Prenatal care - what to expect from a glucose test

We discusses prenatal care to some extent in previous weeks. Today, we will discuss glucose tests, which most doctors recommend. Glucose tests are essentially screening tests, that are carried out to find out more about a woman's chances of having gestational diabetes, a conditions that needs a lot of care and attention. Glucose tests are among the more nasty tests that you will be asked to participate in while you are pregnant. It's one of those things you are likely to prefer going into with a bit of information!

Blood tests and urine tests will always precede the glucose screening tests, and if any of your urine tests show abnormal results, you will be asked to take part in the glucose tests earlier on in pregnancy. As a rule, pregnant woman who take the glucose test do so between 24 weeks and 28 weeks gestation. So, what happens during this infamous glucose test? As the name of the test already indicates, you will be given a lot of glucose. This 50 grams of glucose is brought to you in the form of an extremely sweet and yucky drink. If you are lucky, you will be offered a choice of flavors lime, cola, or orange. If you are not lucky then well, you will just drink a very sweet water with a lot of glucose.

You will have to drink all of the stuff in less than five minutes, to add to your misery. An hour later (yes, you will have to lounge around your doctor's office all that time), you will have a blood sample taken from your arm. This is to check your blood sugar level, and tests how well your body processes sugar. If your test comes back with worrying results, you will then have to undergo a three-hour glucose test to see if you do in fact have gestational diabetes.