So. This happened. If you’re pregnant, you know you have to be checked for gestational diabetes. I failed my one-hour screening test by a ton of points. Xenia joked “What kind of Asian are you?” Ha! A week later, I took my three-hour glucose test. They take your blood four times to see how your body is dealing with the glucose drink. Fail, fail, fail. I have gestational diabetes.
Three hour glucose test for gestational diabetes
In a nutshell, there’s a lot going on in my body with pregnancy hormones and the placenta blocking production of insulin, which helps deal with blood sugar levels. This can cause premature labor, baby’s pancreas going overtime to create insulin, macrosomia, pre-eclampsia, and the list goes on…
What Happened Next
I went to see a Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE) to learn how to control my blood sugar and diet for the rest of my pregnancy. I’m on Week 31, so I’ve got about 9 weeks to turn this ship around and make sure Spawn and I are as healthy as possible. This was a two-hour education session, complete with my own fancy blood poking machine, blood reader, food diary, and rules for how much I can eat per meal.
How I feel.
This week, I’ll be testing my blood four times per day to get a standard reading. I’ve messed up my poking machine (lancing device) – I’ve wasted a full set of needles (lancets) and had to start all over. After I put in a new lancet in the poker, I got a good squeeze of blood for my measurements. This is going to take a little bit of practice.
Accucheck machine, finger poker, strips, food diary
My Concerns
While we went through the education part, I was getting anxious and concerned about Spawn. I slept it off and with a clear head, I think I’m just annoyed. My pregnancy thus far has been fun and problem-free. Spawn is kicking like a mofo. I felt great until my diagnosis.
Ok my actual worries are:
- Meal planning – I don’t usually eat six times a day. This diet wants me to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and three snacks in-between. Three snacks?
- Solution so far: an apple or 1/2 banana + almond butter will be my go-to “easy” snack. I’ve found a few blogs that posted ideas for meals and snacks. If you’ve got suggestions, I’m all ears!
- Remembering to poke myself an hour after the first bite of my main meals.
- Solution so far: Since I have to keep a food diary, I’m hoping I can form this habit asap and be “on time” when it’s time to poke. It also helps that The Wife is there to remind me when to do a poke-check.
- Light to moderate exercise every day – There is no workaround. This has to be done. Even if it’s just a 15-minute walk every day. I work out 2-4x/week – prenatal yoga or walking, but that’s going to have be bumped up.
- Solution so far: Make the time. Spawn is counting on me.
I’m determined to get this to work because any extra blood sugar affects Spawn and her growth. It may affect her own insulin-production, and I don’t want that for her. I don’t want her to be born with diabetes. I don’t want her to be extra big before birth. And for me, I sure as hell do not want to be on insulin now or later.
On The Plus Side
My hope is that with the next nine weeks being a lot stricter than usual, I’ll gain a new habit to continue after Spawn is born. Portion control will play a major part in this diet. I don’t eat that much already but I guess it’s not just the size of my meals but the frequency. I have to eat at regular intervals. My goal is to maintain my GD diet. The CDE mentioned that once you’re on insulin, you’re on insulin. So let’s all work on this diet thing and not require insulin injections or pills, yes?
What’s Next
I’ll work on blogging my diet and fitness to control my gestational diabetes. Stay tuned for all of my boring meal updates!
If you had gestational diabetes, what were your go-to meals?
I know this may sound bad but I ate a lot of deli meat, cheese and crackers. I don’t normally eat deli meat but it helped me with the snacks. Also, you may find this odd but I like eating (and still do) smoked oysters (canned), with almond butter or PB and ritz crackers. I have to portion them out though, maybe around 4-5 crackers to make sure I don’t go over my carb requirements. I also didn’t like having to eat a snack around 10 PM since I don’t snack after dinner usually. Good luck with the GD diet. You can do it!! I had to forego rice and after awhile, you won’t even miss it.
I had gestational diabetes with my second child and it sucked! What was hard for me was breakfast. What worked was having an egg or slice a cheese corn quesadilla. I missed my cereal 🙁 If I started my day well then I did great the rest of the day. Good luck!
Oh I’m so sorry. 🙁 You are braver than I am!
So sorry to hear this; but I know you’ll get this taken care of for both of you. As for the 6 meals a day, I remember that task from my Jenny Craig attempts–as hard as it sounds, it really does help your body. Take care of yourself and keep us posted on your updates–can’t wait to meet the whole (healthy) family when she arrives.
Wow that’s a lot to take in. I do know of one or two women who had gestational diabetes and everything with the pregnancy went normal and kids are well.
As far as snacks granola is a good snack and sometimes just eat a little bowl of cereal between meals. Smoothies, cheese and crackers (jicama), carrots, hummus & celery, soup, half a sandwich, imagine with all of those you can make them healthier. I eat like 6 meals a day just because.