Becoming a parent means forgetting what I learned in medical school

Before each of my midwife appointments during my pregnancy last year, I'd try to quiet an anxious little voice in the back of my mind.

"The patient is a 35-year-old woman presenting with her first pregnancy, confirmed by first-trimester ultrasound," the voice would tell me. It would go on to recite other relevant facts: I had been feeling particularly nauseated recently, and I was having a hard time sleeping. It was possible those were normal symptoms of pregnancy, the voice would say quite reasonably before leaping to the worst-case scenario: it was possible those were signs I was about to die.

The voice was me as a doctor. But instead of being a kind and rational guide during a transformative period of my life, the voice was really, really stressing me out.

Pregnancy was my first real experience as a patient. I'd spent the last ten years observing our health care system as a medical student and now as a primary care physician,