A couple of days ago when I wrote that post about anxiety (and y’all are awesome for the comments there, seriously, thank you), I was driving home from work and still feeling pretty jittery and stressed out.
Then my cell phone rang, and I saw that it was my OB’s office. That’s never a good sign, is it?
So I answered (yes, sometimes I talk on my cell phone while I’m driving, they haven’t passed a law here saying that I can’t yet, so shut it), and the nurse informed me that I failed my glucose test last week. Like, spectacularly. I believe she said that the typical blood sugar is supposed to be 65-80 and mine was like 145 or something. So, yeah, that’s pretty bad. Even though I’m mostly blaming it on the fact that they scheduled my test at 2 p.m., so it was right after lunch, and it just so happened that I’d gone to Waffle House for lunch that day. (I didn’t have anything with syrup on it – just eggs, bacon & toast – but it was probably still too carb-heavy.)
Anyway, the fact that I failed means that I need to go back for the 3-hour gestational diabetes test. Which, oh BTW, is a fasting test, which means you have to get there at 7:30 a.m.
And you know, in the grand scheme of things, this is not that big a deal, right? Obviously my health and Baby 2.0’s health trumps any minor inconvenience. I know that, I really do. But at that moment, when she told me that, I… god, let’s just say that I owe this nurse an apology at my next appointment, because I basically turned into a petulant child.
“But… but… I don’t wanna! No!”
And then I almost burst into tears. I had to work really hard to hold back the floodgates.
Now, leaving aside the fact that the test itself sounds like pure hell (and it does, the one-hour test was bad enough), there’s also the issue of scheduling. And the fact that Catie doesn’t even wake up until after 7:30. And did I mention that Dave is about to leave town for three weeks so I’ll be on solo parent duty?
Oh, right, I haven’t blogged about that yet: Dave is going to England for 3 weeks. And I am 100% supportive of this, because I know he’s been homesick for a while and I think it’ll be good for him to spend some time with his family and friends over there. And this is probably the last chance he’ll have to go before Baby 2.0 makes her arrival. So, it’s FINE that he’s going, it really is. It just throws a major wrench in the works, as far as things like scheduling early morning doctor’s appointments.
I told the nurse I’d have to call her back because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’m sure she thought I was insane.
I got home, and I worried and fretted for hours. I talked to my mom, then I started to calm down a little. I looked at Dave’s itinerary: he’s leaving on a red-eye flight Tuesday night. (For some reason I thought he was leaving on Monday morning, hence my panic.) So the next morning, I called the nurse back and said that I could do the test on Monday or Tuesday morning if they could manage to squeeze me into the schedule, but after that? I’m screwed as far as childcare arrangements.
And God bless her, she found a way to get me in on Monday morning. The lab they normally use is booked, so she found somewhere else I could go instead. (It’ll be at the actual hospital where I’ll deliver Baby 2.0 someday.) I don’t care so much where it gets done as long as we get this over with as quickly as possible.
So, if anyone’s done this three-hour test and can tell me that it’s not all that bad? I’d really appreciate it. (Also, WTF am I supposed to do for 3 hours? I think I’m renting a movie online and borrowing Dave’s iPad to watch it while I sit & wait. But other ideas are certainly welcome.)