jumping off a high dive? break dancing? what, exactly, is going on in there?

The other day I was sitting at work and I reached for something and suddenly felt like my uterus had fallen off a cliff.  Since as far as I could tell, it was still lodged in my abdomen, I can only surmise that the baby had perfected it's double gainer from the high dive.  Then the next day I felt incredibly sick to my stomach and was lying in bed.  As I was highly attuned to what was happening in my abdomen, I'm pretty sure the baby had started break dancing.  I tried to warn him/her to settle down or I was going to lose that nice lunch full of lovely nutrients I'd eaten with him/her in mind.  (S)he didn't listen.

From what I can gather, the baby has a fair amount of room to move around in there and that space is only going to get tighter from here on, like real estate in a large city.  My advice, baby, is to enjoy it while it lasts because pretty soon you're going to be squished like sardines in a can.  Or at least one giant sardine in a uterus-shaped can.

In other news, in a fit of domesticity, I purchased material to make curtains and a crib skirt, never mind that I do not own a sewing machine, nor would I know how to use one.  My friend, Laurie, said she would help me make the fabric curtain-shaped, which is pretty exciting.

Also in eleven days we get to find out if we're having a boy or girl!  I reminded Ed of this fact last night and he was like, "Then it will be real!  Of course it's probably been real for you since you've been puking in the toilet every day." I assured him that, yes, it is quite real to me, especially since our baby has developed these mad break dancing skills.  So You Think You Can Dance, year 2032?

shingles. not the cool kind.

Can you see the stress in my eyes?

Shingles?  Seriously?  Apparently the varicella virus in all of it's associated forms seriously hates me.  I'm told that I had chicken pox when I was a baby, but of course, being a baby I, 1.) don't remember and 2.) had a crappy immune system that didn't build an effective immune response to the virus.  I then developed shingles when I was six years old.  I don't remember this either, but that's what the doctor apparently diagnosed.  My first grade teacher insinuated that I must have something horrible going on in my life to be so stressed as to get shingles as a six year old.  The only stressful thing I remember was wearing a leotard and tights in dance class for the first time.  I mean, yeah, six year old dancers are hard core, especially when dancing to "Bee my Little Baby Bumblebee."  Two years later I contracted chicken pox again.  THIS time I remember it clearly.  Itchy as all get out and I still have the scars to prove it.

*Aside* As a person who picks things, i.e. cuticles and scabs and what-not, chicken pox is the WORST thing you can possibly have.  Hence the scarring.

Now, sixteen weeks pregnant and my body, instead of getting prepared with all the previous miscarriages and learning about handling stress in general, flips the blank out and wakes up my dormant inner-shingles virus.  For real?  So the nausea abates ever so slightly and now my back is on fire, so much so that I rub against the corner of the wall like a freaking bear in order to scratch it.

I can't wait to see what's next.

the sugar

Ok.  So last week I failed my 3 hour glucose test.  I kind of knew this was coming.  My doctor wanted to test me early because of my weight and higher propensity for developing gestational diabetes.  (I did pass the last level, at three hours, but when you miserably fail all the other levels, I guess it doesn't matter so much.)

My doctor wanted me to immediately start testing my glucose FOUR times a day, fasting and two hours postprandial (after each meal).  I started off my weekend of glucose checking by gorging at Olive Garden as a sort of last meal before my execution, A.K.A my complete and total carb-free lifestyle.  I forwent the salad in favor of the bread sticks and ordered a pasta dish (Chicken Scampi, it's absolutely delish).  This is rapidly turning into an advertisement for the Olive Garden.  I was so ready for this carb-tastic blowout, but when my food came I suddenly felt nauseous.  Curse the pregnancy nausea!  I decided to set aside the chicken and vegetables, which I could eat the next day when I would become resigned to my sentence of a bread-less and pasta-less lifestyle.  I slowly and deliberately ate my pasta (every last delicious cream-covered morsel).  At the end of the meal, we ordered tiramisu, of which I ate a scrumptious, creamy, coffee-flavored third.  (Possibly half, but who's counting?)

*Aside*  I just read this last paragraph to Ed and he said, "You might have a problem."

After my last meal, which I devoured every bit as greedily as a shipwreck victim rescued from a desert island after three months of eating coconuts and sea water, (I don't know what they eat), I resigned myself to being good and keeping my diet in check.  My glucose results have so far been fantastic, (except for one night when I ate half a bagel - not ok, apparently).  I told my doctor that I was afraid that she would think I was cheating.  Luckily, she believed me and I don't have to take medication at this point.  She did say that the diabetes could get harder to control later in pregnancy and that diet alone might not suffice.  In the meantime, checking my glucose is a concrete way of monitoring my diet, and my natural competitiveness makes me want to get the lowest score possible.  Like golf.  Except I suck at golf.  Or I would if I'd ever played.

I'm treating this as a good thing, however, because I now have a solid reason to get healthy, for my sake and for the sake of our little navel orange (that's how big baby is now at fifteen weeks).