At the end of May, I went to the doctor’s office for my first appointment.  It was an extensive individual consultation with the OB nurse and ended with me getting sent to the lab to get “some” blood drawn.   Well, “some” turned out to mean “10 vials” and “10 vials” quickly turned into “one very out-of-it patient.”

Since the only other time I remember having blood drawn resulted in the use of smelling salts, I was able to give the technicians fair warning.  Thankfully, they wheeled out the big recliner chair for me.  The woman did a great job of trying to distract me while sucking up all my lifejuice into her vials but ’round about the 5th one, I started feeling very woozy.  She hurried up to finish and got her colleague to come look at me.  Apparently they decided I was WAY too pale and went to get the nurse from my previous appointment to check on me.  She stayed with me for about 10 minutes until, as she said, “my freckles came back.”

Now, it wasn’t all bad.  I did finally learn my blood type after all these years.  Also discovered I appear to be pretty healthy.  The weird thing, though, was that the test for immunity to Rubella came back as “non-immune”.  I immediately ran to our file cabinet where I pulled out my C-PP School District Immunization Record and it showed two MMR immunizations: one when I was an infant and one 10 years later.  Lifetime immunity, yeah right!!  When I went in to meet with the doctor the next week, he told me that immunity wearing off has become quite common.  Some women are immune in their first pregnancies but are no longer immune by #3.  Of course, you can’t get the vaccine once you’re already preggers, so you just have to hope you don’t contract Rubella since there’s a high probability of birth defects if contracted in the first trimester.   So if there’s anyone out there considering having kids at some point in the future– I recommend getting tested for immunity BEFORE you have a Baboo.  (Not that you’ll have Baboo, of course.  (S)he’s a Kenton!!)