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I walked in for our first OB/GYN visit and found myself the intense focus of 30 pairs of eyes all accusing me with their hard, red-rimmed, late-night-lactation glare. THIS IS YOUR FAULT. YOU DID THIS TO HER! hovered in the air over me like a storm cloud.
Hey, this was her idea. I mumbled to no one in particular.
Heehee! You're talking to yourself again. Don't talk to yourself, talk to meeeeeee!! Chirped Tylerpants.
The OB/GYN waiting room is lined with chairs containing uncomfortable women waiting to have their mysterious ladyparts thumped and prodded like the tires on an old Chevy (the one you decided not to buy); and every woman in there knows what you've been up to and how you got into this situation and they're thinking about it. That is an unhappy combination.
The crowd is not terribly varied. Mostly, you see pregnant folks and a few not-pregnant folks studiously pretending they don't know about ladyparts and can't recall exactly why they're waiting. If you go in there you better look pregnant or everybody starts thinking the worst: herpes. Maybe gonorrhea. Or even better - an unwed pregnancy situation. Tut, tut. The savvy birthers flash a wedding ring on the way through the door like a secret code.
Then, out of the blue, in walks an octagenarian.
EGHHH!! Nobody should be confronted with the fact that there are 80yr-old naughty parts just out wandering around the city at will, totally unlicensed. It's too upsetting.
Eventually everyone quits thinking about old folks, which is rude, and realizes its perfectly fine to stare at me, furiously, as I am the only male person in view. In retrospect, perhaps the staring was due to my attempt at dispelling the awkwardness in the air with loud approximations of humor.
Finally, after "I guess now we know what estrogen smells like" and "Whew, when do I get to try on the fatlady suit and pretend to nurse?" Tyler giggled and whispered "please you have got to stop!"
My mouth did, but my mind didn't.
A maternity waiting room crowd does not play to my comedic strong side. They don't like me in there and, in the process of finding that out, I decided I don't need to see my child in an unborn state on a computer screen that badly. Do I want my unborn child's first vague impression of me to be as the guy who went to great technological lengths to photograph him or her naked? We can shake hands in May. That's soon enough. In fact, it may be a bit too soon if you ask me, which nobody did.....ever.
Essentially, the waiting room is a giant box of shame. There's one hugely pregnant, but thin, woman who insists on standing, in heels, to prove she's beautifully, wonderfully, pregnant and feels perfectly fine; unlike most lower forms of women. Later, she goes home, flushes the goldfish, kicks two puppies, and burns all her skinny jeans in a rage over the size of her swollen feet. Everybody else is in worn-out house shoes furtively glancing around trying to make sure someone in the room looks fatter and more miserable than she does, until the blinding realization finally hits one of them that the reason she can't spot anybody worse is because: she's it. Once the tears come and the pecking order is established - most of them kind of drift off into a hazy pregnancy-addled sleep, or resort to manipulating their own strange, misshapen bodies in a variety of terribly off-putting ways.
The woman directly to my right was sitting bolt-upright with her legs spread as wide as they'd go; she was staring down and methodically lifting her 7-months-plus belly before abruptly letting it flop back down between her legs. God only knows how the baby was tolerating that nonsense. Lady - there's a person in there, you know? The sensation would be like me stopping your elevator half way down the building, then lifting it up a few hundred feet and dropping it two floors at a time all the way to the lobby.
I wanted badly to ask her to stop, but I didn't because I can control what comes out of my mouth when my life is at stake. She eventually tired of tormenting the unborn and started furiously punching at her phone.
About mid-way through our 45-minute wait; an absolutely enormous black woman shuffled in and settled, groaning and sputtering, into a chair directly to my left. She looked to be a solid 45 days overdue and terribly uncomfortable. She had to stand back up to shoehorn her phone out of her maternity jeans, then after slowly lowering her heaving bulk back into the chair she proceeded to text someone. Lengthily. I was dying to know who. What could she be saying? I slid over a seat to get a better angle on her. About 9 lines in - she fell dead asleep, slumped over; maternity water bottle tipped over and puddling across her abdomen. Drool immediately began trickling down her chin. Apparently pregnant women have lots of extra drool.
I suddenly find I am in the incubation chamber of an unknown horror.
Then, the nurse called our name. MRS. EWING? She mumbled. TYLER? I looked around. Tyler was gone. I felt trapped. What if it's like a Six Flags ride and if you don't go in when you're called - they skip you?
HERE!! I shouted flapping my arm wildly. HERE I AM! I MEAN WE! HERE WE AM! ARE! HERE WE ARE!
