When I was pregnant with my second baby last year, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes at about 28 weeks. I was not happy when this day came because it was the start of three months of watching your health very closely.  Gestational diabetes is high blood sugar that develops during pregnancy in a person who did not have it before pregnancy.  The pancreas does not produce enough insulin to combat the glucose in your body.  I’m not going to go all medical here since there are many medical sources on the web you can look up, I just want to share what I had to go through and forewarn anyone that may have to go through the same thing.

For the next three months, everyday, I had to test myself on what my blood sugar levels were 7 times a day: before and after each meal and before bedtime snack.  Yes, I had to prick my finger and draw blood 7 times a day.  My fingers got a bit painful and used different fingers to combat the pain.  At the same time, everyday, I had to shoot insulin into myself 4 times a day before all meals.  This is because although I was controlling my gestational diabetes with my meals and exercises after meals, by the time the next meal came, I had high blood sugar again.  To avoid taking the insulin, it would seem I would have to exercise all day long which is almost physically impossible since I was getting bigger everyday.  The casing of the insulin needle didn’t even look like a regular needle casing, it looked like a pen.  The needle part of it is very small and you screw a new one on each time you shoot the insulin.  This wasn’t too painful, sometimes there was no pain at all, which I thought was weird.  I usually did it in my thighs where there’s a lot of fat!  haha.

On top of that, I had to get checked every two weeks from the gestional diabetes clinic.  I had to record all my blood sugar levels everyday and what insulin I had taken.  In the beginning, I also had to record all the foods I ate (which was three meals and three snacks a day!). The nurses reviewed my stats and then adjusted the level of insulin or diet if they saw problems with the levels.  It seemed that as your pregnancy goes on, the hormones kept going up!  My insulin was adjusted at every clinic visit during the first two months of being diagnosed, but during my last month of pregnancy, the hormones seemed to finally level off and I didn’t have to add anymore insulin.  The nurse had initially showed me a graph on how the pregnancy hormones increases in your body during pregnancy and I learned that your pregnancy hormones don’t even take off til about 24-28 weeks (that’s why they test for it during that time) and when it does, it increases exponentially.  Thus, the amount of insulin I had to inject was added gradually, it was not from the start I had to have insulin nor was it 4 times a day when I did need it.

My daily routine at my gestational diabetes consisted of:

• Before breakfast – blood sugar level test and a shot of insulin
• Breakfast – very high fiber bread, one slice, with peanut butter and cinnamon, no jam allowed; an egg and a slice of ham.  Needed a lot of protein, mornings were the worse for me for high blood sugar levels.
• After breakfast – 20-30 minute walk on treadmill (I walked longer here because this was my worse time of day)
• An hour after breakfast – blood sugar level test
• Mid morning snack - 1/2 cup nuts and small fruit
• Before lunch – blood sugar level test and a shot of insulin
• Lunch – a lot of vegetables, fish balls (or some sort of protein), with a quarter pack of udons.  I also had a small fruit and sometimes yogurt too with it too.
• After lunch – 20 minute walk on treadmill
• An hour after lunch – blood sugar level test
• Afternoon snack – 1/2 cup chicken with tomatoes and onions and 15g of goldfish crackers
• Before dinner – blood sugar level test and a shot of insulin
• Dinner – 4-6oz of protein like chicken or fish, with lots of vegetables, 1/2 cup of corn, small fruit
• After dinner – 10-15 minute walk outside or treadmill (my blood sugar levels were the lowest during dinner time so I didn’t exercised as much.)
• An hour after dinner – blood sugar level test
• Before bedtime snack – blood sugar level test and a shot of insulin
• Bedtime snack – stonewheat crackers with peanut butter

I will explain more about nutrition in another post because I have lots of foods to recommend but as you can see, it’s a lot to deal with everyday.  I was always counting carbs, counting how much protein I was eating, how much exercise I needed.  This was very important though for the health of my baby.  If you do not control gestational diabetes, you can risk your baby being larger and having low blood sugar when he or she is born; as well, risk yourself of having high blood pressure during pregnancy.  Always listen to your doctors and take care of yourself.  It’s ALL WORTH IT when you meet your little angel!

UPDATE: How to get sweets into your gestational diabetes diet? Read this post: gestational diabetes: you CAN have SWEETS!

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