What's Mexican for "Doctor"?

Owww my skin!

Fortunately, the tech that draws the blood at my doc's office is very good at it, and she keeps the pain as low as it can be. Which is good. I have giant, freakishly plump veins, and a long time ago I set forth a rule when it comes to having my blood drawn: the tech gets one try, and then they're DONE. It may sound unfair to those of you in the blood-drawing bidnis, but seriously, if you saw my veins, you'd be like, "WTF someone actually couldn't poke that on the first try?" A decent tech could probably draw my blood without even using a tourniquet.

So, I had my glucose test today. For anyone who is facing that test in the near future and has heard the horror stories about how awful it tastes, let me allay your fears (somewhat): it's not that bad. Yeah, it's not exactly delicious, and you probably aren't going to think, "Oh yum! I could drink this shit all day!" But it's not horrifically disgusting. The aftertaste is the worst part, and not even the immediate aftertaste. You'll drink it, be like, "OK that wasn't so bad," and then 15 minutes later, the aftertaste will creep into your mouth and make you taste icky until you can eat something. And since you haven't ingested anything but that glucose drink, you'll probably feel kind of sick. Not that bad, but just enough to make you go blahhhh.

My doctor and I went over my birth plan, and he's on board with mostly everything. The hospital I'm delivering at has a policy that requires at least a saline lock, so I agreed to get one. A saline lock, for those who don't know, is an IV that isn't connected to anything. It's just a port that is closed unless they need to put something in you, and then they can just hook an IV in. It will be there just in case, but I can still skip around the room without being tied to a rolly IV thing.

Rolly IV thing.

So I agreed to that. It's policy, and I can understand why the doctors would want it there just in case my head explodes or something. And they won't be able to sneak something into me that I don't want there. So yay!

I had also said I wanted to be able to eat and drink while in labor (I don't expect I'll want a steak or anything, but I at least wanted the option), and my doc said drinking wouldn't be a problem, but they generally try to dissuade laboring mothers from eating. From what I've read, I probably won't want to eat anything anyway, and he said eating solid foods increases my chances of barfing during labor and then choking on my own barf. Not exactly how I picture my birth experience. So I said I wouldn't eat, but I might sneak a cookie or something small anyway. Don't tell on me. >.>

I said I didn't want constant fetal monitoring, and he said no problem. They will want to monitor every 30 minutes to an hour or so, and I'm fine with that. I just want to be able to move around.

Apparently, it is standard practice to give Pitocin to all mothers after the baby is born. It speeds up the delivery of the placenta, and also helps to reduce blood loss. I initially said that I want to have absolutely nothing to do with Pitocin, but I agreed to take some AFTER the Beast is born. Mostly to make my doctor feel better. He said I won't DIE if I don't get the Pitocin, but I'll lose a lot more blood. I'm of the opinion that my body (probably) isn't going to let me bleed out and die after having a baby, but I do appreciate the advances that modern medicine has made that make life a little easier for my bod. And I thought about how tired I'm going to be anyway, and how taxed my poor body is going to be, and I figured, "Well, less blood to regenerate is just less work for my body, so I'll go for it."

The doc always does a feely thing on my tum, just to see what the Beast is up to, and today he informed me that the Beast is configured as follows:

So when I feel pressure on my bladder, it's not because the Beast is kicking it; it's because the Beast is headbutting it. What a treasure!

The fact that the Beast is head-down makes me happy, even though it's still early and s/he will probably continue to flip around in there. I guess I'm just glad that the head-down position is being tested, and even just that the Beast CAN be head-down. Like, somehow, the Beast wasn't going to be able to flip head-down. I worry about the dumbest things.