This is the first week of our last trimester. On one hand it’s hard to believe that time has gone by so fast and on the other hand I feel like it’s been so long that it’s hard to remember what not being pregnant felt like (or what diet coke or a glass of wine taste like). Whoever came up with the idea to time pregnancies in terms of trimesters really knew what he or she was talking about. The nausea I had at the beginning of the pregnancy faded away as the second trimester rolled in. Then, just as anticipated, the last few months of second trimester bliss have been marked with high energy, stable moods, and general comfort. And now, as we’re turning the page to the third, I am suddenly feeling heavy, uncomfortable, and slightly irritable. My belly is growing on a daily basis and it’s getting more and more lopsided as the days go by. Especially when I’m sitting or standing, the unevenness begins to tug at my lower back and eventually makes all of my muscles ache. By the end of the day I am very happy to lie down on my side, which seems to be the only position where my back muscles can relax. Maybe it’s the discomfort that is making me more irritable, or maybe it’s a shift in hormones. But either way I am noticing a change in mood so let this serve as fair warning to any of you who I may come in contact with in the near future.
A Lesson in Genetics
In the last blog, I happily reported that the appointment with the midwives had gone well and that I hadn’t yet received a call back from them about my glucose screening (meaning it was probably fine). However, the very next day after posting it, I DID indeed get a call and Elizabeth informed me that my blood had tested above the threshold and I had to come in for the more extensive glucose test. This was upsetting to me, but not a total surprise. Since diabetes runs in our family (and since those who have it are not what you would consider high risk individuals…i.e. overweight or inactive), I sort of assumed that gestational diabetes would be the pregnancy complication I would have – if I have one. So I asked Elizabeth some general questions over the phone and then she scheduled me to come back on Tuesday (the 2nd).
My instructions were to fast from midnight the night before (drinking only water) and then to go to their office at 10:45am. Needless to say, by 10:45 Tuesday morning – I was STARVING! But I had managed to make it down to CBS on the hot subway without passing out, so I felt that was already a big accomplishment. The plan was to get my blood drawn first, then drink two bottles of the orange flavored glucose drink, then wait an hour, get blood drawn again, wait another hour, get blood drawn again, wait another hour, and then get blood drawn again. As she drew blood the first time Elizabeth explained to me that the glucose level from each blood sample had to be within a certain range, each time decreasing as the body processes the sugar from the drinks. If one reading is greater than the upper end of the range, it’s not a diagnosis of gestational diabetes. But if two are, then it is. In my case that would mean seeing the high risk back up doctors in addition to the midwives for the rest of the pregnancy as well as consulting regularly with a dietitian. This was on my mind as Elizabeth handed me the orange bottles and a glass and sent me back out to the waiting room to drink. The glucose drink is carbonated and tastes a little bit like really concentrated orange soda. I think kids would go crazy for the stuff actually. But on an empty stomach, it’s a little hard to get down. In fact, after finishing both bottles I had to sit very still for about 20 minutes as I concentrated on not throwing it all back up. But eventually my stomach settled and I relaxed and read an issue of Star cover to cover. Luckily, at CBS they have a couch in the waiting room, so after the second blood draw, I settled into the pillows and closed my eyes and slept almost an hour until my third one. The waiting room was busy with lots of pregnant women coming and going, but I slept like a baby. I wonder if they were staring at me. I would have been. After my final blood draw Elizabeth said she would call me with the results the next day (either way) and I headed for the elevator. By then it was almost 3pm and I dove head first into the bag of trail mix I had packed in my bag. I think without it I would have definitely passed out on the subway on the ride home. After I got home and I had finally gotten enough food into my stomach to where my brain began functioning again, I quickly worried myself into a semi-panic. I was SURE that I would get a phone call the next day telling me to head for the dietician. The more I thought about it the more I worried that I would have a huge baby, who wouldn’t fit out of the exit, and be born with terrible jaundice and heart problems, and who would inevitably develop childhood diabetes himself. Just when I began to feel really good and sorry for myself and the baby, Jason came home. In a very un-Jason-like fashion he was very calm about the whole thing (he’s usually the first one to go into a tail spin) and helped me to stop worrying. He told me he felt like the test results would come back better this time, and that if they didn’t, we would work it out.
The next morning at work, my phone rang, and as promised, Elizabeth had results for me. She cheerily told me that the glucose levels from each blood sample were within range and not one of them was too high. I was off the hook! I felt so happy and so relieved. But at the same time I couldn’t help but think that a crisis had just barely been averted. I didn’t want to get cocky in all of my happiness since I think this is a classic case of nature versus nurture. I still interpret my failing the initial screening as an indication that the diabetes gene is lurking around somewhere – just waiting until I’ve eaten more than my share of Nutella to pop out and shout “ready or not here I come!”. There is really no telling whether that’s what nature really has in store… but since I don’t know, I plan to “nurture” myself (and the kid) with broccoli and whole grain bread instead of Nutella so that maybe the diabetes gene will stay in hiding.
Hiccups
On a lighter note, I began to feel the baby’s hiccups sometime over the last two weeks. The first time I felt them I almost freaked out because I thought he was having a seizure in there. The rhythmic pulses coming from my stomach were too slow to be my own pulse or abdominal muscle spasms. So it had to be the baby and not me. And since these little pulses had woken me in the middle of night, my groggy brain could not figure out how the baby was moving in such perfect rhythm. It wasn’t until the next morning that it dawned on me that it had to be hiccups. Since then I feel him get the hiccups at least once per day – if not more. They are faster than adult hiccups would be – but seem just as silly and amusing. But mostly I love it when he gets them because I know from letters from my own mother, that she wrote to me when she was pregnant, that I too got hiccups in her belly a lot. It’s just a little thing, but it makes me feel connected to both her and the baby.
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