Dr. Cook

Royann and I can't say enough good things about Dr. Cook. He has delivered both of our children and has become a family friend in the process. Dr. Cook and I both share a lot of the same interest so it is not just in and out when Royann goes to the doctor. It is usually more talking about those shared interest than about the delivery of our child. Since we were on our second child and everything was very normal each time,  the topic would usually turn to Ole Miss, travel, or World War II history. I will say this though, with Ann Fleming it wasn't at all this way. I had a lot of jitters about the health and the delivery of her being the first child, but he calmed those quickly in by sitting me down and having a long talk with me. The biggest plus I could add about Dr. Cook is his strong, Christian faith. The day Ann Fleming was born I was a nervous dad just like most with their first child, and in comes Dr. Cook late in the day and he checks Royann and gives us his analysis of the birthing process and just takes a seat in a rocking chair in the corner. I mean Royann had been in delivery now for over eight hours and this man is just as calm as he could be. I was just the opposite. He sits down and starts reading a book. I am sitting there thinking how in the world can he sit and read at a time like this. I was like in my mind, come on doc, and lets get this baby out. I walked over and started  to talk to him. The thing I noticed was what he was reading. It was a book that I saw my preacher reading the week before. He calmed me down explaining exactly what was going on. Well come to find out later on, Dr. Cook actually once almost went into the ministry because his faith in God is so strong, but God wasn't calling him there. God was calling him to bring life into this world.

Since becoming pregnant with Taylor, we also share something very similar with Dr. Cook. Dr. Cook's two children, which are older now, are exactly the same age difference as Ann Fleming and Taylor. So advice about siblings being that close in age was a topic of conversation the last few visits before Taylor was born. His wisdom about two babies that close in age was exactly right so far.

As I was leaving Dr. Cook at Royann's six week check up, I kinda got sad because I knew it would probably be a while before I saw a friend that myself and my family had come to care about a great deal. I told him as I was leaving, " I like you a lot Dr. Cook. We share a lot of the same interest in life and I hope to see you at a few Ole Miss games, but I hope we don't see each other here in the office for a while". We both had a good laugh about it and went our separate ways.

Before we left the examining room, we got a picture of Dr. Cook and the children. He said, "This is exactly what they looked like when he brought them into the world", so I guess this is their Dr. Cook pose.