Maybe it was your mother, maybe it was your best friend. Maybe it was your Uncle Stan, your aunt’s creepy second husband who never knows when to stop. It could also have been your grandmother. Maybe it was all of them. Somewhere along the road however, you heard horrific stories about birth.

I was always envious of people who grew up knowing exactly what their career trajectory looked like. How did they know that? Were their parents more strict? Did I lack some internal barometer of my own abilities? I still don’t know the answer, but now I am too old to give a shit. Sometimes callings find you late, and being late to the party is always a little hip.

What We Do: The Nitty Gritty

…And what we don’t do, because that is also important.

I didn’t think anything of my glucose tolerance test leading up to it. After all, I had no risk factors for it as far as I knew. I was 31, not a young mom, but not yet what the medical establishment refers to as a “geriatric pregnancy” by any means (seriously, fuck that term). I was reasonably fit and walked up to 6 miles a day. And honestly I had that “it won’t happen to me” mentality that so many first time parents adopt. I wreaked of pregnancy privilege. I don’t even know if that is a thing, but I had it. And man oh man, I took the diagnosis hard.