Bring on the Hair Shirt

It just takes one day, one phone call, to realize again how little of this whole pregnancy thing you control. Today was one of my days.

When you're pregnant, unless you fit into a very specific subset of very low-risk categories, you are screened for gestational diabetes. Why? Because gestational diabetes (1) if untreated can have lasting and potentially serious implications for your baby and (2) is often symptomless, making it difficult-to-impossible to catch through simple observation.

So a little over a week ago, I downed the medical equivalent of melted Otter-Pops and submitted to a blood draw, to see how my blood sugar was doing. And lucky me, I got the morning-after call letting me know that I needed some follow-up tests. Follow-up tests that, I should say, come back negative in about 2/3 of patients. So the next week, I went in for the big brother of the previous test, in which the Otter-Pops are twice as concentrated, the monitoring period is three times as long, and FOUR blood draws are involved. The whole time, I excused and explained away my need for a "retest." I had just come back from a trip for the first test; I was probably dehydrated from the plane flight. It wasn't a fasting test; maybe something I ate the day before threw things off.

And then today I got ANOTHER morning-after call, which unfortunately went to my cell phone during the work day. Didn't get the message until after the office was closed, so I won't know until tomorrow. But here's what I do know.

Despite the fact that I haven't been on a pregnancy diet comprised solely of doughnuts, ice cream and other sugary snacks, I feel like a failure. I could have eaten better. Despite my swimming and walking and snowshoeing and yoga and pilates, I feel like a failure. I could have exercised more, or more effectively, or more consistently. I didn't need those Christmas cookies, or to have waffles for breakfast on Sundays. I KNEW the right things to do, and while I really did and do try to do them most of the time, maybe I could have done them more of the time.

Despite knowing that the last six sentences are unrealistic, unfair and UNNECESSARY, I can't do much more than self-flagellate. Here I am, entrusted with the sole care and feeding of this little mite until he or she is big enough to join the world, and I (maybe) contract a condition that, while a temporary annoyance to me, puts my child at higher risk for birth complications, vision problems and diabetes of their own later in life. I can't help feeling like I've put my kid at risk, as much as if I'd strapped on skis a month ago or slept on my back all night or actually tried to do that headstand during yoga last week.

But still, in the midst of all this worry and hyperbole and hysteria, a little nugget of reality sits, countering the weight that seems to have fallen suddenly on my shoulders. Because I think of my friend M, or our friend and coworker J, both of whom have diabetes that doesn't go away after pregnancy's over, who have managed and controlled and lived with the condition for much of their lives. And who aren't defined by it, but instead are defined by their own incredible selves, who are smart and good and kind and a tribute and, I'm sure, treasure to their own parents. I envision this child of mine NOT as some conditional-perfect being, idealized except for my imperfect influences, but instead as his or her own self, already, and I wonder if M's parents, or J's parents had any inkling that their child might cope with a chronic condition. And whether that would have mattered one whit in the love and devotion they felt for that child. And when I frame it that way, I realize exactly how ridiculous my fears are.

If nothing else in life proves it to this chronic over-achiever and perfection-seeker, pregnancy seems out to hammer into my head that "doing it right" doesn't guarantee "getting it right." And conversely, "getting it wrong" doesn't mean "doing it wrong."

No one has told me "YOU did this... YOU caused these high blood sugar levels. You BAD, BAD mother." No one needs to - I hear it plain as day inside my own head. Instead, as my husband did tonight, people whisper, softly so I have to ignore my internal monologue to catch it, "You are doing a good job taking care of our baby. We will do what we need to do to keep taking care of our baby." And I think that, miraculously, that loving whisper can drown out the shouting, angry noise in my head.