Babyhood (9780062098788) by Paul Reiser Page B

time. When he was examining and probing, I often felt like I was the intruder—despite his best efforts to include me.
    â€œI do feel a slight inflammation in the lining of your wife’s uterus.”
    â€œThank you” was usually what I wound up saying, followed by, “I think the two of you really need to be alone now.”
    Often, he would leave us momentarily to tend to other business, and my wife and I would return to being The Couple—a transition that always felt odd. We went from serious adults who were discussing matters of medical importance with this trained professional to suddenly being just a goofy couple in a room, one of whom was virtually naked and had just been handled in the most personal of ways, and the other of whom was standing there in a jacket. It usually made us silly.
    â€œWhat do you think happens if I press this lever here?”
    â€œLeave it.”
    â€œWhat’s he going to do—yell at us?”
    â€œLeave it.”
    I made great discoveries with the guy’s stethoscope, placing it on various parts of my wife.
    â€œOoo, listen . . .”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYour capillaries are playing ‘Mustang Sally.’ ”
    â€œShhh—put it down, here he is.”
    â€œSo, Doctor, you’re saying that these Braxton-Hicks contractions are entirely normal and nothing to worry about.”
    â€œThat’s correct. Wait a second, where’s my stethoscope?”
    â€œShe took it.”
    Our favorite part of these visits was when we got to see the sonogram. If there’s any event in the pregnancy that reminds you something real is going on, the sonogram is it.
    The first time we saw the wavy image of our child we were ecstatic. We took the little printout and showed it around town like it was a Van Gogh.
    â€œLook at that . . . we made that.”
    We looked forward to each subsequent sonogram like it was our favorite show. We’d dim the lights, pull up our chairs, pull up our stirrups, and settle in for the latest installment of My Little Fetus. The reception wasn’t that great, but the show had everything: When the little guy turned to the camera and thumbed his nose at us, we had comedy. And when the doctor momentarily couldn’t find our child’s heartbeat, we had one brief but terrifying moment of drama.
    The show even had mystery: Is there or is there not a penis?
    My bride and I decided early on to let the sex of our child be a surprise. We figured we had all our lives to know the sex. And once we knew it, it’s not like we were going to forget it. So why not try not knowing for a while.
    Plus, we’d heard horror stories of parents who were mistakenly told their child was a boy, got all set for a boy, bought boy clothes and boy toys, and then, in fact, had a girl. And since it was too late to return everything, they had to raise her as a boy anyway.
    While we appreciated the doctor and his staff for respecting our wish not to know, we also got a kick out of watching them trip all over themselves as they struggled to speak in gender-neutral pronouns.
    â€œYou’ll notice that those are its feet and those are its arms . . . Yes, this sure is a beautiful little . . . person. ”
    We also had fun looking for early traces of family resemblance.
    â€œGee, honey, it looks just like your mother, if she were small, bald, had no eyelids, and was floating in amniotic fluid.”
    â€œYeah, but from this side, it looks like your father—presuming, of course, he was a Hawaiian prawn.”
    M y wife and I had a post-OB-GYN-visit ritual. After every checkup we’d go to this little coffee shop across the street from the doctor’s office and grab a bite to eat. I remember one of my wife’s friends saying, “Boy, you are one great husband to go with your wife to every doctor’s visit.”
    I said, “Well, I enjoy it, and I want to be there for her