The Test Most Women Never Get

There is one appointment after a GDM pregnancy that matters more than any other, and it is the one most commonly missed.

Between four and twelve weeks after delivery, you should have a glucose test — usually a 75 gram oral glucose tolerance test — to check whether your blood sugar has returned to normal.

Why it gets skipped is easy to understand. The pregnancy is over, the baby has arrived, you are exhausted, every appointment is about the baby, and your glucose was fine at delivery. It feels like a closed chapter.

It is not closed, for two reasons.

First, it confirms the diagnosis was actually GDM. Some women turn out to have had undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes all along, which does not resolve after delivery and needs ongoing treatment. Only this test distinguishes the two.

Second, it sets your baseline. It may show normal glucose, prediabetes, or diabetes — and each leads to a different follow-up plan.

A fasting glucose alone is sometimes used, but the full glucose tolerance test detects more, because it picks up impaired glucose tolerance that a fasting value can miss.