"What is my blood pressure this time?" I asked the nurse.

"I'm not going to tell you - lie back and relax. The doctor will be in here in just a minute."

From his chair in the sterile examination room, my husband gave me an apprehensive stare, trying to smile.

"I'm guessing it wasn't 120/80, then," I said to him, trying to infuse a little humor into a worrisome situation. This was our third child. We thought we were pros at this pregnancy thing. Child number three in utero came with her share of unexpected complications - high blood pressure,anemia, severe morning sickness that never waned. But there was still more reason to be optimistic than not. My husband was "in between jobs" and pinch hitting for me in the Mommy department, batting 1.000 while I was sidelined in the last trimester.

Funny how things work out.

I lied down on my back and breathed air in my nose, out my mouth, listening to the sounds of traffic outside the medical building. People carrying on with their lives. People who had their own share.

My ob/gyn, Alice, walked in the room. Alice is a tall, brunette woman that is driven by best possible outcomes. If I weren't afraid she would think me crazy, I would tell her "You've got a cool head, Mellie," the way Scarlett O'Hara addressed Melanie Wilkes. Alice is not undeterred by gestational complications such as pre-eclampsia, as I was about to find out. Even faced with a dangerous condition, I felt comfortable in her presence, confident in her orders.

"You're at 160/100. Here is what we're going to do."

I wiggled my tush, preparing to move from my back to my side and look at her while she gave me physical mandates.

"Bed rest," she said. She really left no room for discussion about it, but I tried anyway. "I can't be on bed rest. I have to take care of my kids." I stated, matter-of-factly. Not arguing with her, more like pleading with my eyes, and reminding her that she had birthed two other children for me and those children needed their milk in sippy cups, those children needed bedtime stories, wanted spaghetti carbonara, and liked to hear my feet shuffling across the tile floor of our kitchen, even if it took me ten minutes to travel five feet.

"He can do that," Dr. Alice said, pointing to my husband. In just four words, she had diagnosed our situation, made any ego my husband had seem extraneous, and handed us our only option, minus any sugar-coating and game playing. We were talking the health of an unborn child. I loved her honest approach, which is why I came back to her over, and over, and over.

"I don't know where this pre-eclampsia is coming from. Just do what I say, lie in bed and do nothing," (Doesn't sound so bad, I have plenty of Gourmets and Bon Appetits I could read, but what about making dinner? What would my family eat?)

My head was spinning. I had never, ever been ordered to "do nothing". I was thirty-four years old, seemingly healthy except for a kidney stone once and springtime allergies. And my self-opinion was based on how much I could accomplish in a given twenty-four hour period. Bed rest had the potential to mess with my head and I wasn't sure my head was up to the test.

Alice pulled my very thick manila folder and medical chart up to her chest, held it tightly, and sighed deeply. She gave me a reassuring smile. A buck it up, honey kind of smile.

"Call me if anything changes." She means worsens.

And finally, her hand on the doorknob, a hand that had delivered thousands of babies, she paused and asked "You going to be okay?" She waited to hear my answer.

"We'll be fine," I nodded my head. We, meaning me and the baby. We, meaning my husband and I. We, meaning our other kids and me.

And the she left. The nurse smiled as she followed Dr. Alice. She told me to call the nurses line about anything, anything at all. Gotcha.

"Honey, Alex told me he wants the same thing in his lunch today that you made yesterday. I don't know what that is. You have to help me, I've never made a sack lunch in my life," said my husband.

Anxiety over a sack lunch? This could have escalated into chaos, but I was still in good spirits and found it funny. I smiled at the manly man who yesterday may well have scoffed at the idea of making a sack lunch, but now accepted (a little frantically) that "taking care of his family" also meant wearing many hats. I told him nothing was sexier than a man confident enough to take on modern gender roles and sack lunches. This helped.

"Okay, here's what you do," I sat up and put Matt Lauer on mute.

"A protein, a whole grain starch, a fruit, maybe a veg if you have time, and a juice box, 100% juice. Got it?"

"Got it." Pete nodded his head, clapped his hands together, and rubbed them back and forth - a man ready to do domestic business. Sexy.

Ten seconds later, he was back in the room.

"What does that mean?"

He stood before me, surrendering to his cluelessness about whole grains, protein fit for a sack lunch, and basically everything I had said.

"Make a pb & j for him, give him some grapes and maybe some baby carrots. The juice boxes are stacked in the garage. He likes his name written on both sides of the lunch bag in a blue Sharpie."

Crisis averted.

But ten hours later then there was dinner to consider. Another crisis on the horizon of our hungry family.

Pete was good at bringing home a steady paycheck, good at coaching my son's baseball team. He would brush our daughter's hair and choose barrettes for her now and then, but filling in as a Domestic God(dess) was new territory for him. But he had the time, a meticulous nature, and wasn't given a choice by the trusted doctor, so the alpha male in our home expanded his role - and his character.

It didn't matter that he couldn't make a proper, nutritious sack lunch, even when given explicit directions. I fell more in love with him than ever while I was on bed rest. Our kids came to believe he could do anything, albeit with a little flustering that made them giggle day and night.

"Mama, did you know Papa peels the grapes? You never peel our grapes," my daughter Zoë reported to me in my bedroom living station.

"That's great. But it's almost dinner time, do you know if he's cooking anything?" I asked her.

"Huh-uh" she replied, nodding her head sideways and back, little pony-tails bouncing off her pink cheeks. She never let me do pony-tails in her hair. But then again, I never peeled her grapes. (Suppose we'd have to do some duty negotiation once bed rest was a memory.)

My husband's solution to our dinner time dilemma went like this:

"Babe, I'm just going to get take out for dinner, if that's okay." Truth be told, my family ate a lot of take out for the three weeks I was on bed rest - Chinese noodles, breaded chicken strips, teriyaki beef, pizza, and burgers. I couldn't expect my husband to read "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" while taking care of the kids and his pre-eclamptic wife. I grinned and sucked down the Lo Mein with abandon.

At 37 weeks, Dr. Alice induced my labor. My liver wasn't functioning properly. Our third baby arrived healthy, and I like to say even though it's not true, with a fortune cookie in her mouth. The fortune that told me a lot about the man I married, the family we'd created.

Its two years since I have been on bed rest. And oh, the ramifications of letting my husband run the show - the grapes for my son's lunch? They must be peeled. When someone in the house is sick, lo mein noodle are requested.

Funny how my kids link food with memories, like a familial connect-the-dots. It makes me smile. I think they recall my fragility, and how their father took care of me. I think they remember the concern in our home, yet how their father sturdily eliminated all worry while simultaneously melting down over a sack lunch.

I remember. I'll never forget.