I panicked. My panic response is to babble.
SHE'S IN THE BATHROOM. SHE GOES ALOT. I DONT KNOW WHY. I GO SOMETIMES TOO ALOT. HEH HEH. I MEAN NOT OFTEN ALOT BUT VOLUME ALOT. NOT LOUD VOLUME. I MEAN ALOT OF PEE. ALOT OF VOLUME OF PEE ALL AT ONCE. I HAVE A LARGE BLADDER. BUT NOT NOW. HEH HEH. WAIT. WHAT I MEAN IS I DON'T NEED TO GO NOW. NOT THAT MY BLADDER IS SMALLER NOW. I HAVE A GOOD MAN-SIZED BLADDER. SHE DID NEED TO GO WHICH IS WHERE SHE IS GONE AND I AM HERE. BUT I DON'T GONE. I MEAN GO. I MEAN I DON'T NEED TO GO. I MIGHT LATER. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM SAYING.
(silence)
HEH HEH.....
(silence)
OK HERE IS WIFE. I MEAN HERE IS MY WIFE. THE ONE THAT IS PREGNANT, TYLER.
(silence)
HEH. HEH. AHEM.
Enormous black person was still asleep, but everyone else was staring at me like you'd stare at the person talking in a library. Angry staring.
Tyler clip-clopped back into the room and shared a knowing look with the nurse that communicated something negative about me, I'm not sure what, and in we went.
After that, it got worse.
Much worse.
The woman directly to my right was sitting bolt-upright with her legs spread as wide as they'd go; she was staring down and methodically lifting her 7-months-plus belly before abruptly letting it flop back down between her legs. God only knows how the baby was tolerating that nonsense. Lady - there's a person in there, you know? The sensation would be like me stopping your elevator half way down the building, then lifting it up a few hundred feet and dropping it two floors at a time all the way to the lobby.
I wanted badly to ask her to stop, but I didn't because I can control what comes out of my mouth when my life is at stake. She eventually tired of tormenting the unborn and started furiously punching at her phone.
About mid-way through our 45-minute wait; an absolutely enormous black woman shuffled in and settled, groaning and sputtering, into a chair directly to my left. She looked to be a solid 45 days overdue and terribly uncomfortable. She had to stand back up to shoehorn her phone out of her maternity jeans, then after slowly lowering her heaving bulk back into the chair she proceeded to text someone. Lengthily. I was dying to know who. What could she be saying? I slid over a seat to get a better angle on her. About 9 lines in - she fell dead asleep, slumped over; maternity water bottle tipped over and puddling across her abdomen. Drool immediately began trickling down her chin. Apparently pregnant women have lots of extra drool.
I suddenly find I am in the incubation chamber of an unknown horror.
Then, the nurse called our name. MRS. EWING? She mumbled. TYLER? I looked around. Tyler was gone. I felt trapped. What if it's like a Six Flags ride and if you don't go in when you're called - they skip you?
HERE!! I shouted flapping my arm wildly. HERE I AM! I MEAN WE! HERE WE AM! ARE! HERE WE ARE!
I panicked. My panic response is to babble.
SHE'S IN THE BATHROOM. SHE GOES ALOT. I DONT KNOW WHY. I GO SOMETIMES TOO ALOT. HEH HEH. I MEAN NOT OFTEN ALOT BUT VOLUME ALOT. NOT LOUD VOLUME. I MEAN ALOT OF PEE. ALOT OF VOLUME OF PEE ALL AT ONCE. I HAVE A LARGE BLADDER. BUT NOT NOW. HEH HEH. WAIT. WHAT I MEAN IS I DON'T NEED TO GO NOW. NOT THAT MY BLADDER IS SMALLER NOW. I HAVE A GOOD MAN-SIZED BLADDER. SHE DID NEED TO GO WHICH IS WHERE SHE IS GONE AND I AM HERE. BUT I DON'T GONE. I MEAN GO. I MEAN I DON'T NEED TO GO. I MIGHT LATER. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM SAYING.
(silence)
HEH HEH.....
(silence)
OK HERE IS WIFE. I MEAN HERE IS MY WIFE. THE ONE THAT IS PREGNANT, TYLER.
(silence)
HEH. HEH. AHEM.
Enormous black person was still asleep, but everyone else was staring at me like you'd stare at the person talking in a library. Angry staring.
Tyler clip-clopped back into the room and shared a knowing look with the nurse that communicated something negative about me, I'm not sure what, and in we went.
After that, it got worse.
Much worse.
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