acting diabetic

so finally i get to write something. been putting the may issue of the magazine together. it goes to print tomorrow.

cebu has been blastedly humid with summer rain in between. other than that, things are more or less the same.

doctor said i failed my glucose test so i was sent to a diabetes expert. i was told to avoid cake, ice cream and soft drinks--all of which i had in morocco--so maybe those did affect the test which i had done a few days after arriving. plus i am to limit my servings of food to one cup. Not that i have been abusive, but i have not been demure with the eating either.  

it was suggested i keep a diary to write down what food i ate in the course of the day, and i was told to monitor my blood sugar for the next two weeks, around 1 random meal time a day (have my blood tested an hour after eating) and there were a couple of options on how to do that. 

the obvious one to most people is to go to a medical laboratory to have the test performed. its just a pin prick of blood from one finger that's needed. the test itself is about Php 50. however, the time and commuting fees spent were not appealing to me as i did not want to waste at least an hour everyday to get to and from the nearest lab. 

the other option was to buy this blood sugar monitor gadget (like a real diabetic!) and do my test myself. I have to prick my finger once a day with this pen-like contraption that holds a disposable lancet, place a drop of blood on a special strip, and insert that strip into a little reader gadget. its been 2 days since I got the gadget and results have been within the normal range, so what the heck. not sure which one is worse--anticipating the prick of the lancet, or knowing that this gadget has made me several thousand pesos poorer as a price to pay for convenience.

Last night I cooked chicken liver with a can of pork and beans. Having been an anemic kid, I am used to liver and actually enjoyed my dinner. Our graphic artist ate with us. He liked it, and described my concoction as “earthy”. Yes, like eating flavored soil.

cost: the gadget is called a One Touch Horizon monitor and comes with the pen-like pricker, some disposable lancets, a container of the special strips, and the electronic reader itself. i also had to buy more lancets, a small bottle of disinfectant (alcohol) and a small thing of cotton (these two to disinfect my finger of choice prior to pricking). total cost at Rose Pharmacy was Php 2, 999 

random pregnancy thoughts

I was wanting to start embroidering baby clothes or something but am still too busy to do those. in morocco there was this charity that sold gorgeous hand-embellished fabric items, mostly women's and baby clothes. they were so pretty, as they were mostly white woven cotton and embellished with colored embroidery or crochet. they cost an arm and a leg though, as i swear morocco tends to exploit tourists. but that is for another blog entry.  

I read about pregnancy brain, and then I read that it was some kind of hoax invented by a bunch of people. Not that i am experiencing it, but my Kiwi friend says she is (on top of of her difficult pregnancy). My own theory is, your brain is trying to make you think of the baby as the most important thing (plus all the things that go with it) so your brains diverts you from focusing on “less important” matters.

Interrupted sleep is supposed to gear you towards the first month with the baby who would have an erratic sleep-wake pattern. Don’t quote me, I just read random stuff. Sometimes I wake up and I’m totally lucid. Sometimes it’s because I’m conscious that I’m changing position. In reality, if I didn’t know that you’re not supposed to sleep on your back (which I tend to do) I would have gone on doing it. Now changing position wakes me up, I guess subconsciously making sure I don’t end up on my back. 

Sometimes I do wake up in the night with some pain around my lower back, hip level. Sometimes my hip clicks, but it started doing that more often when I got pregnant.

I’ve really only had two annoying days. One in morocco when we kept walking everywhere and my belly just wanted me to stop walking. One last week when I was sure the baby was dancing on my bladder. Otherwise I could forget I am pregnant, though it is getting more difficult to bend over to pick up pumpkin the cat, and on occasion, i feel more tired than I am used to. If I do some lengthy walking at night, my legs are not able to recover and are “ngalay” until the next day, so I limit my already limited walking to no later than late afternoon.

Sounds like I’ve been reading a lot. Not really.

I want my body back. Konti na lang.

scan #2

we had our scan done yesterday. yep, there IT was, no longer a vague blob as in the first scan, but something that resembles a human form with torso and limbs, head--with a face! its just a standard scan, not one of those fancy 3D scans that you can get (like in sm). seriously, not interested. not appealing. yes, that's a baby, but we can wait for the features when it is born. 

we also told our doctor not to tell us what the gender is. both BBB and I are not that keen to find out. we are old school that way, and we can wait a couple more months to find out. Whichever is fine really.But random friends (at least those who know about it) think it’s a girl, basing it on the opinion that i am looking good, and blooming. true. i did read that you get less hair fall and better skin when pregnant, thanks to the hormones. now, can we retain those hormones til after i'm pregnant? 

those incredulous enough when they find out we don't want to know the baby's gender follow it up with--but what color are you getting the baby's things in?! white. duh. blue. duh. green. duh. yellow. i am not a fan of pink in the first place (tho i do wear it sometimes) and i am not a fan of too serious gender-related color-coding for kids and babies (barbie pink euw). but mostly white. i may be painting myself into a corner here as i haven't done any serious baby shopping so i may be stumped by some items. however, i do know that a lot of newborn basics come in plain white. we are safe. 

