You come here for the neuroses, right?

Today I planned to upload pictures from our little day trip one or two weekends ago, the fallback of the lazy blogger with nothing to say. They're pretty too- water AND mountains AND islands AND a very scary looking bridge. But instead I'm going to freak out about my doctor appointment yesterday. Mmkay?

I stuck with my regular family practice doctor who delivers at the small neighborhood offshoot of the Big Shiny Baby Factory hospital downtown. I stayed with her because she is laid back and easy going and doesn't seem to care if I want to be pumped full of drugs upon entering the hospital doors or if I want to haul in my crew of Birkenstocked hairy-legged natural birthing support team to fill my room with incense and discuss placenta storage. I didn't see a good reason to track down an OB and I certainly wasn't going to hire a midwife and buy a plastic swimming pool for my living room, so she is a nice happy medium. She'll be the baby's doctor too and so far, so good. Also, she laughs when I attempt to be funny. Very important.

Yesterday, however, I began to see one of the drawbacks to being a patient of the most tra la la anything goes doctor in the city: she can drive a neurotic person to the ledge.

"So," says my doctor, "How are you doing? Have any questions?"

"Well," says I, "I'm just wondering when I'm going to have that glucose test."

"Oh!" she smiles brightly. "That would be today!"

TODAY?

"And when I'm going to get that shot thingy?"

"Also today!"

I almost brained her with the Doppler.

See, I am used to the internet, where one obsesses about absolutely everything and plans for everything and schedules everything to the precise second. The Internet likes to prepare. The Internet likes to let everyone know when she is going to have such and such done so that the rest of the Internet can soothe her accordingly. Like the glucose test. I have been worried about this test for several weeks and had made a plan to pass the stupid thing. I was going to share, in lurid gory detail, exactly what I was going to do and how horrible it was going to be. And there was my doctor saying that I could just drink the thing now and have my blood drawn after sitting around in the stuffy waiting room for an hour.

I must have had a look of Pure And Utter Dread on my face, because thirty seconds later she said, "Or, you know. You could take it home and come back later in the week."

I was not so lucky regarding the shot. "Oh that," said my doctor. "No, the nurse will do that in a second." I realized I was glad I hadn't been thinking about having to get a shot all day, although I certainly wasn't going to tell my no-more-information-than-is-necessary doctor that. GAH. You see, I am Rh-negative which means, as far as I understand it, that if my negative blood were to get mixed up with the baby's potentially positive blood, the world would spontaneously combust. So people who are Rh-negative have to get a special shot to, I don't know. Save the world. (I don't see why they didn't check Phillip's blood type, because maybe he's negative too, meaning the baby would have to be negative and then I could have spared myself a shot IN MY BUTT and spared Phillip an entire evening of listening to his wife moan about the indignity and injustice of it all.)

But I'm still worried about the glucose thing. I have the drink sitting in my fridge. I'm planning to down it as quickly as possible Thursday morning and then jet over to the clinic for my absolute favorite thing: getting stuck with needles and watching my blood seep out. This means NO ICE CREAM on Wednesday. It means NO ICE CREAM today! In fact, I came home from the doctor and promptly threw away the rest of the half gallon sitting in my freezer. I ate eggs for breakfast. I made plans to walk around the lake. I furiously Googled "weight gain" "26 weeks" and had myself a regular meltdown- until this morning when I weighed myself and saw that I only gained 3 pounds since my last appointment, which is FINE. (Word to the wise: if you are used to having early morning doctor appointments, you will naturally weigh more at a late afternoon appointment, as your weight includes not only your shoes and coat, but everything you ate or drank that day. Do not allow this unfortunate fact to make you throw away your yummy ice cream and Google scary phrases and make your husband very anxious about whether or not you can get through dinner without bawling.) Anyway. I know how much weight I gained in the last month has nothing to do with whether I pass my glucose test, but knowing that I have not gained 400 pounds like the doctor's scale implied makes me feel a little better. ALL RIGHT?

Wow. This website has become REALLY INTERESTING hasn't it? You are all just MESMERIZED by my tales of weight-related woe. But wait! It gets better!

Because then we went to the Evil Baby Warehouse to look at cribs. I tried so hard to avoid this store, people. SO HARD. But we are not buying a $1000 made-of-solid-gold crib from Trendy Pricey Baby Stuff Store and we are not buying a $10 crib from Wal-Mart that is busted out of the box and isn't set up anywhere in the store for you to shake and rock and inspect the movable rail. Looking at cribs online wasn't cutting it, so we finally took ourselves to the one place we knew there'd be cribs on the floor.

