With Andy, I failed the one hour with a 131. By one stinking, miserable little point. I suffered through the three hour and passed no problem. The three hour is awful. You fast all night long, go in without having had anything to eat, have your blood drawn, drink a SUPER syrupy orange beverage, and then have your blood drawn three more times in one hour intervals. By the time you're done, you're starving, ready to pass out, and your arms look like they belong to some hard core intravenous drug user, not a whiny, timid pregnant mother. Then, after you do the final blood draw at the three hour mark, you get in your car, slap yourself into not fainting, eat a six pack of cheese crackers, and then drive to the nearest Burger King and order a number one with cheese, plus a milkshake.
If your blood levels are okay for at least three of the four blood draws, you pass and can go on living your regular, non-diabetic lifestyle. You get a free pass for consuming as many sugars and carbs as you can in the next three months before baby arrives. I'm pretty sure the doctors encourage outright carbo-gluttony once you get that passing grade. If you fail more than one of the blood draws though- well, now your carb loving ass has a real problem.
I passed the three hour just fine with Andy and went on to birth a healthy baby boy after gaining a whopping 45 pounds through the span of my pregnancy. I guess you could say I won.
This time around, I wanted to make sure I wouldn't fail that one hour screening by a lousy point, so I prepared hard for it. On the day of the test, I ate a semi-normal breakfast, drank a ton of water, and then went on to have a high protein lunch consisting of three hard-boiled eggs and a string cheese. I felt like the office weirdo during my lunch as I shamefully hunched over my stinky eggs and limp string cheese during my break. I could just imagine my co-workers talking behind my back as I burped up eggs for the rest of the day. "Did you see what Jackie was eating for lunch today?" they were likely murmuring. "She's seriously lost her mind. What's she going to have for dinner tonight- the rind of a lemon and a couple of steamed raisin skins?"*
After consuming my high boredom, high protein lunch, I drank so much water that my stomach hurt and then, around 2:30, drove to the doctor's office. I had to stop four times to pee. My plan was to enter the screening with enough protein to completely break down the sugars in the glucose drink and also have enough water floating around my body so that my blood would be as diluted as possible. I'm clearly not a doctor, and I obviously don't know what I'm doing, so if none of this sounds like the right way to approach a simple screening, then there's a reason for that. It's not, and I'm an idiot.
I failed my one hour screening not by ONE stinking little point but by FORTY-EIGHT stinking little points. At an impressive 178, I was definitely on the wrong end of the glucose tolerance scale, and when the nurses called the next morning to deliver the news and tell me that I had to take the three hour test, they did not sound nearly as upbeat about my impending prognosis as they had two years ago when I'd failed the screening with my 131.
My first response was sheer panic. I'm pretty sure I blurted out something about all the eggs that I ate, and then I asked, "Can we just pretend this didn't happen, and can I opt out of the three hour test?" The nurse's reply was to lecture me about the dangers of gestational diabetes and how it can result in a still born baby. Now, I may not be up for dealing with my own problems or having to make any sort of sacrifice for my own benefit- but at the still born baby comment, I grumbled that I'd be there on Tuesday morning, slammed the phone down, and then immediately walked into the bathroom to scream into a towel.
I don't want gestational diabetes. I was a thousand percent sure that I didn't actually have gestational diabetes, and would have maintained this staunch... denial... even if my screening had come in at over 200. I started this pregnancy at 110 pounds, have only gained 15 pounds, and have felt, for the most part, fantastic. I have zero of the risk factors. I don't think it's a fair test to make me consume 100 mg of pure sugar on an empty stomach and then make a judgement about my health based on how my body reacts to an unreasonable situation that it would never be put in otherwise. When's the last time I sat around and consumed 100 mg of pure sugar all by itself with no other protein, etc? Add to that the sheer stress of having your blood drawn, and now I have a new problem- my blood pressure is through the freaking roof. Stop putting needles in me. I don't like it, and my arms hurt.
