I'm finding old posts that I had either written or pulled way back when - and it's felt like a treasure trove of forgotten memories. Take this one for example - when I was pregnant with the boys in the third trimester, in October 2019, and there were still protests. Protests in Hong Kong! Before the National Security Law was passed, before Covid turned the entire world upside down. I had forgotten that we shut down the office at certain points due to fears of inaccessibility and tear gas. A different time, a different life.
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So what has been happening since the third week of October? A lot.
Work kicked my a** last week - mainly because I procrastinated on a mega-complicated agreement and then the client came back asking for all three agreements almost at the same time. I found myself in the office both mornings last weekend, working furiously until the evening, and getting in super early during the workday too to try to get a jump start on the load.
I don't know what it is about the early morning, but I feel like time magically expands so that I can get so much more done during that time. Is it because everyone else is asleep? Or it's just quieter in the office? Working solidly for 3 hours at 7 am beats working solidly for 4 hours at 7 pm every time. I once read that you should not start your day by clearing your inbox, or reading or responding to emails, but rather by tackling THE hardest and most challenging thing you have to work on for that day. It overcomes your desire to procrastinate and also uses the power hours of the day most efficiently. It also makes your day feel great after the weight of the most onerous task has been lifted. I love the idea and generally try to do this when possible, but when you have a task that takes days to do, this strategy doesn't really work.
So basically by 9 or 10 pm every night last night I was well and truly wiped.
On Halloween night, I was horrified to learn that I had a three hour conference call starting at 8 pm... and it was a call that I knew I really should do in the office. Conference call lines can be incredibly unclear, especially when there are multiple parties, and I would need all of my faculties and printer, desk space, huge monitor, and documents all at my fingertips. In retrospect, I am so glad I was responsible and dragged myself back into work.
This was a transaction based on another transaction on which I had not worked on. I was the new member to the deal team, pinch hitting for two others who had all of the prior institutional knowledge. To make matters worse, it turned out the call had nearly 40 people on it - 5 counterparties and all of their external lawyers, wanting to ask why things had changed in the documents. To make matters really worse, not only did the call go for nearly 3 hours, they pulled a complete doozy on me and asked me to run it! I was the only person dialing in remotely; everyone else was sitting together in a conference room. I had expected to be listening in on commercial discussions. And to make matters the worst, the entire office was deserted/shut down because of protest warnings, so I had no one to keep me company, not even a night secretary. I was very relieved when my call ended and I could still manage to get an Uber home. It's moments like these that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Talk about nervewracking.
In other news, my struggle with GD continues, an epic battle of time, diet, contrasting advice from doctors and nutritionists and just trying to manage it all within the realistic timeframes of a busy life. I met with an endocrinologist after I returned from London to get a second opinion on my GD numbers and at the recommendation of my GP. Then while there, I met with a nutritionist who walked with me through my daily diet to try to help me figure out if I was getting enough of the right nutrients.
My numbers had been really good, but she helped me realize that it was in large part due to the fact that I had not been eating enough carbs, which I really do need in order to grow two babies. They recommend a 2000 kcal diet for a pregant woman with twins, and especially because I was "lean" pre-pregnancy. She seemed particularly concerned whether I was getting enough and if the babies were growing on track. At her advice, I started trying to include more carbs in my meals, which I was previously avoiding, like pasta, rice, bread, crackers, and trying to include more dairy, like soy milk or milk, to get more carbohydrates and calcium.
It's been a bit worrying because for the last two weeks I have had to test myself a lot more often to check what foods "trigger" me, and my numbers have been all over the place. The endocrinologist recommended a fasting number of no more than 5.5 mmol/L and a post-meal number of no more than 7.5 mmol/L, and I have blown through the numbers at least once if not multiple times on the days that I test. I am scheduling another follow up appointment to see if I'm just doing the meal planning and testing wrong, or if these numbers aren't as bad as they look, or whether it's time to throw in the towel and get insulin.
I have spent some time thinking about why, initially, I was so resistant to the idea of insulin. It's really treated as kind of the "taboo" thing in a lot of circles - a lot of GD moms will report proudly that they were "entirely diet controlled" and, while not shaming anyone on insulin, inherently assumes that being on insulin is a bad or shameful thing. I think most of my resistance came from the idea of having to inject myself, as I really hate needles. And the thought of having to do that every day just seemed horrible. But I think there was also a fear that having to use insulin with GD would somehow contaminate me and lead to my having to use insulin post pregnancy, like I didn't pass and would have to live with this ailment for the rest of my life.
Ultimately, doing finger pricking doesn't sound like a difficult task, but it's really proven impossible for me. I never remember to test 2 hours after I've eaten. My weekdays are full of calls followed by meetings followed by drafting or working or trying to get things out asap - do you know how hard it is to remember when you first started eating, and to make sure you test 2 hours after that? I have tried to set alarms but it's frankly a lot of alarms to keep track of. I sometimes also can't control my hunger - if I don't have time to fully plan out a big meal at lunch, or get hungry too quickly after breakfast and then need to snack, either before the two hour window or else too late/close to my next meal, I mess up my numbers. Blah.
