28 Week appt. & Glucose Screening Test

Like I stated in my last post, I had a regular monthly pre-natal appointment scheduled for last Friday (a day after my ultrasound). I was scheduled to see another doctor in the practice that I had not seen before - his name is Dr. Heider. He was very pleasant and informative. All in all, the appointment went very well. Here are some stats from that appointment:

• Blood pressure: 110/80
  
• Weight gain: 3.5 lbs for a running total of 13 lbs
  
• Jacob's heartbeat: 141 bpm
  

After I was finished with Dr. Heider, he gave me the paperwork to go down to the Lab, which is located in the same building as the OB/GYN office, to do my Glucose Screening Test, which tests for Gestational Diabetes. I had been told by a few of my friends who had already been through this, that it was pretty awful, so I was prepared for the worst.

I was pleasantly surprised when the Lab Tech handed me a small water-bottle sized container of fruit punch flavored liquid. I guess from what I had heard from other people, I expected it to be a gallon of liquid that I had to drink. Thankfully - even though I am not a fan of fruit punch - it went down very easily, didn't taste bad at all, and I was done drinking it in a matter of minutes. Once I was finished and handed the empty bottle back to the Tech, she wrote down the time and said that she would take a blood sample from me in one hour. I made my way to the seating area, found a interesting looking magazine (I think it was Redbook, but I can't quite remember) and sat down to wait an hour. Once the hour was up, she took a blood sample and told me that the result would be sent to the doctor the next day.

Yesterday, a nurse from the OB/GYN office called and said that my results came back and my glucose level was elevated - it was 166 milligrams of glucose per deciliter of blood plasma (mg/dL). She said that it wasn't super high but higher than they would like to see. A level of 200 mg/dL or over definitely means you have diabetes and she said that anything over 130 mg/dL means that the woman has to have a follow-up test called a Glucose Tolerance Test. This test is similar to the Screening test except I have to drink twice the amount of glucose liquid AND it is a three hour test. This time, after I drink the sugary stuff, I have to have my blood drawn one hour, two hours, and three hours afterwards. Fun times, huh?

I have this three hour test scheduled for tomorrow morning at 8:30am. I guess I need to bring a good book and just plan to hunker down in the waiting room all morning. I am wondering if they have wireless internet access in the lab....maybe I will bring my laptop and see if I can actually accomplish something worthwhile (ya know, like blogging or reading blogs or facebooking....those sorts of things. HAHA). Anyways, hopefully I will get the results back tomorrow afternoon or Thursday at the latest. I will be sure to post an update once I have the results.

Please pray that things continue to go well for Jacob (and me) and that all of this testing comes out normal. I will certainly do whatever I need to do to make sure that the baby and I are both healthy during these last few months, but having to deal with diabetes (if, in fact, I do have it) will not be fun!