Support and help with Gestational Diabetes?

[Crapweasel]

Failed the "Lucozade test" last week, I've now been told that my GTT has also come back high and have therefore been diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes.

Having failed the Lucozade test but passed GTT during my last pregancy I was really hoping to dodge that particular bullet again. Oh well....

Did some searching in the archives and found this fab old thread with lots of support and tips on diet etc. Any current sufferers (or experienced old timers) fancy joining a similar thread for 2010?

I have a diabetic clinic appt on Tues (where I understand I'll get a finger prick testing kit and see a dietician) so I'll report back then.

I'm 29 weeks by the way.

I wish they would of tested me earlier, i worry all the time the effect on the baby, and i really dont know what i am doing, apart from avoiding the obvious sweets etc.

How do you feel when you have had cake or something, im 99% sure its back i would be so supprised if it isnt.

I wouldn't worry too much at this early stage. Assuming you just have GD (rather than normal diabetes) then it is likely to be only mild insulin resistance at this stage.

On the odd few times I have had sugars over about 7.5 I've felt drained and fuzzy headed. High sugars just make me want to go to sleep!

I'm sure i didnt have it beofre as i have bee tested a few times.

I never felt like this whislt not pregnant .. it seams to of started about 2 weeks ago, dry mouth etc.

thank you

Hi everyone...

I've just had the call i've been dreading from the hospital, and found out my level after the two hour wait was too high... I'm going to have to go to the diabetes unit on wednesday to get a finger pricking kit to take home for a week... I'm devestated.

I can't stop crying and feel like a terrible person.. even though I should have seen it coming, I haven't exactly been cutting out sugars.

I want to change my diet from this instant to see if I can make my appointment on wednesday a bit less traumatic.. I already spoke to an extremely rude doctor who wasn't prepared to discuss anything with me over the phone.

I'm extremely allergic to nuts and seeds, and am really sensitive to certain food textures (left over from hyperemesis in first two trimesters) so I'm really worried about finding things to eat :S things like weetabix, porridge and yoghurt would just make me sick (the lumpy sort of texture) And brown and granary bread are full of seeds :S

I just found a thread where someone was eating bacon with a small amount of beans for breakfast, and a salad with fish or steak for dinner. I have no idea about lunch, but does that sound about right?? I assume we should grill everything?

I really need to talk to someone. I don't think i've ever felt this upset and to top things off, I was supposed to be getting a fit to fly letter next week to go to a villa for my mums 50th birthday, I guess I can say goodbye to that now!

Sorry for the long message, any advice would be fantastic xxx

Hey anythingwithagiraffeonit hope you're ok. You are having a tough pregnancy, firstly hyperemesis and then GD... First of all take a deep breath...

Firstly, a GD diagnosis is NOT in any way caused by eating too much sugar, it is caused by your pancreas not being able to keep up with the increased insulin requirements in pregnancy. There is nothing you could have done which could have prevented it happening. It being caused by eating too much sugar is such a common myth, but a myth it is!

You will almost certainly need to change your diet and you will get more advice from a dietician in due course, your allergy will make life more challenging certainly, but not impossible.

There's lots to get your head around with the diet, you'll need to cut out the refined sugar and cut down on starchy carbs (which break down into glucose in your blood), but you shouldn't cut them out completely in pregnancy. You should be looking for carbs to make a smaller part of your total diet and look to get more of your calories from fats and protein.

Things you mentioned not liking like weetabix would probably be no go anyway as they're high carb, same with nearly all yoghurts as they tend to be full of sugar. Greek yoghurt is the exception- would you eat that? It's lump free...

I would recommend getting hold of the Collins Gem low GI book (it's fairly cheap on Amazon, as that will give you a good idea of what sort of things you should be eating.

I can't think why GD should stop you being fit to fly, once you settle into the diet it really shouldn't be any more than an inconvenience. I know that the initial GD diagnosis can be very overwhelming, but you do seem very upset, is there anything particularly that is worrying you? We might be able to help put your mind at rest.

Thanks for the reply... after stopping googling and having been for a swim I feel a bit better...

I just feel really bad, like i've done something to endanger my baby, which my DH tells me is rubbish, but I can't help it.

I've ordered a low GI book, and am just about to eat some salmon and salad, so maybe things won't be so bad!

I suppose I'm most worried about how its going to be at the hospital. I read a few posts that said I'm going to be induced early / have to stay forever in the hospital and it just ruins everything I was planning. xx

Oh giraffe I really feel for you. I felt exactly the same when I was first diagnosed in terms of feeling that I had caused it, and also that my nice natural birth had been taken out of my hands and replaced with an over medicalised one.

