Monarchgrrl, your family is gorgeous!
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Equilibrium- I don't know what to say. Focus on taking care of yourself and your kids and try not to obsess about the food/weight/what has gone before. You may gain less if you started bigger (like you did with #2, your ending weight was the same but your gain was less) For me food logs, frequent smaller meals, and cutting out (almost) all sugar and most starches has been a great diet. Hard, and not always so soothing, but actually I am not hungry all the time or having cravings. I have to keep the food logs for my MW, and man they really do help. When I think, "I'll have to write that down" its easier to turn stuff down. Also, it helps me to sort of plan stuff out- like to see that I haven't really eaten enough protein in the past 4 hours, maybe that is why I am feeling so darn hungry. For me keeping protein, fat, and veggies WAY up, like consciously eating them all the time, keeps me fuller and makes it easier to forgo the junk food (also not keeping any around helps! its a contest between laziness and cravings...)
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You're right - I would want to know. I'd rather have an AC1 instead of a GTT, though. Not only do you avoid the hour of sitting there and drinking that solution, but it is a more accurate picture of your blood sugar levels over a few months. The recommended amount of sugar per day for most women is under 30 grams. Taking 50 grams at once doesn't give the clearest picture.
problem with A1C for diagnosing GD is that it looks at average sugars over past 3 months, if you really have GD it wouldn't look like much- since it would only develop between around 24-28 weeks. So by the time it did much to your A1C, it would be after the fact. Also it can apparently look low when you are anemic (it looks at sugar bound to hemoglobin, so if you have low hemoglobin, it will come up low, that is the explanation I read anyway). And lots of pregnant women are slightly or even more than slightly anemic. Anyway it surely would tell you if you actually have underlying insulin/glucose problems which would also be good information.
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That said, I agree GTT is a bad test, but not sure what a good alternative would really be. What I did this time is do self-monitoring, all fastings, 1-hour post-prandials, at least once a day and often more, and some other random jabs to see what is going on. That is more work than most women are going to want to do.
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I do absolutely want to know what is going on, for a couple of reasons, and I am delighted that I have been able to use diet to keep my blood sugars very normal. For myself, and particularly for my unborn kids (apparently the uterine exposure to high blood glucose levels seems to "predispose" them to developing type II, and they have a good chance of crappy genes already on that score since my mom and DH's dad are both T2... would love to at least take one risk factor out of it).
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anyway sorry, not trying to go off on a rant!













 I was told that I can decline any tests, but suddenly it feels like they aren't trusting me... There has been a lot of emphasis on my weight this entire pregnancy - in the beginning I thought it was just something they needed to say but now that they are considering 'risking' me out of a homebirth I feel upset. I get A LOT of exercise and I eat healthy ... drink lots of water ... and many people have actually commented that I seem small for how far along I am (will be 32 weeks on Saturday). I feel a little betrayed ... *sigh*
I don't understand why'd they'd consider you risked out of a home birth since the information you provided seems kind of borderline, no? But I don't know how cautious midwives need to be... Since you started out at 245 and only gained 3 lbs, that doesn't seem bad to me at all. I started out at 208 and have gained 33 lbs, so I'm close to your weight now too. Although, I am tall at 5'9", so I suppose height makes a big difference with BMI and all that. (I'm not sure how tall you are.) It's never been an alarm to any of the health practitioners I've seen in or out of a hospital setting during my pregnancy. I declined the GD test too. My midwife said it was unnecessary as long as I'm eating a good diet since that's all they'd recommend for me anyway. Does a BP of 125/82 actually count as pre-eclampsia? If you aren't formally diagnosed with it, I wouldn't think you should be risked out for that slightly elevated BP either! I was tested for pre-eclampsia and it's my understanding that you have to have several other symptoms confirmed before diagnosis. As for your measuring 2 cm ahead, I'd personally be a tad skeptical of that myself just because I feel like different midwives/OB's measure differently. I experienced that once during my pregnancy when I saw my clinical midwife one day and a few days later saw my regular OP midwife whose measurement was 1 cm less than the clinical. I obviously didn't lose a cm in that time, so they just arrived at different measurements.

