Too sweet for our own good

We had our regular doctor's appointment today, and spent most of the time discussing the results on my glucose tolerance test. They tested my blood sugar levels after fasting, 1 hour after taking the glucose solution, and 2 hours after taking the solution. Although the fasting and 2-hour levels were fine, the 1-hour level was a bit higher than the normal range. Our doctor says it's not high enough to be diabetes, but he does want me to take a few steps to lower my blood sugar through diet and exercise. (Cutting out my chocolate fixes and my morning glass of juice should take care of most of it, plus making regular exercise a bit more of a priority.) But to make sure, he's ordered me to come in for a 24-hour monitoring session, so they can draw blood every hour to get a more detailed profile. So I get a preview of the maternity ward in another week and a half, when we've scheduled the session.

Pauline is right as rain; she's still right in the middle of the optimal growth chart. Since gestational diabetes often causes fetuses to grow more than they should, this was a relief for all of us. She was moving around a bit during today's ultrasound, which made it harder to measure her blood flow, but we got it in the end. She also was kind enough to confirm that without any doubt, she is a little girl. (Tim and I had a brief moment of panic when the doctor asked if we knew already if it was a boy or a girl. We said we'd been told it was a girl... well, today's ultrasound showed that her reproductive system is also developing right on schedule, and she's definitely a she. Whew!) However, she's already settled into the head-down, face-back position she should be in for delivery, so we can't get a good image of her face with an abdominal ultrasound. Tim says this just confirms that she's his daughter - "OK, I know I've got 2 months left before I have to move into position, but there's no reason not to get ready now!" Let's hope she takes after him in terms of punctuality; if she were more like her mother, she'd still be turning this way and that, wouldn't get into position until she'd been reminded a few times, and would remember halfway out the door that she forgot something back at the top of the uterus that she needed to go back for.

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In other news, Melissa and Jeremy arrived Tuesday without any problems. I picked them up at the airport by myself because Tim has been down for the count. He got a sore throat last week, and by Thursday was running a fever. It seemed to go down at one point over the weekend, but then went back up - by the time we took him to the embassy health unit (our primary care facility) on Monday, he was running a fever of 101.8 degrees. The nurse-practitioner said she wasn't certain if it was strep or flu, but put Tim on antibiotics and regular doses of ibuprofen. As of yesterday, he's been feeling much better, though still completely sapped from the illness. Poor Tim! This flu has been running wild around Berlin in the last few weeks. Lucky for me, it's a strain that's covered by the flu shot I got earlier this winter. Hopefully he'll be back to normal before too long!