Glucose, Orange Drink and the Like

On Tuesday I was late for work due to the lovely glucose screening I needed to complete at the OB doc. I fasted in the morning, which is a feat for non-pregnant Kim, much less the one with the baby freaking out as her stomach rumbles and drove over to the hospital by myself. It was sprinkling while I drove and I just couldn’t help but get nervous about all of those rain drops and my freshly straightened hair, or maybe I was just shaky from low blood sugar. Hard to say.

I arrived early, as usual, and made a few phone calls to pass the time. When the office finally opened, I signed in and waited for them to call my name. Instead of calling me back, they just brought me a little orange drink and told me I had five minutes. You usually get handed empty containers and are told to fill them, so this was a nice change of pace. A bunch of people had been telling me stories about how terrible this drink was and I’d believed them. I shouldn’t have. It tasted almost exactly like orange pop, the kind you left out on the counter for about a week and has almost gone flat. You wouldn’t throw it out or anything, but you might not offer it to guests either, at least, not without some kind of caveat.

I downed the stuff in about a minute and kept reading magazines about how to throw the perfect party for baby’s first birthday (in case you were wondering, I will most likely do none of those things, given the fact that the baby will not remember any of it and he will just be over stimulated by all of that mess. Whatever happened to baking a cake and just having a few adults over to watch the kid enjoy frosting for the very first time?).

The nice nurse came and got me, took my blood pressure (110/70) and then took me to the dreaded scale. Survey Says? Three pound loss.

Next she took me into a room and had me wait for the doctor. In he came, glasses on his head and my chart in hand. He checked the gestation wheel and pronounced me in the 28 week, which I had not forgotten. Then he reviewed my vitals and looked stopped when he got to my weight.

The next minute or so I sat in bemused silence as he explained to me that I should not be losing weight while pregnant, that the baby is still putting on vital fat and that our brains especially need it. When he was done, and I was feeling high and mighty for having beaten the weight gain at its own game, I reminded him that I usually weigh in the afternoon, having eaten most of the food I will consume for the entire day and about three and a half liters of liquid. The morning weight measurement was totally invalid and not really a measurement of anything. Take that, doctor smarty pants.

Today the nice nurse called me at my desk, while I was in the middle of attempting to catch up on my overdue emails that are still hanging out there from last week (I may never get ahead at this point and I am not kidding), and told me that not only do I process sugar properly, I am iron rich and gorgeous. Well, maybe not that last part, but you know how I love to embellish.