Bridget's Pregnancy Blog

I recently discovered, completely by accident, that my unborn baby likes classical piano music.

I tutor children in English here in China a few times a week and last week when I arrived at one of my students’ homes, I was a little early. She was finishing up her piano practice before English class and invited me to listen. She eagerly showed off a piece she’d been learning. I’m not sure who the composer was, but the music was classical style, maybe Beethoven or Bach.

As the strains of classical piano wafted through the room, the baby started kicking and squirming in response to the music. My student’s piano playing was pretty good- and apparently baby thought so too! His applause was conveyed through twists and turns and thumps.

After class, when I got home, I decided to try to see if the baby would have different responses to different styles of music. It’s been difficult to gauge his reaction at times, but I’m considering any strong movement as approval. (Though I suppose it could mean I’m annoying him with all that noise!)

Now that he’s started developing sleep-wake cycles, times when he is active and times when he is quieter, I had to be sure to pick an active time to try my test. I waited until I felt him start moving around a little and then I began to play a few songs each of different types of music while I sat on the couch and observed his reaction.

So far, he seems to enjoy piano music the best. Jazz gets a little reaction. Rock music doesn’t get much response. Oddly enough, the ringtone on my cell phone seems to be well-received, something I inadvertently discovered when it rang while I had the stereo turned off for a few minutes.

Now I’m wondering if I’ll be investing in a piano a few years down the road. I’m a fairly dismal piano player myself- I learned as a child, but wasn’t very good at it. I did play flute for many years, but piano was something I found more difficult. But maybe he’ll inherit it from the rest of my family, since my mother, grandmother and cousin can all play piano much better than me!

No matter whether he decides he wants to try to play piano later or not, I do find it interesting that sometimes babies will continue to enjoy sounds they heard in the womb and find them relaxing. Perhaps playing Beethoven or Bach on the stereo will be a good way to help him get to sleep when he’s fussy after he’s born.

So, after many blood tests and drinking unpleasant glucose solutions, I’ve been diagnosed with mild gestational diabetes. It’s not very severe in my case- of my four tests during the multi-hour screen, two were a little high, which is the minimal diagnostic criteria for gestational diabetes.

This condition is not really rare, but it does require a bit of meal planning to deal with it. My doctor recommended eating small meals and snacks all throughout the day- at least three meals and two snacks. Each meal or snack should have some protein and some carbohydrates, with the goal of keeping my blood sugar from shooting up quickly. I was also told to make sure to eat something before bed, since it can help prevent blood sugar from dropping overnight, which could cause a blood sugar spike when I eat breakfast the next morning.

The danger of gestational diabetes is that if the mother’s blood sugar fluctuates wildly, whenever it goes up quickly, the baby’s blood sugar will also rise, since he’s getting blood from her system. When this happens, his body will produce insulin, which will cause him to store excess fat. This is called a macrosomic baby, and it can be dangerous if he gets too big to safely deliver. It can also cause a blood sugar crash when he’s born, since his own food- breastmilk or formula- won’t have such a high sugar content as his mother’s blood did.

Learning this, I know I need to work hard at keeping my sugar levels stable so that my baby won’t be affected. This isn’t turning out to be too difficult. I’ve started trying to avoid high glycemic foods, like white bread, sodas, refined sugar and things like that. Instead, I’m trying to eat more whole wheat grains as my carbohydrates and also have some protein, such as an egg or handful of nuts or some cheese, whenever I do eat carbs.

It’s important for me to get enough carbohydrates, though, so I can’t limit carbs too much. There is a balance, because the mom’s body has to get most of her energy from carbs. If she doesn’t get enough, then her body will burn fat and produce ketones- which is also bad for the baby.

Luckily, after following the diet recommendations for a week, the next blood test- taken two hours after a normal meal- showed that my blood sugar was fine. So it seems like as long as I continue to eat well, the gestational diabetes should not be a problem and both me and baby should stay healthy for these last few months.

After my last post, I’ve been thinking about food and I’ve determined what it is that I miss the most. I miss my soft serve ice cream.

When I first got pregnant and started learning about all the things I couldn’t eat, most of the restrictions seemed fairly easy to live with. I’d expected alcohol to be off limits, of course, since that seems to be something everyone knows these days. I occasionally think it would be nice to have a glass of wine with a meal (especially when we happen to have Italian pasta, for some reason), but it isn’t any major craving.

