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Drama. Pure drama. That’s what happened yesterday.

My sugar baby is no longer sweet.
Yesterday was like the fifth most hellish day of my pregnancy to date. Yesterday I was asked to forcibly stab myself four times a day.
See I hate needles. They make me throw up in my mouth. Now with pregnancy you kind of have to suck it up, but that doesn’t stop me from having my eyes roll back into my head and almost passing out every time I get stuck. In fact, the only reason I let it happen is because someone else does it and they let me turn my head and hold Seth’s hand.
Now they want me to do it. By myself, four times a day. Yeah…that was so not happening.
So we get to the appointment, and for some reason we have to share our appointment with the –excuse my blatant stereotyping- most ghetto black woman I have seen to date. This lady likes to eat. This lady fits every “risk” for gestational diabetes there is. She even has close family with it. She’s lost babies because of it. Yet she refuses to stop drinking Pepsi because “she don’t drink no diet crap”.
First things first, because God hates me, they hand us our little satanic stabbers of evil and tell us they need a baseline blood sugar and want us to maim ourselves right there. They show us how to use the machine and then look at us expectantly, poised to write down our number.
The ghetto lady shoots herself like she does with a heroin needle every other day and declares her blood sugar to be 165. You are supposed to be under 120.
Then they look at me. And Seth looks at me and loads up all the needles and everything and gets everything ready. I panic. I start freaking out, complete with hyperventilating. After about 45 minutes of trying to talk myself into pricking my finger, they give up and tell me I will have to do it after the nutritional education class, before I leave.
The teacher lady, who is about half way to Hitler’s age, begins to school us on nutrition by having us each share our personal menus for the day.
Ghetto black lady drinks about 45 Pepsi’s, eats whole pizzas, and generally allows her “greedy baby” to eat whatever it wants. Shock. Ghetto black lady gets a talking to and gets her entire diet rearranged. When told to switch to thin crust pizza she exclaims “Thin Crust? That’s like eating cracker pizza!” I snicker from behind my book. The book the teacher gave us that sucks all the fun out of eating. It even has restaurants that I can eat at, but can’t, because Cheesy Gordita Crunches account for my entire dinner allowance. And who wants to eat one?
Plus Teacher lady keeps pronouncing “peanuts” like penis and every time she says it (because it’s a good in between snacks, throwing a few peanuts in your mouth) I snort and snicker and Seth stomps on my foot and gives me a look and whispers “Behave” under his breath.
Then we turn to me. I tell her what I ate today. She sits for a minute and tells me instead of orange juice in the morning, which I was only drinking because my Dr. told me to, I have to switch to water or diet pop and eat a granola bar. And then we were done. There was no diet modification whatsoever besides the decrease in my portion size. Then class packs up. I try to make a break for the door before the lady remembers I am supposed to lancet one of my fingers in the name of sadism. Oh of course, Seth remembers. The drama begins again. Only this time it is worse because I’m tired and crabby and my idea of swinging thru Taco Bell on the way home has just been smashed to smithereens. I get all worked up. Now if the lady had just let me go home and relax, I probably could of handled it eventually, but instead she keeps prodding and standing over me expectantly while Seth tries to whisper words of encouragement in my ear. “Do it for Evie, do it for me, we love you!” He pulled up a picture of Bagheera on my cell phone to calm me down. He pricked himself with the lancet to show me it didn’t hurt (never mind the fact that his fingers look like hell and he has so many calluses I sometimes worry about him touching the baby). After another 45 minutes I finally work up the courage to do it because I just want to go home.
It hurts like a son of a bitch, and all of the sudden, because God hates me, my finger starts squirting blood like a gyser. I scream and start flinging my hand around. Just looking at it makes me want to vomit. So I don’t look. Teacher lady has the tester with the strip plugged in is yelling at me to put a drop of blood on the strip. Seth is trying to get me to stop waving my hand around and screaming that it hurts and it is gushing. Blood is flying everywhere. Somehow, by a miracle I’m sure, one of the flinging streams of blood lands on the strip and Seth gets my hands down long enough to wrap my finger in a tissue and put pressure on it.
Then he makes the fatal error of saying “See it wasn’t so bad, it didn’t hurt did it?” You better believe I blew my top then. Big fat heaving crocodile tears come flying out of my eyes worse than the finger blood gusher. I start cussing at him for lying about it hurting and telling him I’m never going to do it again and how I hate him and I hate being pregnant and this was the stupidest idea ever and on and on.
Teacher Lady declares my blood sugar to be 76. She thinks it’s been too long since I’ve tested since I ate. I neglect to tell her that on my way to the appointment I ate half a box of Cheese-it’s and 10 gummy savers as a last hurrah to my food freedom.
Evelynn is kicking me hard for amping up her placenta with blood pressure and adrenaline.
The lady says I have to come back in two weeks to meet with her, she is concerned. I run to the bathroom and cry. Seth set’s the appointment.
When I come out they try to talk to me but I just run out the door to the car, with Seth behind me.
Evil. Pure Evil.
Eventually Seth follows me home from the hospital and talks to me, the second sticking after dinner (in which I ate the EXACT same thing I would have the night before) goes better and comes in around 85.
This morning I was 76 (in the morning you are supposed to be under 95). That test went even better, but I was half asleep and Seth did most of it.
I have to test again at 9:45 but by myself. Right now I’m brave, but once I get that lancet on my finger I literally shit my pants and start breathing funny.
So far though, everything has been normal and good, so hopefully I don’t have to do it for long.

Seth
I have the best husband ever. Have I mentioned? I can’t believe he didn’t leave last night, no matter how many times I wished he would. He’s still there, and he’s coming home tonite, even though I said every hurtful thing I could think of in the book yesterday. He even brought me ice cream in bed for my night snack. (I have to have something to keep my blood sugar up over night)
I love him so much. I wish I could remember that when I have to test my blood.
I told him thank you and sorry last night and this morning when he got up and came over to get my stuff ready I didn’t say one nasty thing. I just grumbled a little. And he said “Good Job, great job!” And I snuffed into Baggy and Willow’s fur because they have been super good about sitting with me when I have to do the bad stuff.
I love you honey!

Phew!
Well that was a story and a half for you all today. And it’s about all I had. I ran out of the house (mostly to get away from stabby Seth) and it was snowing and there was fresh snow on the ground. I thought about pulling back into the driveway, but then I remembered there is only two days left in the work week, so I’d better get here. It took me a while but I did it. I would be proud of myself if the next stabby deadline wasn’t looming over my head.
On the plus side I got to eat an English muffin with cream cheese for breakfast. And still came in under my breakfast “points” (you get 1 point for every 15 grams of carbs, I get 2 points for breakfast, 3 points for lunch, and 4 points for dinner, and 1 point for all three snack times).
Keep on the sunny side, right?
Talk to you all tomorrow on New Year’s Eve!!!

Love (for needles to break on my skin instead of stabbing it),
Carrie