1.04 Maternity
From tv.com: When a virus is spreading among the hospital, infecting six babies, House and his team must make decisions that could compromise the lives of the babies.

I'm not sure if this really belongs here (feel free to tar and feather me if it doesn't), but I wasn't sure where to post it, and it's relevant to this episode. House's speech in this episode about superbugs could never be relevant than it is right now, I think. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mrsa/DS00735/DSECTION=1. That's a link to an article on MRSA, a superbug that has gotten a lot more press recently. A student in my former high school has it, and everybody around is panicking. I'm a bit worried, but I don't abuse anything anti-bacterial, and I don't wash my hands compulsively. I do everything on a normal, doctor-approved basis. It's still a little scary, though, to know that there's someone who lives about five minutes away from me with this infection. I just hope what happened to that poor student in Virginia doesn't happen here. Society is so anti-bacterial crazy that these infections are becoming more and more prevalent and, more importantly, fatal. I'm just happy because I now have a legitimate reason to bring up House in casual conversation with friends and co-workers. And now I can quote the man/character himself without reservation.

MRSA (and its ugly younger brother VRSA) is one of the few things that scare me silly. I've seen it in action and it's dreadful.

MRSA and VRSA scare me since reading kidsnurse's wonderful fic The More Things Change, where House gets it from a clinic patient.

Oh, wow. I can only imagine what it's like. I'm actually concerned for my mom's health, because the cancer she has (Multiple myeloma, which was briefly featured in "Informed Consent," actually. That was shocking.) weakened her immune system severely, so I'm just worried she's going to wind up catching MSRA somehow. We both work in the same library, and most of the people that come in there keep their cards in their mouth while they're looking for whatever else they need. And then they hand us that same card. ...mind-boggling. Anyway, the point is that you never know who's "colonized" or not. It's just scary to think that this kind of infection was unintentionally created by society. Especially American society, I'm sure.

One of the things I liked about this episode was that the lesbian parents were treated the same as the heterosexual parents. Most shows, in a bid to be well-meaning, would have inserted a comment or speech about how the couple deserved to be treated like anyone else. "House" just did it with no fuss.

I am liking early Cameron a lot, as I start to rewatch all the episodes. Her struggles with telling people bad news seem to me to be very believable. House of course notes quickly that there's a problem, but interestingly asks Foreman about how she's doing first, and Foreman first asks why is House asking since he's not a curious kind of guy (which shows how intuitive Foreman was!). Foreman doesn't trust House's motives, so gives no information (or maybe he hasn't yet noticed her problem). But, while Cameron didn't prepare the women parents at all well for the very possible death of their children, it was obvious she wanted to spare them pain. And I was very touched by her realizing the parents of the other child would get so much comfort from being able to touch their baby for just those few moments, in order to change the sheet. She is very gentle and thoughtful and empathic, and all good qualities for a doctor (Am waiting to find my annoyance with her again - I don't have it yet!)

I found Cameron very likable in the first part of Season 1. The Cameron we see in this episode was a warm, gentle person who you would want to be your doctor. It's a long way from here to Informed Consent! It wasn't until she developed that obnoxious crush on House that I got annoyed with her--except when she was being nosy and insensitive about Chase's family in Cursed. She was annoying (and rude) then too.

I always want House's last scene, where he's sitting in the haystack and he sees the old volunteer who is the shedder, to last longer. It's House. He could care less about hurting someone's feelings. While he might just tell Cuddy so he doesn't have to deal with her, I can also see him informing her she has to go home before she kills any more babies.