Baby Memoirs: What Are The Odds?

It was time for our 18 week checkup. My wife who is normally a rock was a total train wreck. Let me clarify, she was a wreck relative to her normal self, as she usually handles stress extremely well. But not this morning. I could see the worry in her eyes and feel the anxiety permeating off her and billowing into the rest of the car.

This checkup was a big one to be sure. First of all we were to find out the gender of our new baby. We also would learn how healthy the baby is and what sort of odds we were looking at for various congenital birth defects. It was getting close to Christmas and it had been pouring rain for like seven days straight. I started wondering if she was going through some sort of Seasonable Affective Disorder (a.k.a. SAD), like all those depressed people in Seattle do when there is no sunshine for extended periods. That thought quickly passed once I realized in the six years we’ve been together I’ve only seen this type of stress a few times.

I am usually the more pessimistic half of our relationship, but for whatever reason, I was as cool as the other side of the pillow for this one. So we sat unusually silent in the car for a while on our way to the doctor when out of the blue she asked what I was thinking about. This caught me a bit off guard, so I actually fessed up to her about what was on my mind. I was thinking what a bummer for Fashion Island, which is an outdoor mall near us, that it had been raining for the very biggest shopping week of the year leading up to Christmas. I just couldn’t fathom what the rain would be doing for their sales. There is no way I’ll be shopping at Fashion Island with it raining like hell, nor can I imagine others doing the same.   I can only imagine the blood bath of red ink being piled on to these already unstable retailers. Let’s just say that was not the answer she was wanting out of me.

I decided to turn up the music to provide some sort of distraction when I quickly noted that one of my favorite bands (Pearl Jam) was playing and not only that, but I just so happened to remember from a book I had read that it was the lead singer’s (Eddie Vedder) birthday. Given the significance of what we were heading into, this sort of chitter chatter seemed to annoy her even further. I figured my best strategy was to not talk the rest of the ride, so as to not deepen the hole I had been digging for myself.

We walked into the waiting room of the doctor’s office and there were already about four other couples in there. I quickly noted each of them had this same look of confused trepidation on their faces. It was eerie. It was also dead silent. I think it was then I realized “holy poop”, this appointment is a really big deal. As some sort of self-protection mechanism, I realized my head had been buried deep in the sand pretty much the entire morning.

The only sound in the waiting room was coming from this wall mounted flat screen television. The video they were playing was about how to handle special needs children. I did my best to ignore it, but am almost positive I heard something about cancer in there as well. At this point, I knew I needed to get a hold of myself. The fight or flight dynamic kicked in and flight was clearly the best option. I told my wife that I am not totally sure I had locked the car, which was actually true, and I needed to go back and double check it. After all, it was nearing Christmas and there were all sorts of valuable gifts in there. 

So off I went to gather myself and lock up the already locked car and then made the short walk back to the office.   My wife and I have a weird dynamic that when one is stressed or depressed, the other pulls up their boot straps and offers caring reassurance and strength. It may sound like make believe or at best an exaggeration, but this is true to the letter. I had been being a self-deluded moron at a time when my wife needed me most.

So, I reentered the office with my game face on, sat down, held her hand and asked how she was feeling. She shared with me that one of her friends, who is also an “older” first time mother, had told her this appointment would scare the pants off us because they go through just about every ailment imaginable. The older a woman gets, the percentage of something going wrong increases exponentially relative to “younger” women. I already knew this fact, as we had spoken of it before, but somehow managed to fence in the implications of this appointment deep down into the reptilian part of my brain that doesn’t experience emotion.  I can think of no other explanation for my earlier indifference.  

Finally, our name was called and we were summoned into a room that looked more like an office with three chairs and a desk rather than a doctor’s room. We spent the next hour or so going through the various defects and potential risks for a woman giving birth after the age of 35. She actually had little charts and went through just about every potential risk on the board, each of which were dramatically and most notably slanted negatively towards the older end of the spectrum.  Despite the fact, I found this all fascinating and hate to say was thoroughly enjoying learning about these incredible statistics. In fact, I think it was the percentages that put my mind most at ease.

I like odds and am happy to place them on almost anything that has yet to occur. I know full well that something going wrong 1 out of 10 times is a 90 percent bet. These are odds I would take every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Admittedly, 1 out 10 is still a bit worrisome as it pertains to my new child. But here is the kicker. The odds were like 1 out of 360,000 for congenital disease A and 1 out 26,000 for congenital disease B., and on and on we went.  I walked out of that office feeling quite confident knowing as a betting man the odds were on our side in a big way.

Whenever anyone quizzed us on do you want a boy or girl, we would always say healthy is just fine with us. Well, now we were directed into an actual doctor’s room and were about to learn the sex, and as a bonus would get to see Polaroid -esq images of our yet to be born baby. The nurse asked us if we wanted to know and we both anxiously nodded yes. She told us we were going to have a girl and more importantly all looked really good from a health perspective.  We both were ecstatic. If she had said it was a boy, we would have been equally ecstatic. Whatever the case, this was a really big moment and I think it all sunk in at this point.  We no longer had an “it”.  It went from being some sort of inanimate object to being “my precious little girl” residing inside the ever expanding tummy of my beautiful wife.

Even though the rain was still pouring, we walked out of the office to the car hand-in-hand. Pearl Jam was again playing on the radio and my wife said I cannot believe you knew that it was Eddie Vedder's Birthday. She remarked only you would remember something so unimportantly random like that. We both were feeling pretty good at the moment and quickly made the decision to skip out on work for the day.  Instead, we were going to zoom over to South Coast Plaza, which is the indoor mall in our area, to have a little fun and finish up our Christmas shopping as well.