This pregnancy I’ve been having fake contractions since week 24, I think. The belly tightens up, I feel some pressure, and then it subsides. Sometimes they come hours apart, sometimes just a few minutes apart. Sometimes they hurt a little bit (usually when they coincide with a baby kick or spin), but usually they’re just distracting. They slow down or go away if I take a bath or shower or lie down for a while.

The distraction is the annoying part. The timing and intensity of fake contractions is totally unpredictable, so it’s pretty interesting to be walking to the kitchen table with a full glass of milk or driving down our winding, hilly street when one hits. They’re rarely immobilizing, just surprising, and really tough to ignore.

In fact, I kind of assume it’s best not to ignore them entirely when I can. I try to use them to practice my relaxation techniques, to remind my body that contractions aren’t something to stress out about and to train myself to un-tense my shoulders and face instead of freak out. I, like my mother, like to think that if I work with my pre-labor contractions I’ll get some of the work done in advance so that the active labor will be shorter and less painful. But even if they are productive, I still think they’re annoying. So there.

So, what’s been going on here?  Hmmmm…

Thanksgiving in Arizona with my parents and some of my siblings was divine.  We had all sorts of good food, including a cheesecake flan made by my very own Chef Colin.  My brother, Uncle Nephi, was a hit with Degen and Maggie as expected.  They just can’t stop talking about him and how wonderful he is.  We did some yard work together, which really means everyone else did yard work while I sat in the sun and kept them company.  I tried to lift a shovel of dirt once and immediately thought better of it with my very large belly and confused sense of balance (not to mention my healing sprained knee and very loose ligaments).  I got to see my sisters Ruth and Eliza pass their road tests and receive their driver licenses on the same day!  Yay Liza and Ruthie!  The test proctor was impressed with both of them and their driving skills.  We cooked and talked and my mom adjusted all of our backs (she’s a DO so she can do that stuff) and went to the park and the kids played with Grandma and Grandpa and their aunts and uncle.  It was really ideal, except that a couple of my sisters were missing (on the other side of the country for Thanksgiving this year). My mom cut Maggie’s hair for the first time (with bangs so she can see without pigtails) and trimmed Degen’s to a presentable length, then Mom and I went to a nearby salon and had our hair cut too.  I really love spending time with my mom, even when she has to study for her next qulifying exam part of the time.

Just before Thanksgiving I was officially diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and just after Thanksgiving I was put on a low dose of insulin overnight to take care of that stubborn fasting number, just like when I was pregnant with Maggie.  My current OB, Dr. Klekman in Santa Rosa, is wonderful and is very laid back about the whole thing while also vigilantly watching and listening for any possible problems.  The diabetes educator I’ve been assigned to, Astrid Ortega, is also friendly and relaxed, even when my kids are running around her office in circles.  I do have to have weekly consults with her, weekly appointments with Dr. K, weekly nonstress tests, an ultrasound at 36 weeks to check the baby’s size, and they want me to induce at 39 weeks if the baby doesn’t arrive before then.  They only have me testing my blood sugar four times a day (compared to seven plus when I was pregnant with Maggie) this time and I don’t have to check my ketones in the morning like I had to last time around.  It’s really helped me this time around to have relaxed providers who explain things slowly and listen to me when I have concerns.  It also helped to have some past experience to compare it to so I had some idea of what was coming.

Monday was Colin’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Colin!  We spent it, just the two of us, in Los Angeles at a training for a new product Colin was researching for his company.  It was the first time we’d been (relatively) childless overnight since Degen was born, so it was fun for me to have a little break from my “job.”  It really was amazing to have a room to myself and several meals in a row with no squeals of “Mommy Mommy Mommy!” requesting a refill of plate or cup.  Thanks so much to Sonja and Dick for the time off!

Wednesday was my sister Abby’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Abby!  We celebrated Colin’s birthday with his parents, sister Kim, and her boyfriend that evening.  I gave him 2G of RAM for his laptop, which he’s apparently very happy about but accidentally found out about in advance because I wasn’t sneaky enough to delete it from the history of my browser.  So, no surprise, but a good gift anyway.  Kim and Colin’s parents surprised us with an awesome gift–an overnight stay in Kim’s downtown San Francisco apartment after Christmas (hopefully before baby), complete with local restaurant reservations, spa treatments, babysitting, and touristy touring recommendations.  And I thought our LA trip was a vacation!  Definitely a surprise, and a very cool gift.  No, I wasn’t bothered that his birthday present was pretty much half for me (and neither was Colin, as far as I could tell).  Who needs Christmas presents when your husband gets birthday gifts like that?

