the long page of instructions they give you with this bottle of liquid made the whole thing seem a little more complicated then it really was but i left home that morning and timed my watch for exactly one half hour before my appointment (no eating for two hours before and the entire bottle must be consumed within 10 minutes with a blood test to be given exactly one hour after drinking the noxious concoction, blahblahblah). it started beeping as i was sitting at a stoplight about two blocks from the clinic (thanks seattle traffic) - so i really could have waited until i pulled into a parking spot but the bottle was sitting next to me in the cup holder, so, why not? i chugged that puppy like a good little frat boy. it wasn't the most horrible thing i've ever tasted - a bit of a sugary/flat soda sort of aftertaste. no problem-o. but what they don't tell you is that they then keep you waiting in the doctor's office for 45 minutes with no cell reception (stupid basement suites) just to take some blood. (i should have grabbed a book, or a magazine, or a freaking pamphlet). and in that 45 minutes in the very warm basement suite of the doctor's office, i start feeling a little queasy - nothing horrible - but i'm starting to get uncomfortable and bebe is obviously feeling the sugar rush (hellooooo world!) because he's bending it like beckham in there which isn't helping things. the nurse came in and did a quick fetal heart monitoring - that part was cute because she starting laughing - anytime she put a little bit of pressure on my stomach he started kicking her. that's my boy!
then more waiting...
and some more...
and some more...
the florescent lights are just starting to make me twitchy in a murderous kind of way when my doctor breezes through the door. she says she's surprised to see me because ND and i had mentioned transferring to a midwife/birthing center. i told her unfortunately the Puget Sound was filled to capacity for the month of march (apparently there's a lot of summer lovin' going on because march is a very popular birthing month) so we're still interviewing other places. then it gets all sorts of weird because she goes into a long speech about how i really should give evergreen hospital a chance, and have i taken the tour yet, and blahdee blahdee blah - and when i start to voice my opinion she literally has a counterargument for every reason why i want a natural birth in a birthing center with a midwife. not that she was anti-natural birth but she was really trying to convince me that i could have the exact birthing experience i wanted in the hospital. even to go as far as to say that though the epidural rate is about 70%, that the nurses "get bored with that" and "enjoy having more things to do" concerning an unmedicated/"more uncomfortable for the mother" birth. i didn't have ND there as a support system this time around so i just sort of started nodding my head a lot because nothing i said was getting through to her. thankfully it was finally blood test time so the nurse came back to usher me to the little station and this is where my wuss factor totally kicked in. normally, i have no problem with needles or taking blood but i do know that my blood pressure has this annoying habit of dropping off the face of the earth at a moments notice, leaving me clammy, nauseous and wanting to pray or make some sort of sacrifice to the porcelain gods. and just as the nice nurse was finishing up her last little vile - whoops, there it goes...
"are you ok, honey?" she says. "um, i think i might be sick" and she points me to the nearest restroom where i quickly lock the door and drop to my knees. this is where the fun game of: WILL. SHE. PUKE?! actually starts. my stomach and brain like to duke it out a bit before one of them is declared ultimate champion. thankfully today brain is the winner because nothing is grosser than having to be sick in a public restroom. a women's clinic bathroom is probably exponentially cleaner then say a yankee stadium bathroom or a port a potty (thankfully i've experienced getting sick in neither) - but still, gross. i meekly stand up, wash my face and walk back out to the nurses station. she hands me a juice box and has me sit down until the color comes back into my face. i tell her i think it's the not eating paired with the sugar rush that did me in. "yeah, we nurses like to mess with you pregnant ladies as much as possible." at least she's funny and i was starting to feel better. i asked her if this was normal and she did say that some people do feel a little sick after the whole process.
at work i did a little more research and sure enough, a lot of women experience varying degrees of puke-itude and general nausea. a friend empathetically posted on my facebook wall that she nearly passed out several times (she has multiple children and she always fails the first test so they make the poor girl go through it all again). yeesh. you mean i might have to do this more than once!? fantastic. here's hoping i pass.
"mmmmm.....gulcola. side affects may include barfing, hurling, spewing, tossing your cookies, retching, puking, or technicolor yawns."
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