Doctors and Nurses: You're on Notice.

There are times in life when you’re truly tested. For me, nearly all of them have occurred while growing a human being inside of my body and trying not to completely f it up.

For example: While pregnant, I’ve tried to make sure that I’m eating enough fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. I mean, this is not my go-to move. But also, let’s get real, most adults don’t do this on their best day, let alone when all their body-that-isn’t-their-own-anymore wants to do is eat a bag full of Sour Patch Kids (fruit flavored!) with a side of hamburger pickles. Or so I’ve been told.

But you look up the daily suggestions for intake, add two of each more to your day, and consider yourself light years ahead of the women who birthed babies back in the days when smoking cigarettes on their break from drinking whiskey was considered standard practice. However, I call foul on the doctors who have decided that part of this mom-test is checking to see if your alien body can tolerate sugar by basically putting you in a medically induced, low-level torture situation that involves orange soda, all of your blood, and no food.

You guys.

I mean, to be fair, this isn’t how it starts. They start by letting you eat like a normal (pregnant) person, giving you the sugar soda, making you wait an hour, not letting you pee, and then taking your blood. The torture test is only for those of us who under-achieve and fail the test so that the poor nurse has to call and talk to you in a soothing tone about the “next steps.”

Which I’ll be taking on Friday morning.

Let me set the scene for you: You’re 25 weeks pregnant (do the math), not allowed to eat or drink for 8-9 hours leading up to the test, and are then handed over to a friendly, sadist nurse who draws your blood, sets 8 oz of orange soda with three extra tablespoons of sugar added to it in front of you, and tells you to drink it in 5 minutes or less. AND YOU CAN’T PEE. Or throw it up. Or, I’m pretty sure, stab the nurse, but I'll double-check all of the rules on Friday.

And then you wait for an hour until they draw your blood again. And then wait another hour so that they can draw more blood. And then wait one more hour so that they can take whatever is left of your sugar-blood and then probably also remind you of your name, address, and the fact that there’s a baby person inside of you that is causing all of this chaos in your life. (Mother of the Year).

Which obviously I’m looking forward to and not at all being dramatic about. Except that doesn’t sound anything like me, so let’s just assume I’ve already jumped ahead to the days that I’ll have to say no to cake and prick my finger once a day as a reminder of what a mom-failure I am and how my sugary ways almost hurt the baby and made it forty-five times bigger than average upon birth or something (I only skimmed the article).

Which is why I’m baking two desserts for Easter this weekend and making sure I consume whatever I want on Sunday because I feel like it’s my last time to enjoy sugar until sometime in July. Which is also why I already gave the baby a pep talk about bucking up this weekend and not kicking me every time I eat a jellybean, BABY. I’m doing this for US.

Wish me luck! (and won’t be blogging Friday because I probably won’t even know what a blog is by then since I’ll be on hour 12 of my forced starvation and trying to eat my own sweater.)

Happy Wednesday!