What to Expect During Your Glucose Test

A pregnancy glucose test is a routine part of your pregnancy examination.  This article gives you information on what to expect during your glucose tolerance test.

Gestational diabetes is a high blood sugar condition that some pregnant women get. And therefore, women need to be tested for this condition at about 24-28 weeks into their pregnancies. You may be tested earlier if your routine urine samples contain high amounts of sugar. A woman who has already been diagnosed with diabetes before becoming pregnant will not have to take this test.

The procedure is fairly simple

The first thing to tell you is to bring along a book, magazine, portable CD player, or something that will occupy your time for an hour or so. You will be given a sugar solution that will contain 50 grams of glucose. It will taste a lot like sweet soda. The nice thing is that it comes in cola, orange or lime flavors. That’s the good news. The bad new is that you have to drink it all within five minutes. Lots of places will keep some chilled, and even let you put it on ice if you need to, just to help you be able to drink it within your allotted time of five minutes. You will then need to wait an hour to be tested. (This is where your favorite kind of entertainment comes into play).

Taking a blood sample

After your hour is up, either your doctor or a lab technician will draw some blood from you. This test is to see how fast your body processes sugar. You will then need to wait a few days for the results to come back.

Some women may get nauseous

Some pregnant women will get nauseated after drinking the solution. A suggestion would be to eat something a few hours before the test. Because if you get sick and throw up after you drink the solution, you will have to reschedule to come back again. But, in reality, most women get through the test in fine shape.

If the results of this test come back with an abnormal reading, it does not always mean that you have gestational diabetes. As a matter of fact, most women who have an abnormal reading from this test don’t end up with gestational diabetes at all. However, if you do have an abnormal reading of 13-140 milligrams of glucose per deciliter of blood plasma or higher, you will need to go on the next phase of the test called glucose tolerance test, or GTT. This test will be a fasting test. You will need to drink another glucose solution and be tested every hour for three hours.

If those results come back abnormal, then you and your doctor will decide where to go from there. Gestational diabetes will not harm you or your baby if it is regularly monitored and managed by your doctor.