Pulling my sweet tooth

Well, Monday was the day (and a half) at the hospital for blood sugar monitoring. It was pretty straightforward - we checked in first thing in the morning, and I ate only the hospital food they served me; the nurses came before and 2 hours after each meal to check my blood sugar. Because they wanted to do a reading in the middle of the night, I had to stay the night there. Tim spent the whole day with me, minus a quick trip home to let our dog out and feed the pets, then came back first thing in the morning.

The news wasn't great, but could have been worse. According to the nutritional consultant, it's somewhere between impaired glucose tolerance and gestational diabetes. We discussed foods I may and may not eat, and she showed me how to use a home blood sugar test kit so I can keep monitoring on my own. Meanwhile, we learned through our own experiments that a walk after meals (especially breakfast and dinner) really helps regulate my levels, so we're timing our exercise to get the most benefit from it.

Hospital food in Germany is a bit strange. For one thing, the breakfast trays they sent me seemed very generic (jam, honey, coffee, sugar, sweetened fruit yogurt, etc. - not exactly at the top of the "approved" list.) For another thing, dinners are very light (although the PSAs on our military TV did warn us about that) - dinner was bread, a few slices of salami, butter, and soft cheese. Seriously. I did cheat there and ask Tim to bring me some carrots from home. But it was good to know what to expect when the time comes.

So, for the next 2 weeks, I'll be testing 5-7 times a day. Tim suggested keeping a food journal, which I've started doing scrupulously. And we're trying to find things I can eat. I was on the road for work yesterday and had a working lunch with colleagues; that was pretty easy (soup, salad, whole wheat bread, etc.) We did black beans and rice for dinner, which turned out to have a bit too many carbs for me. My morning high-fiber whole-grain breakfast cereal, which is the staple of my diet, turns out to have much too much sugar added to it (never noticed it before!), so I'll need to do some shopping this weekend.

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We had our first birthing class last week. It was fun. Nice to get an idea of what to expect. We'll finish it up tomorrow. We then get to pack for our trip out to western Germany, where we'll be combining work, genealogical research, and a meeting with the priest in the town of Schöppingen, the Klitz family's home before emigrating to the U.S. We've asked about having Pauline baptized there, and he's open to the idea, but wants to meet with us before he agrees to do it. This will be our last road trip before the birth (in theory); although we're sad we can't bring Minka with us, we're looking forward to one last adventure with just the two of us. Which isn't to say we won't do loads of travel once the baby comes; it'll just be rather different!

Show-off!

We had our first regular appointment with our midwife yesterday. She checked on Speck's position (still head-down and waiting patiently; SO unlike her mother) and size - estimated weight is about 5 pounds - before hooking me up to a fetal heartrate monitor. Speck was happily sleeping when we began, but woke up and put on a show once she realized someone was watching. We went through a full cycle of activity before she settled back down; in the meantime, she was moving and kicking so actively that both Tim and our midwife could see my belly moving. It's still such an odd sensation - the realization that there's a whole other little person inside there, who moves around on her own. Everything checked out just great, including a urine test for sugar (totally negative), which was a relief after last week's OB appointment.

Tonight we have our first pre-delivery class, which our midwife will lead, with two other American couples. We're looking forward to it!

In the meanwhile, I'm finishing packing up my office and moving back to the Embassy annex out near our house, which is where I worked until last May. There are space issues at play here - we'll need my downtown office for someone else - but in the meanwhile it means I trade my 45-60 minute commute on the train for a 5-10 minute walk to work. I'm excited about having a bit of quiet to work on the remaining massive projects I have to complete before we leave in June... and of course, I'm terribly excited about going back to work in May just around the corner from home. Until delivery, though, it also puts me just a 5-minute drive from the hospital, which is a good thing.

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In other news, we bid a sad farewell to our friends Melissa and Jeremy earlier this week. We had such a great time with them! I'm so glad they could come. It turns out that Jeremy has a secret passion for golden retrievers, so was thrilled to spend time with Minka. Melissa's not as much of a dog person, but was excited to see our kitties, especially Vanya - she's known him for more than 10 years now. Minka has been in a bit of a funk since they left; I think she just misses the extra attention. Not that our dog is spoiled or anything...

