Sugar, ah honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you
(Jeff Barry / Andy Kim)

I couldn’t eat after 8pm last night, even though I was starving and wanted desperately to eat a cheeseburger. At my part-time job last night they had a big plate of ginger cookies. Oversized, soft, chewy, dark ginger cookies. I forgot that I had made a promise to not eat anything sugary and I whomped two into my mouth before anyone could see. Then, as I gulped and swallowed, I thought, oh shit! I have to take my Glucose Tolerance Marathon 3 Hour Test tomorrow morning at 8am. I’ve just put myself over the sugar limit. My kid’s gonna be born with diabetes. I’m gonna die. He’s gonna die. It’s all my fault. So I downed a gallon of water and then basically couldn’t work because I had to pee every five seconds. And that kind of pregnant-and-have-to-pee that makes my belly hard and bloat and I know if I sneeze or cough or laugh I’m about to have a Depends moment, so I have to rush to the bathroom only to squeeze out the teensiest bit of urine. And my belly still aches and I still have to pee but nothing is coming. It’s maddening.

So I woke at 7am and got myself dressed in the comfiest clothes and packed my laptop and my book and my headphones and drove through the chilly December rain to my doctor’s office.  At 8am, they stuck the inside of my left forearm with a needle, “this will sting, take a deep breath” and drew blood for a baseline.  Then at 8:30, handed me a bottle of bright orange liquid, which I was to drink in 5 minutes. It tasted awful. Like cotton candy and that pink kind of bubble gum that had gooey liquid inside that was (if there is such a thing, and there is) too sweet. I almost gagged the stuff down. They said, ‘now you may feel sick to your stomach and lightheaded, so let us know’. And sent me back to my corner to wait one hour. I set my alarm and opened my laptop to watch the latest Netflix episodic binge mystery.  I was prepared for this 3 hours of boredom. I was going to be cozy.

An hour later, repeat, except on the right arm. This one hurt. And bruised. Back to my corner and my laptop. An hour later, same thing, left arm. Each time I felt like giving the nurses a high five, ‘hey y’all, it’s me again’. I feel like we bonded. I don’t know their names. They stuck me four times and drew blood and as much as I tried to sail through this with ease, I was worried, because, if you read this blog, you know that I’d already convicted myself of involuntary manslaughter with the cupcakes and the coca colas and the 2 ginger cookies last night. A girl can worry.

Fast forward to about an hour ago when the nurse called. Good news, she said, you’re fine. Your levels are normal.

So. Another hurdle in the journey of the late 40-something pregnancy. No Gestational Diabetes. Honestly, it’s a miracle. I was already settled into the idea of daily insulin testing. I’m grateful that at least for now, things are fine. Little Dude is flip-flopping around, and then landing with a whomp on my bladder, again, I have to pee and I’m sure nothing will come out and I’ll finish up, pull up the overalls, pull on the sweater, come back to the couch, lay down and he’ll do the somersault back flip twist right back down again on my bladder.

Rinse. Repeat.