Last week the midwife told me that I would be doing the one- hour glucose test at my next apt. I explained to her that I do not normally eat sugar and that I was pretty sure I would have a major reaction to such a sugar binge, regardless of whether I had gestational diabetes. I'm pretty sure I would throw up everywhere. Anyways, I told her that another midwife practice I had researched offered a fingerstick instead. So she told me to find out exactly what they did and she would look into it. I e-mailed my doula (who is also a midwife :) and she gave me this info:
"the information can be found in anne frye's textbook: holistic midwifery volume 1..... Standard ob testing involves a glucose load of at least 50 g. Some women react badly to this especially if they do not normally eat a lot of sugar normally. It will be a type of shock reaction (starvation diabetes) and not true diabetes... The pancreas can not produce insulin quickly enough after a sugar load such as this and makes the mother feel sick. Then when the pancreas catches up to produce the insulin it can cause a sugar crash appearing to be hypoglycemia. What we do is counsel dietary intake and exercise for prevention of gd and preeclampsia. You can do a fingerstick about an hr after a good meal. If it indicates hyperglycemia then further testing is warranted. Another way to screen is a first morning stick after overnight fast and should be less than 120. But keep in mind the midwifery model of care differs from the medical model so the standard ob procedure has been the glucose drink "
I sent the info to my midwife practice and they said it made sense and it would be fine for me to do the fingerstick instead of the glucose sugar rush test! I was amazed. The big OB practice that I used with my previous two pregnancies would never have agreed to deviating from the norm. I am so thankful that I switched to a small midwife practice!
