Things I think every day, but never talk about

Yesterday afternoon I found this Ta-Nehisi Coates article while waiting for Theo to wake up from an unexpected nap. For once, maybe convincing myself that I didn't have enough time to start a new project around the house was a good thing.

This is how I felt after Theo was born, when I realized how close I'd come to losing Ruth. I've never escaped the knowledge that at some other place or in some other time, I would've certainly found myself alone at the end of that crazy week.

"...you need only look to the immediate past, or you need only look around the world, or you need only come close to losing the love of your small, young life to understand a correlating truth--pregnancy is potentially lethal work."

Ruth's dream

So my lovely wife had a dream this morning -- In her dream, we were at one of the mansions here in town for a pool party with a bunch of our friends (most of whom are also pregnant).

Then, at a point in the party where I was inside the house (either getting another drink, or giving one back, I assume), someone stands up at a microphone and starts announcing the sex of the babies of the pregnant women in attendance (I joked to Ruth that this scene reminded me of the "Garden Party" episode of The Boondocks: "Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11.").

We don't know what we're having and don't want to know (no one knows, as the one test that could've told us was done by an anonymous tech who didn't write it down and has surely forgotten by now), but the dream speaker was apparently clairvoyant, because she told the whole crowd that we're having a boy. Ruth was quite disappointed that our surprise had been ruined, but tried to get everyone to keep quiet about it because I hadn't heard and she still wanted me to be surprised.

Of course, as she's telling everyone to shut up, I suddenly show up and say, "Wha happened?" I think as she was telling me about the dream, we started laughing too hard at that point for her to tell me if I ever found out the sex or not. Or maybe after I popped back into the party, that's when the phone rang in real life and woke us up.

So, we're not sure if this dream is just a weird hormone-inspired mash-up of anxieties, or some sort of prophesy. Of course, as I told her this morning, there's really nothing mysterious about predicting something that has a 50-60% chance of being true anyway. If our kid ends up looking like the blond, curly-haired toddler she dreamed about last week, then I'll be spooked.

Any aspiring Josephs out there want to take a stab at an interpretation?

Another twist

I'm fond of telling people that my wife and I have been through every ride in the "Having Kids Amusement Park," from the "Infertility Roller Coaster" to the "Adoption Drop" to the "Miscarriage-a-whirl."

Today, we're getting the crash course in the "Gestational Diabetes sucker punch in the pancreas."

If you're not familiar with testing for Gestational Diabetes (GD, I'll call it from here) -- the mommy-to-be has to drink an orange-flavored solution with three times the straight-to-the-bloodstream dextrosy goodness of a can of Mountain Dew, then has her blood sucked an hour later. If she fails that test, she has to try again a couple days later -- except this time she has to fast 12 hours beforehand, and they suck her blood three times over three hours. End result: A hungry, cranky pregnant woman, several CCs short of blood and suffering from insulin shock on an empty stomach.

In short, if your wife and child aren't diabetic before the tests, they sure as hell will be afterwards.

I realize that poor insulin sensitivity (along with lactose intolerance and the inability to be on time for ANYTHING) is one of the burdens my wife's people deal with in exchange for great tans. But honestly, after seeing her eat sensibly, exercise several times a week and gain very little weight (probably a good amount given her size pre-pregnancy but I'm no OB), I was so not worried about this one.

I probably still shouldn't be worried; as the Doc put it, the initial test is "non-diagnostic" (docspeak for "if you pass, you're fine, but if you fail you might still be fine") and of the women who have to take the fasting test-from-hell, 80% pass and have no further issues.

It would just really really suck that just as I'm going to quit work -- giving us more chances to go out to eat, giving me more chances to cook -- she might be stuck on a diabetes diet for the rest of the pregnancy.

For cryin' out loud, can't this shit just be easy, one time? I suppose we're saving up all our good karma for labor and delivery (oh please oh please oh please).