i don’t wanna miss a thing

So this morning I had a routine weekly doctor appointment to check on George’s progress into the world.  Save one appointment, Steve has come to every single doctor visit with me.  This whole fatherhood thing has looked good on him from the outset; he’s going to make a hell of a dad.  The one appointment he didn’t come to is one he didn’t necessarily miss:  he forfeited and let my visiting-from-Oregon sisters come with me.  It turned out to be the one time that I had high blood pressure and was admitted to Labor & Delivery triage.  All turned out well; my blood pressure dropped almost the instant I was admitted.  But I didn’t even call Steve and tell him I was holed up at the hospital.  I knew it would turn out okay, though he was so upset when I called him after I was discharged.  It turns out that I felt like an asshole for not telling him that I was hooked up to all kinds of machines in a triage room.  Not a proud wife moment.

Back to today’s appointment.  Steve was with me.  My doctor wanted me to have an ultrasound to measure George’s size so that, come next Wednesday, he could determine how late George could be if George wasn’t close to coming at the due date.  At this point, with about ten days to go, my cervix is not “ripe” – I’m a green banana.  So off to the ultrasound tech we went.  George was sleepy and he wasn’t moving in her favor.  She tried to wake him but it didn’t work.  She asked me a series of questions that had a me a little nervous.  At any moment I thought she was going to say “DID YOU KNOW HE HAS THREE LEGS NOW” or “GEORGE? HOW ABOUT GEORGIA?”  She got up mid-ultrasound and told me she was going to look at my previous ultrasound.  Steve and I were like okay, we’ll just stay in this room and listen to your shitty radio play Aerosmith’s theme from Armageddon while you go put your big brains to work calling up my prior results. 

And she came back and finished up the ultrasound.  George was measuring on the small side.  5 pounds, 12 ounces.  This concerned her; she went off to call my doctor.  Mind you, my doctor has said for the last few weeks that George is a good medium-sized baby.  Not too big, not too small.  She returned and like that: Madge?  You’re going back to triage.  You need to be monitored for a couple of hours.  Steve at my side, the question-asker (I’m the “OKAY” person – I do what I’m told in medical offices), asks “Why?”  “Oh, it’s nothing to be worried about!”

We get to triage.  The nurse at the pearly gates tells me I’m not on the list to be admitted.  We tell her we were sent by GOD.  “Ultrasound technicians are not GOD.”  Whatever, just hook me up to some machines so I can get out of here.  "You're seriously here because you have a small baby?"  The triage nurse hooks me up to machines and says everything looks excellent.  She can’t get a hold of my doctor because he naps in the afternoon and never wakes up before 2pm.  So we wait.  And wait.  We listen to George’s heartbeat for 90 minutes and giggle when he moves because when it happens, the machine makes a BLEEP.  There is some drama in the triage bed next to me and it is so entertaining:  a 36 weeks pregnant woman says her water broke about 20 minutes ago.  The nurse doesn’t believe her!  “You peed yourself maybe?  Your baby’s head is way up there!”  Nothing like hearing the inspection of someone else’s vagina.  After some more tests, we listen:  YES.  She is in labor.  That is fluid, not pee.  She is going to have a C-Section.  “Do you take prenatal vitamins?”  No.  “What did you have to eat today?”  Diet coke and watermelon.  “How much do you weigh?”  300 pounds.  “Seriously, what did you eat?”  Same answer.  Then the anethesiologist makes an appearance and all kinds of nurses are in the triage hovered around this hot mess.  She’s a tough stick; she wails when the needle doesn’t cooperate.  At that moment, my nurse comes back and says “YOU ARE OUT OF HERE.”  Since everything looked swell.  But, I do have to go back tomorrow for more monitoring and have a nurse (or doctor) do another ultrasound.  George might be far down enough in my pelvis that he’s throwing off the whole system.  But the concern is, if he truly is that little, he has lost weight.  That’s not good.  But I was reassured by the nurse with 25 years experience that that is probably not the case.  She doesn’t have a lot of faith in ultrasounds.

Leaving was a relief.  Steve went back to work and I went to Chipotle and inhaled a beef bowl.  But the amount they served me was way less than last time.  A little consistency is always appreciated. 

What I want to say is, during my triage experience today, I was belly laughing.  Steve knows how to tickle my funny bone and he was in rare form.  He even confided in me that he likes hospitals because they’re cool and dark.  He wanted to take a closer look at the machines.  He followed cords and outlets and made sure he knew how everything worked.  I rested on him and thought to myself how lucky I am to have made a little tiny baby with my soul mate.