Firstly, Chocolate is right, you haven't caused it, it's just one of those things. Looking on the bright side, it means that your baby will get the BEST, most healthy (yes, a bit boring!) diet for the next few months of its life. Plus, you won't balloon in weight which is nice for afterwards and during the pregnancy.

Once you see a dietician you should be able to sort your diet better, but to be honest I haven't had to make loads of changes. Biggest changes is that I have to eat 6 times a day (oh the hardship) and obviously cut out cake, biscuits etc. Basically you'll be looking at having no more than 5% sugar in anything you have. Anyway, the dietician will go through it with you.

As for the birth, even my interventionist heavy obstetrician said I could go to term although once I got put on insulin she is keen to induce earlier. But remember it's still your choice, your body and your baby.

A N Y W A Y what I'm trying to say is, yes, it's a shame when it happens and your reaction is totally normal and understandable, but now I am about 5 weeks in, the diet is second nature, the insulin I don't love but it's really fine.

Good luck and come back to this site for more help, it's really helped me.

Giraffe, glad you're feeling a bit better. Google is rarely your friend in these circumstances.

If you read back through this thread you'l spot that worries about the birth are quite common, but the ladies who have had their babies all came back with positive stories. I'm assuming this is your first... before my first I was terribly worried about staying in hospital afterwards, in the end I had to stay in five days (due to issues with DS's low birth weight not GD) and it was no where near as bad as I had imagined beforehand. I think that generally applies to lots of things we worry about.

Do come back. How many weeks are you?

Hi, thanks for your replies, I do feel a bit better.

I'll be 28 weeks in a couple of days. I'm going to the diabetes clinic on wednesday so I suppose I'll get all my answers then! Until then i'm just trying to eat salad and grilled meat... the internet is not my friend and I am definately going to stop googling!! x

Giraffe, you need to try to eat carbs basically with every meal, but just not too much.

If I can give you my "sample" daily menu, that might help?

Breakfast - bran flakes (look for ones with 5% sugar or less) with a handful of nuts and sunflower and linseeds. Skim milk.
(some people have had problems with cereal but it's been fine for me).

snack - pear or an apple.

Lunch - hummus and cheese sandwich, or chicken sandwich on wholegrain bread. Plus big salad.

Snack - low sugar natural yogurt (not lumpy!) with berries.

Dinner - chilli with rice, casserole, fish with veg and pots, steak with chips and veg, home made curry with rice, shepherd's pie, omelette with salad and pots, small portion of pasta with salad, chops, roast dinner etc.

Followed by an apple and a bar of sugar free chocolate.

Then sometimes I have another yogurt in the evening or a slice of bread and cheese. Depends what time I have dinner.

I appreciate it's difficult if you can't eat nuts and seeds - bread will be a challenge. You could substitute crackers for bread at lunch and maybe add fruit to the cereal instead of nuts.

At first I really cut out carbs but weight fell off and I got told off .

Ozzie I hardly eat carbs, apart from soya and linseed bread and a few potatoes. I try to fill up on extra veggies and make sure I have some protein which staves off hunger, supposedly.
My main gripe is I am always hungry and the foods I would choose to eat are mostly bread and cereal and pasta.

My best tip is strawberries as you can pretty much munch on them all the time without it affecting my sugar. All berries are low GI.

Does anyone know if Peanut Butter is an ok food to eat? The sugar content is about 1g per 15 g serving, carb is 14.5g per 100g 5g sugars.
Am trying not to eat it but am craving it

I just follow what my dietician told me which was to make sure I wasn't hungry as if I was hungry then the baby was hungry and to have 2-3 serves of carbs per main meal and 1 serve per snack.

She also told me that to check whether ready made stuff was ok, was to just look at the % sugars. So anything less than 5% sugar was probably ok. It's been a bit trial and error and I have to see how things go together - eg, pasta on its own with some cheese was fine, but when I added some pesto which was only 3% sugar, it took my reading slightly over. So tricky!

Thing is, I guess it's whatever your dietician tells you, which I imagine depends on where you are in the pregnancy, your weight, how badly your sugars seem to be affected etc. My readings have never really been above about 7.7 and that's rare, so perhaps I've got a bit more leeway?

I'm certainly no expert!

