Skipping the Glucose Screen

My midwives do not routinely do the 1 hour glucose screen for gestational diabetes.  I couldn't be happier.  I think it was routine at HCMC and I hated pretty much every second of that entire hour plus some.  I felt dizzy and gross and couldn't believe what  had just done to my body.  Then I was sure I would fail it, because I felt like crap, but I passed.  I swore I would never drink that crap ever again, which is BRIGHT orange and tastes horrible.

Doing more digging I don't even think I even have any risk factors for gestational diabetes.  I'm young, I'm not over-weight, only late-onset type 2 diabetes runs in my family, and only to over-weight members of it.  I gained 55 pounds last pregnancy and was totally fine, and I'm gaining slightly less this time around.  I'm also starting this pregnancy 7 pound lighter and I beleive with less fat and more muscle mass.  Generally I'm a bit healthier than I was last time.

And I also found out that if you fail the 1 hour test, you do a 3 hour test, good god, that sounds awful.  The one-hour test isn't even a diagnostic, it's just a screening.  And there don't even seem to be very straight-foward guidelines for diagnosing GD anyway.  And I can tell you from experience that ultrasounds are total crap at telling you how big your baby is.  I was told I was having a ginormous 97th percentile baby!  They were wrong.

So, I'm not going to do it.  Late pregnancy makes me pretty adverse to sugar anyway.  I feel sick easily from it.  It's just another part of digestion that is all messed up while pregnant for me.  Fatty foods give me heartburn, I crave dairy like crazy, hate meat, and can't eat much sugar if I don't want to regret it.

Just mark this under a long list of things I wish I knew last pregnancy.  We're also not checking my urine every single visit, because it turns out that might not be very indicative of anything either.  I still need to decide on the GBS test.  I will probably do the same prevention method I did last time, get the test, but probably won't do anything much different if it's positive, unless my water breaks well before labor starts.