Gestational Diabetes?

So I went to the specialist yesterday and got all sorts of advice about diet, learned how to use the glucose test meter, etc etc etc.  And just to make it more unpleasant, I cried the whole time.  Diet is a very emotional subject for me and the pregnancy hormones kicked in full gear and before I was even called in, I started crying and couldn't stop.

But here's the thing.  Other than the results of that one glucose test, all evidence is pointing to me not having an issue with my sugar levels.

The diet advice she gave?  Stuff I'm already doing.  She said if I eat fruit, cut it with protein.  Well, I already do that.  Cut down the carbs.  My pregnancy taste buds have already done that.  I should probably do it more, but yeah, already doing it.  Eat a little bit throughout the day instead of a few big meals.  I've never been able to tolerate eating a lot in one sitting.  I have to snack all day so, not a problem!

I have never been able to just eat an apple off the core.  It makes me sick.  But I can eat the same amount of apple if I have it with peanut butter.  Apparently, this wasn't my imagination all my life!  An apple makes your blood sugar spike, but if you cut it with a protein, the protein slows down the dose of sugar your body is getting so it's more even and long lasting.  That sick feeling I always got was a blood sugar spike.  Who knew?

I spent all of yesterday collecting little drops of blood and measuring my blood sugar.  Every single test came back where it was supposed to be.  1 hour after eating, it's supposed to be under 130.  Well, I measured exactly one hour after everything I ate and throughout the day it slowly climbed from 90 to 117.

And I got my test results back today.  They measured my hemoglobin (?) which is kind of a picture of my sugar levels over the last 3 months.  Kind of the long term test to see if I've been spiking and dipping or if things have been where they should be whereas the glucose test that started this whole thing is a specific set of circumstances designed to stress your sugar levels and see how your body deals with it.  Well, the hemoglobin number is supposed to be between 4-6.  My number was 5.  In other words, perfect.   Other than a little lack of Vitamin D, all my tests came back great.

So I talked to the nurse who called me about the test results today.  I asked if it's possible the first test was affected by the fact that I hardly ate anything that day before the test.  I had my usual decaf (well now that's normal for me) latte and bagel and then other than about 3 bites of granola, didn't eat anything for the next 4 hours before drinking the glucose and going in for the testing.  I was at work that day.  That always throws off my eating norms.  She said that it might have had an effect.  So we left a message with the nurse assigned to me and I expect to talk to her about this tomorrow.  If not tomorrow, we have a follow up appointment on Monday (the 20th).

I also checked with K to see if I'm reacting to wishful thinking or if this is a rational interpretation of the evidence.  He thinks it's a rational conclusion and we need to talk to the doctors about it.


I think the best thing to do is to continue testing my levels for the next week to get that data.  If we don't see any spikes, then I think I should do the glucose test again on a more average day.  If that comes back normal, then I think I should spend 1 day a week tracking food and testing glucose levels for the rest of my pregnancy.  That way, if there's an issue, we'll see it appear, but if there's not an issue, I'm not sitting here stressing myself out for no reason. 

Diet plans and food tracking are extremely stressful to me.  If I don't have to do that, I don't think I should.  But now I am more educated on how to keep my sugar levels stable and I can certainly keep them in mind.  Like adding protein to my morning carbs.  That's easy enough.  And if I am worried about it, I now know how to calculate how much sugar I'm getting so I can read labels and do a little bit better than I'm currently doing.