The advice given by dieticians does seem to vary wildly (although I suppose with Ozzie being outside the UK that's to be a bit more expected). I saw the dietician as part of a large group so the advice certainly wasn't tailored to my circumstances. I've got to where I've got to by trial and error over both pregnancies.

In my first pregnancy I ate hardly any carbs at all, this time round I've eaten more, just because I didn't find fitting low carb into my diet longer term, especially eating with a toddler sustainable. Having said that I pretty much low carb at dinner time as I will stick to a serving of 1tbsp of brown rice, 2oz low carb pasta or 3 baby new potatoes. I get my calories from cheese, cream and nuts.

I have found that my appetite has decreased over time and I'm actually looking forward to not being pregnant any more so I can eat more to my appetite, rather than making sure I get my calories all the time.

Raspberries and strawberries have been my saviour this time, I'm probably getting through a punnet of each every day at the moment! This baby is probably going to come out bright pink!

Debs- I have no idea about peanut butter, disgusting stuff! Having said that if you're eating it and your sugars are fine I would say it's probably ok!

Giraffe- I'm sorry this probably isn't helping you very much. Make sure you let us know how you get on with the dietician.

God yes, I love strawberries and raspberries. It's pleasing that strawbs and cream is actually lower GI that strawbs and yogurt, but feels more decadent.....

giraffe sorry, yes, it is hard and it is trial and error. I would push for a personal dietician appointment, mine was so helpful and gave me lots of ways in which I could tweak the diet.

But sometimes it doesn't work - a "low GI" chicken salad wrap sent my sugars higher than anything else, but my endocrinologist also says not to worry too much about the occasional high reading, it's sustained high readings that are the problem. Plus your baby will be monitored anyway to check you aren't getting too big.

Also, I meant to say, they are very strict with us in Australia, my Obs has said they are basically the strictest in the world in that they test every pregnant woman, and also the sugar levels that they are happy with are lower than anywhere else.

Oh and definitely stop googling, my Mum emailed in a panic when she was reading about "placental failure" etc but honestly, you will be well looked after and although it makes us a bit of a higher risk, careful diet and if necessary insulin will keep everthing under control.

Hi All

I'm just over 12 weeks and haven't had the diagnosis yet, but I got GD at 20 weeks last time and it's very popular in my family - oh the joy.

I just wanted to put my story in for Giraffe really.

I played around with what I could eat to see what made things spike and what didn't. I soon learned that all takeawy food is a no no and pizza and pasta not great either. Although a small meal using wholemeal pasta with a big salad was OK.

Meat and two veg was a definete winner and new potatoes were much better than old.

The recommended baked potato with beans was a crazy meal for both me and my sister - may as well of had a chocolate cake with extra ice cream.

Close monitoring and a food diary will hopefully help you get to grips with things, and if it can't be controled by diet well you may have to go on the insulin but it's a healthy baby you're aiming for. The ability to directly control the whimms of you pancreas is out of your hands.

As far as birth goes, none of us knows GD or not what will happen at the time. Try not to panic. Just know your options.

Right I'm off to eat carbs before the useless Diabetese midwife (yes we have one too) forces me into a world of raw oats and celery.

Hey Ladies,

I hope you are all coping well in the heat? My LO is not so keen on the humidity in London nor my neighbours building project so we are escaping to the county tomorrow, I can't wait to get away!

Choc surely it can't be long for you now?

I went for my six week follow up GTT today - I kept my self testing kit and checked my sugars after dinner last night - 6.1 - happy as I'd had a huge amount of lamb, tonnes of rice & broad bean salad and ice cream for afters). I then tested every hour this morning having fasted:
6am - 6.9 (panic mode set in)
7am - 5.1 (calm)
8am - 5.4 What?
9am - 7.0 What?????

I should get the results later this week, really intrigued, hoping I don't have a borderline result again as they will pounce on me when I next get pregnant!

On the plus side, we have a big party in three weeks time to celebrate Connie's arrival and our wedding anniversary. So I bravely tried on the evening dress I wore to my wedding (four years ago), it fit (though perhaps rather too snuggly around the bosom!). The healthy low GI (not Atkins style) diet required to cope with GD rocks, embrace it, don't fight it!

Have been lurking and read this thread through since my own GD diagnosis nearly 3wks ago (am 31 +4 today).
On top of the GD I've now got a cold and am noticing my sugars seem to be going a bit higher than typical - the hospital I'm at like me to stay under 7 and in last few days have been over that 3 times (my pre-breakfast was 5.3 this am as well!).
Just wondering if any ladies have faced similar/any tips?! Cheers in advance x

Oh gosh ladies help any advice,

I have my GTT on tuesday (week today) this is my 3 rd baby my last pregnancy i had GD diagnossed at 34 ish weeks. was controlled on diet alone.

