I took the three-hour glucose test and…

I passed!! My fasting baseline was 90, which I was told is very good. I didn’t bother getting the rest of the scores; I’m pleased enough to know I passed. I can assume my scores at each hour fell below the maximums listed (from BabyCenter.com):

Abnormal Scores
Fasting: 95 mg/dl or higher
One hour: 180 mg/dl or higher
Two hours: 155 mg/dl or higher
Three hours: 140 mg/dl or higher

The nurse said if even one score had been abnormal they would have diagnosed me with gestational diabetes. The doctor still requires I watch my intake of sugar and carbohydrates (makes sense), which I’ve done all along. This means, however, I will give up the one thing I crave and have permitted myself up until now: Concord grape juice (100% no sugar added). I was drinking one 8 ounce glass a day; the combination of sweet and tart, and that particular taste of Concord grape, is like the Nectar of Life to me. As cravings go, it’s not a particularly bad one. Even so, I’ll be curtailing consumption.

The woman I chatted with yesterday was four months pregnant. She’d had gestational diabetes with her first child, so they were testing her early. Talking with her brought the point home that it’s not a woman’s “fault” if she has it (although poor diet surely has an effect): she’s very slim, professes to hate sugar and sweet foods (which I believe, as she’s Indian; over the years, a lot of folks I’ve met from Asia have been puzzled by the American obsession with desserts and sweets), and is a vegetarian. And yet she still had it once and might again.

I’m glad I decided to tough it out and take the test.

*One of my favorite comic strips, Calvin and Hobbes, featured a fictional cereal called Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. From the website:

Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame has been known to eat Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs which Calvin says are “tasty, lip-smacking, crunchy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside, and they don’t have a single natural ingredient or essential vitamin to get in the way of that rich, fudgy taste.” Hobbes says the cereal makes his heart skip and likens this cereal to “eating a bowl of milk duds”.