Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Diabetes update


Yesterday I had a scan to check the baby was growing okay. And today I went to the antenatal clinic for my two weekly check-up.

The good news is the baby is fine. Not any bigger than it should be. The sonographer said if she didn't know that I had gestational diabetes, she wouldn't be able to tell from looking at the baby.

The not so good news for me today is that when I had my weigh-in with the diabetes educator, I discovered that I had actually lost three kilograms since starting my diet. Normally this would be great news. Apparently losing a bit of weight is normal for women with gestational diabetes, but the diabetes educator seemed to think that three kilos was a bit too much. If I keep my carbohydrate intake to about half of what the dietitian told me to, I can keep my glucose levels within the correct range. But it seems like I am going to need more carbs so the baby doesn't suck all the nutrition out of me.

So this also means I am going to probably need some more insulin as well. I'll be emailing the specialist with my levels tonight to see what he says.

I feel a bit sad that my body isn't coping too well with all this. And I miss the high GI sweet treats. I'm still eating frozen yoghurt and carefully rationed squares of dark chocolate. But what I would really love is a big muffin, or some chocolate caramel slice.

Sorry for the downer. Mostly I am going okay with all of this (apart from the boredom of eating All-Bran for breakfast every day). But I get worried sometimes that this is going to be a longer term thing. The risk of me developing type 2 diabetes later in life has increased to 50% now that I have had it in pregnancy. I just hope I can maintain some semblance of these healthy eating habits once the baby is born.

1 comment:

Wendy said...

Hmmm, that's tough Karen. I'm just glad you aren't in Japan. Goodness knows how they'd approach this. I was in huge trouble for gaining 20kg in my pregnancy here (on my 55kg frame). They aim for something like a 10kg gain, in fact they are quite obsessional about it. I think the only reason I didn't get more lectures was because I was a foreigner! BTW I lost all the weight within months afterwards. My boys drank it out of me :-) I hope this is all soon a dim memory.