Thirty-two weeks pregnant: glucose tolerance test and gestational diabetes

Bugger, I can’t reach my water, I think lethargically.

‘Please could you pass me my water?,’ I ask Matthew beseechingly, necessitating him getting up, crossing half the room to pass me my glass which is only centimetres out of my reach. He does so – not for the first time – ungrudgingly, seeing first-hand how overwhelmingly tired I have been and how awful I look.

As I lie there I realise with slow-creeping certainty that this is not normal. I mean, I remember feeling tired before and, sure, I have three small children and a baby in utero that between them don’t let me sleep much but this tiredness and generally feeling crappy is exceptional. My anaemia blood test results came back fine so I telephone and book myself in for a glucose tolerance test even though I will have to call in yet another favour with a friend just so I can spend four hours at the hospital starving and nauseated.

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Last time I went for the gestational diabetes test it was like a day out. Because when you are home all day with small children any kind of break from them takes on a new kind of pleasure. Even if it involves throwing up, fasting and being stuck with needles.

This time the test isn’t so bad. During the long wait I finally get a chance to finish reading Tracy Thompson’s book Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Depression – possibly not the best book to go waving about in a waiting room full of pregnant women – which I have been reading to try and get a handle on how I have been feeling recently. After the second blood test I gratefully gulp down the cup of tea offered and drive into town. I have someone to look after the children for the whole day so I make the most of it by having lunch out and then doing a bit of shopping – an altogether more pleasant experience without my crying, tantrum-laden toddler in tow. It hurts to walk far but I do anyway, remembering that this is probably my last time alone before the baby comes.

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The hospital calls pretty much right away. It’s not the news I wanted to hear, nor really expected despite my semi-obvious symptoms of excessive thirst and tiredness.

The midwife runs through the diet basics: swap simple carbs for complex carbs and refined sugar for natural sugar. I think of my daily diet, which has relied on refined carbs to keep the nausea at bay, and look in the cupboard where I can see nothing complex or natural.

She runs through the risks to me and the baby: early induction is likely because of the risks of a large baby (my babies are already large without gestional diabetes) and to reduce the risk of stillbirth, a 3% risk of stillbirth and 1% risk of the baby dying in the first month, a 50% risk of me developing diabetes in the next 10-15 years.

She invites me for a three hour appointment at the hospital for checks and advice. I think momentarily about declining, the way she makes it sound like I have a choice, and think how Matthew is not going to be thrilled that he must stay home, even though he was due to fly to the States. ‘You’ll be monitored weekly but this is the longest appointment,’ she says, as if that makes the whole thought of weekly trips to the hospital with three small children any better.

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Sugar withdrawal is nasty.

Already tired and depressed, I start to feel even worse. I start to hallucinate about bowls of cereal and milk and a milky, chocolate-covered cappuccino. I scrounge through the cupboards looking for snacks that don’t involve sugar. There’s nothing.

I go out to the grocery store and wander up and down the nut aisle. I come away with a basket full of wholemeal bread, brown rice, nuts and chickpeas, feeling virtuous but uninspired.

I’m already the environmentalist. Now I’m the lentil-loving hippie too.

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The recipes in my GI diet recipe books don’t look too bad. It’s a wake-up call for my diet, I think. It’s a warning system that I am susceptible to late-onset diabetes. I have a chance to change my ways now. Before it’s too late.

I try not to think about chocolate cake.

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And so now I will be having a baby in six weeks, instead of ten weeks. As I have to be induced, at least I don’t have to wait until I am fifteen days overdue like last time. Because being fifteen days overdue with a big baby was so much fun.

Six weeks. I’d better get on and order the poor thing a mattress. And a chocolate cake for me for the moment the baby arrives.

Tagged as: gestational diabetes