I had very good intentions to live a semi-normal life this week and even find time to write about it, but good intentions, it seems, have not managed to clean up my kitchen. This is a good summary of how this week has gone:

(Click through to Flickr to read notes on what items are in this mess!)

Good intentions, after all, could not overcome the 100 degree weather that descended on Portland this week, forcing us to hole up in the air conditioned bedroom, barely venturing downstairs to the kitchen except for very late at night and very early in the morning, when it was a livable 85 or 90 degrees. At seven months pregnant, it was all I could do most days to get some sleep, some food, and some exercise, without collapsing into a pile of tantrums and heat fevers. So perhaps it’s not that odd that our kitchen counter, normally the place where we, you know, prepare food, looks like it does.

Something else happened this week, though: I’ve been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I am on a two-week trial of testing my blood four times a day to see if my glucose levels can be controlled by diet and exercise alone. This has put our plans of a homebirth temporarily on hold; if my glucose levels do not respond well (meaning I’m eating right and exercising a lot and they STILL won’t go down), I will need to receive medication to control it further. And once you start receiving medication for gestational diabetes, the midwives transfer you to a specialist obstetrician, and a hospital birth is the only safe choice.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and processing about this. It’s really difficult to steer away from the doom-and-gloom thoughts (I’m a failure! I’ll end up strapped down and overmedicated in the hospital!) to more positive ones (I’m going to do everything I can to help my body! I can have a fully aware and present birth even in the hospital!). I won’t know until sometime next week how we will proceed. Lacking a crystal ball, I’ve been doing my best to make the right choices and do the best I know how.

So aside from the heat, I’ve been more engrossed with the inner workings of my blood, rather than the state of our kitchen counters. But I still wanted to record this week, because not everything is photogenic and easy, and I want to remind myself that it’s all okay, really. Really.