While I was pregnant with E, not many people knew that I had Gestational Diabetes. I'm sure it sounds much worse than it really was at the time. For those who don't know, Gestational Diabetes (GD for brevity in this post) is diabetes found only during pregnancy. Since we have so many pregnancy hormones going on, for some of us it makes it harder for the body to produce enough insulin to lower our blood sugar levels. It usually occurs at the end of the 2nd, beginning of the 3rd trimester since that's when our hormones seem to be at their peaks. Which is why our OB wants us to take the glucose test to find out the blood sugar levels and if the body is breaking them down properly.
Why was this so important? Well, if I didn't regulate my blood sugar there were risks that my daughter could have been born huuuuuge. Okay not huge, but bigger than normal. And also with me having high blood sugar levels and passing it on to my baby while pregnant, she starts to produce a lot of insulin. But right at birth, my daughter had a higher chance of having low blood sugar since her body was producing more insulin to balance the high blood sugar. Have I lost you? Let's just say that I handled my GD well, but at the time I was so sad about being told I had it.
You see this isn't a common thing, but for some reason is more prevalent in Asians - which I am. Plus the fact that my dad had type 2 diabetes as well made me a higher risk for having it while pregnant. Since my dad had type 2, I had to do an early blood glucose test in my first trimester. My results were great and no GD at the time. So when it came to my 28th week, I thought for sure I'd have no problem with the 3-hour test. I was wrong. My blood sugar levels were high for 2 of the 4 readings, and for me that meant I had GD=(. I was bummed. I mean REALLY really REALLY bummed. I just didn't get how I could get it. I mean I wasn't overweight, I had a good diet prior to the glucose test, and I worked out. Wasn't I in the clear? Apparently from what the GD nurse told us, you can be the healthiest of people and still get GD. ANYONE can get it, and I just happened to be one of that small percentage. I was totally in denial though. My 2 results that were high were just a little over the GD range. I read forums and read about other pregnant women who's results were way higher than mine. So I got even more sad. But what could I do?
My husband saw it as a wake up call for me. Even if I had just barely passed the glucose test, would I have wanted to put our baby at risk if I wasn't GD? No. Regardless if my results were a little over the norm or a little under....that was enough to let me know to take more care of myself for our baby's sake. I had to take a GD class to learn about diet & nutrition, and most importantly about testing my blood sugars 4 times a day. Yup that's right, pricking my finger in the morning, and after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yippee. All this because I was a few points over. What's funny is that the diet the nurse wanted us to go on was pretty much the exact way my husband eats all his meals! Too bad we couldn't have switched places, ha. But the diet wasn't so bad. It was more of just counting my carbs and my sugar intake. It just made meal planning a little more challenging. I'll get to that in my next post. For now, just know..that if you found this blog and you have GD, it's not the end of the world! Think of it as giving your child a healthy beginning=).
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