Yesterday I had an appointment with my OB. As usual, he found the baby's heartbeat within .5 seconds of putting the little doppler thingy on my belly. Her heart is beating strongly, she's in the right position, everything is good with her.
Me, on the other hand, managed to gain 6 pounds in 3 weeks. Now, my weight gain to date has been encouragingly slow. I haven't gained more than 1 or 2 pounds between doctor's visits, which have been more less than 3 or 4 weeks apart. The "normal" rate is 1 pound per week, for a total of 40 pounds, but that is if you were at an ideal weight before getting pregnant. Since I was not at an ideal weight, it is not recommended for me to gain the full 40 pounds. Up until yesterday, I was at +20 pounds. Ok, so +26 pounds is still good for a pregnancy weight gain, especially at this stage (34 weeks, exactly 2 1/2 weeks until I am full term! 5 1/2 weeks until my due date!). 6 pounds in 3 weeks isn't healthy, even if 2 of those pounds should have gone directly to the baby. I'm going to blame it on the entire bottle of water that I chugged before going in, since I anticipated another urine test. Which I did have to do, confirming the result of a "raging UTI" as my doctor put it. That's 2 UTIs in one month, if anyone was keeping track. In 2 weeks, I get the Group B Strep test, which I am not looking forward to, since the pamphlet explains that it consists of violating my privacy (that's as specific as I am going to get).
By far, the highlight of my time at the doctor and hospital yesterday was the waiting room experiences. My doctor was running late because he had been in a delivery in the morning, so my appointment was delayed by about an hour. I had my Kindle (Water for Elephants), and I am glad that my Doctor makes himself available for deliveries even if he has a bunch of appointments in a row, so I absolutely didn't mind. Plus, I was so conveniently seated next to a wonderful example of the white-trash that lives in Las Vegas. A 28 year old woman was there with her sister, and her sister's two pretty cute children. The sister was loudly talking about going to the Tatoo convention, and yelling at her son about having to shave his head (which he was very upset about) because he had gotten gum in it. It was the woman's first visit to this doctor's office, so she was filing out all the pregnant paperwork. She was not-so-discreetly telling her sister that 1) she couldn't remember when her last period was, so she put down "sometime in February". 2) she didn't know anything about her baby's father's medical history, and couldn't call him and ask because he was in jail. 3) didn't know her insurance information (her sister reminded her that she was on Medicaid). Her sister, in between yelling at her 2 1/2 year old son, also kept interrupting her 4 or 5 year old daughter playing a video game on her phone because she was "doing it wrong". Excellent parenting examples.
After my appointment, my doctor recommended that I head over to the hospital to pre-register for my delivery. In that waiting room, I had another delightful sample of Las Vegas locals. An extremely overweight woman, who turned out to be pregnant, was there with equally overweight mother, her 13 or 14 year old daughter, and her 2 year old daughter. She was talking to her mother about how inconvenient it was for her to get searched by the cops last week because she had two vibrators in her purse. She told her mother about how the cops asked why she was carrying two vibrators in her purse, and she explained that "I'm pregnant, as big as a house, horny, single and nobody will have sex with me". She further explained to them that she needed two because one was for "on the go (you know, like in the car and stuff)", and the other was for "prolonged pleasure". She was also there to preregister because her doctor (also my doctor) was going to schedule her for a c-section because her "uterus was liable to BUST", as she explained to the woman doing to her registration. Also, when asked about her marital status, she said, "well, I got married to the father of my first child, but I haven't seen him in 10 years, so I don't know the answer to that question". Sometimes registration questions are hard. On the way out, the 2 year old spilled the entire contents of a bag of Doritos (which she obviously got yelled at for, because 2 year olds should be in charge of holding their own Doritos) onto the hospital floor right in front of the doors to the infant nursery, so my entire time registering was spent interrupted by people's shoes crunching on the chips (which have always smelled bad to me, which is only intensified by being pregnant).
Yes, I am judgmental. I understand people all have different circumstances and everything, but come on! You don't know if you're married? You don't know when your last period was?? You're yelling at your kid for doing kid things, like getting gum in their hair and spilling Doritos? Now I know why all the nice houses are in gated communities.
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