Sugar fiend

Just saying that a woman with GD who is getting a bit sick of her diet and craving sugar in any form decides to throw a baby shower (we'll just say a baby shower and skip over the fact that it might just have been her baby shower ...). Well, the menu might look something like this (it was brunch today).

To start, the easy/casual bagels, cream cheese, and lox.
Cold wonton wrappers with curried eggs and hot wonton wrappers with artichokes
Very healthy blueberries
Less healthy cabbage salad with toasted almonds (too much sugar in the dressing I made)
Then some OJ and apple cider and prosecco. Plus chocolate liquor and coffee. All off limits to the host, obviously.
Then she starts to bake.
First, very healthy low carb blueberry muffins.
And then a few more thing she's craving. And suddenly you have a table that looks like this:



Chocolate cheesecake
Vanilla cupcakes with sugar frosting (far, far more than the total number of guests)
Carrot cupcakes brought by a friend at her request
Chocolate chip pumpkin bread (okay, three)
Rum cake (in an octopus mold - I won't claim maturity on this one, but at least I didn't try to swirl the cake batter with neon food coloring like last time. JD was most unimpressed with the last presentation, but I love Willi.ams Son.oma clearance holiday specials ...).

Don't worry, I only had 2 bites of sugary desserts today, but I packed away a whole tupperware of treats in the freezer for Jan. 1 ....

My neighbor who showed up with her 2 kids called later in the evening to ask me a question and commented on how tired I must be after the cooking and cleaning. But you know the best part about not having a baby yet? JD and I took a blissful two hour nap after the guests had left (more than 5 hours after the first guest arrived). And that is another perk of throwing your own baby shower at your very own apartment.

More whining

I've caved, I'm just going to whine tonight. I don't really have a defense except it seems better to do it online where you can skip over it in 5 seconds than in person to my poor husband. And I already called and whined to my mother tonight. Plus, I do want to remember that I also got through this should I ever be lucky enough to experience this particular miraculous set of circumstances again.

To put it simply: I am hungry.

Really, really hungry. I can't seem to find anything I'm allowed to eat that makes me feel full, and nothing that makes me feel satisfied. I am craving anything spicy, a big hearty sandwich, the ice cream JD has been eating all week, chocolate, hot chocolate, mocha, cupcakes, pizza, anything baked .... basically the full list of things I'm not allowed to eat.

What have I been eating? Plain yogurt, mini whole wheat bagels, hard cheese, eggs, plain meat, tofu in low carb whole wheat wraps, cottage cheese, plain oatmeal once a day, no more than a 1 inch square piece of unsweetened dark chocolate once a day, nuts, protein bars, peanut butter, more nuts, blueberries, occasionally melon or half an apple ... and it's all so boring and bland.

I know, I'm incredibly lucky that thus far I have been able to control my GD with diet and exercise and that my lack of weight gain since the GD diagnosis seems to have staved off all of the other late pregnancy symptoms (very, very little back pain, no swelling - I'm still wearing my wedding band, still sleeping through the night about 1/2 the time ... ) so I'm sure if I wasn't complaining about this I'd be whining about all the other little distractions. I think that part of my frustration is that everyone expects me to eat endlessly, and I get so many comments about how 'lucky' I am to be able to eat whatever I want, when in fact you can hear my stomach growl at least once an hour if you're listening. I fully expect my weight to go up significantly post-partum. Hopefully my GD consult on Tuesday will at least earn me another signed letter clearing me for 7 more days to give birth 'naturally.' There is something also deeply disturbing in the power dynamic between my GD doctor and me, but that's another post for another time.

Giving my husband the benefit of doubt

Yesterday night JD told me I 'really need to relax more.' It's possible that he was talking about my mini-temper tantrum about something he forgot to do in the apartment ... but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. To be precise, I took his admonishment as a suggestion to take the morning off from work and go shopping. And not for a shower curtain or mop or anything particularly practical at all. Of course, I do realize that we have some large expenses coming up in the next few weeks and I'm really not supposed to be spending money ... so instead I gathered together a whole stack of gift cards (most with under $10 left on them) and store credits and such and went to midtown. I love, love, love spending 'play money.' Even the $3 Starbucks gift card was well spent this morning. Sometimes a girl just needs to indulge.

And in other financial news, despite the raised eyebrows and strongly disapproving looks at our pediatrician meet and greet yesterday, I actually asked the cost of a well-visit and PKU testing. And it's not nearly as bad as I thought. Well-visits seem to run around $200, the PKU lab work is only around $20 (although no one's sure how many tests that covers, poor baby may get heel-stuck several times to get all the testing done) and another $50 for the pediatrician to adminster (which is apparently quite standard practice in NYC - so much for the hospitals being required to offer it). Plus, the Hep B vaccine will be covered by a program for uninsured children so that might just be free. Even if we land up needing the maximum number of visits during our insurance gap, we're looking at something like $500-$600 total, which is frustrating and annoying but also feasible.

