I wanted to write something today but then I thought, oh, pottery. Oh, work. Oh, washing the dishes. Oh, trolling through Twitter. Oh, doing anything but getting those words down on paper. But these last couple of weeks I’ve written an average of 3,000 words a week, and considering that before I wrote basically nothing, well, that’s saying something.
When I say before, I really mean the first several weeks of my maternity leave and probably the 6 months leading up to it. I was so busy growing and keeping a human alive that I just didn’t write. And I think that’s a pretty good excuse, if I’m being honest. Pregnancy for me was primarily planning what I would eat, eating it, and going to bed as early as possible. My 18 month old was going to bed at 6:30 or 7, and I wasn’t that far behind him. I would have to stay up to eat my bedtime snack at 8:30 and take my insulin, and then I was allowed to go to bed.
Insulin—or all the shit that comes with it—is no joke. There are the shots, which weren’t all that awful unless you managed to hit a vein. Or if you happened to put the needle in sideways. Or if you followed the Stupid Dietician’s directions and shot it into your belly, but your belly was stretched out and no longer a squishy area, so you bruised. And I was pregnant, so I bruised at basically everything anyway.
So on top of the insulin shots and the bruising, there was also the obsessive time tracking to take my blood sugar 1 or 2 hours after every meal. And pricking my finger to check my sugars. And the glucose tolerance test they tried to make me take multiple times.
At 6 weeks pregnant they told me I would have to go back to the endocrinologist anyway. At 8 weeks pregnant I decided to check my blood sugar, found it outside of the normal zone, and changed my diet. That had the pleasant side effect of curing my morning sickness, so that was a win.
At 10 weeks–despite knowing I had GDM again—they made me take the glucose tolerance test (GTT). This required me to fast overnight, go into the office and get my blood taken before drinking 8 oz of glucose with orange flavoring. Then I sat there for 2 hours while my body tried to not vomit up the drink, before getting my blood taken again to test my blood sugar, which would inevitably be out of control. Okay, fine. We had to do it to confirm the diagnosis. It was confirmed, and I saw the endocrinologist several more times.
The endocrinologist and the midwives are all connected in my chart through the university medical system. Any of the medical professionals that I met with could see my diagnosis and the tests that I was given.
Then, at 26 weeks, when most pregnant women would take the GTT, I had to go in for my first in-office visit during the pandemic. We went to our normal office, and the admissions attendant yelled at us because we were at the wrong place because her office was no longer seeing pregnant women. Then we went to the office we were “supposed” to go to (although no one told me that), and the nurse who took my vitals, poor woman, really just didn’t know what she was stepping into.
First, my blood was (literally) up because the lady at the previous clinic yelled at us, so my blood pressure made the machine send off warning bells. I told the nursing assistant what happened, and that actually calmed me down so they were able to get a more normal reading (I have low blood pressure anyway, so the spike was kinda concerning). But then, she kept insisting that she would bring me the dreaded glucose drink.
I said “I already have GDM.”
She said “you need to take the test.”
I said, “I already did it at week 10.”
She said “I’ll ask the midwife.”
Then she came back and took more vitals, and said “I’ll be back with the glucose drink for you to start that,” and I lost it.
“Can we please just talk about this? I don’t want to do this, because I’ve already done it and I’m already seeing the endocrinologist. Why do I have to do this again?”
Cue the tears.
The poor nursing assistant was stunned. She said “I was told to give you the drink. It’s in your chart.” I sputtered and continued to cry and wave my hands, at least that’s how I remember it.
And at that point, my husband stepped in. “Ok, I think we’re having a problem with communication. Everyone is in a mask, and we’ve been really stressed out, and can we just talk to the midwife about whether she has to do the drink test?”
Thank god for him. Sometimes I felt like it was overkill that he came to every appointment, but also I wanted him to be involved in the process, and more importantly, HE wanted to be involved in it.
Long story continuing to be long, they didn’t make me take the test. But because I was proactive about my health and because I was working to make sure all those little things were in line before they became a big problem, well I felt like we were punished for it.
That said, I really enjoyed my midwifery experience. That day, the midwife not only de-escalated the situation, and never made me take the test a second time (it was, she admitted, her mistake, and of course we all calmed down and got over it quickly, because, COVID.) The reason I went with the midwives with my first child was because I felt like they would actually listen to our needs and take the time to understand what we wanted. And even in this case, where we were kinda breaking protocol, we were listened to.