I was falling asleep in the exam room at my doctor’s office. I just laid back and made myself comfortable. Or as comfortable as I could get with my legs hanging off the end. (Now that I think about it, it may have been worth the effort to slide out the little extension thingy.)  I could hear the conversation my doctor was having with an older gentleman in the room next to mine.

I think most of his patients are older than I am. Sometimes I feel like that should get me out of the dreaded health screenings like colonoscopies and mammograms, but my doctor knows I’m not THAT young. He has my birthdate right on my chart in case he forgets.

He doesn’t forget.

The man in the next room is telling my doctor all sorts of interesting things about his family and his pets and what he used to do for a living.  When it becomes quiet, I suddenly sit up, aware that the doctor will be coming in at any moment. And I prefer not to be snoring when he opens that door.

He looks bedraggled. I am his last appointment of the day, and I have been waiting for an hour and twenty-seven minutes.

He walks in and smiles. “You are my favorite,” he jokes. I have a feeling he is exhausted from listening to the life story of the patient before me.

As for me, well, I am all business. I am just here to renew my prescriptions, so I am hoping to be done in like five minutes.

A medical assistant enters the room, waits patiently for

the doctor to take a breath, and quickly asks if he will add another appointment to his day. He says no.

When she leaves, he looks at me very seriously and confides that if he were to say yes, every one of those women in the front office would be mad at him because they would all have to stay late. (And he was already running an hour-and-a-half behind.)

This is not how things go at the pediatrician’s office.

There is never a wait there. I guess a baby doesn’t have much of a life story to tell the doctor. So the chit-chat part goes fast. (Though I have occasionally seen a mom, desperate for adult conversation, get a little chatty.)

I love sitting in the waiting room at the pediatrician’s office because a lot of newborns tend to go there.  They come in, all tucked into car seats. Sometimes the moms cover them, so you can’t see their faces. But once in a while you get a glimpse of a new baby. Sometimes I think if I am feeling a bit down, I will just sit in that waiting room and hope a baby shows up.

Looking at other people’s babies is the fastest cure to remembering the sleepless nights and the vomit. (I have had sickly, senior pets who threw up less than my babies.) Also the screaming in the car. (“Put them in the car,” they said. “They’ll sleep,” they said. Not mine. They just screamed.)  But one look at someone ELSE’s newborn, looking up with big, wondering eyes and giving no indication that either screaming or vomit is on the way, just makes me forget the tough times.

But the absolute best part of going to the pediatrician’s office–better than the cute babies and better than the short wait time–is that I am not the one getting on the scale. I get to just hold the shoes.