Maggie chipped a tooth this week, so I’ve got to get her to a dentist to check and see if we can/should do anything about it in the near future.  We’ve got to finish off the Christmas shopping and do some seriousgift wrapping.  And I need to have the car serviced right away (of course the regular maintenance would fall on this month).  And our renters of our house in Utah gave notice, so we’ve got to find a new family to live there, preferably starting in January.  And I really should get appointments for teeth cleaning and doctor checkups and eye glasses for everyone in the family before the end of the year.  I don’t even know if that’s possible, but if it were it’d be ideal.

It’s always busy around here, even when I have no energy.  Actually, I’m usually okay as long as I don’t have to stand up for long or carry anything and I get a nap in the afternoon.  Any guesses on how often those three things coincide?

As I mentioned, I spent much of my childhood abroad, but since then haven’t spent much of my time exploring.  I got a degree in International Studies, planning to spend my life as a travelling diplomat, but marrying and having kids slowed that aspiration down.  I rearranged my furniture often, quelling my restlessness.  I read travel magazines when I can get my hands on them and watch the Travel Channel on TV.  It’s a little pathetic, but it’s how I deal with my travel bug when I can’t go anywhere.  I take any chance I get to visit my local airport, and have been known to say that I wouldn’t mind living in an airport.  I admit that I’ve been jealous at times of my more mobile relatives, and anxiously watch for opportunities to go on trips close to home.

I found a National Geographic Expeditions magazine in my in-laws stash today and flipped through the pages of exotic trips to see gorillas in their natural habitat with gorilla experts, to see Sicily by boat with a local guide and archaeologist, and to visit Antarctica with some of the famous explorers of our time.  To my surprise, I wasn’t even tempted to wish I could come up with the $7000+ it would cost to go on one of those trips.  The thought of amazing, educational safaris through jungles didn’t make my mouth water as usual.  In fact, the only thing I felt was a wave of exhaustion at the idea.  And a little nausea, but I always feel a little nauseous right now.

So, the cure (temporary though it is) for the travel bug is pregnancy!  Whenever I’m pregnant, I have no desire to leave home.  I want to stay put.  I avoid stuffed suitcases and unfamiliar food at all costs.  Although one of the few medicine-less things I’ve found that decreases my nausea is air travel, I do not want to face my normally-beloved airport.  I don’t want to deal with cultural customs that aren’t part of my culture.  I get impatient with jokes I’d normally enjoy, because I don’t want to use the energy to process the subtleties of the banter.  Imagine how I’d feel about dealing with communicating in another language!  Nope, travel takes energy and pregnancy takes security and predictability, and never the twain shall meet…pleasantly, anyway.

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?

But, since we already have a boy and a girl and all their attending stuff, I was thinking that it could be fun to have a “surprise” birth this time around where we wouldn’t find out the gender for sure until the baby arrived.  I mentioned the idea to Colin, and he looked at me with a confused expression and said something like “What do you mean?  We already know.”  Hmmph.  Way to burst my bubble.  It also occurred to me that if I have to have as many ultrasounds this time around as I did last time with the gestational diabetes (once a week), it could be tough to keep everyone from accidentally telling us.  But we have weeks and weeks left to make that decision still, so I won’t think about it too hard now.

What do you think?  Are we going to have a boy or a girl?  And should we make the gender a surprise, or find out when we have an ultrasound (assuming the baby cooperates)?

So what’s for breakfast?  Wheat Thins.  I’m having room-temperature crackers for breakfast.  Crackers I have to ask my kids for permission to eat.  Degen holds the box, I say “May I please have some more?” and he carefully considers his answer each time before answering “uuuuuhhh..sure!” and handing me one cracker (sometimes one half-eaten cracker).  In all fairness, while I was typing the above he got impatient waiting for my plea and said “You want some more?”  When I answered affirmatively, he of course gave me one more cracker.  He’s really very generous for a three year old.