Work kicked my a** last week - mainly because I procrastinated on a mega-complicated agreement and then the client came back asking for all three agreements almost at the same time. I found myself in the office both mornings last weekend, working furiously until the evening, and getting in super early during the workday too to try to get a jump start on the load.
I don't know what it is about the early morning, but I feel like time magically expands so that I can get so much more done during that time. Is it because everyone else is asleep? Or it's just quieter in the office? Working solidly for 3 hours at 7 am beats working solidly for 4 hours at 7 pm every time. I once read that you should not start your day by clearing your inbox, or reading or responding to emails, but rather by tackling THE hardest and most challenging thing you have to work on for that day. It overcomes your desire to procrastinate and also uses the power hours of the day most efficiently. It also makes your day feel great after the weight of the most onerous task has been lifted. I love the idea and generally try to do this when possible, but when you have a task that takes days to do, this strategy doesn't really work.
So basically by 9 or 10 pm every night last night I was well and truly wiped.
On Halloween night, I was horrified to learn that I had a three hour conference call starting at 8 pm... and it was a call that I knew I really should do in the office. Conference call lines can be incredibly unclear, especially when there are multiple parties, and I would need all of my faculties and printer, desk space, huge monitor, and documents all at my fingertips. In retrospect, I am so glad I was responsible and dragged myself back into work.
This was a transaction based on another transaction on which I had not worked on. I was the new member to the deal team, pinch hitting for two others who had all of the prior institutional knowledge. To make matters worse, it turned out the call had nearly 40 people on it - 5 counterparties and all of their external lawyers, wanting to ask why things had changed in the documents. To make matters really worse, not only did the call go for nearly 3 hours, they pulled a complete doozy on me and asked me to run it! I was the only person dialing in remotely; everyone else was sitting together in a conference room. I had expected to be listening in on commercial discussions. And to make matters the worst, the entire office was deserted/shut down because of protest warnings, so I had no one to keep me company, not even a night secretary. I was very relieved when my call ended and I could still manage to get an Uber home. It's moments like these that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Talk about nervewracking.
In other news, my struggle with GD continues, an epic battle of time, diet, contrasting advice from doctors and nutritionists and just trying to manage it all within the realistic timeframes of a busy life. I met with an endocrinologist after I returned from London to get a second opinion on my GD numbers and at the recommendation of my GP. Then while there, I met with a nutritionist who walked with me through my daily diet to try to help me figure out if I was getting enough of the right nutrients.
My numbers had been really good, but she helped me realize that it was in large part due to the fact that I had not been eating enough carbs, which I really do need in order to grow two babies. They recommend a 2000 kcal diet for a pregant woman with twins, and especially because I was "lean" pre-pregnancy. She seemed particularly concerned whether I was getting enough and if the babies were growing on track. At her advice, I started trying to include more carbs in my meals, which I was previously avoiding, like pasta, rice, bread, crackers, and trying to include more dairy, like soy milk or milk, to get more carbohydrates and calcium.
It's been a bit worrying because for the last two weeks I have had to test myself a lot more often to check what foods "trigger" me, and my numbers have been all over the place. The endocrinologist recommended a fasting number of no more than 5.5 mmol/L and a post-meal number of no more than 7.5 mmol/L, and I have blown through the numbers at least once if not multiple times on the days that I test. I am scheduling another follow up appointment to see if I'm just doing the meal planning and testing wrong, or if these numbers aren't as bad as they look, or whether it's time to throw in the towel and get insulin.
I have spent some time thinking about why, initially, I was so resistant to the idea of insulin. It's really treated as kind of the "taboo" thing in a lot of circles - a lot of GD moms will report proudly that they were "entirely diet controlled" and, while not shaming anyone on insulin, inherently assumes that being on insulin is a bad or shameful thing. I think most of my resistance came from the idea of having to inject myself, as I really hate needles. And the thought of having to do that every day just seemed horrible. But I think there was also a fear that having to use insulin with GD would somehow contaminate me and lead to my having to use insulin post pregnancy, like I didn't pass and would have to live with this ailment for the rest of my life.
Ultimately, doing finger pricking doesn't sound like a difficult task, but it's really proven impossible for me. I never remember to test 2 hours after I've eaten. My weekdays are full of calls followed by meetings followed by drafting or working or trying to get things out asap - do you know how hard it is to remember when you first started eating, and to make sure you test 2 hours after that? I have tried to set alarms but it's frankly a lot of alarms to keep track of. I sometimes also can't control my hunger - if I don't have time to fully plan out a big meal at lunch, or get hungry too quickly after breakfast and then need to snack, either before the two hour window or else too late/close to my next meal, I mess up my numbers. Blah.
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