Musings From The Exam Room

Gracie and I are in the exam room in her pediatrician's office, waiting for her doctor to do her pre-op visit. It is incredibly hot and I'm suffering from either food poisoning or some new type of 24-hour cholera. Because the universe can be a cruel place, there is a law of nature called The Inverse Toddler Energy Law that says the sicker you feel, the more wound up and active your toddler will be. Gracie is bouncing off the walls - literally - she's doing some version of the toddler demolition derby where she runs into the walls and doors of the room and bounces off of them. She's already shredded the white paper on the exam table so it looks as if I've actually let a kitten loose on it instead of just a little girl with a pen. She's already opened the top of her sippy cup and poured it on the floor.

I am sitting on the too-narrow, multi-colored plastic bench in the corner with my head against the wall, relishing the relative coolness of the wall against my fevered face. Out of the one eye I've managed to keep open, I see Gracie taking her diaper off. Since I brought her here from daycare, she has on an actual diaper with Velcro tabs instead of her absorbent pants. I run to her and try to reattach the tabs, but evidently she's played with them so much that they won't stick anymore. Ugghhh!!! I realize that most organized, multi-tasking women would just get another diaper out of the diaper bag and solve the problem. Well, you know me and you know that organized is not one of my adjectives. Somehow I've managed to get here without a spare diaper - I have two extra pacies, a sippy cup, ten books, a change of clothes, and inexplicably, a plastic teapot in her diaper bag, but NO EXTRA DIAPER. So, being the creative woman that I am, I try tying the sides of her diaper together. Well, that works - for about two seconds, then the diaper is off again and my miniature version of Lady Godiva continues running around the room. Then she stops and stands very still. Then comes the slow grin. Then she says, proudly - "Poo Poo!" I shriek and run to her with the ineffectual diaper thinking I can just hold it around her bottom until she finishes. She starts laughing and I realize that she doesn't need to poop, she's just saying her new favorite word. I breathe a sigh of relief at the disaster averted.

I settle back into my spot and she continues running. Then, she lies down on the floor. At last - a moment of peace. Two seconds later she hops up. "Mama, pee pee! PEEEEEEE PEEEEEE!" And there, on the floor where she was lying, is a small puddle of evidence proving that I was not as lucky averting the second disaster. I try and dry the carpet as best I can with paper towels and diaper wipes (yes I had wipes, just no diapers). What genius thought of putting carpet on the floor of a pediatrician's office -isn't that like carpet in a vet's office? I stick my head out the door and ask if we will loose our place in line with the doctor if I go out to the car and get another diaper. A kind nurse takes pity on me (perhaps because my face looks like alabaster and she's afraid that I might lose my lunch if I have to go out in the heat) and finds Gracie a diaper to put on. The Velcro on this one works well, and Gracie resumes her chatter-filled marathon.

At this moment, I have an epiphany. I am going to go home and convince Steve that the next surgery that takes place in our family will be permanent birth control for him or me (preferably him!) or maybe, perhaps even better, I can convince him to join a monastery where the vows of poverty and silence are optional but the one of celibacy is not - okay, well maybe I'll convince him to take the silence one, too.

Right then, I am utterly convinced that I do not want a second child. The ambivalence that I've felt for several months about giving Gracie a brother or a sister is solidified in that one second. Gracie does not need a sibling; I do not need multiple offspring to be happy. One child in our family is plenty.....

Finally, the doctor comes in and does Gracie's exam. It's over and we head to the checkout desk before going back out into the wilting heat. There, on the bench beside the counter is a tiny infant, brand new in this world, still pink and wrinkly, wrapped in a lightweight receiving blanket. Gracie, her face awash with joy at the unbelievably small miracle, points and whispers, with the rapture of someone in the presence of pure magic, "Baaaybeeeeee!" And remembering how only yesterday the toddler in my arms was that small, I say, "Yes, baaabeeeee" with the same feeling of magic and begin to rethink that idea about Steve joining a monastery....