Some things on the list surprised me. Deli meats being off limits seemed strange at first, until I found out it is because cold cuts can harbor the Listeria bacteria. No more ham sandwiches for lunch unless the ham is thoroughly cooked and reheated!

Caffeine is occasionally difficult, but with a limit of 200-300 mg of caffeine allowed daily, I’m ok with one cup of coffee or a few cups of tea. Tea is so prevalent in the culture here, I think it would be hard if I had to avoid it entirely.

One I hadn’t thought much about until the last few weeks is hot dogs. Beijing has recently been hit with a huge hot dog craze, with hot dog stands and restaurants serving hot dogs springing up all over the place in the last month or two. I wasn’t missing them when they weren’t around, but now whenever my friends stop at a stand and get one, they seem to smell really good!

With my cheese cravings, soft cheeses being on the off limits food list has been tough at times. It helps that there are so many other hard cheeses I can choose from, though. And our local western grocery stores seem to be well stocked with a wide variety. So whenever a particular craving for, say, blue cheese or Camembert comes up, I can easily substitute a good parmesan or cheddar and distract myself.

Sushi seemed like it might be a problem at first, since my friends tend to like to eat at Japanese restaurants. But there are enough vegetarian sushi options that don’t involve raw fish that I adapted quickly. I’ve become hooked enough on avocado rolls that I’ll probably still eat them after raw fish are allowed back in my diet.

But of all these things, none is more missed than my soft serve ice cream. The Dairy Queen near the subway station taunts me now, with their dipped cones and Blizzards. Hard ice cream never seems to truly satisfy the soft-serve lust, either. I suppose I only have a couple more months to go, so I can wait just a little longer. Hmm…I wonder if they’ll let Justin bring me a Blizzard in the hospital after I have the baby?

Since I’ve gotten pregnant, I’ve been crazy about cheese. Not that I wasn’t a big fan of cheese before this- I’ve always liked it. But now, I like it on everything!

I noticed some changes in my food desires pretty early in my pregnancy. Aside from my constant desire for cheese and my suddenly thinking that any menu item at a restaurant that had cheese in it sounded like the most amazing dish ever, I also started having a few weird desires.

The funniest one I noticed was one night at about 14 weeks pregnant I got it into my head that a piece of cheese pizza with powdered sugar sprinkled on top would taste absolutely excellent. The pizza part of the equation was easy to find- a friend manages a pizza joint in town and was willing to supply a piece that evening. The sugar proved to be more difficult and entailed a search around neighboring groceries and convenience stores. Finally, after a heroic effort by my friends, I managed to get my sugar and cheese pizza. It was exactly as good as I anticipated and I haven’t really craved it since.

Aside from the cravings, I also noticed an odd aversion to certain foods. Before pregnancy, I always liked cabbage, but now my hormones made the thought of cabbage turn my stomach. I found this to be strange, since I had such good memories of particular cabbage dishes that I’d once enjoyed from local restaurants. I even tried to ignore the food aversion and taste some of the cabbage dishes my friends and Justin ordered when we went out to eat. But my stomach rebelled and I’ve been forced to accept that the baby just doesn’t like cabbage and I’m stuck with a cabbage-free existence until after January.

My most recent pregnancy craving is peanut butter. I had to do a little research on this one, since I’d heard conflicting reports on whether it is healthy to eat peanut butter during pregnancy. Apparently, the western medical advice is now that it’s ok to eat peanut butter as long as you have no allergies or history of allergies in your family. Since I don’t, I’m safe. Oddly enough, here in China they don’t have many peanut allergies at all. It is so rare that most people here have never heard of a peanut allergy. Pregnant women here are encouraged to eat peanuts, since they are a good source of folic acid and protein, both healthy for the developing baby.

I’ve got two months to go and am wondering what other foods might strike my fancy. I’m hoping for some healthy cravings, like fruits and vegetables, but I suspect I’m more likely to develop cravings for cupcakes and Swiss chocolate.

The other morning, I woke up to Justin leaning his head on my belly and trying to hear any thumps. Sweet. It’s been a rough road to get to this place.

