This morning I got a call from a nurse at Kaiser.  As I mentioned yesterday, I assumed it was a call with the exciting news that I’d failed my gestational diabetes screening and would have to take another test.  But this nurse, who said she had my lab results, began by saying she had good news!  All I could think was “What in the world?  What good news could they call about from the lab?”  She told me with enthusiastic delight that I do NOT have HIV!  I’m thinking “Ummmm…good.  Why did you think I might have HIV?”

Now, I am blessed to be in a situation where I’ve never been concerned about whether I have HIV.  It’s never even occurred to me that I might have HIV.  I don’t think I’ve ever been tested before.  It was a rather confusing surprise to have someone announce to me with excitement and even some relief in her voice that I don’t have HIV.

Then I recalled that I’d had a bunch of blood work done at my prenatal appointment, and that probably automatically included an HIV test.  She was going on about how I should be tested again in six months to be totally sure, but that this test was a good sign, and that I’m very lucky.  I couldn’t help but interrupt her to explain that I’d never thought I might have HIV and that it was part of a prenatal bloodwork panel the doctor had ordered for me.  She stopped, congratulated me on my pregnancy, and seemed a bit disappointed that I wasn’t as enthusiastically pleased as she about my test results.  I thanked her and said something like “I never thought I had it, but I guess it’s a good thing to know I don’t.”  She replied seriously, “Yes dear, it’s a very, very good thing that you don’t have HIV.”  And we pleasantly ended the phone call.

It made me think of what a hard job she must have, calling people who are worried about contracting such a horrible virus and informing them of their fate.  She probably sits on the phone trying to comfort people all day, with few encouraging facts to share with them.

It also made me think, a few minutes later, that I am blessed to not be worried about something like having HIV.  My complaints are all temporary, relatively fleeting things that I know will probably go away eventually and have good treatment options.  I am confident in my husband’s past, present, and future faithfulness to me and mine to him.  What is a little morning sickness and gestational diabetes (which come with the blessing of a baby in the end) to the alternative of HIV and some of the things that would put me at risk of having it?

It’s nice to get good news when you’re expecting bad news.  And it’s good to have another thing to be grateful for.

I fed my kids and myself waffles for dinner tonight.  Not homemade waffles, which are superior to anything else in every way except prep time/effort.  We ate Eggo waffles for dinner, with syrup on top.  Not pure maple syrup, but a simple sugar syrup flavored with immitation maple flavoring that I made myself a while back. I remember when I was little I always wanted to fill each individual waffle hole with syrup before eating and hardly ever got to do it before Mom or Dad stopped me, protesting the amount of sugar and the number of diners left to share the syrup with.  “Save some fore Virginia!”  Did I do that tonight?  No, but I remembered it while I ate and it made me smile to think that I could do it if I wanted to.

This unhealthy fare was a celebration, or perhaps an adamant denial, in honor of my bloodwork results from my prenatal doctor appointment last week that I found online today when I logged in to my insurance web page for the first time.  My blood sugar was a point over normal on my gestational diabetes glucose one-hour screening test.  Very likely when my OB gets back from vacation tomorrow she’ll be calling me to let me know I have to go in to take the 3-hour version of the glucose intolerance test, and I consider it even more likely that I’ll test positive for gestational diabetes.  And that means no waffles with syrup for a few months unless I’m willing to starve one morning in favor of a few bites of one of my favorite foods.

So, before the diagnosis is official, and before that placenta gets big enough to cause serious blood sugar spiking, I had myself a good stack of waffles.  I miss breakfast food when I’m on a diabetes diet.  For breakfast on that diet, I can have a total meal of about one Eggo with a dollop of Cool Whip (no syrup) if I want to go the waffle route.  Or half a cup of breakfast cereal with half a cup of milk.  I can have all the eggs and bacon and sausage I want, but through some sad twist of irony eggs and bacon and sausage all make me nauseous to one degree or another during most of my pregnancy.  Strawberries and cantaloupe are better choices with larger volumes allowed, but I sure miss those breakfast grains.

I get that an official diagnosis won’t change whether I actually have it now or not.  It’s still not good for me, diabetes or not, to have that much sugar.  And posting this confession will hardly do anything for my arguments against the nearly intolerable fasting glucose intolerance test involving the stupidity of having a possibly diabetic person drink a huge amount of glucose and shocking her sugar-processing system.  But my waffle eating ritual calmed my misgivings about whether I can stand going through this process again.  I really don’t want any more waffles.  I think I can probably actually survive the next six months on a small brownie square interspersed here and there among my healthier alternatives.  I am steeled for the news, prepared as much as I can be.