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!

Still growing...

We reached week 32 today - or week 31, if you're counting on the German system - and continue to grow. Pauline is as lively as ever, pushing and stretching and kicking and hiccuping and generally making the most out of her increasingly limited space. In the last few weeks, I've started having more Braxton-Hicks contractions (the sort of warm-up contractions that are common in the 3rd trimester.) They're not painful, but can be a bit uncomfortable, especially when Pauline lands a good kick at the wrong time.

Although I haven't had too much pregnancy swelling before this month, it seems all of a sudden it's gotten much more pronounced. Thank goodness my favorite work shoes, which are wearing out fast, have nice stretchy elastic tops to them. But most of my other shoes are getting very tight, my watch has grown a bit too small, and this week I finally had to face facts and remove my wedding rings. Alas! I let it go too long, and was unable to get them off my finger. I think I tried just about every home remedy known to the internet, but no luck. So today I went with a German friend over lunch to a jeweler friend of hers. The jeweler was able to saw them off, with only minor cuts to my hand in the process. Since both my engagement ring and my wedding band have a plain gold band on the back (normally turned back to my palm), she said it should be a piece of cake to forge them back together; I'll go back next week to pick them up, along with a very sturdy chain to wear them around my neck for the time being. The good thing is that the beautiful diamond-and-sapphire eternity band Tim gave me for Christmas last year, which I normally wear on my right hand (the hand where Germans wear their wedding rings), I managed to take off several months ago - intact. Sigh. Next time I'll know to do it sooner; I'd been hoping to avoid it entirely, but no such luck.

We enjoyed watching the various inauguration events. Tim came downtown to join me in watching President Obama (yay!) give his inaugural address, before we went to the European premiere of Tom Cruise's new movie, "Valkyrie." It was pretty good - I don't know that Tom was the best bet for the main role, but the rest of the cast was great, and the story was well developed and well researched. And what the heck, every once in a while it's awfully fun to go to the movies via the red carpet...

Our friends Melissa and Jeremy are coming to visit us next week! I've been looking forward to this for a long time. The two of them are dear college friends of mine; I'm so happy we get to see them here in Germany. We also have a doctor's appointment next week and an appointment with the midwife the following week, so hopefully you'll get more news about Pauline in the next few posts.

Midwifery

Our learning process continues! We've already learned a lot about how the whole process, from conception to post-partum care, is different in Germany, but we still have much to learn.

One thing we've discovered is that most of the heavy lifting during the delivery process is done not by the obstetrician, or even by the labor and delivery nurses, but by midwives. Each mother-to-be is assigned a midwife ("Hebamme", in German) at the hospital, who is responsible for checking on you, monitoring your labor, delivering the baby (with the doctor in the room, but the midwife will actually be in the catcher's position, so to speak), and coordinating post-delivery care for you and the baby. Now, we made very certain to find an English-speaking doctor, many moons ago. That seemed too important to risk to my German skills. But what about a midwife?

It turns out that you can bring in your own! In addition to the staff midwives who are on duty at the hospital, there's a list of midwives with privileges at each hospital. If you want, you can make arrangements with one of them to be on-call for your delivery - to meet you at home or at the hospital, and go forward from there. It's a slightly more expensive option, but when push comes to shove (ha ha), we really want to make sure the key people in the room speak our language!

So we got a recommendation from our doctor, and met yesterday with the midwife he suggested. Katrin O'Malley is a lovely lady of German and Irish parentage, who did most of her training in Germany but worked in Ireland for several years as well - which also means she's more comfortable than I think many German midwives would be with some of the ideas and questions we have, coming from our American context. She's seen various ways of practicing medicine, and recognizes that the German way, great as it is, isn't the only possible way to do things.

