No even keel here

We ended 2008 with an appointment with the obstrician, who requires me to come in every week now that the LG is to term. My regular doctor is on island time. She's deliberate, soft-spoken, thoughtful and perpetually late because she takes an hour with each half-hour appointment slot. She was on vacation yesterday, so we saw a different doctor.

She is a short, compact, whirlwind woman who talks faster than I do and who leaves you with the sense that even though you've had a conversation, it's not clear she was actually listening. I think she might have just been following Patient Script 12A, the one for the Educated Professional Woman Three Weeks Before Due Date.

Hunter and I brought our list of questions about the birth plan. This also was the first appointment that would require the, um, checking of certain things on my person to see if my body was going ahead with delivering the baby without sending me a memo.

So there I sit on the examing table, partially disrobed and covered only by one of those awful paper drapes (how much extra would it cost to use an actual piece of cloth, honestly?), as Tasmanian devil doctor comes in. Hunter and Maddie are in a chair beside and a little bit behind me.

The conversation had the tempo of a firefight. By the end I no longer used fully formed phrases but lobbed keyword grenades. She returned fire with paragraphs on the subject, punctuated by odd laughter during discussion of things that aren't really humorous. (Episiotomy? Circumcision? Ha ha!)

One of our last questions was about post-partum birth control. Since I hope to breastfeed the LG for at least a year, and I'm not interested in being pregnant for 18 consecutive months, we need to know our options.

With one, she said the most common complaint was increased moodiness. From my half-naked perch, without even making eye contact with my husband, I felt his brain go into red-alert mode and heard the warning sirens in his head. Before we needed to hand him a paper bag for hyperventilation, I told the doctor:

"You stopped us at moodiness."

She didn't even crack a smile.