We found one or two we liked (we are not curvy antiquey elegantly-rounded furniture people, give us Swedish Modern!) and I spent the rest of the time salivating over the cute bedding sets. Cute bedding sets I had just told myself I wasn't going to buy, because they are expensive and useless and the baby is so not going to care if his dust ruffle matches the window valance. BUT PEOPLE. Look at this bedding set! It is adorable! I want it! And I want the wall border to match!

Anyway, this is why the Baby Warehouse is PURE EVIL. I am defenseless against the massive quantities of cute. Goodbye sensible and thrifty! 

So now you are really wishing I'd just posted the day trip pictures, huh? SORRY.

Comments

[Catherine]

I don't know whether this helps or makes it worse, but I have had glucose tests a lot, due to unrelated-to-babymaking blood sugar issues, and I don't think it actually makes a difference what you do in the time before it. One of my glucose tests informs my ever-helpful GP of exactly how well I've been controlling my blood sugar for the last three months, for example.
I think all they want to know is if you have gestational diabetes tendancies, isn't it? If you do, you do, and if you don't, then eating or not eating icecream makes no difference.
Plus - icecream is yummy!

Catherine.

[Angela]

Oh, I'm all for getting the bedding set! It's not really for the baby, is it? I mean, you're right, the baby won't care if his room is all coordinated and adorable, but if you do, then make it happen! Besides, that's probably the cutest baby room I've ever seen--I want to make a baby room now, and I have no intentions of introducing a baby into this world (or any other world for that matter) for a very, very long time.

[Laura]

I love it...the colors are great. The valance looks nice to. Get it...you are going through all the work (sorry hubby) so do what you want...

[maggie]

ENABLERS! First ice cream! Then bedding sets!

[Katie Ann]

You'll probably be spending a lot of time in that room you might as well get something pretty to look at! Aaaand, I'm sure you'll be taking lots pictures of baby in there and the set would look lovely in the pictures :)
Good luck with the glucose thingy!
BTW...I would never in a million years throw away ice cream, mmmmmm!

[Katie Ann]

Oops... I mean NO! NO ice cream and NO bedding sets!!! :)

[Jenn]

I love the bedding set! My SIL picked Classic Pooh as her nursery theme and I just wanted to puke.

[karianne]

I'm agreeing with the bedding votes. But if you head over to my blog, you'll see how well we fared with the whole crib thing. (Monday Mission Accomplished)

http://lvmynefews.blogspot.com

AND, don't sweat the glucose test. I didn't think that the drink was all that bad. I'd heard horror stories, but I've tasted worse unfortunately. My test came back borderline so if you have to go back for the long winded glucose test, take a book! Good luck and keep us posted.

[Christina]

I think it's good you waited on the glucose test. Because I will forever believe it was the tons of Cruncy Bits of Yum that I ate the night before my test that made me "borderline positive" and led to the Evil Diet From H-E-Double Hockey Sticks. But then, I could be wrong.
LOVE the bedding set. And hello, that is what gift registries are for!! Shop to your heart's content and let other people pay for everything!! :-)

[Maureen]

My doctors kept weighing me on different scales, and my appointments were at different times in the day. This led to a COMPLETELY FALSE weight gain of 14 pounds in four weeks. Because two weeks after that, I supposedly lost four pounds. This made a total net weight gain of 12 pounds in six weeks which is totally fine. Stupid scales.

[Kate P]

Does anybody else think it's a little cruel to moms-to-be that there's a wall hanging with a WHALE in the bedding set!? Other than that, I like the color scheme.

[orangepaas]

That was the bedding set we had picked out for our girls...nice and gender-neutral. Nobody bought it for us, though, and a friend of my mom's gave us not one, but two cute bumper pads from Pottery Barn kids, so we said screw it, and hello to pink girlyness.

Good luck :) And don't worry about the glucose test -- if *I* didn't fail it, then you're good to go :)

[Sara]

So, you'll wish you'd gone with that nice midwife after all now....because my midwife (one of the nurse, delivering in the hospital kind) gives you candy instead of the horrible drink (which I had with my first pregnancy) for the glucose tolerance test. 6 big candy orange slices, and we were good to go.

You might want to wait to spend much money on crib and bedding til you see if the baby ever actually spends much time in that room. I speak from hard experience here :) 11 mos later and she is still with us.

[Jenny Ryan]

I just love reading your website! :)

[Maureen]

Oh, I don't know. Jack sleeps in his room now and we also hang out in there a lot during the day, so even if he weren't there at night we'd still get use out of it. It's a nice room for tummy time while I fold laundry. The never ending piles of unfolded laundry.