Twenty Five Weeks

Monkey has kept us on our toes the past few days. For the past 4 weeks, I was dreading my appointment on Dec. 9th, the day for which my gestational diabetes test was scheduled. Unlike in the States, the Germans don’t give you a one hour test first. Everyone is subjected to a two hour test. I had to come in at 8 AM after fasting since 10 the night before. Really, this isn’t a big deal, but telling a pregnant lady she can’t eat induces a fear of being hungry. I ate a bowl of cereal at 9:50 PM just in case. This was just after getting home from stuffing my face at John’s unit’s Christmas party. When a task involves fasting, you just can’t be too sure.

When I arrived for my appointment (my doctor’s office is in the hospital, by the way), they took me into labor & delivery and said they’d need to take a blood sample. They asked if I was bothered by needles, and truthfully, I’m not. It’s the fainting that terrifies me, and since the last time I had blood drawn, I fainted, I was concerned. I voiced this to the doctor (not my normal doc, but I love this guy and wish I could switch to him), and he was amazing about it. He talked me all through drawing the two vials and he was incredibly gentle. It really didn’t hurt much.

He then gave me the lovely glucose drink and told me to drink up and come back in an hour. I went out to the lobby and braced myself for something disgusting. The bottle was about the size of a typical bottle of hydrogen peroxide. John smelled it before I drank it and made a nasty face. I was worried…for nothing! Once I sipped it, I drank about half of the mixture down right away. It tasted like diluted cranberry juice. No biggie. Then the waiting game began. I had a finger prick at 1 hour and 2 hours. The prick was actually in the side of my hand and hurt way more after the fact that during. (Those bruises can be nasty!)

I waited a little while after my last finger prick and then met with the doctor. My results came back a-ok, so no gestational diabetes for me. Thank goodness! They did say that my levels were still a little high, though, so I shouldn’t overdo it on sugar. This is not the time of year to tell me to limit my sugar intake, but I’ll be careful.

Surprisingly, they didn’t do any exams during this appointment, and I hadn’t had a regular monthly check up in 4 weeks. They scheduled me to come in again in 5 weeks. I guess Monkey didn’t like that, because Friday night starting at around 7:15, I started having contractions. They felt like regular cramps and would last about a minute and then go away. This happened every 10-15 minutes for 45 minutes, so we called the hospital just to be safe. The midwife who answered only spoke German, and I’m proud to say that I was able to communicate what was going on auf Deutsch. She said I needed to come in to get checked out. Go figure that in the next 30 minutes on the way to the hospital, I didn’t feel any more contractions. She brought me into one of the labor rooms, which was really peaceful. I’m a fan. There were not fluorescent lights, just one incandescent bulb in a lamp. There were two overhead speakers in case you wanted to use the room’s sound system, and there was also a birthing ball and a rope. There was also a reclining chair for John. Being there and seeing that made me feel a lot more comfortable about when we end up there for the real deal.

So the midwife hooked me up to a monitor to check for contractions over the next 30 minutes. Of course I didn’t have any more. I did feel Monkey kicking the monitor a lot, though. The midwife also took my blood pressure, a sample of some ahem fluids and then had the doctor come see me. This was all done in German, and was pretty successful. When the doctor came in, she spoke to us in German as well. I didn’t understand her nearly as clearly as the midwife. I got as much as “bring your coat,” “we’re going to use your doctor’s office for an ultrasound,” and “is this your first child?” When we got into the ultrasound room, she spouted off a number of words (sentences? I have no idea) in German and I just looked at her blankly. I didn’t catch any of them to even help with context. She then asked if it was better if she talked to us in English. Hah! She spoke it perfectly. So she did an ultrasound as well as an exam to check for several different things. Everything looked good, she said, so there isn’t anything to worry about. I guess Monkey just wanted some attention.

That was the end to a very busy week and the start to an incredibly busy weekend. I need a vacation from real life. Who’s with me?