In which I'm thankful for gestational diabetes...

 It's Baby Month!

I mean, technically next month is baby month, but my doctor's pretty sure this baby will come prior to then, and if she doesn't she'll be kicked out anyway because...diabetes.

Now, I have done more than my fair share of complaining about having gestational diabetes, that's true, but to quote from dear Marti again, "When you have no food in your belly, chewing on a complaint or two can bring a little comfort" (Leavitt, 2014, p. 43). As I've mentioned, it's hard to hear other pregnant women complain about their cravings when in my overall experience of pregnancy cravings are entirely irrelevant. 

For example, "I wanted a mint chocolate milkshake but they were out so instead I had to get cookie dough." *pout*

(Cry me a river).

Or, "I live in a foreign country and can't find any of the things I'm craving so instead I've tried this, this, and this, which just don't quite hit the spot. But then I tried this and it's incredible and I ate an entire box!"

Puh-leeze. I'm over here, like, chewing on spinach.

Which isn't all bad—I'll be strong 'til the finish—but, like, sometimes a girl just wants a bowl of ice cream, okay?

But that's an impossibility for me, so I've spent the last four pregnancies muscling through meal after meal of nothing appealing (and often things that are downright unappealing (I don't like eggs, guys, and yet I eat one every day)), ignoring both cravings and hunger cues to eat measured meals as dictated by the clock and my blood sugar levels.

And I spent the pregnancy before that living in a foreign country, dreaming of peanut butter (so I understand that plight, too).

Gestational diabetes isn't fun. 

And yet! Today I feel very grateful for gestational diabetes...or at least the diagnosis and subsequent management of gestational diabetes. Because all the finger pricks, all those eggs I've choked down for breakfast, all the self-control to have none-of-the-treats is very much worth it. 

My friend had an eleven pound baby a couple of days ago. 

She had been worried because her doctors told her that her baby was measuring large—they guessed 9.5 lbs—and she couldn't even fathom that because her largest baby (prior to this one) had been 7.5 lbs. So everyone was reassuring her that ultrasounds aren't very reliable this late in the game and can be up to a pound or two off...and, as it turns out, the ultrasound was off by a pound or two...in the wrong direction!

Eleven pounds! 

I can't even imagine! 

So today I'm grateful that we're monitoring my blood sugar and weight gain very closely and have determined that this baby, as the ultrasound technician just told me on Thursday, "is not large" (when I was fretting about that head-in-the-80th-percentile thing). And there's no way she'll be allowed to get that big (without first being evicted).

All day long, whenever I've thought to myself, "Oh, this baby is so heavy!" I follow up that thought with, "But not that heavy!" 

And I give a little sigh of relief...because there but for the grace of God go I...