I am happy, relieved and peeing a lot.

I have news to share. I DO NOT have gestational diabetes! Hooray! A little over a week ago I went to see my OB for my glucose test. The results came back high (156, and they do the 3-hour glucose test if it's over 136). I was very upset by the prospect of having gestational diabetes. Would the baby be healthy? What would I eat? Would it be enough for her to be healthy? It seemed everything I read gave only basic information and was scary. "Gestational diabetes is the most common ailment in pregnant women. It's not good and can cause high baby birth weight, leading to cesarians or broken baby bones from being too big for the birth canal ... or stillbirth." WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?! And that's where many of the books I picked up ended on this topic. What a frightening, horrible thing to do to a pregnant woman! And it's so nice to scare pregnant woman.

I was on the Web searching for information on what I needed to do if I did have GD, and it was just no real help. One of the few times my friend the Web has let me down. It's been a rough week and a half. I went in to the hospital Saturday morning for the 3-hour test. If you haven't had one of these or don't have a woman in your life who has, it goes like this. You fast for 12 hours. Then you go in and the nurse gives you a bottle of a chilled drink (mine was about 8 oz of orange-flavored stuff). The drink is like soda pop syrup. If you've ever had Coke syrup for a queasy stomach, you get the idea. But imagine 8 oz of it. I certainly haven't craved orange pop since.

Oh, before you drink the stuff, they take your blood so they have the fasting version of it. Then you drink the stuff and go sit in the waiting area for an hour. Then you go back in to have more blood drawn. Then you go wait an hour. This repeats until you've been stuck a total of 4 times with a needle and have hung out for 3 hours. It's not terrible, but there are a lot of other things I would have rather been doing. At least my mom was there to pass time with me, then Bill came and spent the rest of the time. I had also brought along my jewelry supplies, since I figured I could "work hard for the money" while waiting since I wasn't able to make the cold hard cash at the Farmer's Market like I usually do on Saturdays.

The good news is that the lab was super quick with my results; they sent them to my OB Monday. The great and awesome news is that I don't have glucose problems. No diabetes, gestational or otherwise. And, I tell you, I was worried. I'm sure you can figure out why with the above rant.

So I'm happy. And I'm also happy nothing is wrong with me otherwise. Here's the rest of the fun stuff. Last Thursday morning I woke up with weird cramping. I didn't know if it was Braxton-Hicks contractions (the "practice" contractions I had heard a little about that pregnant women get) or if something was wrong. They were kind of painful like menstrual cramps, though at least not horrible. I had no other symptoms except for lower back pain/soreness, but that's typical. I waited around until 8:30 a.m. when my OB's office opened and gave them a call. I was scheduled to come in that afternoon. So I went to work for a couple hours and then got a call to come in to the OB early at 11 a.m. instead due to an emergency surgery the doctor had scheduled. Mom met me there and went in with me. I was hooked up to a baby monitor for her heartbeat and a monitor for contractions, which was high up on my abdomen. I told the the sensations were actually very low, but they hooked it up high.

It turns out they were not contractions and probably not Braxton-Hicks, but quite possibly the cramping was caused by the bladder infection they discovered I had. Yuck. Not fun. That totally made sense though since I'd been super cranky all week. Nothing like one of those to ruin your mood. Now I'm on meds and finally feeling better (almost a week better). But not before I had the sensations again throughout the weekend and then a whole bunch of times yesterday. The OB said to come in again just in case. But they still weren't contractions, thank goodness, but now they think they are ligaments pulling as my body stretches for growing baby. It's always something! I need to post a pic of pregnant me so you can see the belly I've got going on. It's huge!

So this is all that's been going on on top of regular work, jewelry work and trying to get the magazine out to the masses. It's STILL at the printer! They are really bogged down with other projects. I use the Print Center at the college I work for (Palmer College of Chiropractic--I'm an 11-year employee!), and this is a big crunch time with our huge homecoming event coming up in a few weeks. So I apologize to those of you who are waiting impatiently or patiently for the next issue. It will be out soon, I promise!

I'm also working ahead on the fourth issue so that it's in the bag by the time the baby gets here. So if you have anything you want to submit, do it soon. It's really staring to come together.

All right, my lunch is over and I've already written a novella here. I just have so much to say! :)

I will post some pics of baby Annabella's 4D ultrasound when I locate the CD. I'll also get a pic of myself up soon so you can see me in my pregnant glory.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Minda

www.TheCemeteryClub.com

Things that make me cranky ...

I am just under 7 months pregnant, and I should be happy and glowing. Instead I am cranky and sweaty. It was already 80 degrees when I woke up this morning and will be around 100 as the day goes on. In the Midwest we have this little thing most call humidity. I call it a living hell. As I write this, I am snacking on ice cubes. I think that if a person has to be this miserable (I slept snuggled up with an ice pack last night to relieve some of the heat), that person should at least be in someplace awesome--like, say, New Orleans. The high for NOLA today is going to be 90. Our high is going to be 99. I'd rather be in my favorite city eating po' boys and beignets and drinking virgin hurricanes (if they have such a thing) than in this armpit. If it's going to be this frickin' hot, I'd rather be in New Orleans.

Another thing that makes me cranky is that we had our air conditioning fixed a month or so ago, but the air can't compete with this heat. Our house hasn't cooled below 80 in more than a week. Hopefully Bill will be calling the AC guys for them to fix it. Of course, I'm sure they are more than a bit busy right now.

The third thing that makes me cranky is spammers. Evil spammers have infiltrated my website survey for TheCemeteryClub.com. So I took the sucker down, even though it's a useful tool. Silly me thought it would end all the spam. Here's how it goes. These idiots get into people's surveys and answer EVERY question with their website address. I've gotten gambling site spammers and a host of others. Let me tell you, this DOES NOT make me want to visit their sites. It makes me want to hack them (if I knew how) and destroy them. Okay, well, not really. But it does make me mad. But I thought that taking down the survey--and I mean erasing it from existence--would stop the insanity. It did not. I'm getting just as many as before. Maybe 30 a day or more. So the info must have been passed on to a list. I'm not sure how to stop it. So my mail box fills up with the worst and stupidest spam ever.

So I guess this doesn't make the most happy-go-lucky post I've made, but it's a nasty hot summer and I'm pregnant. In two days we'll be starting our 3rd trimester. Mid October will come pretty fast now.

The good news is that the 3rd issue of Epitaphs Magazine will be at the printer tomorrow. And for those who ordered copies of "Cemetery Walk," those books have come in and will be mailed today.

I hope everyone is staying cool and enjoying life. Now that I've cooled off, I'm feeling much better about things.

Later gators,
Minda