And, selfishly, I did not want to alter my diet or prick my fingers or put myself through any sort of inconvenience for the next three months. There, I said it. I don't want the label of having had gestational diabetes on my medical chart, I don't want to be bothered with carb monitoring, and I certainly don't want to test my blood sugar four times a day. That all being said, is having gestational diabetes the worst thing in the world? Nope. It goes away after the baby is born, and it's pretty common. I hear the diet is easy and totally manageable. And of all the horrible complications that a pregnant woman can having during this time, the diabetes is probably the best one to hope for. I'm embarrassed how upset I've been about this prospect while knowing what some other women have had the misfortune of dealing with. That doesn't change the fact that the prospect of being diagnosed gestational diabetes pretty much consumed my life for five days and caused me a decent amount of lost sleep. I do not deal with adversity well at all. I freak out if I get mildly unpleasant news during a routine oil change.In addition to not dealing well with adversity, I also require a lot of blind reassurance in order to function. "Do you think I have gestational diabetes?" I asked my friends over the weekend. My friends are in no way qualified to answer that sort of question, as they are neither doctors or psychics. "No, really- do you think I have gestational diabetes? Do I look like I have gestational diabetes? Then why was that number so high????"
The only person who gave me the answer I did not want to hear was my beloved husband Chris, who replied, "Yeah, well, looks like you probably have diabetes" followed shortly by, "If I hear the word 'diabetes' one more time this weekend, I'm filing for a separation." Followed shortly by, "Hey, do we have any ice cream?"
On Tuesday, I went back to the doctor's office with butterflies in my stomach. I grilled the nurse on my odds of passing, did my first blood draw, drank my disgusting drink, and then snuck out of the waiting room and walked to Walgreens, where I wandered the aisles for a little bit in an effort to burn off some of the sugar. There was no way I was going to SIT in that waiting room and not give my body the fighting chance of metabolizing some of that crap. I bought a five dollar magazine (since when do magazines cost so much??), a big bottle of water, walked back to the doctors office, and drank my water. Right before my hour was up, I went to the bathroom, did a couple of deep knee bends, and headed back to the nurses' station to do my second blood draw.
This routine continued for another two hours. During those two hours, I had two conversations with women in the waiting room. One woman was very nice, and we engaged in a polite amount of small talk. The other woman was super weird and insisted on asking me personal questions and then showing me pictures of her sons. I did not offer to show her any pictures of Andy.
After my final blood draw, I left the doctor's office, ate my crackers in the car, and nearly passed out behind the wheel as I drove up Route 59 in search of burgers, fries, and a little piece of sanity.
This morning, I anxiously awaited my phone call from the doctor's office. I felt like a teenager waiting for a call from a boy, checking my phone ever thirty seconds to make sure I had plenty of bars and that it hadn't accidentally turned off for some reason. When at last I got the call, it was almost 10:30, and my stomach was in knots. "HELLO???" I screamed nervously into the phone as I picked up during the middle of the first ring. "It's me, did I pass???"
"Your blood sugar was so low by the fourth blood draw, I'm surprised you were able to walk out," the nurse said, sounding half amused and half alarmed. "It was down to thirty-three."
"So, I passed?" I replied, ignoring the possible medical consequences of what she had just said about my near coma-like blood sugar levels.
"Yes, you passed," she replied, and I whooped it up into the phone, bid her a good day, and hung up quickly before she could make any other comments about the state of my pancreas.
So, there you have it. I have a clean bill of health, at least when it comes to gestational diabetes, and a new lease on life. I'm going to try my best to maintain my good weight gain and to eat healthy as I continue into the third trimester of my second pregnancy, and I'm going to do my best to not be such a whiny bitch next time I have a possible, non-life threatening, totally manageable issue on the horizion. Because, let's be honest, I kind of lost it here for a bit.
Potato, anyone?
* If this doesn't ring a bell, you need to watch some of the comedic stylings of Brian Reagan.
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