P.S. I also ate an artichoke with my waffles.  I feel pretty good about that.

Because of my previous bout with gestational diabetes, she had me do my first glucose test today instead of waiting another ten weeks or so.  I don’t know when I’ll get the results, but Abby and I were talking about how I should eat a stack of waffles with syrup and a big glass of milk for breakfast sometime before I find out, because it’ll be against the rules after I have diabetes officially.

So, yes I’m really pregnant.  For sure.  I still don’t know if I’m diabetic.  I’ve discovered that although there are famous drawbacks to working within a big health insurance system like Kaiser, it’s also very convenient.  I didn’t even have a copay for my visit and the lab work.  It was all in the same building complex and everyone pretty much did whatever I wanted.

Pregnant me is different because I get soooo tired for no reason other than that an inch-long unrecognizable baby is sucking me dry of energy.  The last few days I’ve napped during the day, despite objection #2 above.  Today I got lucky and was able to get both kids down for a nap at once, thereby freeing myself to also sleep.  Other days I’ve slept while Maggie napped, rationalizing that Degen is old enough to take care of himself in baby-proofed areas.  I’ve also snoozed on the couch in front of the TV as the kids watched My Friends Tigger and Pooh or whatever else popped on the kids station or roamed the house freely.  It’s nice to have my father-in-law, Dick, around as an emergency backup adult for the times when I involuntarily collapse on the couch.  At least someone else would (probably) hear the kids crying.

I vaguely remember something like this when I was pregnant with Maggie, only it was different then because I had only one child and he was less than a year and a half old.  That meant he didn’t get offended when I’d put him in front of the TV for hours while I slept, no matter how guilty I felt about it.  He happily played with his toys and watched his videos over and over and over again.  Not so, now.  When I try to sleep when Degen is awake now, he’ll run up and shake me, screaming “Wake up, Mommy! Open your eyes!” repeatedly.  Hard instructions to resist.

Why is it that when I wake up in the morning I feel refreshed and rested, but when I nap during the day I usually feel like I just need another nap?  I HAVE to take the naps, but they just aren’t very restful.  I seem to feel slightly less nauseated in the evenings when I nap during the day, which is payoff enough to justify them to myself, but why won’t they wake my head up too?  Ten minutes or three hours, it doesn’t seem to make a difference how long the nap is, I just don’t feel a whole lot better in the end.  Hmph.

For those of you who are wondering if the next nine months are going to be a play-by-play of my pregnancy, brace yourselves for the worst because I’m hardly interested in anything else at the moment.  In fact, my brain probably isn’t clear enough at the moment to speak reliably on any other subject.  In fact, when I think of the things I’ve said in the past that were most embarrassing and thoughtless, nearly all of them were while I was pregnant (a couple were during high school or while I was dating Colin, but they are the minority of the group).  There are times when I really wish I could go hide alone in an air-conditioned cave at the outskirts of town for a few months and just sleep and eat while I’m pregnant, then re-join society when I’m fit to interact pleasantly and coherently.  Aren’t there societies that let women do that while they’re pregnant?  I think someone told me so once and it stuck with me…except the part about what they were called and how to find them and join them.  I guess I’m doing the next best thing right now–living with family who help take care of me and forgive me more readily than the rest of the world might.

After all that, I’m finally starting to awake from the haze my nap left me in.  And the kids are still asleep!  Yay!  What to do with all this lack of energy while I have some free time?

This evening I took a walk in the rain.  It was just overcast and a bit of a sprinkle when I left the house, but I knew from the clouds continuing to roll in that it would soon get worse.  I know as well as everyone else that it’s not a good idea to be outside during a thunderstorm, but I wanted to anyway.  I was in a really bad mood at the time, and maybe it was a “misery loves company” self-sabotage thing, but I knew I’d have to work out before bed and it would only get rainier and darker outside if I waited longer and I knew that I’d better get out of the house alone for a while.

So, I threw on Colin’s SPAM T-shirt (one of my favorite ratty workout shirts), grabbed my phone in case Colin needed to call me about a tornado warning or something, and clipped the iPod to my corduroy pants and headed out the door.   Double-dutying the time and attempting to improve my mood, I flipped on the Book of Mormon on the iPod and listened as Mosiah started a democratic government among the Nephites and abolished kings, Alma went to war with the Amlicites, and Nehor died a not-so-ignominious death.

