Three Hour Chinese Sugar Torture Test

I keep all my old calendar planners. Does anyone else do that or is this yet another frightening manifestation of my control freak personality? I buy big, beautiful leather bound calendars. The kind that show the entire month on one double page spread with plenty of room for notes and scratch-outs. I have every one since college wasting space in a manila envelope in my filing cabinet. During occasional cleaning fits, I consider throwing them away, but the only journals I've ever kept are contained in the reminders scribbled on each day's two inch square.

My current calendar (in lilac purple leather) spans March 2007 to August 2008. I don't know how I will let this one go into the file because of the way my heart breaks and swells when I flip through it. For months last summer, as their language exploded, I recorded Ess and Gee's new words each day. I recorded the weeks of Cue's pregnancy. Alongside the baby trivia, I also documented the roller coaster of life with our older son in laughably terse prose. Therapy appointments and phone calls. Innocuous on the surface, but hiding major decisions and agony behind their dry notation.

This morning, I happened to glance at this week, June 2-9, 2007. A week of my life contained in neat print entries fit into two inch squares. On Saturday: "seven months pregnant." Cue's arrival was just seven weeks away. On Thursday: "7 p.m. Call with Smiths." The first actual conversation we would have with the couple that would become our oldest son's second adoptive family. On Friday at the top of the square: "8:30 a.m. 3 hour sugar test." Also, at the bottom of that same day, "bless you - Ess and Gee."

That last entry cracks me up. Friday, June 8, 2007 was not one of the better days I've ever lived, but then again, it's not in the worst twenty either. That dubious distinction is reserved for days like a Tuesday later that same month. That entry reads "our son leaves with B and S, 5 p.m." Such a simple note for the last day I would probably ever see the little boy who had been a part of our lives for over two years.

I had failed my one hour glucose test a few weeks prior and had an 8:30 a.m. appointment to take the three hour test. If you haven't experienced the three hour sugar torture test, it's really fun. Ask for one if you ever get a chance. The lab instructed me to fast for 12 hours before the appointment. For a pregnant woman, at least for me as a pregnant woman, not eating equals unpredictable nausea.

HSSH hadn't been able to get that Friday off and I couldn't get a sitter. I didn't really know anyone in town. At more than 12 hours since my last meal, I arrived at my midwife's office with my 22 month old daughter and 20 month old son in tow. The nurse took my fasting blood sugar level and then handed me a huge bottle of orange liquid derived from whatever mix of chemicals they put into Fanta to make it that alien-life-form orange color. Mixed with sugar, tons of sugar. I'm guessing maybe two huge grocery store bags of sugar? Minimum. Minus the pleasing fizz.

The nurse advised me to drink it fast so that it didn't get warm. Plus, there's a time limit in the sport of pregnant alien orange goop chugging, apparently. If you can't beat the clock, you have to do it again a different day. I chugged like a champion. They should put this stuff on ESPN II or, at the very least, a Japanese game show.

Post chug, they take your blood every hour for three hours (hence the name of the test) to see if you are processing the sugar correctly. If not, you're diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I survived the first hour in the waiting room looking at the fish tank and reading ripped, fraying books to my toddlers. I gave blood again at hour one. I survived the second hour prostrate on three chairs in the play area, blocking my toddlers' access to the rest of the room and trying not to move for fear I would puke right there on the floor in front of the fish tank.

When they called my name at hour two, I managed to get Ess and Gee strapped into the double stroller and wheeled back into the lab. I somehow remained upright through the blood draw. I stood up from the stool in the small lab and I knew it was over. I'd fought the good fight, but it wasn't my day. Fear and alien orange sugar were a factor for me.

As I lowered myself to the floor, just inches from my babies' dangling legs, I remember the nurse saying "you look pale" and barely answering "I'm going to be sick" before I was, repeatedly, into the proffered trash can. My children watched with studious fascination. After considering my retching carefully for a minute, Gee said, "Bless you, Momma." Without thinking, I croaked, "Thank you, baby." This delighted them. All sports are more fun with audience participation. Thereafter, each time I gagged up another mouthful of orange syrup, my little cherubs chirped "Bless you, momma, bless you" from their ringside seats. Their new words for that day.

I wonder if I would remember all of this, if I hadn't written "bless you - Ess and Gee" in my calendar that night at the end of a long day. Writing this story after seeing those little notes convinces me to hang onto all my calendars. Even life's littlest notes are worth something looking back.