Doctor Update

Our doctor's appointment was switched from yesterday to today, which I was fine with. It just was a little confusing on the phone. In Arabic, "tomorrow" is bukra and "the day after tomorrow" is b'ad bukra. The receptionist phoned us on Monday evening and asked if she could change my appointment from tomorrow at 12:15 to 12:45 "after tomorrow." I said that was fine and then hung up the phone and realized that I wasn't quite sure what she meant by "after tomorrow."

For a native English speaker, "after tomorrow" is a rather vague statement meaning anytime from the day following tomorrow until forever. We have to use the whole phrase of "the day after tomorrow" to really know that we aren't referring to tomorrow but the day after that.

Andrew and I talked about it and were pretty sure that she was saying "after tomorrow" because that's basically what "b'ad bukra" means, only it is commonly understood that "b'ad bukra" means tomorrow's tomorrow. There was a chance though that her "after" didn't mean "b'ad," though, so I ended up phoning the clinic back and using the names of the days of the week just to verify. She meant "b'ad bukra."

Another funny thing she did was say, "Dr. Tarek won't be in tomorrow, but I can get you in after tomorrow. I will phone Dr. Ultrasound to see if she is available."

Andrew said that we should still use professions as last names. Then we could be the Mr. Eternal-student family going to see Dr. Ultrasound and Dr. Gynecologist, at least until we become the Dr. Teacher-of-history family, or something like that.

So this morning we got up and got ready to go to our appointment. Dr. Ultrasound was surprised to see us.

"There were no abnormalities in your 20 week scan. Do you have any complaints?" she asked.

"Well, no...it's just that last time you said it was too early to tell the gender of the baby and that if we wanted to know for sure to schedule another appointment..."

She found the baby's gender right away because, unlike last time, Miriam was sleeping so she was staying still instead of running away from the probe. It's definitely a girl. There are no boy parts, still, and we all saw the triple white lines that the labia make. So, Miriam it is.

After finding out the gender, Dr. Ultrasound proceeded to do a very thorough scan, which woke Miriam up. Miriam was sleeping in an anterior position, which Dr. Ultrasound said was very good since we're nearing the third trimester. But when she woke up and started "playing" she was all over the place. Like Rachel, she was pushing back against the probe and doing all sorts of crazy things.

"She's very active," Dr. Ultrasound commented, "Can you feel her moving?"

Ummmm...yes. See how my stomach is lurching aorund? How could I not feel it?

It was nice to see such clear signs of girlhood since we had pretty much convinced ourselves of that after our 20 week ultrasound (which was actually at 19 weeks). Still, I thought it funny that the very doctor who suggested we book another appointment was shocked when we showed up.

When we got in to see Dr. Tarek, he said,

"And I see you had another ultrasound! That's fine, that's fine. It's no problem to have one."

He was shocked that we had had an ultrasound as well. He is the one who wrote out the request for us to have the ultrasound so why he's shocked I will never know. I was further confused at his next question:

"When did you have lunch?"

We hadn't had lunch yet, even though it was almost 2:00 PM because we had been sitting in the waiting room or lab since 12:30...he didn't say anything about anything being wrong, though, and my maternity card says that my urine sample was normal so they didn't find glucose in it or anything. Weird.

We have another appointment scheduled in 3 weeks. When we were getting ready to leave Dr. Tarek's office he said, "I'll see you in a couple of weeks."

"So, in two weeks, then?" I asked.

He stared at me. I know that "couple" technically means "two" but sometimes people don't mean exactly two when they say couple.

"Do I make an appointment for 2 weeks or 4 weeks?" I clarified.

"Well, you are almost 28 weeks--you are 27 weeks and 5 days--which brings you to the third trimester. I should be seeing you every 2 weeks after 28 weeks, so make the appointment for 2 or 3 weeks."

So we made the appointment for 3 weeks since, by my calculations, I'm only 27 weeks and 1 day. But who's counting?