Last summer I went for my first mammogram. I try to get most of my yearly appointments during the summer so I don’t miss school. The kids were out of daycare, so I arranged for my mother-in-law to watch both kids in all of their craziness.
I went in, very nervous and very under-caffeinated. I got “dressed” in the hospital’s finest attire and started filling in the questionnaire. The tech came back and told me I would have to reschedule. Wait, What???
I was pretty aggravated, but apparently, you can’t get a good mammogram image if you have breastfed within the last six months. It had only been four months since I stopped feeding Girlie.
I asked her why nobody mentioned it, and she said, “We just don’t get a lot of breastfeeding moms over 40.” Thank you very much.
Try Again
So, I rescheduled the mammogram for November, but I couldn’t secure child care for my daughter. My husband watched my son, but Girlie wasn’t quite out of her “Give me mommy or I will scream until you are all deaf, or want to be” phase. My mother in law was out of town, and it was a holiday for the daycare. So I put her in the stroller and brought her along. I was a bit worried that she would get some ideas about her feeding choices again, but that didn’t happen. In hindsight, that would have been a much simpler problem to handle.
They brought me into the room and we had to take a few minutes to find a spot to put the stroller. I had her in our medium sized stroller so she could have a snack and a toy. Well, that didn’t fit in the one corner of the room where she wouldn’t be exposed to any radiation, so they sent me outside to get the umbrella stroller.
The new stroller fit, but she no longer had her entertainment and her half-naked mother was a whole four feet away, on the other side of a four-foot wall, and she was not happy about it. Girlie screamed for me the whole time. So as I was being squeezed, arranged and photographed, I was also fighting away the tears and frustration of listening to my daughter scream.
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The Scream Heard Around the World
I tried my calming “it’s okay” voice. I tried Baa, Baa Black Sheep, Row, Row, Row Your Boat and every lullaby I could think of, but the screaming went on and on. The tech asked if I wanted to take a minute to calm her, but no. Let’s just get this done because I know the screaming isn’t going to stop.
The imaging office is right past the pediatrics office at our medical center. One of our usual pediatric nurses stopped popped her head in because she recognized the screaming. Talk about mom pride – my daughter has a distinctive tantrum scream.
We finished up the images. I hurried my shirt on and gave her a big hug. She screamed in my ear. We checked out and she screamed in the elevator. She screamed in the car all the way home (small blessing- we only live 1.5 miles from the doctor’s office). She even screamed as I got her out of the car and into the house.
We got inside. I gave her a snack, and she just cuddled up on my aching chest for the rest of the day. Totally worth it.
If you’re wondering- the mammogram results were negative, and my husband will be watching both kids when I go for my second mammogram later this month.
Photo by maf04 