From the beginning, I’ve tried to convey that this is our baby, not just mine. I thought it was important to get Justin involved and keep him involved. I talked to him about what went on in the appointments he couldn’t make, shared milestones, etc. And he’s tried hard from the start to stay involved, asking questions and letting me babble on about baby socks and weird biological details.

But it’s hard when the father doesn’t have much involvement in the whole process- at least, nowhere near as much as we women do! While we moms-to-be are going through morning sickness, feeling those first precious movements fluttering inside and hormones gone wild, the guy is usually on the sidelines wondering what to do.

For us, part of the difficulty was getting past the unexpectedness of it all. We had planned to have children eventually, but were thinking of “eventually” as maybe being a year or two down the road. And based on my past experiences trying to conceive in a previous relationship, we were expecting to have to use some medical assistance and maybe take a while before succeeding. So the ease and suddenness with which we went from international adventuring couple having fun across the world to prenatal appointments and contemplating future moves with a baby in tow has been a little overwhelming at times.

It may be a universal thing for the daddy to feel a bit out-of-sorts, though. At one of our early ultrasound appointments, Justin mentioned, “I know this is the right place because all of the men here look as shell shocked as I feel.” Nonetheless, over the course of the seven months we’ve been adjusting to pregnancy so far, he’s adjusted quite well. He’s talking to the belly now, and accompanies me to any major prenatal appointments, including all the ones involving ultrasounds.

I think now that he can really feel kicks from the outside and has seen the baby on ultrasound, he’s taking an active interest. He’s been good, too, with helping me however he can, although he does tease me about being lucky I’m pregnant since it means he has to clean anything I spill on the floor. All in all, I think I am lucky- but not for that reason! I’m lucky to have him here to help me and be supportive, and I know our baby will be lucky to have such a caring and involved dad.

I can’t stand maternity clothes. Love being pregnant, but maternity clothes are the height of awfulness, in my opinion. Which means I’m down to about three outfits for the next two months.

One of my problems is that I’m not a fan of pants to begin with- I don’t think I’ve owned any jeans since the 90s- so maternity pants are out of the question. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave many options.

I’m also not fond of dresses decorated with cartoon characters, which seems to be a theme at some of the stores I’ve encountered.

Here in China there’s a style of maternity clothes that have lead linings, aimed at protecting the pregnant woman from any potential exposure to radiation. Moms-to-be who work with computers often get these, since there is a general paranoia over computer radiation here that Western moms don’t tend to have. Some of these radiation dresses are, of course, decorated with cute cartoon characters.  Justin and my friends have been teasing me that I need to get an outfit like that. My answer is a very emphatic NO!

I tend to be an eclectic dresser anyway. My favorite style is best described as bohemian. I did manage to find a marvelous long brown flowy maternity skirt at a local market, along with a few extra large skirts that can accommodate my growing belly and some long tops made of stretchy material.

I’m also cheap- I’ll admit it. I hate the idea of buying clothes I’m only going to wear for a couple of months.  And maternity clothes are expensive! I just can’t justify paying three, four, ten times the amount I’d spend on normal clothes for a two-month purchase. I’d rather save the money to spend on cute baby stuff.

Some of my old skirts with elastic waistbands stretch enough that I can wear them under my bump, low on my hips, so that gives me a few possibilities. I don’t think they’ll last me much longer, though, since my bump seems to be growing at an accelerated rate now that I’m in my third trimester.

I guess having only three outfits is ok, as long as I remember to wash clothes every day. The people at work might get tired of seeing me wear the same thing over and over, but these days they’re paying more attention to my growing belly than to what I’m wearing anyway. I can always switch around the accessories if I have to. I’ve already arranged to borrow one of Justin’s large winter coats for December, since my streamlined coat isn’t gonna cut it anymore and I am SO not buying a maternity coat for one month. I’m sure I’m going to look a little silly practically swimming in his big coat, but at least the belly will be warm.

Aside from that, it’s been a fairly warm autumn so far and the central heating should turn on in a few weeks. So staying in my PJs until late in the day isn’t looking like a bad option for the next two months. When winter comes, maybe I’ll splurge on an extra-large robe.

