Between all the appointments, blood tests, and ultrasounds—not to mention your body feeling completely different—pregnancy can make you feel like a test subject at the worst possible moments. Therefore, given that some people Options One test, and another appointment and lab work is given up. But Cora Bryant, who posts as @weylynsmama on TikTok, urges all moms-to-be not to skip this step Very Important test.
“Let’s talk about why I think you should never, ever, never, ever say no to a blood sugar test,” she begins in a recent video.
Content warning: missing children.
Bryant explained that she was planning to have her first child at home. Her midwife offered a glucose test, a routine screening recommended for all pregnant women between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy to check for gestational diabetes, or GD. GD is a temporary form of diabetes in which the body is unable to produce enough insulin to meet increasing insulin demands, causing blood sugar to rise.
Mothers with GD are at increased risk of developing preeclampsia, which is dangerously high blood pressure during or immediately after pregnancy that can lead to liver and kidney damage, stroke, seizures, and death. Babies born to mothers with GD are at higher risk of having a higher birth weight (especially with very large shoulders, which can cause them to get stuck during delivery); being born prematurely, which can lead to a range of problems, including difficulty breathing; Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, can cause seizures; and stillbirth.
In most cases, GD does not cause symptoms that most people will notice, which is why screening is done through a urine or blood test. Bryant’s midwife did see signs that might suggest a diagnosis of GD, including sugar in Bryant’s urine and elevated blood sugar on a finger prick test (more on that later), but she wasn’t worried.
“I think we blindly choose to trust our providers,” she reflects. Tragically, her son, Weylyn Craig Allen Bryant, was stillborn at 37 weeks in March, weighing 10 pounds, 5 ounces.
“I hope this video will reach out to vulnerable moms out there, knowing that I am in no way judging them for wanting or planning a home birth, but simply wanting them to still get the best prenatal care possible to ensure that they and The safety of my children,” Bryant told Horror Mom via email. “Anyone with a placenta can truly develop GD. You don’t have to look a certain way or have an unhealthy lifestyle. I was a healthy weight, ate a healthy diet, and exercised regularly…and still am.
So why do moms skip this test in the first place?
Bryant, a self-described “vulnerable mom,” said looking back, she didn’t have all the information about the risks.
“I don’t think I educated myself properly and was told properly what to expect besides a big baby,” Bryant explained.
For equally vulnerable moms—who strive to limit interventions during pregnancy and birth, and who may choose to follow a particularly conscientious diet—the idea of drinking 50 grams of glucose sounds unpleasant at best, and at worst may appear unhealthy or dangerous.
In fact, on social media, you can find accounts claiming the toxicity of glucose — the super-sweet drink usually flavored with orange that is used for testing. Health influencers have decried the test as unnecessary, with one chiropractor calling it “the most disturbing test” and claiming healthy people have no reason to undergo it. This is untrue. While some people are at greater risk for GD, including those who are above average weight and those with a family history of diabetes, Dr. Shannon Clark, an obstetrician-gynecologist who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, was quoted as saying in a social media post. : BabiesOver35, “Anyone, I mean anyone, People with a placenta may develop gestational diabetes. While some influencers rightly point out the existence of now-banned brominated vegetable oils, or BVO Somealthough not mostGlucose drinks, the truth is that the negative effects of BVO are cumulative: one drink during pregnancy is considered safe, and certainly much safer than undiagnosed GD.
But it’s not just influencers encouraging people to abandon this important test. Ina May Gaskin is an iconoclast in the birthing world, and her books are popular among those who want to have an unmedicated or home birth. (My own midwife suggested I read Ina Mae’s Guide to Childbirth Preparing for my VBAC delivery…”Take it with a grain of salt.”)
on her guideGaskin believes that GD “is not really a disease” (it is one) and that “the anxiety this test often creates is simply not worth the information gained from it.” She derides glucose tolerance tests as “not very reliable. ” because most people who fail the one-hour screening test will find their results normal after a second three-hour test.
Like Bryant’s midwife, Gaskin noted that she chose to use urine test strips during her prenatal visits to check for the presence of sugar (a telltale sign of GD) and a glucometer to determine the level of glucose in her blood at any given time, Also called a blood glucose meter. However, a recent study from Kobe University in Japan found that casual blood glucose testing missed up to 70% of GD diagnoses.
Gaskin claims that “the best evidence we have shows that no treatment for GD, whether diet or insulin, improves outcomes for mothers or their babies,” but that’s simply not true.
Some people take a more middle-of-the-road approach to their blood sugar tests, but they’re also very enthusiastic on social media. They tout glucose alternatives, from specially made glucose test mixes like The Fresh Test to juices, gummies, sodas and other foods.
Although these alternatives can raise blood sugar, they have not been tested during pregnancy. (While jelly beans were tested as a substitute for glucose in 1999, recreating the experiment’s precise metrics proved difficult, and subsequent testing found them to be less accurate than the test for glucose.) Additionally, food-based Substitutes usually do not have the same type Sugar (glucose, fructose, and sucrose all behave differently in the body) may react differently than pure glucose due to the presence of fiber, protein, and other naturally occurring chemicals in food.
“A blood sugar test is no worse than anything else you put into your body, I promise You,” Kobe points out in the video. Here’s the truth: Glucose, citric acid, citrus, sodium benzoate, artificial flavors, and more are found in a variety of foods that most of us eat every day.
Kobe is pregnant again. She had GD again, but this time it was correctly diagnosed and she monitored her blood sugar multiple times a day to ensure a healthy pregnancy.
“I just think we need to educate mothers on why they should participate in GD [test] “Don’t bully them into accepting it,” she said in the TikTok post, which had more than 1 million views at press time. “But I do think we should tell them, if they say no, we should tell them the risk factors instead of just saying ‘You might have a big baby.'”
