What to expect when you're not expecting yet

We've spoken before of how pleasantly surprised all the doctors and nurse practitioners have been with our preparations. I really started to understand the flip side of that surprise this week with our visit to the Yale Student Health center Monday.

Everything sitcoms have taught me about pregnancy has painted it as regimented, monitored, and above-all, scheduled.

• Day one of your pregnancy: Start taking pre-natal vitamins, one month ago.
  
• Day two of your pregnancy: Wife begins craving pickles.
• Day three of your pregnancy: Husband's anxiety over crushing responsibility, lost youth manifests in hilarious, seemingly-unrelated psychosis of questionable verisimilitude.
  

The process in this... discovery phase of pregnancy seems wholly self-guided.

We've had great, detailed conversations with a lot of whip-smart medical professionals, but sometimes all I hear is:

“I'm going to recommend a 24-hour urinalysis. Just, you know, take a day and get this done some time before you become pregnant.”

“Oh, so you'd like to get off your class C and D migraine meds? You might consider looking at and switching to one of these alternatives before you get pregnant. You know, talk with your primary care doctor about it.”

“So you had a football-sized tumor removed as a child. Oh -- visit an oncologist? Sure. Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. I mean, if you want. So really, you're not pregnant yet?”

They've imparted lots of great information and helped us work through all the preparations to feel confident going into this. I just hadn't considered that there's not much to the process at this point beyond advice. Anne's basically healthy; until evidence suggests otherwise, all our necessary bits are in working order; really, we're not pregnant yet. Any changes at this point depend on our initiative -- why would a doctor ever change Anne's migraine medicine out of the blue, when it's doing an okay job at regulating her migraines with a minimum of side-effects?

This may not be revelatory to anyone but me. And it's not like my doc is hunting me down with a blood pressure cuff, so I shouldn't have been flat footed on the idea. Just noticing, is all.