So I Gots the Diabeetus

Thankfully it's the gestational kind but still...

In my first trimester I was screened for gestational diabetes (GD) because I met three risk factors - I'll be 35 or older at time of delivery (I'll be 35), I'm carrying multiples, and I have a parent with diabetes (thanks Dad). That test was negative. At my last OB/Gyn appointment two weeks before my hospital stay, my doctor ordered a one hour diabetes screening test for me, which all pregnant women get at the beginning of their third trimester. She said I could get it that day, but didn't recommend it if I'd eaten a lot of starch right before seeing her. (Oops. Flash back to my all potato lunch a half hour before.)

Wilford Brimley might be next in line to replace my obsession with Patrick Swayze. Who would have thought Swayze would be the first to go?

Fast forward to two weeks later in the hospital. I requested the diabetes test while I was there so I wouldn't have to make a special trip back. But they ordered me the three hour fasting test instead of the one hour screening. I tried to talk my way into the one hour screening since I didn't want to have to fast for 12 hours and miss breakfast but it was to no avail. So I got to drink the glucola, a super sugary orange or lime (depending on the flavor you get) drink that tastes like really terrible fruit soda, and they took my blood four times - once to get my fasting level, and then three times in one hour increments after the glucola. That night I found out I tested positive. I passed the fasting and one hour marks, but missed the two and three hour ones. Which means I would have probably passed the one hour screening! (Plus it's possible the steroids I took to strengthen the babies' lungs may have made my blood sugar levels higher.) Of course since the three hour test is the more rigorous one those scores stood and I wouldn't be given the one hour one which is really just a screening test. But still... crap.

Thankfully before I found out, I finally got one of the Haagen Dazs ice cream bars they bring around to hospital patients.



More Wilford. Hmmm... now that's a name I haven't heard on a baby ever. Maybe it's time to bring it back... Wilford Swayze Pilloff?

Then the next morning a nurse came by to administer the one hour test and mysteriously said one of the doctors had ordered it. I drank the nasty Glucola again, and an hour later, literally right when the nurse was about to test my blood sugar, she got a phone call saying the test had been canceled. I tried to convince her to do it anyway to no avail. So they gave the super sugary Glucola to someone with diabetes for nothing. (Ironically they wondered why my blood sugar was high when I was tested after lunch. I was like, "Um, Glucola?")

There's nothing like having Glucola for breakfast to days in a row.

This happened my last day in the hospital when I found my cervix had "miraculously" closed to 1 cm and I could go home. The only thing that could have made the day perfect would have been finding out I no longer had the beetus.

So now I'm at home and I have to prick a finger four times a day (when I first wake up and an hour after each meal). Thankfully it's just the diet-controlled beetus and not the insulin one.


I test my blood four times a day to make sure I'm not in the Kenny Loggins blood sugar danger zone.