This also means that we'll be able to do pre-natal classes, since those offered by our hospital are all in German. Katrin has two other American couples she'll be working with, and suggested getting all of us together for two intensive class sessions. We're relieved that we won't have to miss out on these classes. And I'm super relieved to have found a midwife! From what I've been able to read online, she'll be very important to this whole process. I've been stressing for a while about how that would work, and am so relieved to have checked this particular box!

Speaking of which, one of the many routine services she'll be able to provide for us is pre-registration at the hospital - so when the time comes, we can just waltz on in and not have to worry about paperwork. She even gave us the consent forms for epidural and other anesthesia to fill out in advance, so that's taken care of. The less paperwork in German we have to confront when we're in labor, the happier we'll both be!

Pauline's Zero-th Christmas

The tree is down, the ornaments and decorations are all packed back up, and the presents have been put away... Usually I hate packing up the Christmas things, but this year we did it over the weekend after New Year's. For one, I had some energy to do it; for another, I'm ready for the holidays to be over so March can get here more quickly!

Santa was very generous to Pauline. Mostly she got clothes, but she also got her very first bicycle.

One thing we've noticed is that well-made wooden toys are very common here, something we both like. One wooden toy we'd never seen before we came to Germany is a toy bicycle. German kids tend to start off on bikes like this one - low to the ground and without pedals - which they'll ride like crazy while out for walks with the family. They learn balance and steering this way, so when they're big enough for a real bike, they can hop right on - no training wheels required. We love this idea, and wanted Pauline to learn to ride a bike the same way - so Santa arranged for her to have her very own wooden bike. We can't wait until she's old enough to actually use it!

Our last doctor's visit was on Thursday; everything's just fine with Speck and with me. Tim and I have a meeting on Tuesday with a midwife. We're learning that the whole labor and delivery process is handled a bit differently here than in the U.S. - but more about that after our meeting.

We hope you've all slipped into the New Year successfully (as the Germans say), and are keeping healthy, safe, and warm wherever you are.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2009 to everyone! Somehow turning the page on the calendar makes Pauline's eventual arrival seem more real to me. One way or another, one day or another, she will be born this year! Tim and I cannot wait to meet her.

The holidays were nearly as quiet as expected. We got to watch my brother Jim's 7-day run on "Jeopardy!" all of Christmas week and at the beginning of this week. Sadly, all good things must come to an end, but he was amazing on the show. He's flying out to Las Vegas shortly to tape the Tournament of Champions, which will air in March (hopefully not while we're at the hospital!!), along with a small legion of family, friends, and supporters.

Meanwhile, Tim and I enjoyed our last quiet Christmas as a couple. We realized this was our 5th Christmas together - time flies when you're having fun! - and our 4th overseas. We got to spend a few days of the holiday together with Connie and her husband Jim. Connie and I have been friends since middle school. She's now Dr. Chang Wilking and I'm climbing through the ranks of the Foreign Service, but put the two of us together and it seems very little has changed since we were 14, much to the amusement of our husbands. It was wonderful to see Connie and Jim again! They're now doing post-doctoral research in Boston, and so we look forward to seeing them much more often when we're back in DC.

We had a brief... episode earlier this week. I've had asthma since high school, though since I've lived overseas it's generally been very well controlled. I had an attack that began Saturday night, though, and when it still hadn't cleared up by Tuesday, the embassy health unit was a bit concerned. They sent me to the local emergency room, which was fine (please, just check and make sure the baby's OK!) except that I wound up having a linguistic argument with the attending physician in German. Apparently the term I learned for "asthma attack" means something more acute than what I was technically experiencing. (There is no such thing as a "mild asthma attack" in German.) OK, so call it whatever you want, but please stop arguing with me and do something about the fact that I can't breathe! Sigh. Meanwhile, poor Tim had to sit there and listen to me become frustrated to the point of tears in between coughing fits and wheezing. The treatment was much less aggressive than ER asthma treatment I've had in the US, though this was also fine with me (less medication = safer for the baby). Mostly it was one of those bizarre foreign moments. My first time to an emergency room outside the US. Here's hoping it's also the last... although my German is very good, it's not too nuanced in terms of medical terminology. Thank goodness our obstetrician speaks English!!!!!!