Instead of doing the smart thing and heading to the gym and a treadmill out of the rain, I took a walk around the apartment complex.  It was so nice to smell the rain-cleaned air as I breathed it in deeply and feel the cool breeze on my arms and face.  The temperature was cool, but not too cool, and I explored the lower half of the complex that’s a lot bigger than I thought before.  I mostly walked under cover of the balcony/sidewalks along the front of the apartment buildings, but once in a while I’d walk between buildings or under trees on the grass.  The rain wasn’t heavy and didn’t soak me through, so it was pleasantly cool and refreshing.  As the thunder clapped around me, I was reminded that the world is a beautiful place, that there are bigger (and more important) things than me, and that my problems aren’t the worst in the world.

Refreshing.   And no, I didn’t get hit by lightning. 

I’ve been exercising 30 minutes a day, every day except Sundays, for more than 40 days now!  This is a huge change for previously unathletic me, and I’ve learned a couple of things in the process.  I thought I’d record my thoughts on the subject while I’m in a good mood so that next time I feel grumpy about exercising I can read over it again.

1. Exercising is great stress relief, helps me relax, and puts me in a good mood.  Even when I hate it while I’m doing it, once I’m done I have more patience with my family and it’s easier to have a good attitude about my problems.  I’m generally happier than I was before I started exercising every day.

2. Variety is important for me.  I’ve been doing a yoga video at home in the evenings for the last couple of weeks because I could do it inside with the kids, and at night when it’s too dark to safely go outside (and I’m sure people are in the apartment complex gym…I’m shy that way).  The last two days I started getting REALLY annoyed with the woman on the video and started exercising half-heartedly.  Last night, in the middle of my video, I decided to try something else.  I got the iPod out and went for a walk around the apartment complex–it was only dusk (reluctant thanks to Daylight Savings), and being outside was really refreshing.  This morning I walked for a while outside, then went to the gym and ran for a while, then lifted some weights.  It’s much easier to keep exercising if I can quit Option A when I get sick of it and have Options B and C to switch to.

3. Exercising while listening to something helps me work out longer.  Listening to the scriptures helps me focus and be calm (plus I get some scripture study in), while listening to upbeat music motivates me to keep going and distracts me when I don’t want to keep going.

4. Working out in the morning is best, even though it’s possibly the hardest time of day to make myself do it.  When I do it in the morning, it’s not hanging over my head as a to-do all day.  I also have that feeling of confidence-boosting accomplishment to start the day with and motivate me to keep it up.  Plus, I’ve got the endorphins going while I do my foundational work of the day, instead of “wasting” them while I sleep at night.

5. I sleep better when I exercise.  I haven’t had a whole lot of trouble sleeping since high school (when I hardly slept at all), but early this year stress started bugging me to the point that I couldn’t shut it off when I got to bed and it would take me a long time to get to sleep.  Since I’ve been exercising, that problem has totally gone away and I usually go to sleep happy.

6. Exercising every day is possible with little kids and without money.  Sometimes the kids work out with me.  Sometimes I exercise in 5-min increments in order to get my 30 minutes in.  We had a couple of nights without electricity and I still exercised.  I haven’t spent a penny on working out since I started this goal.

7. I don’t have to exercise a huge amount or get super-sweaty to make a difference or to lose weight.  Even a happy little walk outside or the easiest level of that workout video is worthwhile.

8. Runners aren’t as crazy as I always thought.  Running is sometimes easier than walking fast…who knew?h

9. My body really does improve and get stronger as I consistently exercise.  Having never really exercised regularly, it was hard to believe that if I made the effort I would see a difference.  Everyone has heard that exercising a muscle will increase its strength, but now I’ve actually experienced it.

10. Exercising alone is one of the few things I’ve discovered that will convince my mind to turn off its “mom-radar.”  You moms know–it’s that part of your brain that is always paying attention to whether the kids are doing okay.  It’s on when I’m sleeping, it’s on while they’re sleeping, it’s even on when Colin is watching them while I go on errands by myself.  Until now, the only time I would find that it would turn off was when I’d pay a trusted babysitter to watch the kids and go on a date with my husband.  But when I’m exercising alone away from the house it turns off.  Exercising is at least as good for my sanity as our weekly date.

11. Having social support is important.  For those days when I’m discouraged and don’t want to keep it up, it’s a huge help to have Colin around to be accountable to.  I know he’ll ask me if I exercised before we go to bed, and I don’t want to say no.  And if I tell him I don’t want to exercise today, he’ll give me a long list of reasons not to give up.

12. Rewards make it easier, and they don’t have to be food-related or expensive to be motivational. Especially at the beginning, I found myself thinking of how I could keep walking for just a few more minutes or stay up the extra half hour at night to get my 30 minutes in, because if I did I’d get flowers at the end of the week.