Also entertaining at the meet and greet was watching all the other women guess exactly which sitcom the very attractive looking expectant father stars in. Me? Well, we don't own a TV so I had no idea he was a B-circuit actor. But I certainly appreciated his looks.

I think our handyman missed his true calling

He clearly wanted to be an ob/gyn, or maybe a doula. And not at all in the negative sense of unsolicited advice. He is, if anything, deeply reassuring.

Every time I run into him he asks me any number of questions. This morning I got:
- Are you feeling ok?
- Baby kicking everyday?
- Remembering to rest?

He really doesn't give advice, it's more like he feels the need to check in every day and see how my progress is going. Within the first 5 minutes I met him he had shown me photos of his 8 month old girl. And unlike everyone else who keeps telling me to 'take it easy' but then does nothing to make that feasible, he's actually quite helpful. Last time he was in the apartment he had to move the kitchen table to get to a broken radiator valve. Of course, there were dirty dishes on the table and as I was desperately scrambling to put them away, he told me I really should sit down and he'd take care of the dishes. Nice, eh?

Registry fun

I'll admit it, I might be a bit addicted to registries. After all, we just finished 'completing' our wedding registry items a few months ago and in fact one of our 2 wedding registries will be open until my due date (another great benefit of being due almost 6 months to the day after your wedding ...) and now people are actually buying us gifts off of our baby registries! I registered such a long time ago and had basically forgotten about them until last week when packages started to arrive. So much fun! I will of course admit to being embarrassed by our friend's generosity in such a short amount of time, but really, I'd far rather receive useful gifts than endless stacks of princess-themed pink newborn onesies.

When I registered we were still living in the mini-apartment, so I really tried to pare the list down to the bare minimum. And I also decided strategically to buy all the expensive items* I could used (i.e. the crib, strollers, rocking chair and diaper bag, we skipped a changing table but recently found a bureau on craigslist for $40 and bought a pad for the top of it) so that there was nothing too extravagant on the list. And after the activity this week, there are really only 2 big ticket items we will need to buy (the breast pump** and a high chair, which we won't need till May) and a few more cloth diapers and we're set! Of course, I'd love some extra sheets and cloth wipes and a few of the little luxury items I've registered for, but they're not things that we'll need to run out and buy anytime soon. All of this makes me very excited and thankful that even if my friends are more than a bit flaky sometimes, they do come through on certain things no matter what.

* I know everyone has different expectations. Just to clarify, I consider anything at or above $100 a big ticket item and unlikely to be purchased off a registry. I did receive both a new carseat and a crib mattress as gifts, which were most unexpected and delightful.
** After our breastfeeding class this weekend I think that I've been sold on the Me.de.la Fre.estyle rather than the Pump In Style. Sadly, there is a huge price difference, but given that I would ideal like to pump for up to 12 months and will need to keep freezer stashes in multiple cities and will start part-time daycare at 4 weeks, I think it's probably worth the upgrade.

This whole 'full term' thing

I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around the idea of being 'full term' (don't worry, not there yet). I noticed over the weekend when I kept messing up how far along I am. Sometimes it's wishful thinking and I'm also 37 weeks, sometimes I'm back at the beginning of the third trimester. It's so weird to think that as of the weekend after Thanksgiving I will be 'full term' and I should be resting for labor and prepared at any moment to have a baby. And yet, I might still have 5 weeks to go (and that with an induction at 41 weeks, rather than waiting until 42 weeks). And even though I know the chance of a my NST's uncovering an emergency which would lead to an immediate delivery are very slim, it's a bit terrifying to be in the hospital on the same floor as L and D every week at 9 am ...

The childbirth class instructor spent a lot of time reminding us to rest and not go into labor exhausted. But I've never in my life tried to spend 4-5 weeks relaxing and taking it easy. How do you find a balance? And deal with the persistent questions (luckily mostly from family, but really how many times can my mother ask if I'd had any signs of labor? And this from a woman who claims she never had a braxton hicks contraction ...).

And just to totally play with my composure, yesterday I accidentally put on a non-maternity shirt and wore it out and about all day. My belly seems to be shrinking even as the baby continues to grow apace.

Sharp breath in

JD and I were talking about our schedules this week (I'm busy Monday-Wednesday night, he'll be working till 9 pm every night, then his parents come visit on shabbos and we have a baby shower on Sunday ... great) and the last midwife appointment he needs to come to and how I'd really like him at next week's NST since they make me so nervous ...

And JD looks directly at me and says "Why didn't we do all of this last year? We had so much more time. And we could already have a one-year old."

And I was left speechless. This on the day when we watched gory birth movies and JD lamented the endless pressure between work and spending time at home. For all that this was clearly 'my idea' sometimes I'm amazed by how much he gets it.

Update: Least you never again take my endless whining seriously, tonight, 2 hours prior to above conversation JD looked up from his computer to see his 35 week pregnant wife sitting on the kitchen floor scrubbing in her ill-fitting sleep bra and shorts and rather than immediately jumping up and offering to help he pronounced the situation "very sexy" and returned to his 'work' on the computer.