Gestational Diabetes

(An old blog post that I hadn't shared.)

With my last pregnancy I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes (GD). It was a serious pain in the butt and I was in such denial about the diagnosis that I never really believed that I had it. I was bitter that I had to test my blood 4 times a day and visit the diabetes clinic at the hospital. The appointments always ran about an hour behind schedule and the nurses were always a little condescending. I didn’t have any of the symptoms that they told me I should have. I felt that I ate fairly healthy and I exercised, sort of. In my mind things just didn’t add up.

When you develop GD it can be an indicator that you will develop diabetes later in life. How could that be for me, no one in my family has diabetes? I went to the appointments and was always a little annoyed with the fact that I had to be there. I felt that they needed to reach some kind of quota and where sending people that didn’t necessarily meet the criteria. Why else didn’t I experience the symptoms they said that I should?

At my first appointment they put me on the special diet. When I checked back in a week later I had lost weight and they got upset with me. In my mind that reinforced that there was nothing wrong with me and I didn’t need to be there. So, I basically went through through the motions of following their plan, but from then on out I really did my own thing. Sure I was eating better and following their guidelines, but I did cheat on the diet, here and there. I felt good and didn’t have any issues with my pregnancy. I craved sugary foods and McDonald’s and would regularly indulge.

It wasn’t until my daughter was born, via C-section (after 23 hours of labour) at 7 pounds, 11 ounces and had unstable blood sugar that I finally realized that I probably did in fact have glucose issues. Albeit, not serious ones, but issues none the less. It is said that when you have poorly controlled diabetes during pregnancy it can lead to adverse outcomes, such as large babies, an increased C-section rate and low blood sugar in newborns. Crap. Time to wake up. For 8 hours they came every hour to take her blood and test her levels. Every time they put the needle in her heal she screamed louder then the last time and I felt so guilty, I would cry with her. It was awful. I was a brand new mom and felt like I was off to a horrible start. Then finally it stabilized and that part was behind us.

When she was two years old she had thrush in her mouth for months that would not go away. It was suggested that she was getting too much sugar in her diet. This didn’t make sense to us but because it came to HER health we gave our eating habits an honest look. In the struggle to be a working mom and to get meals on the table at a decent time of day, we had slowly become part of the pre-package, pre-made, easy food choices that our society loves to push so much and had lost our way with real food. We also discovered that she was eating things that weren’t chosen for her by us when she wasn’t in our care and was in fact consuming a lot of sugar;-( This was not going to lead to the life that we wanted our child to live and she was on the verge of developing some real issues, so we made changes. Changes that would give her a real shot at a long, healthy life. Surprise, surprise after only a week of clean eating her thrush cleared up and has NEVER been back!

Now I am 22 weeks pregnant with our second and will be tested for gestational diabetes in 3 weeks time. I am really curious about the results of that test. Regular exercise and clean eating is a way of life for us now. Having said that, I haven’t been exercising nearly as much as I normally would as I have been dealing with pregnancy migraines and some days activity is just not possible, but I do eat well. It is a night and day comparison between the two pregnancies.

There is of course the chance that I will automatically be treated like I have GB regardless of the test results, simply because I had it last time. Either way, I don’t mind. The “diet” is really just clean eating anyways and I am already there. I guess I am more curious about the changes in my body between then and now.

I am grateful for our lifestyle change and grateful hat we won’t have the learning curve to go through this time around;-)