Most of you know that I flunked my three-hour glucose test – and rather spectacularly, to quote the midwife – and the likely scenario is insulin for the remainder of my last trimester.
It makes sense – I had a mild case with The Poo, and I’ve felt so very, very crappy this time. I just felt something was off, and I am most sorry I didn’t push the docs to test me earlier. I have a feeling The Diabetus made its appearance quite some time ago.
Meanwhile, I’ve been eating carbs and sugar like mad since Day One of this pregnancy.
When I met with the midwife after my test Friday morning she tossed around terrifying phrases like “fetal death” and “amniocentesis” and “poor organ development.”
She scared the fat pants off me.
I had a few days to get used to the idea of a carb-free lifestyle and I got my glucose meter so I could start testing right away. I’ve been following the one-page example diet they gave me, and it does look like cutting out cake isn’t going to cut it. My numbers are higher than they want them to be.
This is all something I can deal with, something that can be controlled and monitored. It just means more frequent doctor visits, a perinatologist and a dietitian.
I’m OK with that, so that Henry and I are healthy and safe.
What is really bugging me is that I wish with all my might that I had my old OB right now.
The doctor who delivered The Poo had been my OB/GYN since I was 18 years old. She was my mom’s OB. She was a woman and a mother and she knew me, my family and my history, medical and otherwise.
The day my dad died, she was there for me and The Poo, who was still cooking in my belly.
She was there for me afterward, when my abdomen was burning from the c-section and my head was swimming with fatigue and fright over this wee human I had to take care of.
She was there at my six-week post-partum appointment, when she told me that if I felt even just the littlest bit depressed, it was OK to go back on my meds.
I don’t know these people here. These nurses and doctors and midwives and incompetent boobs who schedule me for multiple appointments at the same time in different places. I don’t know the hospital or even have a GP, for that matter.
I don’t trust them.
I want to go home.
Something’s been eating me lately, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Stupid shit is getting under my skin, shit that always seems to be unique to Chambana.
It isn’t that I hate it here anymore; because I don’t. I have friends and a routine and I know where the grocery store is and how to get to the post office.
But I still have to make three shopping runs to three places to get all the groceries I want. I still can’t remember who has the right-of-way at all these four-way stops. I still compare the frozen custard stand to the one back home.
I miss Wegmans and my oldest friends, the ones who knew me when my braces came off. I miss Lake Ontario and good Buffalo wing sauce. I miss the pizza place on the corner, the one that delivered.
Most of all, I miss the people I trust to take care of me, Henry and The Poo. I miss my old pediatrician, the one who always used common sense as his yardstick and told me no call from a worried mom was unwarranted.
Moms know, he would tell me. And he was right.
I’m homesick.
I just wonder sometimes how long it will go on, this ache inside me. The odds of our path bringing us back to our hometown are slim – we have to go where the jobs are. I thought I was OK with that, I thought I was ready to make that break forever.
It turns out that I’m not.
Homesickness isn’t terminal, is it?
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
I dunno.. we’ve been here in Podunk central for.. dang.. 15 years? I’m still craving Pollards Chicken from Ballatine Blvd and the feeling of the ocean breeze in the off season when all the tourists are gone.
I still get really really homesick.
Homesickness isn’t terminal, but it’s a chronic condition. And when it flares? It’s really hard live with. Hope you feel better soon.
ugh. i miss my hometown (home city, really) in much the same way. i keep telling my husband that i will live where we do right now up until the kids leave home, but then? all bets are off.
Insert different names and places and I could have written this post (though not as eloquently). I haven’t lived in my hometown since I graduated college, but I still miss it fiercely — until my SIL tells me about the annoying people she runs into at the grocery store.
Oh, I’m so sorry. I lived in NYC for 4 years and no matter how metropolitan it was it could never replace my tiny hometown. I hope you feel better soon…sorry about the glucose test, ugh. I had to have mine tested at 16 weeks and will again at 28 weeks…due to my previous large, failure to descend resulting in emergency c-section Luke.
We do have much in common, I wanted to thank you for your kind words on my blog. If you ever need to vent or just a sympathetic ear please send me an email. Feel better!
I’m homesick too. We moved to the city so that hubby could have a job with benefits, and not spend his life commuting when the baby comes. I don’t want to quit my job. I just want to go home.
Hang in there.
I wish you had some of your familiar comforts there. I just started shopping at a Wegman’s—that I would surely miss. But all those losses at once are a lot to digest. Sounds like you’re taking the GD stuff in stride–much more so than I would.
no, but it does come in waves.
damn homesickness
I too am dreading giving up Wegmans. And I’m fearing all the newness California will hold. But most of all I’m dreading the unknown-ness for after Cali. And it looks unlikely that our path will lead back home either. And that leaves me very unsettled. I sympathize. Hang in there, honey. It is hard.
I’m the GD queen if you run out of ideas for things to eat, but I am dying to deliver this child and eat some ice-cream.
I’ve had chronic homesickness TWICE, and now it is settling down now that we have been here four years.
