I can still remember vividly the phone call that late July night.
My OB rang said Don't worry but your results have come back you have GD. Call this number in the morning to set up an appointment.
As anyone who has had that diagnoses will tell you 'Don't worry' and 'GD' in pregnancy do not go hand in hand.
This was my fourth bub but my first with GD. For the first time in 4 challenging pregnancies I felt broken.
I had been induced for my previous 3 children and suffered with various things through the pregnancies with HG, (severe morning sickness), high Blood pressure, PE, (Pre-eclampsia) burst blood vessels in my stomach, heartburn and reflux, and a nasty case of shingles, but not until that moment did I fell broken.I wondered about my poor baby growing inside and how my bodies inability to function would effect it, would it need SCN, would it thrive, would I be forced to have a Caesar, how would I be able to regulate my sugars whilst still suffering severe morning sickness.
The interesting thing is I already had a feeling something wasn't right, call it mums intuition, when I had the GTT (Glucose Tolerance Test) I almost passed out I spent the 2 hrs laying down on the bed as every time I sat up, my world started spinning. Something I had never experienced in my previous 3 pregnancies. I had said to both my twin sister and my husband that I had a feeling I would 'fail the test'.
I knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep well that night, but then what pregnant person can :-) I jumped online and googled, I reached out to my DIG (Due in Group) online mums group and asked advice. I talked to my Dad (he has type 2 diabetes), I talked to my mum (a nurse) and I waited. In Hindsight I probably would have been better to wait til seeing the diabetes specialist but the reaching out made me feel better. Made me feel like I was not alone that I could survive this.
The next day came and I met my diabetes educator and we went through tips on what food to eat, exercises, how to test, when to test. We followed that up with an appointment with a midwife at our OBs office, and all of a sudden I knew I could survive this. I knew that it wasn't my fault, it was just something else's to get through.
There are plenty of blogs out there that give you recipe ideas, so I won't go into them to much but as a rough guide I ate a small serve of muesli with yoghurt for breakfast. I would test my levels 2 hrs later and have a small serve of tinned fruit (no juice) and yoghurt.
Lunch was normally grilled chicken and salad. Or I would have soup with 1 1/2 rolls. 1 my levels to low, 2 they would be to high. Afternoon tea would normally be fruit and yoghurt again. Dinner meat and veggies. Supper was normally a hot chocolate.
I found that if I didn't have supper I would wake up with extremely low blood sugar.
I was extremely lucky and was able to keep my blood sugar relatively stable with diet alone, I had a couple of high readings each week but everyone was happy, that's why I was surprised when my beautiful baby was born with a low blood sugar level (more about that later).
GD is interesting as what works for you, may not work for others.
Stay tuned for more posts about GD
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