The Waiting Room

It’s safe to assume your local OB/GYN office prides themselves on knowing women – in and out. After all, upon arrival, you are presented with a questionnaire that demands not only information about your personal experience with practically every medical situation known to man, but also detailed information about your sex life. Upon completion of the lengthy questionnaire (20 minutes later), you are then weighed, usually in the middle of the hallway, for everyone and their mom to see. As my own personal form of revenge of the hallway-scale- humiliation, I practically get naked before getting on that medically accurate down to the half-pound scale. The nurse is then forced to help me carry all my items of clothing, shoes and jewelry to the doctor’s office. Ha! Take that!

Despite having the most intimate and secretive information about me, my OB/GYN office fails to know the most basic fact about me, and all other childless women ages 18-50: what we want to READ while waiting for the hallway-scale-humiliation and the subsequent unpleasant experiences that come with any visit to the OB/GYN. From the magazines offered in my OB/GYN’s office, women must fall into only 2 categories: mothers (who presumably only want to read about their children) and women going through menopause. For the mothers so focused on their children that they want to read every parenting magazine available, there are several options:

1. Parenting (apparently the most respectable and loved of the parenting magazines since a complete set of issues from 2005-2008 is available);
2. Kiwi (raising children organically);
3. Parents;
4. American Baby;
5. Fit Pregnancy;
6. Parent and Child; and
7. Working Mother.

Those going through menopause have just one option, “Pause” (very, very clever name).

Where are the interesting magazines - People, Us, Vogue, Shape and InStyle? Is the receptionist hogging them all at the front desk, afraid that she too will be forced to read the 7 versions of parenting magazines or “Pause” in a moment of boredom? Next time I am at one of my now bi-monthly OB/GYN visits, I’m bringing my own magazines and leaving them for the next childless woman age 18-50. At least I will have afforded her the opportunity to get caught up on the latest trends and celebrity gossip before she is stripped of her dignity in the hallway-scale-humiliation.