Hugs
Nah, but it’s hard while it’s working its wiles on you, that’s for sure. You need a bacon salad, love, with sweet potato matchsticks. I wish I could make you one, right now.
Oh dearie. I am sorry. I am still homesick for Cincinnati, although much of my pining is for something that can’t be regained. Not that I’d trade it, but that might be why I miss the place as much as I do.
Hey, if you want to grab coffee while you are in Cleveland, that is where I am. Email me if you want.
Homesickness is not terminal, it just never really goes away. Luckily, it tends to come in waves. Ride it out and it will improve.
It will get better.
I agree – I’m not sure homesickness ever really goes away.
I miss bagels and good bakeries and the kind of friends that we can’t make as adults. Email is great, but, oh, I miss my friends.
Good luck with the dietary changes. Not much longer to go!
I feel the same way you do about NY – - except about Chambana. I’m in an even more rural place!! I miss my doctor(s) at Carle. I cried the first day I took my daughter to the pediatrician here…it will never be the same.
I have a hard time thinking about having another child while I feel like I’m not even in civilization…
I’ve asked my husband to look for a job back home – - at least within driving distance of my parents in STL…
Anyway, I feel your pain…homesickness hurts!
The feeling you describe is not terminal — it is chronic. It is a condition of a life in which we must chase the jobs and the opportunities. After awhile, you get used to no place feeling like home.
oh honey. i wish we lived closer.
Two things…
1 – Can you write/call/visit your old OB just for the deep support it would offer you right now when you really need it?
2 – I had GD with E. The hardest thing for me was the idea of half a cup of beans at a time. Beans were/are a main source of protein for me.
However, that GD diet stabilized me in profound ways, on all levels. I’ve been trying to gather the courage to get back onto it for my own mental and physical health reasons, but I’ve been lazy and depressed, and it hasn’t happened.
Imagine yourself well, balanced, with healthy Henry in your arms and The Poo learning from you at your side.
This will help you on all levels — even though it sucks at the beginning.
I bet your not homesick now…
Heh.
Good Morning
I am living in Europe, and am originally from Connecticut. Ths adventure is almost 8 years old. The homesickness took about 4 years. Now I love and appreciate this home and the old one has a special place in my heart.It was what it was when it was, and this is now.I feel this is a part of the evolution that I was meant to have. This is me fully becoming the me that I am supposed to be. Too corny?
I feel your pain! I have been in the CU area for 18 months now after leaving everything I know and love behind in Ca. I try to remind myself often of the reasons we moved and focus on the GOOD things we have here- but homesickness is truly chronic- it never goes away! BTW I have a son with Type 1 diabetes so I feel your pain on that front too.. hang in there.
I haven’t commented here before but I read this post and I just wanted to commiserate. I’m from upstate NY and we moved to the mid-west a year ago. I still want to go home and I could have written this exact post.
Homesickness ain’t terminal, but it still hurts.
Sorry about the GD diagnosis. I recently had to cut way back on carbs and sweets and it is hard. I never realized how much of that stuff I was eating in a day. Yikes!
Oh, I know what you’re saying about good Buffalo sauce. I got introduced while attending college in Rochester and made a trip to the Anchor Bar. Mmmm. And don’t get me started on just how wrong it is to call anything that is boneless or breaded a Buffalo wing. Just.plain.wrong.
As for homesickness it is just something you learn to live with. I’ve been out of college and away from home for 10 years and I still miss it. Becoming a mother made it even worse! I want to be back home where there are relatives that will babysit for free and my close friends that have known me for ever!
It never goes away – that ache.
My homesickness hits me differently – I think I’m homesick for an old-home-place. All the moving and upheaveal and never putting roots down occasionally makes me totally sick. I miss something that I never even had.
I don’t think you’re terminal – but I know it can hurt like hell in the meantime. I’m so sorry, my friend.
Man, I don’t know if homesickness is terminal. I don’t really yearn for my hometown– but Wegmans.. That one I can get behind.
I was homesick for several years and I thought it wasn’t possible to come back to my small home town but here we are and I couldn’t be happier.
I’m sorry about the GD. Had it with #1.
Not terminal, but that doesn’t make it suck any less. Every time I think I could move somewhere more exciting, I think about these things. I’m grateful I have family and friends here and that it’s not really so bad.
I’m sorry you’re having a rough time with this.
i’m sorry you’re feeling homesick, and i’m sorry you’re not comfortable with the people taking care of you through this pregnancy. i know what it’s like being home sick. though i’m only 3.5 hours away from my parents, and my brother and his family, it feels like light years…especially now that i have kids.
sometimes i dream of moving back home to be closer to my family…but then my hubby would be missing his…
I often miss things I have never had. That sounds weird, doesn’t it. I miss the idea of things – like I’m missing out on something ?
Hugs, friend.
And P.S. I had to do insulin during pregnancy.
The doctor from your hometown seems more like a family member and friend. I can understand how you miss being under her care. I don’t stay in my hometown and was able to get over not being around friends and family members. But, I did want to move from my hometown so it may be easier for me.
This is the best article I have read, thank you, I have learned a lot of knowledge in this area.