Ok, somebody messed up on the name. Morning sickness should have been called “All- Day Sickness” or “Sickness that Hits When You Really Don’t Want It To”, or maybe “Get That Smell Away From Me Sickness.” Whatever the name, for me it was first trimester stomach hell.

I’d love for this to have been an exaggeration, but it really wasn’t, at least not for me. My morning sickness ranged from a general mild nausea throughout most days to a severe reaction whenever I’d encounter certain smells. Living in a country with a vast tradition of street food didn’t exactly help, either. I also tended to get extremely nauseous after taking my prenatal vitamins, which seemed really counter-intuitive on my body’s part. I kept trying to convince myself “I’m taking this to HELP the baby! Don’t reject it!”

Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as some people have it. I didn’t need to be ready to run to a bathroom and throw up multiple times a day, like some people I knew. The biggest issue for me was how constant it was. I truly felt like there was never a moment when my stomach actually felt ok. It was always either mildly bad, moderately bad or really awful. No respite.

One of the tips I found helpful to ease my churning pregnancy stomach was to eat a small amount of crackers whenever I anticipated severe nausea coming on. This was especially helpful when taken along with my daily prenatal and just before I went to bed. Early mornings were another time for crackers, and I kept a little packet of them at my bedside table just in case I needed them when I woke up.

I also carried around a packet of extremely sweet candy, which I’d eat whenever I wandered into an area that had potentially stomach-upsetting scents. No matter how adventurous eating grilled squid had once seemed to my non-pregnant adventuresome self, now whenever I got close to a cart of it, I’d pull out the candy. I found that holding a hand over my mouth and nose ensured that the candy scent and taste would drown out any other potential problem smells lingering in the air around me. It got to a point where Justin would see a cart ahead and tell me “pop a candy” before we got too close.

Despite the problems of morning sickness, I actually got off pretty lucky in the end. When my second trimester rolled around, my morning sickness dissipated. Turns out this is fairly common, since at about 16 weeks the placenta takes over most of the hormonal functions that cause or add to morning sickness, so the mom’s body isn’t flooded with them anymore. For me it was like waking up from a constant nagging nauseous dream into a pregnancy that actually felt good!

Among the many things I’ve learned during this pregnancy, one thing is certain- prenatal checkups involve an awful lot of blood draws! I feel like I’ve been pricked and poked with about a thousand needles by now.

For those just starting on this pregnancy journey who are afraid of needles, don’t worry too much about it. Many of the blood tests are simple ones that only involve a little prick on the tip of a finger. Those are basically checking for the basic levels of things like hemoglobin (which carries iron) in your blood. A low hemoglobin number usually indicates an iron deficiency, common in pregnancy since the baby is pulling a lot of iron out of the mom’s system and the mom’s blood is increasing in volume anyway. The solution for this minor problem is a simple one, either adding more iron to the diet in the form of red meat or taking an iron supplement. I had this problem at my 20 week appointment blood test but iron supplements and diet have cleared it up by now.

One of the more serious things that can be discovered in a blood draw is the possibility of high blood sugar, which can indicate potential gestational diabetes. I had this, too, at my 24 week appointment. (Sometimes I also feel like I’m the Queen of prenatal complications!) The test for this comes in a few parts. The first is a blood draw an hour after you drink a really nasty tasting sugar water concoction. If that test shows high blood sugar, you’ll have to go in for the three-hour OGTT, the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test.

For the OGTT, they took my blood when I came in, after fasting overnight, then made me drink two cups of the nasty glucose solution. Then they took blood at 1, 2, and 3 hours after. The results for this test show how the body reacts to sugar over time, and if these results show high blood sugar in two of the four samples, then you’ll be diagnosed with gestational diabetes.
If this happens, the doctor will recommend a diet to keep your blood sugar levels steady or possibly insulin shots if the sugar levels are very high. Most of the time, the OGTT results come out in a normal range and the woman doesn’t have to do anything different.

Mine were a little high at two of the points, so technically, I have mild gestational diabetes. In my case, the doctor had me eat small meals or snacks five times a day, cut out a lot of sugary stuff and focus on complex carbohydrates and proteins. A week later, a quick finger-prick glucose test two hours after a meal showed perfect glucose levels, so my prescription is to keep up the diet and they’ll keep an eye on my sugar levels when I come in for checkups.

