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.

Do breakfast in bed if you can beat your mom to the kitchen.  If you can't, send her back to bed.  If you can't do that, then make her sit at the table alone while you fix breakfast and entertain her with your singing or jokes.  When my siblings and I were younger, the oldest (me) or Dad would carry the tray of food we'd all prepared into the bedroom last, after all of us (starting with the youngest) filed into Mom's room.  We'd all say "Happy Mother's Day!" as loud as we could while she praised our beautiful breakfast.  Then we'd sit on her bed and wait for her to tell us how great the food was and sometimes we'd even give her presents to open!  Make sure you do this all early enough to allow time for getting ready for church.

A nice touch is to add a bud vase with a single flower in it to the presentation of breakfast.  It can be a real flower that you bought before or picked from the garden, or a silk/fake flower.  Also, use nice dishes unless kids aren't allowed to touch them.  Make sure you include a napkin (a cloth one if you can) and appropriate silverware.  You can add homemade (or not) Mother's Day cards to the tray, too. 

If you know what her favorite breakfast food is and you can make it, do that.  If not, here are a bunch of ideas.  Chose at least one each of bread, fruit, drink, and protein.

• Muffins are easy and cute and you can get little pats of butter and jam to put on the tray.  They also come in a huge variety of flavors.  Use the little paper cups to put in the muffin tins to make cleanup easy.
• Bagels and cream cheese are even easier than muffins.  Or, you could do a bagel, egg, cheese, sausage/bacon sandwich.
• Waffles are also pretty easy, but it takes some tricky timing to get them to Mom while they're hot.
• Scrambled eggs are always good.  You can make them a little fancier by putting in chopped onions, ham, cheese, green peppers, and such.    
• You can buy bacon that you keep in the cupboard and microwave, and that would be easy to fix.
• Yogurt takes zero preparation, and you can buy it in her favorite flavor.
• Cereal is an easy stand-by, but if you get to be in charge of grocery shopping for this occasion, try to get a special cereal that she especially likes.  If she likes hot cereal, there are simple directions on packages of oatmeal that kids can prepare in the microwave.  Don't put the milk into the cereal before you take it to Mom–just add a glass of milk to your presentation that she can pour herself.  Otherwise, the cereal might get soggy while she admires your work.
• Juice: grape, orange, apple, grapefruit, tomato, etc.  Whatever you think she'd like.  Make sure you also include a glass of water to wash everything down with.  You can use milk instead of juice if she likes milk.
• If your mom likes smoothies for breakfast, that could be simple, but you might have to ask your dad for help with the blender, because blenders can get really messy and it won't be much of a Mother's Day present to give Mom an awesome smoothie and a huge mess to clean up.
• Toast is another kid-friendly breakfast food.  They like to push the button and watch it pop up.  Try making it special by using an unusual bread, like cinnamon-raisin.  And don't forget the butter.
• If your mom likes grapefruit, you could slice one in half and that would be very simple.  Or any other sliced fruit like apples, pears, peaches, or nectarines are a good choice.  They make a pretty garnish with some mint leaves on the plate, too.  Strawberries are always awesome.

I think my ideal breakfast in bed would be something like this:

A waffle or two or some french toast with butter and maple syrup and powdered sugar sprinkled on top.  Two sausage links.  A bowl of strawberry yogurt with granola mixed into it.  A glass of orange juice.  A bowl of cut-up fresh fruit (strawberries, melon, and peaches maybe).  Two fried eggs, the whites cooked solid and crispy on the edges but the yolk still somewhat fluid, with buttered toast.  A pretty flower in a vase.  Big hugs and kisses from my family.

I hope that helps the next person looking for Mother's Day ideas!

• Mimi's Cafe
• Callie's Cafe
• Denny's
• Einstein Bros Bagels
• Gandalfo's
• Golden Corral
• IHOP
• Jamba Juice
• Jim's Family Restaurant
• Kneader's
• Magleby's
• Pete's Lunch

And a list of places I'd like to go to that serve breakfast:

• Allie's American Grill in Provo
• Apple Spice Junction
• Hollywood Juice Cafe
• La Brioche European Style Bakery
• Nate's Diner
• Tahitian Noni Cafe