Glucose Testing, Smuclose Testing!

Early on in my pregnancy I was referred to babycenter.com by a lot of my friends. It's a website that has all sorts of neat pregnancy resources, in addition they send you weekly email updates on you and your baby's development. It's been neat to see how each week a new miracle happens and how amazing this entire process is.

I was EXTRA elated this week to read that I finally get out of something in my pregnancy. Wohoo! No glucose screening test for me :-P Finally diabetes gets me out of something during pregnancy, ha ha!

How your baby's growing:

Your baby's growing steadily, having gained about 4 ounces since last week. That puts her at just over a pound. Since she's almost a foot long (picture an ear of corn), she cuts a pretty lean figure at this point, but her body is filling out proportionally and she'll soon start to plump up. Her brain is also growing quickly now, and her taste buds are continuing to develop. Her lungs are developing "branches" of the respiratory "tree" as well as cells that produce surfactant, a substance that will help her air sacs inflate once she hits the outside world. Her skin is still thin and translucent, but that will start to change soon.

How your life's changing:

Most women have a glucose screening test (also called a glucose challenge test or GCT) between now and 28 weeks. This test checks for gestational diabetes, a pregnancy-related high-blood-sugar condition. Untreated diabetes increases your risk of having a difficult vaginal delivery or needing a cesarean section because it causes your baby to grow too large, especially in his upper body. It also raises your baby's odds for other complications like low blood sugar right after birth. A positive result on your GCT doesn't mean you have gestational diabetes, but it does mean that you'll need to take the glucose tolerance test (GTT) to find out for sure.