The baby and I are fine, but everyone else is insane

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.

Baby, what, baby?

"I like it better when you raid with PUGs. You don't talk to them." Rich has a superhuman talent for being able to play WoW and still talk to me at the same time about a variety of complex topics. Last night the topic was breastfeeding covers and the night before was lawn care or something like that, all while killing bad guys and marking targets. But lately it's been frustrating that while he can multi-task amazingly well, it can be hard for me to tell if he's talk to me or the folks on his Vent channel in the raid.

Me: "So what did you think of that chair tonight?" Him: "I can just port to Dalaran and yell there." Him: "It's cool." Him: "Ah, naw, man."

One of those was the answer to my question, I'll let you figure out which one.

He's now come up with the plan to respond to me like one does a drill sergeant and use a "Baby" prefix and suffix for everything he says to me.

We've only been trying this out for an hour or so, but it seems to be working.

Me: "I'd like to get that chair once it's been the appropriate waiting period before such a major purchase." Him: "Baby, bereavement period, baby?" Me: "Yeah, like buying a handgun. I'm ready to buy it tomorrow, but I'll let you play hard to get or whatever you want to do." Him: "Army, I'll give you a dollar if you run in the opposite direction of me on the next AoE." Him: "Baby, that's cool, baby." Him: "Skull! ... X! ... Ugh, this is not going well." Him: "Nice job, El, that's pro shit there."

Yes, it's cool, indeed.

It's not you, it's me. Well, no actually, it's you.

I'm going to call my OB's office tomorrow and break up with my dietitian. When I went in for my check up on Monday, we barely spoke. Each time I go there, though, I get anxious about having to deal with her. So I think at this point I just need to give her the opportunity to see other patients. In the last four weeks I've gone to three conferences nearly back-to-back. I understand the cost of putting on a production like that and I also understand that foods high in carbs are much cheaper and easier to provide than those with a lower glycemic value. I am also sick to death of living off of protein bars out of my laptop bag.

At this point, anytime I eat or do something out of the ordinary, I pay for it with very high or very low blood sugars. Mind you, by out of the ordinary I don't mean splurging on a jelly doughnut since everyone else had one. I mean out of the ordinary like eating cereal without pouring it into a measuring cup first or disconnecting my pump for a 15 minute shower or swim. My carb ratios are so low now that the difference between guessing that a food is 30 versus 40 grams of carbs can possibly be the difference between my blood sugar being 50 or 250 from wrong calculations. I'm tired of crying over finding a new painful infusion site, agonizing over what foods to eat and being disappointed in the consequences. And I'm definitely tired of not getting any support about it but just criticism and disdain.

When I went for my appointment on Monday, my dietitian Marilyn came in with some random student. She didn't introduce the student, took my log book from me and started reviewing it on the counter with her back to me. The student smiled awkwardly. Marilyn flipped through my log and then blurted out, "ooOOOoo watermelon! I sure hope you had some protein with that." I was floored. Seriously? She just went ooOOOoo at me? I told her, "I don't remember what I ate with it because you're holding my log book." Marilyn said nothing for almost a minute. Then she mumbled "Well, it doesn't look like your blood sugar went high because of it."

Watermelon is actually not that bad for you because it's mostly water. I just looked it up in my completely compulsive online spreadsheet of all food and medication I've had since FEBRUARY and my blood sugar was 69 before the watermelon and 97 afterward. First of all, can anyone tell me what the hell you had for lunch on February 24th? I had an egg salad sandwich and mushroom barley soup at 12:12pm.

So you know what, Marilyn? Fuck you. I don't have to dread opening my fridge or hear your bullshit about everything I might want to eat either in my head or at our visits. I shouldn't have to create secret codes in my log book for the completely fictitious foods I put in there because I don't want to listen to snarky comments about what I really did or didn't eat if it doesn't bother my blood sugars. I don't want to hear the same line about protein like a broken record and yet get disinterested shrugs when I ask for advice on what could have caused a high blood sugar despite eating cheese with my meal. This relationship has become too much work. You're too controlling. You've driven me to lie and cheat and I don't need this abuse anymore. So I'm leaving.

I thought I could tough it out with you a little longer for the baby's sake but it's just not healthy for me and my son.