Page 12 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
“I’m not sure yet,” he answered.
“And preschools—you need to get on the wait-list for the good ones,” the dad with the little girl offered, then blew a raspberry on her belly.
“We don’t even know if we’re pregnant,” he stammered.
The redheaded man waved him off. “It doesn’t matter if you’re pregnant. My wife and I got our name on the wait-list for the advanced toddler baseball clinic before we’d even conceived.”
“You had no kid but put a fake kid on the wait-list?” he asked, trying to keep the cynicism out of his voice.
The man leaned forward. “That’s how the game is played.”
“You’re kidding!” he whisper-shouted back.
“No, sir! I am not! You need to act now. How far along is your wife?”
Jordan closed his eyes, his mind spinning, trying to calculate the date. His pregnant clients simply told him how far along they were in their pregnancy. But to calculate the due date, he vaguely remembered that you had to measure the duration starting on the first day of the woman’s last period—or something like that. He’d have to pull out his physiology manuals when they got home and brush up.
He rubbed his temples. “Six weeks, maybe a little more?”
The dentist dad’s eyes went wide. “Six weeks! That’s an eternity, man!”
Jordan’s gaze ping-ponged between the men as a shock of anxiety hit his system. “How can forty-two days be an eternity?”
He didn’t know all that much about fetal development, but he couldn’t imagine the kid was more than the size of a gumball.
The man chasing his kid plopped down next to him, holding the child upside-down by his ankles as the boy giggled with delight. “You need to get on it. You’re a big guy. Do you play sports? Do you want your kid to play first base, or how about the NFL?”
“The National Football League?” Jordan repeated. This was getting ludicrous!
The man set the child right-side up. “No, the other NFL. Newborn fitness lessons. They’re classes to work on baby hand-eye coordination to get your kid ready to try out for the club teams.”
Jordan’s mouth hung open. He’d spent the last decade of his life immersed in the fitness world, but he’d never heard of these kinds of classes or that you needed to get on the wait-list pre-baby.
“You start training your baby to be a professional athlete during infancy?” he asked, incredulity lacing the question.
Had he heard the guy wrong? He was trying to hold it together and play it cool for Georgie, but his nerves were starting to get the better of him.
The guy shook his head. “You should start before that! I began prepping Dewey to play quarterback, explaining football plays to my wife’s belly once the doc said our little bun in the oven was able to hear.”
“You did that while your wife was still pregnant?” Jordan pressed.
“Yep! And look at him now! That kid is going places,” the man answered.
Jordan glanced down to find this Dewey, who wasapparentlygoing places, sitting on the floor, cross-legged with both his index fingers jammed up his nose.
The dentist clucked his tongue at Dewey’s dad. “You’re blowing his mind.”
“Let’s move on. How about a musical instrument?” another dad asked.
He didn’t know which dad because his damn head was spinning thanks to the waiting room interrogation.
He tried to think, then imagined a little boy or girl, bowing away on a violin or fingertips fluttering down black and white piano keys.
“Music is great. I’m sure we’d consider it,” he answered cautiously.
“Then you’re really late,” the man with the little girl said.
“I am?” he shot back.