I’m sitting here trying to think of foods that sound good enough to eat.  Donuts…with chocolate frosting on top.  Strawberries.  Waffles with syrup.  Cantaloupe.  I could probably eat a burrito or chicken noodle soup.  And I can’t think of anything else.  I don’t really have cravings when I’m pregnant–I have foods I don’t hate.  And that list of foods gets smaller and smaller with each pregnancy because the foods I binged on in the last pregnancy are particularly disgusting to me this time around.   Hopefully I won’t have so many kids that I run out of foods to not hate!

I’m not really trying as hard as I “should” to keep the carbs to a minimum right now.  With my history of gestational diabetes I’m sure my doctor would say that putting waffles with syrup or donuts on my list of foods I can eat is totally inappropriate.  And keeping up with my exercise routine would be especially helpful right now, too.  The stress of moving and morning sickness, however, say otherwise.  Maybe I’ll try to take the kids swimming later today…

In the process of sorting and packing we found an old bottle of my anti-nausea drug from my last pregnancy, and I found that if I take a quarter dose I can function without being too miserable most of the time.  I’m petitioning my doctor here (via phone) to prescribe me some more for the trip, but haven’t heard back from his nurse yet this morning.  What I have handy enabled me to enjoy a long, giggly, chatty night out with both sisters on Friday night (thanks for dinner, girls, and thanks for watching the kids Colin!).  On Saturday, Phoebe took me to get my hair cut, and I really feel like a new person.  What I thought would be an awful drudgery has really been relatively painless so far.  I am so, so, so blessed to have sisters who took the time and the expense to fly out here and take care of me and my family while I’m having trouble.  They even went through my cupboards and figured out a menu of meals I could make without gagging (hopefully) with ingredients we already have.

There’s something about having my sisters around that just lets me calm down and get things done at whatever pace I can without being self-conscious.  I didn’t have to worry about them rolling their eyes at my dirty floors, since they already know how I am that way and like me anyway.  I didn’t have to worry about whether they would pack things in a way that was intelligible for me, or about whether they would understand my packing system, because we all learned to pack from our mom and have similar packing styles.  I knew they’d enjoy playing with the kids when I took a nap, and it wouldn’t annoy them.  Anything weird I do they already know about, and often do themselves.  Yay sisters!

Another thing that is helping me to be optimistic about our move this week is our wonderful church family here.  The sisters of the Relief Society in our ward have volunteered to come over the day before the move and help with dinner, babysitting, last-minute packing, and final cleaning.  I cannot believe how totally supportive they are–it’s truly inspirational.  And the Priesthood of our ward, including members of the bishopric, will be coming over on Saturday to load the truck.  I guess Bishop decided he’s over his silent-treatment phase of trying to get us to stay.   This may actually happen, and I’m so grateful for the help everyone is giving us in the process.

My mother-in-law is already helping me find a doctor in California and had diapers for Maggie and Degen ready to go when we get there.  They’ve already done so much to prepare for our arrival–even down to improving the safety of the deck for the little ones so they can play outside.  I’m excited to see the family there and settle in.  It will be so nice for the kids to get to know the family better, too.  And the glorious weather of Marin County!  No more tornadoes, anyway.

Yesterday Colin shared his testimony during Fast & Testimony meeting at church–I love hearing him share his feelings and thoughts about the gospel.  He talked about how we all need to have an “addiction” to feeling the Spirit, and to getting personal revelation, and that’s the only way we’ll be able to know how to do what will bring us happiness in the long run.  I went to my last Ward Council in this ward and everyone said very kind things to me about my time in Primary.  I gave my last Sharing Time in Primary and waved goodbye to the kids quickly as I bolted out the door to chase a couple of runaway little ones down the hallway.  I handed over my keys to the new Primary president.  The Primary staff gave me a card they’d all signed and that I haven’t read yet for fear of crying, but I’m sure I’ll love once I have the emotional fortitude to believe I’m actually leaving.

I’m still not sure why the Lord sent us to Arkansas, but I think it partly had something to do with my Primary calling here.  I discovered weaknesses I didn’t know I had and parts of my heart and mind were opened that weren’t there before.  I usually felt capable and happy in my calling, which has rarely happened to me in past callings, but when I felt inadequate I felt TOTALLY inadequate and had to rely entirely on the Lord.  My calling helped me to be happy when nothing else could.  I’m grateful to the Lord for trusting me with this calling and to the ward for sustaining me in it.  I will miss it and I will miss them.  I wonder what I’ll be called to do in my next ward…