Implantation

The other day my wife and I had dinner with an old friend and her husband who now live most of the year in another state.  She and I go “way back” almost forty years since she was the first doctor that I hired for my pediatric practice.  It was inevitable during these reunions I would be reminded of stories from the past. 

I’ve written before that one of the most successful ways of attracting new patients was for expectant parents to come to our office to meet us even before their child was born.  These “prenatal consultations,” scheduled at the end of the day, gave us time to know each other to see if we would be “a good fit”.  

One family had moved from Broward County to Palm Beach County. They had one child and another one on the way.  During our visit, I thought I heard them say that their first child was born “by implantation” and I proceeded to tell them that my first two children were adopted and the third was conceived “biologically.”

After I went on and on saying that I had many children in my practice with all sorts of different family origins, he looked at me strangely and asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Well, some kids have surrogate mothers, others are adopted and some are biological.  Some families have two mommies, some have two daddies.”  I continued on with a description of my practice and how I was glad that we had a varied demographic.

“All I said was that my first child was born in Plantation,” he said. 

“Oh, Plantation, Florida,” I replied, feeling very stupid that I had misheard him completely. 

We laughed about it and I wondered how ridiculous I must have sounded.

It turned out that they ultimately chose my practice when their baby was born.  I continued to follow both of their children throughout their teenage years. Whenever I saw their family, I would fondly remember them as the “Implantation Family.”