I had another appointment with my midwife this morning. We got to see the report from our follow-up ultrasound and as we suspected, the cyst was smaller. It was 4.8mm at our first ultrasound at 20 weeks and 2-3mm at our follow-up ultrasound at 24 weeks. The doctor indicated in his report that no further ultrasounds are necessary since everything else was normal and it would be expected that this cyst would disappear completely by around 28 weeks.
Our appointments go to every 2 weeks now, so the next appointment is in the afternoon on November 12th. I’ll be at 28 weeks then, which is when they normally recommend doing the gestational diabetes screen. It is an optional test, but I decided to have it done. I just have to eat a box of smarties an hour before my appointment and then the midwife will take my blood. I could also have had the test done in a lab where I would have to drink glucose syrup, but smarties sounded way more enjoyable!
4 comments:
I'm surprised they gave you an option. Seems like eating smarties would be less accurate?
My dad had to be tested for diabetes earlier this year, and he had to go to the lab, drink the glucose syrup and then have blood drawn at two time intervals - 1 and 3 hours later (which had to be accurate almost to the minute). His second blood sample was taken an hour late, since there was a wait, and my mom (who was a medical lab tech for 25 years +) was severely ticked. The results were basically garbage since they compare results to "standards" which are highly sensitive to time and concentration.
Not only the sugar concentration could be variable, but the time required to digest smarties, versus the immediate reaction from drinking a liquid sugar.
Obviously they don't feel that's an issue. But with my dad's experience this year and knowing how sensitive this analysis is, I'd have opted for the glucose syrup.
It's not a perfect test. There are lots of false positives, even if you go the lab/syrup route.
I have to eat a certain amount of smarties so that the amount of sugar in that is exactly the same as the amount of sugar in the syrup. I just didn't want to have to miss more work time to go to the lab to have it done. This way, I just eat the smarties before my next appointment with the midwife and she draws my blood then. No extra trip to the lab.
I agree that it doesn't seem as accurate, but this test isn't a very good test to begin with. I was considering opting out of it completely, but I figured any excuse to eat more chocolate is okay with me! My mom even said that she read somewhere that the grandma-to-be needs to eat smarties too ;)
Ah, ok.
I think because my dad's test was for "regular" diabetes, they were more concerned. The way they did his test, it was a false negative that would be the issue, since his blood sugar would be lower an hour later. My mom was ticked because if he does have diabetes, his glaucoma will be a HUGE issue and he could go blind.
I had a friend in highschool who found out she had diabetes when she suddenly went blind one day. After she started treatments, her sight came back thank goodness, but I can't imagine how scary that must have been!
I think I would get the test done too, since I think it's always better to know these things than to have my head in the sand! :)
You get smarties... no fair! ;)
I went into the GDS test expecting the worst, but I actually found that the syrupy-drink wasn't that bad. Tasted a lot like flat orange pop, just a little thicker.
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