I am now 10 weeks pregnant with 3rd baby and feel aful, i know it's returned infact i was the one who called for the GTT my mouth is so dry its horrible, my head feels fuzzy sometimes and headaches ahhhh, i know this could be because of hormones anyway but the dry mouth its self drives me nuts!!!

So any advice on how to cope for the week untill my test, well untill i get my results which i just know ill have a high result.

I feel so rough

Burmese, good to hear from you, will be interesting to heat the results of your GTT as those self testing results are interesting to say the least. I keep thinking not long left for me, because I've got myself prepared for an early delivery. I'm actually 33 weeks, so in theory could be ages! Next see the consultant a week on Friday, so will know more then. Bump is still tiny (reckon I could pass for about 25 weeks), but baby is active, so we'll see.

loftyjen welcome to the thread, good to have lurkers joining in. I know that illness can raise blood sugars in normal diabetics, so the cold may well be the problem, will be interesting to see what your diabetes team do about it.

katy sorry no advice really (other than follow the GD diet until your GTT), just sympathy that you're feeling rough. Is there not a chance that it's just another pregnancy symptom rather than being GD related, although I'm not sure how that would help!

Hi everyone,

First, thanks so much for all your advice in the past few days, its been fantastic.

I saw the diabetes nurse today and she was Lovely (which I feel guilty to admit I wasn't expecting!)

She gave me the finger pricking kit and some leaflets and told me it was fine for me to go on my holiday.. thank god!

My first test has come out within range and although the dietician was away, the nurse gave me some advice - being able to drink diet coke as much as you like (Didn't expect that!) and just eating what I eat now really inc carbs like bread and pasta but just cutting down on the portions of them and snacks in between. Does this sound about right to everyone??

Hopefully my baby will stay small and well and I'll be able to have the birth I was hoping for.. fingers crossed! xx

anythingwithagiraffe glad it went well for you. It will get much easier with a testing kit as you can find out what works for you with the diet as we're all different (and it changes as your pregnancy progresses).

You may find that you need to keep the protions of bread and pasta small to stay in range, but my best advice is to experiment and try and keep the carbs you eat as nutritious as possible.

Well, one day in and I think it's going pretty well!

My after breakfast reading in the office was 4.9..

Decided to test myself and had a bowl of pasta for lunch... 2 hours later got a reading of 5.2...

Had steak, potatoes (not many) and stuffed mushrooms with strawberries and cream for dinner and 2 hours later got a reading of 4.9...

Then had (to test it) a packet of crisps and just now before bed got 4.8... Does this all sound normal? Xx

Giraffe I wish mine were so low. I struggle to get a reading below 5 before a meal, nevermind after a meal.
Have a stinking cold at the moment so my levels are a bit higher then normal.
The diabetes nurse is ringing me today to discuss going on insulin. Really don't want to but am struggling with diet and tablets so it will probably be my only choice.

Burmese COuld you of been stressing out about the GTT? That is my only explanation as to why your sugar level rose when you are fasting. I know mine go up when I am more stressed

I'm getting a bit confused..

admittedly I'm not a dietician.. but I ate hash browns and an english muffin this morning, to check what would happen, and after 2 hours my level was 4.6.. my lowest ever.

For lunch I had carbonara with quite a lot of pasta.. and I got 5.0 after 2 hours.

Can it be that some people can just eat carbs and it not affect them?? I'm not opposed to cutting this stuff down / out completely if thats what it takes, but my readings seem fine, I think.

Maybe my monitor is broken...

Giraffe that's the joy of GD, anything and everything can affect your sugars and our bodies all react differently to different things! You may also find that as your pregnancy progresses your insulin intolerance increases, so foods that work now, may not work later on.

There's a concept I picked up from looking at mainstream diabetes sites called eating to your meter, basically experiment and find the level of carbs you personally can manage and then eat at that level- seems sensible to me and it's what I try to do. I have had to cut out different things though as my pregnancy has progressed as I noticed readings creeping up.

One thing I would say about the things you ate is they both had a fair amount of fat in them, which probably helped your readings. Fat is digested more slowly, so eating fat with carbs helps make the best use of the insulin you have as the carbs are broken down to glucose more slowly. I use this trick quite a lot...