Saturday, April 15, 2006

Stay

Coldplay has left the building. We've moved on to Lisa Loeb and "Stay". Again, if you are inclined to watch the video, you can scroll down to the bottom of my sidebar and watch it there. An oldie, but goodie, in my opinion. Also-if you do not want to hear the music, simply hit the "stop" button at the top of your page.

So I failed the 3 hour glucose test. While Gestational Diabetes affects 3-5% of women in pregnancy and then goes away after the baby is born, it still came to a shock to me and I spent a lot of time crying yesterday. Not sure what GD is? Here's a brief description from The American Diabetes Association:

Gestational diabetes affects the mother in late pregnancy, after the baby's body has been formed, but while the baby is busy growing. Because of this, gestational diabetes does not cause the kinds of birth defects sometimes seen in babies whose mothers had diabetes before pregnancy.

However, untreated or poorly controlled gestational diabetes can hurt your baby. When you have gestational diabetes, your pancreas works overtime to produce insulin, but the insulin does not lower your blood glucose levels. Although insulin does not cross the placenta, glucose and other nutrients do. So extra blood glucose goes through the placenta, giving the baby high blood glucose levels. This causes the baby's pancreas to make extra insulin to get rid of the blood glucose. Since the baby is getting more energy than it needs to grow and develop, the extra energy is stored as fat.

This can lead to macrosomia, or a "fat" baby. Babies with macrosomia face health problems of their own, including damage to their shoulders during birth. Because of the extra insulin made by the baby's pancreas, newborns may have very low blood glucose levels at birth and are also at higher risk for breathing problems. Babies with excess insulin become children who are at risk for obesity and adults who are at risk for type 2 diabetes.


For the 3 hour test, I had to fast for 12 hours and then arrive at the office at 8am. They drew blood to check my fasting blood level. Then I had to drink 100g of a delicious ultra-sugary glucola beverage. It's kind of like drinking the syrup from pop without the carbonation...although there is a hint of carbonation. After that-I sit in the waiting room and they call me back to draw blood at 1 hour, 2 hour and 3 hours.

My results showed that my fasting and 3 hour levels were normal but my 1 & 2 hour levels were not normal. My Doctor's office said I am not too far off the charts. So Monday I have to set up an appointment with a nurse/dietition(?). I am not exactly clear who I'll be seeing except they will come into my home and talk to me about GD, discuss a diet, and show me how to check my blood sugar. Yes, I will have to check my blood about 4 times a day. *sniffle* This is all upsetting to me because I feel like I am a healthy eater already and to have to check my blood?...But apparently my body just isn't producing enough insulin or not affectively using it.

So really it is not a big deal. There can be so many worse things that could happen so in the big scheme of things, this is minor. And today I am 28 weeks along so I will only have to do this for 3 months. Since my levels aren't too abnormal, diet should control the problem. If it does not, I may have to take meds or insulin everyday. *insert scared face here*

The only positive side to this (besides the fact that I'm being closely monitored and my baby should be born healthy and fine) is that I get to have additional ultrasounds to watch his growth and see that he doesn't get too big. Typically in a normal pregnancy you get only 2 ultrasounds.

Not sure why the banner at the top of the page isn't working...and I'll have to come back when I have a 28 week belly pic. Hope everyone has a Happy Easter. It seems like Spring is here.

4 comments:

Kim said...

I'm sorry you failed your 3 hr test. :-(

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