Melissa's Place

Pee On This

Today I had my visit with the obstetrician. The secretary knows me by name. I am becoming a more and more familiar face to her. And I'm starting to know the drill.

I walk in. I wave at the secretary. She says, "Hi Melissa." Then I go to the washroom and I pee on a little paper tab with two little colour-changing squares. I note which picture they match on the plastic container in which the paper tabs are found, and then I tell the obstetrician what the results are.

This seems fairly simple. If you are a man, you're probably thinking it might even be fun, peeing on a paper tab. Even if it's a very small tab and the target zone is even teensier, you're probably relishing a bit in the challenge. However, there are a few difficulties with this feat for a pregnant lady.

First of all, you are on a time limit! You only have so much pee and some time in that window of urination, the pee must make contact with the target zone of the paper tab. If you are 30 weeks pregnant, you probably have to pee quite frequently. Your bladder is squished and doesn't hold very much. So you might have peed just a mere 30 minutes earlier as you were leaving work. It was that, or wet the passenger seat of your car. Now there's just not much left. So your time limit, the urination window if you will, is very, very small. You have literally a fraction of a second to connect pee with paper.

Secondly, you can't SEE anything. Your belly is getting bigger and bigger. Tying your shoes has become difficult. In fact, bending in that direction at all is nearly impossible. You may have even had to recline the car seat that very morning to reduce heart burn and to alleviate the difficulties with breathing that have come up recently. Your belly button is about the southern-most tip of what is still in your eye-line. So now, not only are you trying to quickly pee on a paper tab, it is a paper tab that is invisible to you and the stream of pee is quite invisible to you also.

And so, boys, if you think that this peeing on a tab business with really no big deal. I encourage you to attempt THIS simulation. Stand blindfolded, holding your peeing-organ and have someone else, stand two feet in front of you, holding a bull's eye. The dimensions of the bull's eye should be approximately 3mm by 3mm. The assistant should be wearing a rain jacket and humming the jeopardy theme song in fast forward. Then, we'll talk.

The good doctor, in the meantime, breaks me from my daydream to call me into her office. I am hoisting myself onto her examination table and she asks, "Did you pee on the paper tab?" And I say, "Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn't."