Last week I had a doctor’s appointment, I had the dreaded glucose test to contend with.  I say dreaded because that’s what everybody online made it sound like… the most horrible thing in the world.  It wasn’t.  The worst part was that it was kind of a time-suck from my day. So instead of doing things like… working, I sat in a chair at the doctor’s office reading my Kindle.  Wait, that’s not so bad either.

I showed up and got the bottle of test drink. It tasted like flat orange soda… or to put a running twist on it, orange Gatorade mixed up with too much powder. They told me I had 5 minutes to get the entire bottle down. EASY! I chugged that sucker… I should have played drinking games in college!

Then I was supposed to sit around and wait for an hour before getting my blood drawn.

But 35 minutes after that I had to see my midwife for an appointment, so I figured it would be pointless to drive back home and spend 10 minutes there before driving back.  35 minutes of quality reading time!

I went through the normal drill of being weighed, peeing in a cup (do they really do anything with that each time or is it just another hoop to jump through? They’ve never said anything to me about things they might have learned from that.) and getting my blood pressure checked.

Then my midwife came in. We did a test to make sure I’m not leaking amniotic fluid (some weird strip of paper, if it turns blue you are leaking. The strip stayed yellow, all clear.) Then she measured my fundal height for the first time. When she declared my measurement I looked at her and said, “I have no idea what that means.”

She said, “Oh! You’re supposed to measure a centimeter for each week you are in pregnancy, plus or minus a couple of centimeters. And you are measuring spot-on!”

Then she got out the baby doppler thing and we listened to the heartbeat… which honestly, doesn’t interest me that much. They offer it to me almost every time I go, “Do you want to hear the heartbeat?”  Nah… it just takes up time. I can feel the kid moving around anyway. But this time it wasn’t a choice, I think she wanted to measure it for her own records.

After I got my blood drawn and the phlebotomist was able to get the sample on one attempt! Whew… there have been times she’s stabbed me multiple times in both arms just to get some blood. She usually gets accusatory toward me when this happens saying things like “You have little veins!” or “Your veins are rolling!” as if it’s something I have control over.

Then as I was leaving, I stopped off to schedule my next appointment… and they said they wanted to schedule all of the rest of my appointments. Weird… so I’m all booked on appointments right up until my one on my due date. But in all of this I think we’ve pretty much cemented that the baby will be born on August 11 instead of the August 17 due date.  Why do I think this?

1. My birthday is August 11.
2. My midwife will be out of town that weekend.
3. Kevin has just been scheduled on a job with 3 weeks of field work to conclude on the due date, so he’d be in the middle of that.

We’ll see…

As of this posting, I am officially 28 weeks along and I am 3rd trimester. The kid is kicking like mad. If I hadn’t seen pictures on the ultrasounds that indicate otherwise, I would swear that I’m pregnant with an octopus… which would probably land me on the morning talk show circuit after birth.

Not only am I 3rd trimester as of today… today is my anniversary. Kevin and I have been married for 11 years as of today. We’ve been enduring the “When will you have kids?” question for 10 years and 360 days! (Oh, who am I kidding… that question stopped a long time ago. People gave up on us!) So now you know… it takes us over 11 years of marriage to have a kid and 15 years of being together. Expect the next one in 2027.

And I leave you with a picture of my pregnant belly at 26 weeks. I haven’t downloaded the 27 week picture from my camera yet, and this one was taken on a beach in Hawaii during vacation. It’s far more interesting.