13. Ironically, when I exercise I have MORE energy to do other things, not less.  Weird, but true.

14. Weight lifting is sometimes more fun than yoga, walking, running, or cycling.  You have more instant gratification–I have a feeling of accomplishment every time I finish a set of repetitions, and that only takes a minute or two in some cases.

This morning I took two kids to the doctor with me so I could get a physical.  It was an adventure!  It was the first normal, healthy, no babies, regular doctor (not an OB) physical I’ve had in I don’t know how long.  The doctor (someone I’d never seen before) seemed a little confused that I was there because I wasn’t sick.  Funny.  Everyone seemed confused that I had two kids with me, but they managed politely and positively to work around Maggie screaming when I put her down and Degen wanting to continually get another drink of water from the water cooler (he loves water coolers).

The doctor checked the red spot on my tummy and said it’s no big deal, just an infected hair folicle that should go away on its own.  The scar on my back is definitely just a scar, not a cyst, but may be the kind of scar that keeps on growing.  As my sister later said on the phone “what’s the difference between a scar that keeps on growing and a tumor?”  I’ll have to ask my mom about that one, but the doctor thought it wasn’t a big deal.

Because of my history with gestational diabetes, he checked my blood sugar and said I do not have diabetes.  He seemed totally unimpressed with my assertion that I’d been working on improving my chances of not getting diabetes and had lost 15 pounds in the last month and a half, and I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t more cheerleader-ish about it.  He was also unimpressed that I’ve been working out 30 minutes a day for the last 40 days.  Hmph.  He did tell me to keep doing it and said that if I don’t I’ll get diabetes.

My tongue has big cracks in it, and the doctor said that can sometimes be a symptom of anemia, so he had an iron check done.  No anemia, either.  Both that test and the blood sugar test involved drawing blood, but the nurse at the lab in the office was so expert that I hardly noticed the prick!  It was seriously the least uncomfortable prick I’ve ever experienced.  Speaking of needles, I was also a couple of years overdue for a tetanus shot, so I got one of those from another angelic nurse who managed to give me the shot while I wasn’t looking and I didn’t even know for sure if she’d done it or not until I felt her stick the bandaid on.  THAT is impressive.

Degen was excited to watch him check my eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.  He listened to my heart and my breathing and Degen liked that too.  I have a feeling he’s going to start to pretend he’s a doctor soon.  Maybe a Batman-Doctor.  Degen and Maggie both have been entertaining us by singing “na na na na na na na na BATMAN!” at unexpected moments lately. They both like the old Adam West 60s version of the Batman Movie.

So, clean bill of health.  Nothing to do but what I’m already doing.  And now I can step on rusty nails sans consequence…j/k

Speaking of shots, I’m going to say something rather controversial.  My mother didn’t have my three youngest siblings vaccinated back in the early 90s, I guess because she questioned whether all the ingredients in the immunizations were safe.  When I had kids, I called her to get her advice on shots and she said that since she’d gone to medical school and seen more research and information about the newer vaccines she’d decided that they’re safe and she’d have the kids immunized now if she had time.  However, she said that she thinks it’s somewhat unnescessary to immunize babies unless they’re going to be in daycare or another high-risk place for getting diseases.  She suggested that, since I’d be staying home with them and their access to infected people would be extremely limited, I might want to wait a year or so before having them get their shots so that their little immune systems would be more developed when they deal with the onslaught.  So, that’s what Colin and I decided to do.

We started Degen’s schedule of shots at a year and Maggie got her first shots today (18 months) and they’ve both been exceptionally healthy.  When our new doctor here questioned me about why these were Maggie’s first shots, I explained the above to him, and he (understandably) told me that he disagreed with my decision and told me that “there’s a web site of women like you telling their stories of how they regret their decision to not immunize their children.”  The obligatory guilt trip over after I smiled sympathetically, he mentioned in a rather surprised tone that my kids are really actually very healthy.  He took a look in their ears and down their throats, told me they’re growing well, asked me if they fight a lot (they don’t), and handed me some informational paperwork on potty training.  Then he sent in the nurse to do the shots.