I’m around my 24^th week and have gained 10 pounds since the pregnancy. i’m due august 15 +/- 2 weeks. I am not looking forward to getting bigger. Most clothes here in cebu suck anyway, so being pregnant, that gets even more limited. Still wearing a lot of my lose dress shirts and tops. I’m on a quest to find these long dresses that they call maxi dresses, but the ones you find here are in cheap material or wild prints. I am not a printed clothes person. Rarely. I fell in love with a precious white cotton summer dress in mango and it was gone the next day. 

She who hesitates wastes the opportunity.


cost: Php 600 for the scan

failing the glucose test

visited the OB today and have been told that i failed the glucose test. blech. i hoped that doesn't mean i need to do that horrid test again. probably not, but it did mean i might be a candidate for pregnancy-related diabetes which is NOT an ideal thing. i was referred to a diabetes specialist who will tell me what to do. what? at 32? diabetes doesn't really run in our family although my mom was told a similar thing last year and had to cut down on her sugar intake (and she probably takes 2x the amount of sugar i take). 


i have been also informed that i am anemic (according to the same set of tests from last week). no surprises on that one. i was anemic when i was ten years old and learned to eat chicken liver--which by the way is nicer than pork liver. to add to my collection of supplement pills, i now have to take Sorbifer which is an iron supplement. on top of continuing the folic acid (for more iron!) which is usually discontinued by the end of the first trimester for most pregnant women. 


we're scheduled for another scan this weekend. 

green purse tip #7

peg it


clothes peg it. use clothes pegs to reseal opened food packets. certainly useful in this tropical country where corn flakes and crisps left out in the open lose their crunchiness in the blink of an eye. clothes pegs are better than those cutesy plastic clips specifically marketed for chips & such--they are always over-designed but can't actually do the job. clothes pegs are cheap too--about Php 30 for a packet of 12. can't go wrong with that. they're reusable and not a heartache in case you lose one on a boat trip or picnic. i use them for packets of:


breakfast cereals
crisps
bread crumbs
flour & cornstarch
cookies
bread
chocolate
cheese
...anything 

bad vision

i've been wearing glasses since 6th grade, contacts since college. its near sightedness and astigmatism from reading a vast quantity of books in summer, when i had the run of the normally closed school library, thanks to my mother who teaches at the school. 


yes nancy drew, i blame you.


but this pregnancy seems to make my bad vision worst. blurry. but i've read that its not unusual, and pregnant women are advised not to do any laser eye surgery because the results may vary from being mildly inaccurate or horribly wrong. too bad, as in the back of my mind, and before i realised i was pregnant, i was wanting to line up laser eye correction as my thing to do this year. my disposable lenses may not matter to landfills much, but the lens solution bottles probably have nowhere to go around here. 


anyway, to illustrate how bad its gotten, i walked into Marks&Spencers to and found what i thought were good bargains. having chosen 2 pieces of knickers a size bigger than usual (in preparation for when i turn into a balloon), the check out reveals that it is "buy 1, get the 2nd at half price" and not buy 1 take 1 as it registered in my brain. 


at Php 495 each, i thought i would be paying Php 495 for 2, not 495 PLUS 247.50


total damage was Php 742.50. argh. quite extravagant when i am happy with their 5-pack knickers that go on sale for about Php 495 a pack. 


argh. 

package from california

the day is not lost. when i got back from ayala, waiting for me was package and a card from my Unicorn in california. one day i will take out the scanner and post the actual card here. she wrote:



dear love, 

finally, here is the mommy + baby care package i've been wanting to send you. the blanket was out of stock for weeks. love and hugs to you both (and BBB too). i know its complicated still, but i hope you will enjoy your pregnancy. you'll be a great mom. i know it. love you lots. 

p.s. i know you hate milk so, here's more than one way to get your calcium. =) enjoy. 




in the package were:
~ 1 baby blanket from Baby Gap (brown on one side, white with brown hue spots on the other)
~ 1 blankie toy from Baby Gap (a little stuffed bear (head to torso with a rattle inside), the bottom is a handkerchief-sized plush blankie)
~ 1 big plastic bottle of TUMs (for calcium)
~ 2 bottles of pre-natal multivitamins
~ 1 paper tub of calcium-laced chewable chocolates


i cried going through the package. receiving it from my unicorn meant a lot to me, as she and i have known each other since 4th grade, and best friends since high school. we last saw each other in Dec. 2006 at mistah&misus T's wedding. 


but i cried mainly because receiving the package somehow makes this pregnancy very real. 

pre-natal tests & an orange drink

this morning i went in for some standard tests that my OB ordered on my last visit (prior to morocco). however, since i had a cold & jet lag, i'd had to put it off in fear of getting strange results. 


the profile was nothing super fancy, as the main bit is they extract blood from the vein in the crook of your arm and do the various tests on it. but the killer was actually the glucose test. 


first, you have to fast for 12 hours. yep. no food. hard on someone who feels hungry every 2 hours. so i went to bed at 9pm after dinner in an effort to save energy and stay asleep hoping the hunger won't wake me up. 


