Some of the commonest questions in medicine sound deceptively simple.“When is the baby due?” “How long have I got?”
People ask these questions as though there should be a clean answer. A date. A time. Something solid enough to write on a calendar.
Medicine, however, deals mostly in estimates.
Category: Maternity
Body image in tokothanatology
That morning, two patients came to see me—one carrying new life, the other preparing to let go of it.
The first was a young woman in her third trimester, radiant and restless. She sat awkwardly on the exam table, her belly taut and high. “I don’t recognize myself anymore,” she said, laughing a little too quickly. “I used to be fit. I had abs. Now I can’t see my feet.”
Thinking about childbirth through the lens of Kubler-Ross’s stages
As a family doctor, I’ve spent a lifetime at both bookends of life — welcoming new arrivals and accompanying people at the end of their journeys. Over time, I’ve come to see how closely these moments mirror one another. The same emotional currents that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described in dying — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — also flow through birth and the making of a family. As with the stages of dying, these emotions can appear at any time and in any order.
Parallel Pioneers in Compassionate Care: Dr. Balfour Mount and Dr. Murray Enkin
One of my heroes died recently. Dr. Balfour Mount (1939-2025) was a Canadian pioneer in palliative care. He founded the first palliative care service, in fact the first in North America, at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal in 1974. Trained as a urologist and surgeon, he was moved by the suffering he witnessed among patients dying in his hospital.
What If We Treated Death like Birth in Our Society?
In the not too distant past, open displays of pregnancy were frowned upon. We often discouraged pregnant women from working. They dressed in tent-like garments to hide their bump. On television, their condition was hidden from view until Lucillle Ball broke the taboo by using her own pregnancy in I Love Lucy. Look how far we have come. Now we celebrate pregnancy with baby showers, birth plans, prenatal classes, books, apps and more. Families prepare for the new arrival.