This is one question each and every parent in India face. I also went through same process of discovery, confusion and then final decision. This post will clearly help some prospective parents.

Our requirements were very simple -

• Doctor should spend time with us
• Listen to our questions and patiently answer our queries
• Understand our anxiety
• Available to help us in urgency
• Should be in late 30s, so he/she is enough experienced at the same time aware about new technologies
• Should be accessible in terms of distance and traffic
• He/she should be associated with a good hospital

After the good news was confirmed, I called up few friends who have had deliveries in Thane in recent times and then we visited various doctors in Thane. But I found out that everybody here was very busy, they had long queues, uncomfortable waiting periods on every visit and poor appointment management systems. Even if you take prior appointments every doctor had their own algorithms to prioritize the queue. I could see women in 9th month waiting for hours for appointment. It was just absolute chaos.

Then we got few good references from friends about Dr. Suneeta Phadake in Aundh, Pune. We visited her and we liked her in first few minutes. She was knowledgeable, experienced, sensitive and sensible. The problem was, she was in Pune. This meant that we will have to travel every month until 8th month and then move to Pune in 9th month of pregnancy. Also she won’t be available in case of urgency during first 8 months. But we were just so impressed with her that we decided to go ahead and if pregnancy progresses without any complications, we would continue with her. Decision turned out to be very good until now because she has really helped us to cope with the anxiety and stress in first 6 months very nicely.

One thing which we completely forgot from our list of requirements was to check out the hospital she was associated with. I realized that its very important to choose the hospital which has separate maternity ward. I realized that environment in maternity homes is completely different than in a general hospital where all kinds of patients check in. Apart from really fatal deliveries, which are rare, the atmosphere is mostly cheerful and full of happiness in maternity wards. Thats when we rushed to check out the hospitals Dr. Suneeta was associated. We decided to prefer Ratna hospital over Kodbaghe, even though its little far off because it has separate maternity floor and lots of choices of rooms.