The Dreaded One-Year Checkup

Natalie had her one-year well-baby checkup yesterday. Dread is not a strong enough word to describe how I felt about the upcoming appointment.

Let me explain why. Twenty months ago, Sammy had his one-year appointment, and I expected that the shots would be the worst part of it all. As usual, he cried when he got the shots but got over them quickly. Then...the blood draw. You see, at our pediatrician's office, they want to check lead levels and hemoglobin levels at twelve months old. So, they stuck Sammy's finger and he instantly started screaming. It took an eternity for them to squeeze out enough blood to fill the three little tubes full of blood, with Sammy getting more and more frantic with each passing second. In the parking lot afterwards, it took literally close to an hour to calm Sammy down enough to get him into his car seat. And that was with nursing, his usual cure-all.

Now, Natalie is a bit more skittish about new situations than Sammy was. So I was expecting at least twice the commotion. She cried at her shots, but got over them pretty quickly. We dawdled in the examination room after dressing her, letting Sammy take as long as he wanted to pick out a sticker from the doctor's sticker drawer, delaying the inevitable. I walked slowly down the hall with Natalie in tow, feeling like I was leading her like a lamb to the slaughter.

I sat down in the lab chair with Natalie on my lap and tried to steel myself. I felt her flinch when the nurse stuck her finger, but...no tears. As the blood flowed into the tubes, Natalie watched with curiosity at that strange red stuff coming out of her finger. And when the nurse put a band-aid on her finger, Natalie scrutinized it and evidently found it pretty, since she proudly showed off her band-aid to everyone she came across on the way out of the doctor's office.

Well then. Ahem. To think of all the time I wasted worrying about that darn appointment, when I could have been spending all that mental energy trying to solve the current energy crisis.