27 Weeks – GD Testing

The joy of hitting 27 weeks (or around there for some) in a pregnancy is the lovely gestational diabetes test.  If you don’t know exactly what this is about then I can tell you it is where you drink an orange drink and more of you will nod your head in understanding.  If you still don’t understand, then let me tell you the basics.  They test you to make sure that you do not have gestational diabetes, which can cause major harm to you and your baby if it goes undetected.  Normally this goes away after said baby enters the world but something you want to know about.  They test you by having you drink an orange drink that everyone and their brother will make you dread trying.  From there they do a blood draw and let you know later in the day what the outcome is.

For some reason I was really getting worked up over this test.  I’m not a big sugar person but this baby is her father’s child and I have eaten candy corn like everyday is Halloween.  That is a lot of sugar to me.  So I was slowly convincing myself that I was going to have GD.  The night before the test I inhaled candy corn assuming the worst case scenario-I wouldn’t be able to have more.

We went in last Friday for a perinatologist appointment, which was another big ultrasound to check baby’s growth.  The timing of downing my orange drink had to be very specific so I was to drink it before starting the ultrasound and then get my blood drawn an hour after.  I’m not going to lie, Rebecca and the Husband both took a tiny sip of the drink out of curiosity.  I had five minutes to down the drink but took 30 seconds while my two assistants there sang me a pirate song.  For those dreading this drink, it seriously is not that bad.  Sugary and flat.  Down it and life goes on.

We spent the next 45 minutes watching our little nugget dance in circles once again as she has no idea how to sit still through one of these.  She made the tech work for every measurement but the doctor came in and confirmed with us that her growth is right on track and everything looks good.  She currently weighs 2lbs 9oz.  We will do one more growth scan in 6 weeks.  This means I can continue on my current heart medication and we don’t need to change it up as it doesn’t seem to be affecting her growth.

We then went down to my doctor’s office for a quick check with her, blood draw and were out the door for a three-day weekend get away.  On the way out-of-town the nurse called to let me know the good news- no GD for us! Candy corn all around! I breathed a huge sigh of relief and had a much better time enjoying our weekend away.