The Waiting Room

One of the goals of this blog is to write about all the things that happen when you become a parent that “no one tells you about.” I feel like new parents say that all the time: “No one told me it would be this hard;” “No one told me I would love this much;” “No one told me my body would look this way.” Mostly when my new-parent friends say this I think to myself, “Really? I feel like people say that all the time. Are you just not listening?” Of course, I understand: when someone says, “You will never be not tired again,” you think, “Okay I get it.” But until you are rocking a colicky baby at 4am for the seventh night in a row when you have to go to work in three hours you don’t really get it.

I would like to tell you what it’s like to rock a colicky baby to sleep at 4 am—well, I wouldn’t because who would want to have a colicky baby? But if it happens, I will tell you. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Here, really, is the first thing I’ve discovered about being pregnant that no one told me: the doctor will not see you now.

I assumed that as soon as you got that positive blue line, plus sign, red dot—whatever the indicator—your OB/GYN would want to see you right away. Tell you how you’re doing; tell you what you should be doing. Turns out, not so much. They don’t care to see you until you’re 8-10 weeks along, in fact.

So when Snowman and I decided we wouldn’t tell anyone until we had seen the doctor for confirmation that the pregnancy was legit, I assumed we’d be waiting a few days—not a few weeks. Once we realized how long we’d have to wait—3 weeks at this point—we decided we couldn’t wait and told our family.

So I really hope I’m pregnant.

From the doctor’s point of view, I understand why they wait. If you miscarry this early, there is nothing a doctor can do to prevent it. Also, at this stage the baby doesn’t have any vitals so the doctor can’t really do anything other than administer a blood test to confirm the bun is cooking in your 98.6° oven.

Which could be useful, because it’d be mighty embarrassing to find out I’m not really pregnant at all. I mean I am eating a lot of vegetables right now when I’d rather be eating Frito pie.

Now from the mother’s perspective. Are you seriously going let me float along on my own for three more weeks without any sort of medical guidance at all? Did you not see my previous post? I’m just popping pills, washing them down with Jack, eating soft cheese until I stink, and I may even eat tilefish tomorrow! I do not know what the fuck I’m doing.