Women Suffering - The Movie

Had a bit of a shyte day yesterday.  I’m glad I’m over it now so I can kind of laugh about it, but yesterday I just didn’t feel good, emotionally.  One of the first things I did when I woke up was call the gestational diabetes lady back at Kaiser.  And she wasn’t mean, or pedantic, and didn’t mean to freak me out.  I told her I was doing at home monitoring instead and she didn’t insist I take the 3 hour test, but did recommend I go in for some dietary classes, which, considering they’re at 8 AM and considering my RLS, heartburn, and general uncomfortable-ness keeps me up until at least 5 or 6 AM these days, is not going to happen.  I discovered to my dismay that Kaiser’s number requirements are even more stringent than what I had found online for GD – I found a chart that said under 140 an hour after eating is ok; Kaiser wants you to be under 120.  Umm…I would pretty much have to eat bark and twigs to be under 120 after eating, hate to break it to you.  Either that or run a marathon after every single meal, every day.  And neither of those things are happening.  So I am in this strange place where part of me takes this very seriously and part of me is very skeptical as to if any of this makes any difference at all.  I mean, I have changed my habits, kicking and screaming – and it has sucked all of the joy out of my life to no longer be able to have desserts (not even fruit, apparently), to cut back carbs to the bone (being a vegetarian this leaves me with almost no options), never have cereal for breakfast, etc etc.  I hate it.  And so I cheat.  A lot.  And I’m often surprised by how random the numbers are – none of it makes any sense.  I’ll monitor myself for a day and find myself thinking, “oh, that was ok, but that wasn’t?  What the hell…?”  And I know you’re thinking right now, that’s what a dietary class is for, stupid.  But there is a big part of me that thinks this is all a bunch of hooey.  I have no history of diabetes in the family, I’m not obese, I eat extremely healthy compared to nearly every pregnant woman I know.  I have zero symptoms. What’s so terrible about having a 90 calorie Weight Watchers fudgesicle once in a while…?  Does this automatically mean Giant Monster Baby and Emergency C-Section…?  Seriously…?  I don’t know.  Suffice it to say this one conversation alone sent me into a downward spiral that continued for the rest of the day.  I was just feeling very angry, put upon, and joyless.

Then I had to head over to Kaiser for the first of my birthing classes!  Honestly, it was ok.  The presenter was one of my favorite kind of people – a jolly middle aged Latina who laughed a lot and had fun with the class.  We learned about stages of labor, positions/things to do to help with pain management, etc, all of which was very useful.  Then came THE VIDEO.  Now, I for one never watch birth videos or TV shows about women giving birth because they freak me out.  And this was even a nice one – no screaming, no misery, just a normal natural birth and a healthy baby and a smiling mom saying it was all worth it.  But there’s just something about seeing a birth like that that gets into my core place of fear and makes me very uncomfortable.  While some people may look at this and think, “oh, it’s beautiful, a new life just came into the world, look at the beautiful baby!”, in my warped mind, all I see is Women Suffering.  Women in pain, women who can’t stand it one more minute, women saying, “I can’t do this.”  Ugh!  Then when the baby was born I sobbed uncontrollably while all the husbands played fantasy football on their phones.  I’m sure people who saw me thought I was thinking how beautiful it was.  No.  I was thinking, “I don’t like this and I want to go home.”

So on my way home I listened to some angry 80s hardcore punk because it made me feel 14 again and was a good channel for my anger and fear.  I think I just needed to be distracted and reminded there are other things going on in the world than vaginas tearing open and Women Suffering.  At any rate that date with my Ipod cheered me up considerably and I woke up in a much better and more rational mood today.

Had lunch with my doula friend and talked about all this stuff and she made me feel better, too.  I told her my primary goal for her is to make me laugh, and I know she can do that.  So I feel somewhat comforted now and back on track with my previous, “it is what it is, just go for the ride,” stance.  Maybe I’m just a less is more kind of person – I mean, I’m fairly well informed, I think, I understand the terminology, the choreography of birth, all that stuff.  I don’t feel the need to watch tons of videos and read books and take classes when pretty much all of that will fly out the window when labor takes hold.  What I don’t need is more things to read/watch that will make me scared of doctors and hospitals, since I am only just now learning to trust them and I need to go with that.  I don’t need agendas and people being all rigid and pedantic.  I just need to listen to really offensive, dirty 80s British punk rock and laugh.  That’s not too much to ask, is it?