Overall, the blood tests might be an annoyance, but it’s good to have them, because they definitely do point out potential problems early. And most of the problems diagnosed through blood tests are fairly easy to fix as long as they are known about and monitored.

So, I’m trying to decide what to go as for Halloween this year, since I’m sporting a big belly that begs to be incorporated into a costume.

The way I figure it, I’ll probably never again have this opportunity. Even if Justin and I end up having more kids later, chances are I won’t be in my third trimester when Halloween rolls around. So this is my one opportunity to design something to show off the belly.

The first decision is whether to go cute, scary or funny. On the “cute” side, there are a lot of painted belly ideas, like painting it as a pumpkin or watermelon and dressing as a farmer or scarecrow. Someone else suggested painting a fishbowl and being a cat. Or a basketball and dressing as a basketball player.

On the scary side, there’s always a little alien from the Alien movies, which would mostly rely on Justin’s ability to make a baby alien from foam and other materials we could find and figuring out how to hook it onto the belly. Another scary Halloween idea for a mom-to-be is as a headless person with the belly painted as the “head” you’re carrying around. (Or a Spooky Hollow type headless person carrying a jack-o-lantern head) There’s also always the idea of turning a traditional scary costume into a pregnant version- like a pregnant vampire, zombie or ghost.

Some funny ideas that have been suggested are the pregnant nun (with Justin dressed as a priest) or a pregnant angel with him as a devil. There are lots of other preggo characters to choose from, too- pregnant cheerleader, redneck couple or famous pregnant celebrities, for example. Also in the funny category are things like dressing as a man with a beer belly or a character like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Other options are plays on words of things people commonly say in pregnancy. If you’re complaining that you feel like a beached whale, why not dress as exactly that- a beached whale? A cow, with belly as the udder, is another idea.

I may, of course, come up with something totally different- or maybe find a way to blend multiple ideas that I like. A pregnant pirate ghost perhaps?

Whatever costume I choose, I’m definitely planning on taking lots of pictures. I want to be able to show my son later in life what he was for his “first” Halloween.

I’d heard of the idea of baby brain before getting pregnant, but I wasn’t quite sure what that experience was like.  Well, I’ve become one of the afflicted, developing the classic Baby Brain symptoms of forgetting absolutely everything, living on a hormonal overdrive and becoming embarrassingly scatterbrained.

One symptom of Baby Brain is the cry-inducing nature of pregnancy hormones that turn a normally cheerful woman into a ball of tears at the slightest hint of something heartwarming or sad. My partner, Justin, thinks I have become some strange overly emotional creature now that I cry at heartwarming commercials featuring babies. Even when I know the commercial is overdramatic and silly.

But the worst came during a trip to the movie theater to see Transformers 2, when he turned to me to find tears streaming down my face as giant robots died on the screen. I think he wasn’t sure whether to feel sorry for the robots or for me!

Another symptom showed up as mild forgetfulness. Now, I’m generally not a forgetful person. I’m probably the only person I know who hasn’t managed to lose my keys or cell phone by leaving it in a cab or at a restaurant or somewhere like that. I once lost a hat in a cab and have berated myself ever since then. But this pregnancy thing has really done a number on my brain cells.

I’m now forgetting little things left and right. It started simply, things like forgetting to tell the taxi driver which exit to turn off and missing my apartment entirely, necessitating a turnaround and backtracking. I moved on to walking to the apartment elevator, or sometimes making it down to the lobby, before remembering to go back and get my umbrella or turn off the air conditioner or even to lock the door.

But the worst was when I left a student’s home after a tutoring session. As in many Asian countries, it is customary here in China to slip off your shoes at the door and wear little house slippers or flip-flops inside the home. After finishing a tutoring session, I made it halfway down the hall before realizing that I had forgotten my shoes! You can’t imagine how embarrassing it is to have to knock on the door and explain to a 13 year old that you, the teacher, forgot her shoes inside and can you please come back in and get them before you get on the elevator.

I guess I don’t mind the Baby Brain symptoms too much, since most people are understanding, and also a little entertained, by my strange behavior lately. I know the hormones will calm down after the baby is born, although loss of sleep will probably bring on even more potentially embarrassing and amusing (for everyone else) situations. I’m pretty sure its all worth it in the end, though. As long as I don’t forget anything too important!