Man, I need to work on this blog frequency thing!
OK so update on the last 3 weeks!
I think it was shortly after my last post that I got sick with some sniffles that one of the germ-carrier-offspring brought home.
Usually, it's NBD but as a pregnant lady, your immune system is shot, and to worsen the effects you can't actually take any meaningful medication. Don't tell me about some herbal nonsense I should take, there's no proof any of that is safer than Guaifenesin.
So fast forward 3 weeks, I'm just now pulling out of the cold.
But that's not what I am writing about today...
Somewhere about 2 weeks into the cold I took the official prenatal Blood Glucose test to test for Gestational Diabetes.
Gestational Diabetes, as far as I know, is a risk if you are 1) pre-diabetic, 2) overweight, 3) inactive, 4) have a poor diet. I'd like to think I'm none of those things.
The reason they test for this is that pregnant ladies cannot process sugars as well during pregnancy, so momma can get pre-eclampsia (serious) and the baby gets all the calories & hence gets very big (leading to complicated deliveries).
The test works as follows:
You POUND I think somewhere around 50g of sugar (in a beverage) in about 5 minutes. I'magine Gatorade, but like 3x sweeter. To give you some context, a 12oz can of Coke has 39g of sugar.
This is what 50g of sugar looks like.
An hour after you drink the sugar-water, they draw your blood to see how your body is processing it.
For me, it's hell. In the hour between drinking the sugar concoction and getting my blood drawn, I felt truly hopped up on some stimulant. I couldn't speak in full sentences, driving to the midwives, I was thinking to myself that operating a vehicle was a really bad idea because I was so distracted & jumpy.
Today, the midwives called me with the results and as it turned out, my body did not process sugar at all & I will need to go back & drink more sugar drink to confirm if I have Gestational Diabetes. Huge disappointment, and I feel, frankly, wrongly accused of a crime.
Basically I've known since early in pregnancy that my body cannot process refined sugars, so I stopped eating them altogether. I think I only had one piece of halloween candy, and I'm fairly confident I'll have no trouble making it through Thanksgiving & Christmas without eating any treats, whatsoever. But the medical test is backwards in that I'm literally bombarding my system with something I already have the good sense to avoid, and then I'm being measured on how my body treats this stimulant/toxin. It's just backwards.
I started doing some reading on the internets about paleo diets and the blood glucose test, and at the risk of wandering into crazy-paleo-alternate-reality it sounds like this is a very real thing -- people who have given up refined sugars and grains (paging
@gtluke) take this blood sugar test and their bodies go WHAAAAAT THE FUUUUUCK HAPPPPPPENED and then they get diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes and are forced (literally, in some cases) to follow recommendations of ill-informed nutritionists who are accustomed to dispensing nutritional advice to overweight women who exist on ice cream and fast food through their entire pregnancy.
It's still early, I need to do the followup test to confirm, but I have this nagging suspicion that it'll come back with the same result and I'll have to convince them that I don't, in fact, have GD.
More to come on that front. I'm debating faking the test, but there is a part of me that worries if I do, in fact, have Gestational Diabetes then I'm putting myself and the baby at risk, which I don't want to do.
It's 10 days until I re-take the test so in the meantime I'm going to log every morsel I eat (even through thanksgiving) and all the exercise, and let all the evidence speak for itself.
If you've managed to read my rant this far... a few questions:
1) Do you know anyone who was diagnosed with GD? Did they meet the risk factors I outlined above?
2) What would you feel like if you