At our old doctor’s office in Utah (American Fork Clinic, Dr. Hoggard), they had a great nursing staff.  When they did a big set of shots (two or more at a time), they would send in two nurses and administer two shots simultaneously, efficiently and effectively.  It was awesome.  The nurse at my new doctor’s office did a great job today, but she was only one person, and Maggie got four sticks in succession in her chubby little legs.  I prefer the other system.  Maggie didn’t scream until the third shot, but then she made it known that she was not interested in putting up with us any more.  All the shots finished, she screamed and cried for about three more minutes and then I gave her a sucker that the doctor had handed me for her on his way out and she quickly became cheerful again.  The one odd thing about the process was that the nurse explained the normal sysmptoms and when to worry or not about her shots as she gave the shots.  I heard nothing.  I was busy trying to calm Maggie down to hear her over Maggie’s screams.  Luckily, she gave me some paperwork explaining everything (I hope!) she’d just said.  Of course, I was so distraught about my injured baby that I forgot to take the paperwork with me and didn’t realize it until I’d gotten both kids buckled happily into their car seats and had to undo my heroic work and go back into the office and ask another nurse to go searching for the papers.  And no, I didn’t know which room number we’d been in.  And then we repeated the walk-to-the-car and buckle-up processes.

Degen is really into chivalry, to my delight and chagrin.  He likes to hold doors open for people as they enter or leave, and it’s very cute and a habit I want to encourage.  The downside comes when I’m trying to corral both him and his sister into or out of a building and he wants to stay and hold the door open for the next 10 people while I try to figure out why he refuses to obey my command to “come!”  That happened to us today BOTH times we left the doctor’s office on the way to the car.  An ancient gentleman who was going into the office was confused about why Degen wanted to hold the door open for him–hopefully he wasn’t insulted.

Speaking of shots, I’m going to say something rather controversial.  My mother didn’t have my three youngest siblings vaccinated back in the early 90s, I guess because she questioned whether all the ingredients in the immunizations were safe.  When I had kids, I called her to get her advice on shots and she said that since she’d gone to medical school and seen more research and information about the newer vaccines she’d decided that they’re safe and she’d have the kids immunized now if she had time.  However, she said that she thinks it’s somewhat unnescessary to immunize babies unless they’re going to be in daycare or another high-risk place for getting diseases.  She suggested that, since I’d be staying home with them and their access to infected people would be extremely limited, I might want to wait a year or so before having them get their shots so that their little immune systems would be more developed when they deal with the onslaught.  So, that’s what Colin and I decided to do.

We started Degen’s schedule of shots at a year and Maggie got her first shots today (18 months) and they’ve both been exceptionally healthy.  When our new doctor here questioned me about why these were Maggie’s first shots, I explained the above to him, and he (understandably) told me that he disagreed with my decision and told me that “there’s a web site of women like you telling their stories of how they regret their decision to not immunize their children.”  The obligatory guilt trip over after I smiled sympathetically, he mentioned in a rather surprised tone that my kids are really actually very healthy.  He took a look in their ears and down their throats, told me they’re growing well, asked me if they fight a lot (they don’t), and handed me some informational paperwork on potty training.  Then he sent in the nurse to do the shots.

At our old doctor’s office in Utah (American Fork Clinic, Dr. Hoggard), they had a great nursing staff.  When they did a big set of shots (two or more at a time), they would send in two nurses and administer two shots simultaneously, efficiently and effectively.  It was awesome.  The nurse at my new doctor’s office did a great job today, but she was only one person, and Maggie got four sticks in succession in her chubby little legs.  I prefer the other system.  Maggie didn’t scream until the third shot, but then she made it known that she was not interested in putting up with us any more.  All the shots finished, she screamed and cried for about three more minutes and then I gave her a sucker that the doctor had handed me for her on his way out and she quickly became cheerful again.  The one odd thing about the process was that the nurse explained the normal sysmptoms and when to worry or not about her shots as she gave the shots.  I heard nothing.  I was busy trying to calm Maggie down to hear her over Maggie’s screams.  Luckily, she gave me some paperwork explaining everything (I hope!) she’d just said.  Of course, I was so distraught about my injured baby that I forgot to take the paperwork with me and didn’t realize it until I’d gotten both kids buckled happily into their car seats and had to undo my heroic work and go back into the office and ask another nurse to go searching for the papers.  And no, I didn’t know which room number we’d been in.  And then we repeated the walk-to-the-car and buckle-up processes.

Degen is really into chivalry, to my delight and chagrin.  He likes to hold doors open for people as they enter or leave, and it’s very cute and a habit I want to encourage.  The downside comes when I’m trying to corral both him and his sister into or out of a building and he wants to stay and hold the door open for the next 10 people while I try to figure out why he refuses to obey my command to “come!”  That happened to us today BOTH times we left the doctor’s office on the way to the car.  An ancient gentleman who was going into the office was confused about why Degen wanted to hold the door open for him–hopefully he wasn’t insulted.