Preggo Pancreas Probs

So you know those words you love to hear when you are preggo… “you scanned high on your one hour glucose test, we want you to come back for the three hour test…” I heard it with my first pregnancy and now with my second. So like a good little patient I went back for the three hour test with my first pregnancy and they said I was fine… but I had a rough birth and postpartum recovery and have lost a lot of trust with medical care providers since then. Not that I think they are bad because believe me I am THANKFUL for the medical options we have here! So Thankful! But what I mean by that is that I question things now. I don’t just do what they do tell me to do, because that is why I had so many issues with my first birth. I just like being informed now about my options, and sometimes you don’t always have to do things the way they recommend! 🙂

With my second pregnancy, I heard the same thing from the nurse over the phone but I asked if I had other options besides the drink. The drink makes me feel horrible, I feel bad the rest of the day, and my baby goes NUTS inside my belly for that hour or three hours I’m waiting, so it really made me question if this was the best route to take for us. She was annoyed with me hehe and said she would talk to my doctor and call me back. My doctor said I could get a meter and check my blood for a couple of weeks, because I scanned just two points outside of the cut off. So I ran to HEB and grabbed a cheap meter, lancets and strips. I spent around $30 and took my blood 4 times a day for a little over a week, and then sent in the numbers to her through an email.

Here’s why I liked this approach versus the glucose drink… this is me on a normal daily basis and what I normally eat. I don’t normally go drink a glucose packed drink, which someone told me is equivalent to eating two snickers bars, and sit for an hour. I could see at each meal how what I ate effected my blood sugar, and at first things were great, but then we hit the weekend and ate out a couple of times and my blood sugars were soaring! Bye bye Chinese food! So my doctor had me go to a nutrition class and my insurance provided the meter you see below. So I have just continued to monitor what I eat and send in my numbers by email every week or two. It hasn’t been that bad! 

The thing with the drink test, is that sometimes it can miss people. The nutritionist I talked with told me this! And personally, I think I was missed on my first pregnancy. I normally have very low blood sugar and have to eat often, so my “high sugars” might have been in the normal range for other people if that makes sense, but for me they were high.  I gained more weight during my first pregnancy and was much more swollen at the end. This pregnancy I have gained 10 lbs less and have not been swollen at all, and I am telling you that it is because my new doctor “caught” me this time! 

You can also scan high on part of the three hour but not all of it and still not be labeled as having gestational diabetes, per nutritionist referenced earlier, which I did not realize! I also read some online posts about what is in the drink and it kind of shocked me that it is U.S. practice to have every pregnant woman drink something that has chemicals in it that other countries have banned and use for flame retardants…chemicals that build up in our bodies and can get into our breastmilk. Check out this link about the drink itself.

It just makes me sad sometimes when we don’t have options as patients that are healthier for us in the long run…I think a lot of our options are controlled by pharmaceutical companies and what is a more lucrative option rather than what is healthiest for us all. I have friends who have used midwives and they have other more natural methods, eating certain kind of meals and checking blood sugar afterwards. The nutritionist also told me that there has been a lot of talk about going to a 2 hour test like they do in Europe, because it is more accurate, but it is very controversial because then more women will be labeled as having gestational diabetes, therefore more it will be more expensive for insurance companies in the long run. See, they really do have our best interest at heart, right?? Eeek!

So, I don’t know about you but I have the most horrible cravings for anything baked or sweet during the last part of my pregnancy. Ice cream is my best friend… but not this time around. When I first found out that I had GD, I was a concerned and like great, what can I eat?! But thankfully, I can tolerate some carbs, I just have to count them and be moderate about them during the day. The nutritionist class helped show us options for meals and snacks, and basically how many carbs to have at each meal or snack to keep your blood sugars in check. It’s really amazing how many carbs we consume without even realizing it! 

I like this diagram from the Texas Children’s Hospital Education, it shows you your insulin requirements as your pregnancy goes on. So the farther along you are, the more careful you should be because your body has a harder time processing carbohydrates and sugar since it isn’t producing enough insulin.

The way that TCH advised me to handle my diet, was to allow a certain number of carbs per meal and snack…