Fear the Belly

We're now approaching the 29th week of the literally growing saga of this whole pregnancy business. I'm not running any more, which is no fun. Now I'm attempting to churn out the miles walking in our neighborhood. The only problem is that walking just takes so long. The other pregnancy news is the results of a glucose test for gestational diabetes. Notoriously I indulge in sweets of all kinds as I am genetically predisposed to an attraction to all things chocolate and ice cream. I think there were many years of my mother's life spent subsisting on caffeine, M&Ms and nicotine. My grandfather on my father's side was a prodigious home manufacturer of ice cream. As a child, I think I may have had ice cream running through my veins. So, when the one-hour glucose test came back high, I can't honestly say that I was tremendously surprised. After all, I did regularly consume some form of candy as well as cookies and/or ice cream on a twice per day basis. So, after the first failed test I was subjected to a three-hour test. There is nothing quite so fun as to spend over three hours hanging out in a lab and having blood extracted on an hourly basis. Needless to say, I "passed" three of the four portions of the test. The one number that indicated I wasn't processing sugar well has led to the unfortunate exclusion of most simple sugar sweets from my diet. I'm limited to a scoop (as opposed to my normal ritual of three scoops) of ice cream a few times per week. Fortunately, I haven't been put on some restrictive diet involving finger pricking and constant monitoring. We're approaching day five of this restriction. Only 77 or so days to go.

One of the most interesting facets to pregnancy is the belly growth and the response to this burgeoning body part. As the belly grows, it becomes increasing difficult to tie my shoes, maneuver in bed or extricate myself from the car, which I fully expected (though not quite this soon). One relieving part of the belly growth is that my condition is fairly obvious. We've moved past the stage of "is she just letting her self go" to "oh, she's got a 'giant uterine parasite'" (See this article about uterine parasites: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/woman_overjoyed_by_giant_uterine). Some people are drawn to the belly. They simply can't help but gaze upon it. Others avoid looking at me altogether in the course of conversation, staring at the ceiling, the floor, or over my shoulder so as to avoid catching a glance of the growing belly ball. I never realized a pregnant belly would cause such eye aversion.