Numbers Game

I went for my yearly gynecologic exam last week.  The nurse who rescued me from the waiting room after an excruciating 25 minutes (how do they get away with that?) and brought me back to the exam room where I waited for another 15 minutes had to be about 22 years old by my estimation.  She opened her laptop and began the usual spree of questions:  Are you on any medications?  Do you have any allergies?  Have you ever had an abnormal pap smear?  When was your last period?  With the exception of that last question I answered her questions easily.  My baby is 4 months old so calculating my last period took a bit of brain power.  Then she asked, “Do you drink alcohol?”  I felt my face turning beat red as I debated how to answer the question.  You see, since having my third child I have been “treating” myself to an occasional alcoholic beverage.  At first I told myself it was because I wasn’t allowed anything for nine months (actually 41 weeks but who’s counting).  Several weeks into my third child’s life I told myself a beer at night was helping my milk let down.  Now that Gabe is almost 4 months old I realize that an occasional mid-day or early evening beverage can really take the edge off my rapidly fraying nerves.  Back to the question.  Maybe I can dodge it all together with some humor.  “Well, I do have three children,” I snickered.  Old stone face didn’t even grant me a courtesy laugh.  “How many drinks do you have per week,” she retorted.  “Maybe 3 or 4,” I replied, shifting nervously in my seat and quickly doing the math in my head to see how much I had under-reported.  “And do you exercise?” she asked.  OK, now she was hitting below the belt.  I am, after all, a Pilates instructor.  Make that a Prenatal and Postnatal Pilates Specialist.  I spend hours every week perfecting my lectures and updating my website and marketing my classes.  But that’s not what she is fishing for and I know it.  I have been meaning to exercise more, really I have, but it keeps getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list.  I tell myself I should wake up 30 minutes early each morning to fit in a quick jog or some Pilates but with Gabe still getting up every 3 hours at night I am EXHAUSTED and would pay a hundred bucks for just 15 extra minutes of sleep in the morning.  “Maybe 3 or 4 days per week,” I answer, this time calculating how much I’ve over-reported.  I’m sure this nurse gets “false reports” at least a dozen times per week.  I consider coming clean or at least bargaining:  If you take 15 pounds off that scale you weighed me on at the start of this appointment I will double my drink answer and halve my exercise answer.  But, alas, I sit quietly and say nothing vowing to drink less and exercise more.