Doctors-'O-Rama

I am now looking forward to two fun-filled months of thrice-weekly doctor appointments, yee-flippin'-haw. For your entertainment and amusement (and in case you care) here's nauseating detail of my schedule .

On Mondays I have my weekly appointment with my OB, at which I have alarmingly learned that we will be doing a physical exam EVERY WEEK, complete with a date with the Vaginal Car Jack (yeah, you know what I'm talking about). For those of you who haven't tried this whole Having a Child thing, this isn't normal. Normal weekly appointments consist of a few questions, blood pressure, measurements, poke on the belly, then you're gone. This, it sucks.

We will also do a fetal non-stress test at that visit as well, where they hook you up with monitors and you lay around and listen to the baby's heart beat and movements and watch contractions on a line graph for a while.

The second appointment is another fetal non-stress test on Thursdays. These are actually not so bad except that they're time consuming. The Little Miss is a mover and a shaker and at my last appointment I was laying in there for over 20 minutes because they kept having to reset the monitors to keep a bead on her heartbeat.

On Fridays, it's a Level-2 sonogram with the specialist OB group across town. They're keeping an eye on my fluid levels - which they charmingly referred to the baby's "olympic-size swimming pool" last week - and her bloodflow levels for the anemia. They don't think she's acting anemic, but are still keeping an eye on it because her numbers are going up and are now just under the scary "really anemic" line. Eh.

Can I just say, thank God for good insurance? We got the bill for the first sonogram and, well, damn. This is just prenatal care - can't wait for those surgical bills. You know they're impressive when your OB tells you to take your checkbook.