Test Results

Yesterday I took my Glucose Tolerance test. It involves chugging a sugary drink (sort of tastes like flat Sunkist) and then waiting an hour and having your blood drawn. It wasn't so bad. We got to the lab at 3:20, and then at 3:30 we had our monthly check-up with Dr. V upstairs. So I chugged the drink and we went to our appointment.

Everything at our check-up looked great. I'm up to 155lbs. My b/p was 120/70. Clara sounded awesome on the doppler and I'm now measuring 29 weeks (still 1 week ahead). We'll now be going to see Dr. V. every 2 weeks starting August 26th. Dr. V. also wanted us to start taking "kick-counts." Basically we need to pick two 2-hour parts of the day when she's active and count movements. Thanks to Android "there's an app for that." She already passed this morning's count...in 5 minutes she had all her movements in and she was still at it hours later!

After our appointment we went back downstairs to wait for the rest of the hour to be up so I could get my blood drawn and we could go home. Compared to the last time I had blood drawn, it wasn't bad at all! The tech got the vein on the first try and we were in and out in 5 minutes.

This morning I called the office. My doctor isn't in on Fridays, but his nurse said I could call and at least get my results. The triage nurse told me that my glucose results were 140, which is the cutoff point. She wasn't sure what Dr. V's protocol is for this situation. Either I will have to do the dreaded 3-hour test, or I'll just have to watch what I eat. The 3-hour test is much the same as the one-hour test. However, for the 3-hour test you must fast for 12 hours beforehand. Then you must chug the drink. Then you sit at the clinic and wait while they draw your blood once per hour. You're at the clinic for 4 hours. Number one: I can't fast. I'm ravenous and get really nasty angry when I'm hungry. Number two: I don't want to sit at the clinic for 4 hours doing nothing. And number three: I'll either have to take another day off of work (which I don't have) or do it on my Friday off, which is not how I want to spend my Friday off.

The other test that I had done was to test my iron and hematocrit levels. This test also came back low. This one isn't as big of a deal. Most women end up being anemic during their pregnancies. She said my doctor may prescribe me a supplement, or what I think I'll do is just go to Walgreens and pick up an OTC iron supplement. The only side effect? Constipation. I'm not looking forward to that. Pregnancy already gums up the digestive works, so throwing iron on top of that isn't going to be real pleasant. But they make things for that, too. I'll just be taking a fist full of pills every morning!!

Tonight at 3p.m. we have our follow-up ultrasound. This is just to check on the placement of the placenta: to make sure it has either moved up or hasn't moved any lower since the last one 4 weeks ago. I'm looking forward to this!! I love seeing our daughter on the ultrasound. :) I'll try and post the "results" of this tomorrow, but I don't really see any problems, and I don't even know if I'll know anything more tomorrow. That might be something else I'll have to wait til next week for.