The day after my one hour glucose tolerance test, I received a call from the doctor's office. I was already expecting a call, so it wasn't a surprise. She told me that I'd failed the test and that while the typical course of action was to send a woman for a second three-hour glucose tolerance test after failing the first one, my levels had been so high that they could just skip the second test and diagnose me with gestational diabetes. Apparently, if the reading is over 200, they know there's a problem. My number was 250. Fun! At least that explained why I ended up with the sugar low a few hours after the test.
They had gone ahead and set me up with an appointment a few days later with a diabetes nurse educator and a dietician who would discuss blood sugar monitoring and diet with me and help to get things on track.
I was a bit concerned about how my sugar levels could be impacting the baby and was also wondering if they'd been out of whack since the beginning or if this was a recent development. Online research suggests that uncontrolled blood sugars can lead to a higher incidence of birth defects, large birthweight babies, and blood sugar crashes for the baby after birth. The latter two seemed manageable enough since the situation was caught early, but I still wonder and worry about the birth defect piece.
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