Ay yay yay. It’s been a crazy week. The results from my 3 hours glucose tolerance test were bad, and worst of all, the morning fasting number was bad. I definitely have gestational diabetes. I’ve been monitoring my glucose for a little over a week now and I’m having trouble getting that morning fasting number down. The good part is, the rest of the numbers are well within normal range just sticking to my diet. The bad part is, the morning number is the hardest to control. I’ve been researching and trying things out, and making a million phone calls. Yesterday morning I had come to accept that I will probably have to transfer to a Doctor, and forgo my homebirth, but after talking to the midwives, and talking to dietitians, there is still hope. My midwives have complete faith that we can figure this out. I had a great conversation with a dietitian at OHSU and hope to get in to see her on Wednesday. She was very understanding and it sounds like she’s creative, knowledgeable, and very willing to exhaust all other options before advising me to go on medication. My morning numbers aren’t that high, so there’s a good chance we can figure this out. In the meantime, I’m checking my glucose levels all the time, trying to get a good picture of what’s going on. Tomorrow I have an ultrasound to check the baby’s size and make sure everything looks good. I can’t wait to see her again.
My midwives have been amazing with all this. They have so much faith in me, and I really need that right now. They’ve been calling around, trying to find all the help they can get. They are amazing human beings. I don’t know how to thank them enough for all their help and encouragement.
I had a bad, bad, bad appointment with a naturopath last week. She was supposed to help me with my nutrition. Instead she told me to keep up the good work, go on the Paleo diet, and take some pills that frankly I think are probably dangerous for me to be taking along with my prenatals (don’t worry, I’m not taking them). She then put acupuncture needles in some emotional points and asked me to tell her what was really bothering me. Before I knew it, I was talking about my mother’s death and the whole appointment turned into an exercise in grief expression. And let me tell you, I do not need any help expressing my grief. So I left there all red eyed and sad, with no more idea about how to get my gestational diabetes under control than when I got there. And she wants me to see her every week. I think not. I think I’m very done with her. To be honest, I feel like she manipulated my emotional state in order to suit her own agendas, of which she seemed to have many. Sadly none of her agendas seemed to have anything to do with helping me lower my glucose numbers. Anyway, that didn’t work.
The things I’ve found out this week are that I probably have what is called “Dawn Phenomenon”. My body is dumping lots of glucose into my system in the early morning and because I’m not making enough insulin, my glucose numbers are too high. I’m trying Chromium, Vanadium, apple cider vinegar, exercise three times a day. I’m experimenting with what happens when I have a bedtime snack vs none, eating in the middle of the night or not, waking up early, testing my glucose in the middle of the night.
We still haven’t found a replacement for me at work. I am now attempting to hold down an 8 hr a day job, eat every 2 hours, exercise 3 times a day, not stress, get lots of sleep, research gestational diabetes, take care of the dog, and make a million appointments. I can’t do this for much longer. I think it’s time to have a talk with work. I have 8 weeks til the baby gets here and I’m not risking her to diabetes just for a few more weeks of work. I need to focus on this.
So that’s where that’s at. We played with diapers this week:
The ones I’m making are clear winners on the stuffed animals, though it’s hard to tell how they’ll work out on actual human babies. Fingers crossed they work out, because they are pretty neat.
We love our baby class. It’s every Sunday night for 6 weeks and this week was week two. We practiced laboring positions and I got lots of back rubs from Tom. What is there not to like? It’s been really informative and fun and I look forward to it every week.
Here’s me:
Despite getting quite large, and sporting all kinds of terrible stretch marks, I am always worried about not gaining weight. I seem to be staying at the same weight for some time now, though every time I think that, I go to see the midwives and I’ve somehow managed to put on a couple more pounds, so I think I’m still doing good. I’ve been on a modified diet since April and a really restrictive diet since May 28th. It feels like all I do is cook and forage for food.