i rock up at chong hua at 8:00am but there are already a few people before me. it pains me to have to wait so early in the day, especially when you have one million and one things to do (my edits are still ongoing, the magazine needs work, more shooting for another project...). 


my turn happens near 8:30 and i am given this plastic cup of orange-y looking stuff to drink. it looks and tastes like super concentrated Royal Tru Orange soda that has been left out in the sun all afternoon. no fizz. it is horrible. and the worst part is, you cannot drink any water after downing it as water will dilute the solution and affect the tests. the second worst part is sitting in the lab waiting room for the next hour, swallowing your own saliva, hoping the taste and stickiness will go away, while waiting for the solution to go into your bloodstream. blech. not doing that again i hope. 


the blood extraction was the easiest part. no, it was the part where i had to pee into a tiny plastic cup for the urine gram stain test. 


costs: pre-natal profile 600
         urine gram stain 250 

jet-lagged disjointed thoughts

arrived back in cebu last tuesday and have had a cold and bad jet lag since. my nose is stuffy today, but its the best i've been since arriving. as in grabe, non functional entity ako. BBB has jet lag too but no cold. at least today i can see my ankles. they swelled from the flight and i couldn't see the veins on top of my usually veiny feet. i was like "fuck, no way" so i'm glad to report they're back to normal now. only my nose is busted. sleep pattern almost there too. today i woke up before six am, at least not 4am. even our daytime eating schedule is screwed up and we can only manage dinner together. maybe today we'll manage lunch together.

baby's still here. i'm due for some blood tests and pre-natal testing, but i'm waiting for this cold to clear up, or else some strange cold-related stuff might show up in the tests. screening for gestational diabetes is standard i guess, as i'm due for that test too. i'm now at about 21 or 22 weeks (depends when you actually start counting) and visibly pregnant, though sometimes that still depends on what top i wear. 

i am still putting away stuff in my closet and separating the stuff i can't wear but intend to keep from those i intend to let go of. the trouble with having a lot of closet space is unconsciously filling it up over time. also mentally (though not purposely--though necessity requires it) going over things that need doing in preparation for having a baby in the house--more closet space, have washing machine fixed, etc, etc. and wondering what to do about the cat that sleeps at our feet.

my vision seems more blurred than usual. a side effect of pregnancy, or so i've read.

still haven't told my mom i'm pregnant, but don't really want to put it off much longer.

have downloaded pictures but haven't uploaded them yet. in the next week i guess.

no big announcements

my news is mine. oh, mine & BBB's. hee. i am personally not big on making big announcements and things do stay that way. also there is a sequence of some kind on who gets told first that we are expecting a baby. so no, we haven't made any big announcements and don't intend to. as with many things i consider private, my pregnancy is not a public spectacle to be discussed along with the weather over a cup of coffee. significant people do find out as we go along, and i want to be the one to tell my mom, as i would hate for her to find out from somebody else.

the thing is, BBB and i live in a very catholic country, my family is very catholic (i have been a pagan since high school) and we are not married. and don't intend to. i haven't composed my reply to questions that might come, but no, not likely to get married unless we don't have a choice on something that will affect our baby. right now, the philippine family code allows the child of unmarried parents to carry the father's last name as long as he has signed the birth certificate. that is good. and the baby will get both philippine and british birth certificates and passports and those papers have no issue on whether the parents have tied the knot or not.

funny tho, that those furthest away get treated to the news first. Unicorn, my best friend who migrated to california ages ago was informed by text last january--she barely has time to check her mail, working full time and first time mother to Joaquin who will turn one this May. Kiwi is in kiwiland--okay, New Zealand--and she's pregnant too. two months ahead of me. and it was too insane to not tell her we were expecting too. 

having seen BBB's parents in morocco, we have told them we are expecting, his mum complained that we are "sooo far away" while BBB's dad is already asking for assurance that we will have the baby in tow for june/july 2009 when he celebrates his 80th birthday. they asked if it was ok to tell the rest of the family in the UK. of course.

back from marocq

morocco was beautiful and insane. i will need a year to write about everything there. the food, the sights, the people, the weather, the cats, the architecture...


but to focus for this blog--


i've read that whatever an expectant woman eats, the fetus inside gets a taste of those flavors, so moroccan flavors and spices were on! not that i am a spice girl, but the flavors were absolutely great, cinnamon on a lot of things and i ate lamb to my heart's content. 


it was miserably cold on some days and we couldn't figure out the aircon/heater in one of our riads (hotels) so we practically froze in bed. i did get to use the leggings i bought, mainly to layer with under pants. good lord. we were expecting temperatures in the 20's but on some days we got 12! they did have a cold spell and the atlas mountains were topped in snow like icing sugar. we drove up and through it to get to ouirgane, and the height (when we stopped for lunch, it was a 6-hour drive) did give me a headache. 


on an interesting note, and it seemed to happen instantly that day when we got back to marrakech--i started to "show" just like that. my bump was visible. BBB noticed. a female shopkeeper in a wool shop said "excuse me, are you ...baby?" she couldn't find the english word for pregnant or expecting but it was clear what she was trying to say. 


i have a picture in YSL's (as in Yves Saint Laurent) house looking, ahem, pregnant.