One date we had been anxiously awaiting was the much ballyhooed 19 week sonogram. As previously mentioned, our first crack at this ended up instead being a 17 week ultrasound in which, according to our sonographer, ‘you can’t see nothin’. So we were directed to return a few weeks later for the correct date.
And so we found ourselves back in the waiting room. Our appointment was at 9:15, a few minutes later than the last, but the difference was astounding. Instead of one other patient, it was standing room only. I bribed the maitre’d for a few seats, and we took our place amongst the crowd.
Frankly, sitting amidst both pregnant women and women with regular GYN appointments was a bit unnerving – I felt at some point all the hormones might consume me and I would start craving chocolate, assuming I looked fat, and hating my husband for ‘this spawn in my belly’. One woman ‘afflicted with the preggers’ was pounding what appeared to be Coke – after many knowing glances of the sisterhood of pregnant women, I discerned after some prodding that this is some sort of glucose test, or possibly the Pepsi challenge. Needless to say, when they finally called us back, I was elated to escape.
Within minutes Kim was on the table, and the white noise that is our unborn child graced the screen. Things were definitely the right size now, we were told happily, and our sonographer went about happily drawing lines around amorphous sensor blips, saying unverifiable things like ‘that’s your placenta’, ‘nice uterus’ and ‘Fruit loops for breakfast? I thought so.’
After a few minutes, it became clear that our technician was having difficulties, stating that Chi-baba was acting stubborn (big surprise) and being shy (again, surprise). He/she tucked into a ball and was hiding behind my wife’s pancreas, or in a Fallopian tube or something. I wasn’t paying too much attention, as I was trying to find the right moment to ask if the technician had poor reception on her family TV as a kid and had an uncanny knack for making sense of the distorted version of Three’s Company while the rest of her family sat befuddled. She had Kim go empty her bladder in the hopes that it would ‘make room’ down there.
It didn’t help too much – the kid was content where it was. She had gotten her measurements though, so she starting wrapping things up. She handed us a few pictures she had taken, but they were mostly garbage because of the uncooperative fetus. She looked at them, paused as if to say ‘I’m the best damn sonographer in these parts and I can do better than this,’ and then had Kim lie back again, to get some better pics. And, on cue, that’s when the trouble began.
She began her search for candids, perhaps with baby ‘vogueing’ or something, when it occurred to her that she had not checked Kim’s amniotic fluid levels.
Now, me being me of course, immediately pictured some sort of dipstick being pulled out to measure this sort of thing, but apparently drawing dotted lines with an Asteroids style trackball works just as well. The technician’s demeanor changed, as if she had just discovered that ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ was, in fact, butter. She then asked one of the most asinine and ridiculous questions I have ever heard, to the point that I had to keep myself from doubling over in laughter. She asked if Kim drank enough water.
Now you may not be aware of this, but I’m reasonably sure that my wife is partially a fish. We go to Sam’s Club nearly every week to purchase 5 gallon jugs of water, as well as 24 bottles of water for when she’s ‘on the go.’ I’m certainly not drinking all that water (unless it’s mixed with whiskey, and I usually just use the water out of the fountain at work when I do that) so you can imagine the ridiculousness of the question to us.
Regardless though, the reality was that the fluid levels were ‘outside’ the recommended range, and one of the causes of that is dehydration. She left to speak to a doctor about it (who turns out to be the husband of our regular doctor) and returned to tell us that Carla would call us later that day regarding the issue. She mentioned, after some pressing, that one treatment for low fluid levels is bedrest – a statement that again elicited guffaws deep within myself which I stifled before they could reach the surface. Kim on bedrest – that’d be like trying to keep our cat from one of Kim’s hair ties – you can try, but you’ll probably get hurt in the process. Anyway, other than that, she wouldn’t really tell us anything.
We left, suitably freaked out, but hopeful that because the technician didn’t notice the issue until the end of the appointment, that things were still good. Kim also realized, on the way out, that she had been significantly ill, in the bathroom sense, the night before, which probably sapped a lot of hydration out of her.
But once again we were at the mercy of the phone for our salvation.
