The Sugar Trials

So last week I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. It has been difficult for me to admit this, because deep down I feel it as a failure of sorts. It's like being told I am a bad mother, already. I have been told over and over that it really has nothing to do with me, or with all the fruit and occasional goodies I was eating up to now. It is supposed to be the product of genetic disposition. But some part of me just believed that my body was at last proving to be unreliable. I was really shaken up for days, frightened, not wanting to eat very much of anything for fear that it would hurt the baby. I have lost about 4 pounds in the space of about 10 days, which I KNOW is not good for the baby during this key time.

Last Wednesday I went to a nutrition class for women with gestational diabetes. There were 7 or 8 other women there who had just been diagnosed, too. It was comforting that it was so common. I started to feel better immediately, as soon as I found out what I could eat, how much, and was given a monitor to check my blood sugar after meals. I don't mind the food thing-- it's not that hard to monitor your carbs and avoid sugar for 12 weeks. I don't even mind the blood monitoring, which I have to do 4 times a day. My fingers are starting to bruise on the ends from being poked so much. What I do mind is the extra layer of fear, the nagging feeling that even the smallest actions could have a negative effect on my baby.

A week from today I have an ultrasound, which I am really looking forward to. I will get to see my baby again! And, in spite of all of this, it is an exciting time. The baby will be here in 11 weeks, so soon, so soon!

Seven months down

So here's the latest big bellied version of me. When I look at the picture it doesn't seem as big as I feel, yet it always surprises me to see pictures of myself at this stage, so obviously pregnant.

This weekend I had my Rogam shot (for women who have negative blood) and the 3 hour glucose tolerance test (which tests to see if I have gestational diabetes), so I felt like a bit of a pin cushion. While I was waiting in the lab to have my blood drawn, I met 4 other women of varying ages and ethnicities who are having a baby in February. It was so cool.

It's funny how, a few weeks ago, my due date seemed so far away. As of today, the baby's due date is 12 weeks away, and now that suddenly seems pretty darn soon. I keep getting more and more excited, because I will be able to hold my baby so soon! I am so looking forward to being a mother.

Company

So today is the first day of my third and final trimester. Today I read all my blogs since the beginning, and I am amazed at how fast the time has gone by and how different everything feels to me now. More than ever, as the baby moves inside me and reacts to music or my sudden changes of position, I feel him as company. He's sort of like an imaginary friend, a silent but tangible presence in everything that I do. We have secret conversations, he and I. I can be sitting on the bus, people crowded all around me, and the baby will move against me and I will try to touch him back through the layers of flesh that separate us. And it is this incredibly intimate and wonderful time between us.

There have been a few milestones since the big sonogram that I last wrote about. Obviously I am feeling the baby move much more definitely now. I am thinking of him as a he, which took a little time to adjust to. John and I have bought a few things. Last weekend when we were grocery shopping we were in the diaper aisle and John suggested that we buy diapers. So there they are, waiting in the little nook under our stairs where we are collecting our baby items, waiting for baby. We have attended all but one of our childbirth preparation classes (more on that later). At nearly 27 weeks, I look obviously pregnant now, and feel my belly preceding me like this hard, basketball-sized announcement everywhere I go. John has had to endure me putting his hand on my stomach to feel the baby kick too many times to count. . . I am learning to crochet, and have just begun work on a baby hat and blanket. And a couple of nights ago I felt my first Braxton-Hicks contraction, where it felt like my abdomen turned to stone, practice (so I read) for labor.

And so the weeks past, moving steadily forward as time always done, to the time where the baby will be born, fourteen weeks from now.

Today: another appointment with my doctor.