Okay, I didn’t exactly choose him.

My regular (female) OB was booked out until mid-August and the clinic suggested I try calling another location in the Twin Cities to see if I could get in sooner for my IUD consult. 

So I called a suburban location. It was a Monday. Yes, they could give me an appointment with Dr. G, the sole guy in the practice. He had times available Tuesday or Wednesday. Yes, this week. Can’t make either of those? Well, he had openings Thursday and Friday too.

Now my primary care doctor is a guy, and he does the yearly pap smears and breast exams. My second baby was delivered by a worried-looking male resident who showed up at the last minute. So I’m not squeamish - but just as you’d rather eat at the restaurant that’s packed every night, and not the one with the empty tables….you don’t want to go to the unpopular doctor.

Dr. G turned out to be a middle-aged, bespectacled fellow who spent quite a bit of time asking about me and my background and my family. Quite different from my usual OB, who’s always rushing in and out. He talked through a book of colorful pictures of my innards and described how the IUD worked by constantly irritating the smooth lining of the uterus - “like the inside of your mouth” - to thwart both egg and sperm. He whipped out a clear plastic bottle holding the white plastic T-shaped device with a double-stringed tail. In another bottle, he even showed me a metal coil he “took out of a Chinese woman.” (That was slightly bizarre, and probably prompted by my Chinese name, even if my lineage took a 100-year detour via Malaysia).

He told me I was an ideal candidate for an IUD - stable relationship, mother of kids with no plans for more. And, I might add, one tired of fiddling with pills and condoms.

I’ll blame my reporter’s lack of restraint, but I just had to ask. What’s it like to be the guy who’s never the first choice? “It’s great,” he answered, somewhat unconvincingly. The clinic, he said, was filled with young women OBs working part-time because they had young families. He gets the spillover. He shrugged: “I’m the designated hitter.”

Which I thought was a great line.

Cribsheeters, would you go to a male OB/Gyn? And has anybody had experience with an IUD? Pros? Cons?

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