Split hairs and dangerous cocktails

A bit distracted these days – we’re very concerned about a friend of ours and hope that she gets in touch with us soon.

Yesterday I woke with a hangover – minus the benefits of an actual drink and maybe some regretful memories involving a greased pole and The Rapture, but hey, once this kid finally breaks out, life itself will turn into one big long party. A poopy party of sleep-deprivation and breast milk, oh yeah.

I hadn’t had anything to eat since midnight and was about to skip breakfast too. I figured I would have a steaming mug of pure liquid sugar a bit later on, and then maybe spend the next few hours sitting around doing nothing. See how that went down with the little guy.

Would you believe that this is something doctors actually encourage pregnant women to do?

It’s called a Glucose Tolerance Test, and it’s a shitty way for them to determine if I’m predisposed to diabetes, as apparently one in five women are at risk of contracting a mild form of the disease during pregnancy. And hey: it’s no wonder! Maybe if they stopped dispensing with the death-defying, blood-sugar-level-plunging tipples, those numbers would dwindle somewhat.

Unsurprisingly, my body was in complete disagreement with this new nutritional development and proceeded to try and purge the stuff not fifteen minutes later. At which point I was told to try and hold off on that, as it would have ruined the whole experiment and we'd have to start all over again on some other day. So I didn’t; I swallowed mouthfuls of whatever liquid your glands excrete moments before you vomit while Bruce and Nurse Sugarplum struggled to fix the broken plastic fan, as though the fan would somehow magically obliterate the discomfort of having ingested the liquid equivalent of 100 Mars Bars.

Two blood tests later and it was onto another appointment with the midwife, who first said the baby was measuring a bit small and then, on second thought, that it was measuring just fine. You have to trust what they say, I guess!

She said ‘So, you’re 26 weeks along’ and I said ‘Not until Friday’ and she said ‘Well, we won’t split hairs.’ And I didn’t point out that a week is only made up of 7 days, so there weren’t that many hairs to split in the first place. She then congratulated me on being over halfway through the pregnancy, though actually I’m more like two-thirds of the way through, except that in keeping with the avoidance of hair-splittage, I had to let that one go.

These days I am feeling overweight and unattractive, lethargic and ungainly, and for good reason (I am). But these things do happen, and it’s all very normal: a phrase I am well accustomed to hearing by now. I will not even be surprised when a green goblin comes bursting from my mouth to spit in my cereal tomorrow morning, because chances are, when you’re pregnant, these things happen and it’s all very normal.