Good-bye, Navel Ring

We took my navel ring out today. I've had it for over ten years with not a sign of infection or even discomfort, but my expanding stomach has proved to be too much. The area was turning red and while a nurse told me it wasn't infected, it definitely started to have a bruised feeling, especially when something brushed up against it. So Mike grabbed some pliers, I held my breath and closed my eyes because I thought that such an amateur attempt might hurt, but within seconds the procedure was finished, painlessly. I put the ring away as a keepsake for the baby book some day. And maybe after ten years it's time for a new one.

I think some of the achiness I've been feeling in my abdomen lately has been coming from the ring, not from any internal doings. I sleep with my stomach leaned up against a pillow, and when I did so for a nap this afternoon I felt much more comfortable than I have the last few evenings.

It's been a part of me for so long, but it was time to let it go.

Nice Gams

I had a revelation this weekend. The exercise I need to do to keep my blood sugar levels under control is finally making me feel good instead of awful. And it's a totally physical, vain thing that clued me in to this. I realized my legs look good again. A few months of not running or hiking made all my muscle tone disappear but the walking up and down hills and stairs and the stepping with the Wii fit for the last few weeks is bringing it back. I like that and I want to keep it.

When deciding on what to wear on Saturday night for dinner at a friend's house, I chose the short shorts I would have chosen pre-pregnancy rather than the jeans that have been covering up my legs for weeks. I put on a pair of wedge sandals and my legs looked and felt great.

Now I'm excited and happy to be working out again. I'm still taking it slow and easy, because I can't go very far without feeling winded and the extra weight I'm carrying around is aggravating some old aches and pains from my heavy mileage days.

My main reason for exercising is the health of me and the baby, but I'm enjoying the extra push I'm getting from liking my body again. It's been feeling like someone else's body for a while.

Gestational Diabetes

I hate the term, but by some of the calculations, scales, charts, and guidelines used by some doctors, I have it. In actuality, my blood sugar seems to be too high sometimes and too low sometimes, and those "too high" times happened when I was having my one-hour and then my three-hour glucose test. And the "too low" instances were a little troubling as well. My doctors are being extremely conservative and cautious because I'm living in a poor country in Central Africa.

I've been doing a lot of research on gestational diabetes. It seems that some people just plain don't believe in it, or think that there really are not harmful side effects. Even if the only side effect is a large baby at birth, I'd like to avoid that. I'm small.

But the vast majority of publications agree that you shouldn't take any risks with it. And I'm all for erring on the side of exercise and better nutrition. It's just a huge pain. My doctor had me consult with a nutritionist. Sugar is out, except for fresh fruit and some milk and yogurt. Healthy fats are in. I covered most of my dietary issues earlier this week at What I Eat. I need to eat more, but the selection of foods I should eat and can eat keeps getting narrower.

While the food is challenging, the harder part is the exercise. I'm supposed to be walking for fifteen minutes after each meal. My morning walk is wonderful; it's still cool and pleasant outside. I hate doing it some days, but it's still preferable to my lunchtime walk, either in the hot sun or pacing back and forth in my small, but air-conditioned, office. And my post-dinner walk is a drag because the only place I can safely do it is by doing laps on our terrace. Plus I'm pretty tired by then and the thought of pulling on my sneakers one more time really gets me down.

Then there's the glucose monitoring. I've been doing it four times a day for the last two weeks, and I have another week of doing it that often before I've proved that I can keep my levels even. Then I can go down to twice a day. I don't hate needles; I'm not squeamish about blood. I just hate doing it, especially so many times a day. (I have an upcoming post on how difficult it's been to secure a good glucose monitor here. I was afraid I'd get sent back to the States early because of it.)

All this exercise and healthy eating is supposed to make me feel better, but it's not. To combat fatigue and mood swings, all the books and all the doctors recommend exercise and healthy eating. Logically I know I'm fine because my sugar levels are okay now. I also know in the rational part of my brain that it's all good for the baby. But instead of having more energy and a positive mental attitude, I'm even more drained and prone to mood swings than I was before I started this regime. And that's extremely frustrating.

I know that in the grand scheme of things, these are all small sacrifices to make for the health of the baby. (I've been gluten-free for several years now; I know all about making sacrifices for health, and now I have another person's health involved as well.) I just wish I could get to the point where that logical knowledge made the daily decisions and activities a little bit easier instead of a huge chore.

In the Womb

Mike and I have been watching a series on the National Geographic channel called In the Womb. It follows pregnancy, from conception to birth, of different animals. The last time we watched, they featured domestic house cats and lions. This week, they covered dogs: a Neopolitan mastiff (a dog that I love!), a chihuahua, and a wolf. The animals make birthing look so easy! (Except for the chihuahua, which I'll get to in a minute.) It still looks gross, though, and while I'm not usually a squeamish person, I'm still quite apprehensive about childbirth. But the show is fascinating. Our little Sharkbait is going through similar developmental stages of all other little fetuses. Isn't that cool? I just have to be a brave lioness for the birthing part. (I hope I don't have to be a brave Neopolitan mastiff, who is in labor for about thirty hours in order to get seven pups out!)

In the dogs episode there was a lot of discussion about how humans have selectively bred dogs into so many different breeds with different purposes. The chihuahua has been bred to be so small that it cannot give birth naturally. All chihuahua pups must be delivered by c-section. Doesn't that seem cruel? We've denied an animal a natural birth for our own aesthetic purposes. And the way they showed the doctors doing the surgery looked so, I hate to say callous, but it was definitely impersonal and nearly insensitive. The doctor just rooted around, pulled out pups, snipped the cords, and literally tossed them into the hands of a waiting assistant. They were tossed! Who could toss puppies like that? Rationally or not, watching a chihuahua c-section strengthened my resolve to avoid one myself unless absolutely necessary.

When people ask me if pregnancy makes me feel more womanly or feminine, I have to honestly answer "No" (and that seems to offend some people). I feel like a science experiment. Just add food and water and a healthy baby will come out. I feel like part of something that's natural. I feel connected to other mammals when I watch their development in this series. The lioness doesn't worry about feeling feminine. She worries about delivering a healthy baby. Don't get me wrong, I certainly like feeling feminine. I just don't think it's coming from pregnancy; for me it comes from someplace else.

I was not compensated in any way for this post. However, if you click the link and ultimately decide to buy, Amazon will toss a few cents my way.