I've tried writing this several times and I don't even know where to start.
Thursday was my 32 week ultrasound. Our healthy baby boy is 4lb 12oz (67th percentile) and apparently sleeps as soundly as his mother in that the ultrasound tech could not get him to move his hands out of the way to get a good profile picture. He was just sawing little baby logs and wanted nothing to do with us. As a side note I think it's funny that my father is worried that the vibrations from the riding lawn mower might hurt the baby, but the ultrasound tech was literally poking me with a stick and shaking me all over the place trying to get the baby to move.
The main reason to do the 32 week ultrasound is to get an estimate on his size and how much he will weigh at term. The ultrasound tech started doing math in her head.
Tech: "Well, the baby gains half a pound per week at this point."
Me: "So with 8 weeks to go that's another 4 pounds."
Tech: "Oh, but you're type 1 diabetic so we'll take him at 39 weeks."
Me: "Uh ... we'll see when he's ready to come out."
Tech: "Oh, well, that's just what we normally do."
Me: "Well, we'll cross that bridge in seven weeks and not now."
I'm still amazed that she said they would take him at 39 weeks. Granted, she's not going to be there in the delivery room with us and she's not really part of our birth team, but it just smacks of how they do things versus how I want to do things. Apparently, I don't have to just worry about crazy women trying to steal my baby from me but the damn hospital itself.
So let's all just ignore that because we know that my last conversation with Dr. D was a good one and she told me they wouldn't force me to do anything I didn't want to do.
This afternoon brought a variety of appointments. First, I had to go in for a nonstress test (they don't hyphenate nonstress and I'm still not sure that's right, but we'll just treat it like a proper noun and let it go). Twice a week, I'm supposed to go to the fetal diagnostic unit of the hospital and sit in a recliner while they hook up an external fetal monitor (those straps on your belly) to measure his heart rate and my uterus activity for any contractions. The goal is to see movement from him over 20 minutes and that for each of those movements his heart responds "normally". So you have to hope your baby is active then and not sleeping as soundly as his mother does. Then you have to hope the chart looks normal or they'll make you wait even longer to get a better reading. It's about 90% boring and 10% stressful as you hope your baby will play nice so you're not there all afternoon. That visit was pretty uneventful. Little baby's heart rate is fine and they checked my blood pressure while I was there to find it 94/68. All is well.
I left there and walked over to my regularly scheduled OB appointment. Some of you may remember that I declared I was going to break up with my dietitian Marilyn last week. I dutifully called the office the following morning and left a message for my OB saying I wanted to talk about my dietitian, specifically never seeing her again, but I never got a call back. I chalked it up to some confusion since I had just called about a scheduled appointment and figured I would sort it out once I got to the office in person.
But as I sat in the waiting room, I started getting more and more anxious that it was going to be hard to bring up my "special needs" with them when they're all used to just going through the regular routines. I went in to have my blood pressure checked again and it was 115/75. It had gone up 20 points in an hour just at the thought of having to deal with Marilyn. When I went to my exam room for them to check heart beats again, I told the nurse about my voicemail from last week and asked if Dr. D could be reminded that I wanted to only see her and not a dietitian. The nurse looked confused but agreed to relay the message.
Once Dr. D came in we talked a bit about why I don't like seeing the dietitians. I told her specifically that Marilyn stresses me out and that I'm tired of hearing nothing but criticisms over silly things that don't matter but no real help or information about how to manage my blood sugars. I don't need to be chided for drinking milk or eating watermelon. And I would like someone to take the time to read all the crap that I bother to record and bring with me.
Dr. D said that I'm not like other patients they see so they're not used to seeing my charts. I reminded her that even if I'm not like everyone else, that shouldn't be an excuse to be treated poorly. It's straight up rude.
We moved on to the topics of my blood sugar specifically. She had good information for me on what my blood sugar should be expected to do over the next 8 weeks or so. I'm going to keep using more insulin as the placenta grows until about 36 weeks. Then I should plateau or even back off of insulin a bit as the placenta doesn't need to grow as much even though the baby is. But I should take note and call if I need significantly less insulin because that can be a sign that the placenta is breaking down. Remember that all this is related because the placenta produces a hormone that makes me insulin resistant. We also talked about trying to cut back on some of the carbs I'm eating to help maintain my blood sugars. All of that seemed reasonable and I was optimistic that I had managed to get Marilyn out of my life and had a really productive chat with Dr. D instead.
As she got up to leave, though, she told me that she would relay my concerns to the two dietitians and that she would make an attempt to see me first on my next visits but that if they did come in to talk to me I shouldn't kick them out because they're just trying to help. I looked at her blankly and told her, "they stress me out."
Dr. D: "I know they stress you out but I'll tell them to be aware of that when they talk to you. They're just not used to dealing with someone like you."
Me: "Exactly. Which is why they should be grateful and not fuss at me. I bring freakin' Excel sheets of all my logs."
Dr. D: "Yeah, but you're OCD."
Me: "I'd rather just say I'm extremely organized."
Dr. D (laughing): "No, you're OCD."
I managed to leave, go upstairs for my lab work done, come back to make my next appointment and get all the way to the parking lot before I started crying. I came home to tell Rich about my visit and cried again. I couldn't even type that previous conversation without crying.
As I lamented to Rich, I don't understand how they can have an entire medical practice focused on potentially hormone-influenced women and be so insensitive to their feelings. I have worked really hard over my adult life to not be a control freak and during this pregnancy in particular to not obsess over blood sugars if I'm doing well overall. To have come so far, only to have someone casually call me OCD really stings.
In the morning I will be officially 33 weeks, which means I have only seven more weeks of this madness. With each of these visits, I'm more and more convinced to just birth this baby on a pile of laundry like a house cat. But since I'm so OCD, we'll have to make sure the laundry is all clean and sorted into lights and darks first.