Visiting the Doctor with Three Children

Enough said.  The end.

Okay, so I'll tell you.  Visits to the doctor are enough to wipe me out for the entire day.  Today the appointment was at four.  I'm not sure if that is better or worse than a morning visit.  Grady just hasn't been himself all week.  We were at our neighbor's house this morning.  She is also blessed with a two year old boy.  She so sweetly suggested that maybe Grady wasn't feeling well and had an ear infection.   That her child only makes those animalistic screams when he has a double ear infection.  I can only hope.  So I make the appointment.  While in the waiting room, Grady squats down next to a chair.  I can tell by the fact that his face is turning bright red and he's grunting like a pig, that he is taking a big dump. I feel like the others in the room are so lucky to witness this special event.  Boy does it stink.  If you weren't sick before you came in, you sure as hell are now.  I think I'm going to throw up.  This is a particularly small office with only one bathroom.  With no changing table in it.  I can only hope that we are called to a room soon.  I ask Grady very loudly if he needs his diaper changed so the other moms don't think that in my crazed existence I have lost my sense of smell.  The nurse calls Grady's name and it's his turn to be weighed.  He takes off.  I bribe him with tic tacs and he sort of stands on it.  Good enough, we know how much half of him weighs so they can just double it.  By the time we get to the exam room I'm about to pass out.  The nurse takes his temperature and listens to his heart before I can change his diaper.  They hand me a plastic bag to put it in.  The plastic bag must remain with the mother at all times.  For the safety of the doctors of course.  Let me tell you, this room is the size of a toilet.  Not a bathroom.  A toilet. A toilet with three kids and a mom standing in the hole.  A hole with a big, fat poop in a Safeway bag.  I think about swinging the bag hard enough against my head to knock myself out but decide against it.  When the doctor arrives it does not get any better.  I'll spare you the holding down details.  The doctor has to perform a one handed throat check.  Dempsey in her other arm.  Grady is fine she tells me.  Please define 'fine' I pleasantly request.  Well, no ear infection.  No infection to be found anywhere.  He's two she tells me.  Blah. 

When I was pregnant with Dempsey I would take Lillian and Grady with me for my belly checks.  I would hand out candy like it was Halloween and they were trick-or-treaters coming to my door.    I used to blow up the latex gloves into finger balloons and we would bounce them around the exam room until the doctor arrived.  At which point I would buckle them both in the stroller and hop on the table.  After I had Dempsey, I took all three.  I had an appointment in which I had to get undressed from the waist down.  The boys were buckled in early this time and Lillian was left to roam free with a direct order from me to stay out of site of my vagina.  Then Lillian decided she had to go to the bathroom.  For a three year old that means this instant.  Not once mom gets redressed.  So I scoot my naked ass off the table , open the door, cowering behind it, and tell her to go ask one of the nurses to show her which door it is.  Don't talk about me. We know the nurses and doctors very well.  I've had three babies in three and a half years.  But she doesn't ask.  She just opens a door.  A door to another exam room.  With what I can only guess was another bare assed woman.  She's probably scarred for life.  Lillian and that poor woman.

On our way home from Grady's appointment we stop back to see our neighbor.  She looks expectantly at my hand for the tell tale prescription bag.  I look back at her, my eyes glistening...he's TWO!  Who would have guessed?  This is horrible!  TWO!  I just can't believe it!  Can you?  No one told me when I got pregnant I would someday have a two year old!  I quit.  Enough said.  The end.  Blah.