An Open Letter to the Glucose Test

Hello, Glucose test.

We meet again.

I confess, I didn’t miss you one bit in our time apart. In fact, I disparaged you to all of my loved ones, and likened your saccharine taste to countless disgusting budget candies you get from your lame neighbors on Halloween. I claimed you were worse than Bottle Caps, and there wasn’t an ounce of irony to the words. (Don’t worry; I did admit you were more palatable than Neco Wafers, though not by much.)

This time around, though, I’m prepared. My new doctor’s office gave me the drink to take home, I guess operating on the assumption that I wouldn’t dump you straight down the sink while cackling madly like a 1950’s cartoon witch. They think I am a Responsible Adult, which is as flattering as it is terrifying.

To be fair, I didn’t dump you down the sink. Instead, I stored you in my fridge, sure that making you colder would make you less offensive to the taste buds, and shot you silent glares every time I reached past you to grab my economy-sized tub of cottage cheese. (Cottage cheese is also gross but still not as gross as you.)

I was wrong about that, though, wasn’t I? When it came time to chug you – they were very clear that it had to be chugging, leisurely sipping just wouldn’t do – I knuckled down and braced myself and poured as much of you into my piehole as I could handle. Just like last time, I gagged. A sugary cloud of fluorescent orange liquid misted over my face, stickying my chin and nose to the delight of my toddler. She loves being sticky despite my disgust; it must have been a real boon for her to have finally dragged me down to her level.

But I persevered. I took a deep breath, knuckled down, and swallowed the rest of you with all of the strength and resilience I’d built up from my years as an undergrad who thought Aristocrat was passable vodka. It wasn’t pretty, and I choked a little bit more as my daughter danced around me gleefully, but I’d done it. The worst was over. I had made the glucose drink my bitch for the second time, and now it was time to go pass that damn test with flying freaking colors.

Unfortunately, what I didn’t count on was the lab being closed for lunch.

That’s right, ladies and dads. There are strict rules around the glucose test, one of which being that your blood must be drawn exactly one hour after your last sip. And here I stood, locked out of the lab, staring forlornly at my own reflection with mouth agape as I watched the digital clock on the wall tick by – one minute late. Two minutes late. Too many minutes late.

I couldn’t take the test. I’d downed that drink for nothing. I had played myself.

So let this be a lesson to all of the heavy-bellied girls out there who think that since it’s your second pregnancy, you can fly by the seat of your pants: I did some pants-seat-flying, and it did not work out for me. No one should have to drink the glucose drink twice in the span of one week, no one except the idiot who didn’t check Google for the laboratory hours.

And for those women who are as on the ball with Baby #2 and they were with the first: how do you do it?! Please reach out to me because I am clearly suffering. I don’t even know what vegetable my baby is this week.

Save yourself. Be organized. Your palate will thank you.