sweet, but not too sweet

It's 2 weeks later, and I still have one lingering bruise from the 3-hour glucose test. The good news is that I passed the test just fine, and my doctor's office was nice enough to track me down on my cell phone the night before I left town for a long weekend. I was so relieved and grateful to know that I wouldn't have to add more restrictions to my diet and have the added worries of gestational diabetes.

The test was no fun at all. After fasting for 12 hours and no water for 4 hours, my veins ran dry for the fourth and final blood draw. The tech tapped 2 different veins and after a lot of wiggling and poking she came up empty. I swear I heard my vein sputter in exhaustion. I offered the vein in the top of my left hand which has been used before and while it sounds gross, it was completely painless and worked out much better. I wish she would've tried my hand sooner because my right arm was sore and badly bruised after the failed attempts. I'm not a queasy person and after she was done I had to lie down for a few minutes.

I brought my knitting with me. I'm working on my most ambitious knitting project ever for Miss Bean. It's a striped blanket that will have ducks at the top border. It's my first time working with more than one color and the yarn is an unforgiving, mercerized cotton. The yarn arrived in those long twists and when I tried to make a ball from it for the first time, I made an enormous tangle of knots that took a few hours to fix. I felt like I was in over my head before I even picked up my needles! BUT, the blanket is actually coming along very well and my stitches are smooth and even. I've been impressing myself with how good it looks! I'm still working on the stripes (I could finish 1 and a half stripes between blood draws.), but my confidence is growing and I'm getting psyched to tackle the ducks.

I'm just too sweet

I'm at the seven month mark now and in the last trimester...the home stretch. I failed the 1-hour glucose test last week which was a complete surprise since my sugar has been checked 3 times already with no problems at all. I don't have any history of sugar trouble either.

I had seen my primary care doctor a month ago because of dizziness and bloodwork was ordered then. My sugar was fine, but I was mildly anemic for a pregnant woman. There's a different scale for pregnant women according to trimester you are in. For a non-pregnant person my numbers would be much more worrisome. When the nurse called with the results she told me to take an extra iron supplement, but she wasn't sure if that was in addition to taking my prenatal vitamin again. I had stopped the vitamin because it was making me sick. I decided to try to take the vitamin again instead of the mega-iron. I tried taking it at every possible time of day, with and without food and it still made me miserable. I gave up again and decided to increase the iron in my diet through my food choices instead.

The dizziness has improved, but I don't really know why. It was bad for a while because it could come on very suddenly and my hearing would go and then I'd begin to black out. It happened 4 times total, and I hope that it's behind me now.

On Wednesday I'll be at the lab all morning for the 3-hour glucose test which is really 4 hours long. Oh joy! I had been telling Tony I wish I could have an afternoon to myself, but this isn't what I had in mind.

Bean is moving a lot sometimes and then is quiet for hours and hours. I don't remember Cole's movement being as erratic. Yesterday we went to Babies R Us and bought a new mini pack-n-play to use as a bassinet in our room. It's nice because it is portable and folds up. I feel like we're starting to prepare a bit more, and I'm looking forward to putting our trips behind us and focusing on getting ready.