The Good News and the Bad News

At the end of the day last Wednesday, I got the call from my midwife that I had been fearing for a little over a week:  I DO have gestational diabetes.   The bad news is, that means counting carbs, testing my blood sugar 4x a day, and avoiding most things that have any resemblance to bread or sweets.  The good news is, I have the best possible over-achiever mentality to absolutely nail this diet and get an A+ in baby-building.
The first day with the news was pretty rough.  I choked through the over-the-phone directions I was given by one of the nurses at the midwives office, and started bawling into my husband's chest after I hung up the phone.  The only thing I could think about was how relatively well I thought I had been eating, and that I still screwed up.  That all of my fears about the delivery process were going to come true; the baby would be huge, unhealthy, and doomed to be unhappy for the rest of his life and it would be all my fault.  After a few minutes of pretty serious sobbing (I know, people have MUCH bigger problems in the world), we took a long walk around the park and ended up at the Rite Aid, where I would pick up my glucose meter and get some additional instructions from the pharmacist.
I was still fighting back some tears when he started his schpiel about which lancets hurt more and what meters could be afforded with crappy health insurance policies.  About 30 seconds in, I think he noticed the tears welling up in my eyes and started to rush through the rest of the info, grabbing a silver meter and some test strips and heading toward the back, at which point I squeaked in a shaky voice, "Well if you're going to give me that one, at least give me the pink one!"
Surprisingly, the lancets don't hurt too much, and the testing gives me a way to prove to my midwives and doctors that I am, in fact, doing a fuckingfantastic job of building this baby, and I always like making proof.
The other good news is that I think that I have always had a sensitivity to carbohydrates (see post about the gluten-free cleanse), and the diet I need to adhere to for the duration of my pregnancy will help me deal with that sensitivity after the baby is born.  Further, I will have the tools necessary to deal with the fact that 1 in 3 children born to women with gestational diabetes will develop type 2 diabetes before they are out of school.  This is not a temporary diagnosis.  It is a call to take nutrition more seriously.

Here are the basic details that I have absorbed over the last 10 days:
1.  Try to limit your carbs to 25-30g for breakfast, and 30-45g for lunch and dinner.
2.  Try to eat a little something every 2 hours.  Great snacks are made from less-processed grains, low-carb fruits, crudite, nuts, or other protein sources.
3.  Take a walk after you eat.  Or, if you can't leave the house, or the weather is bad, get up and do laundry or vacuum.  Resist the urge to sit still or take a nap after eating.  Light exercise will help your body metabolize your food more quickly, leaving you less susceptible to sugar spikes.
4.  Drink lots of water.  If your pregnant, more than the recommended 64 ounces is usually good.
5.  For the most part, don't worry about the carbs in vegetables.  They are the absolute best place to get nutrients for your amazing baby.  Do not, however, be fooled by starches that pose as vegetables, like sweet potatoes.  These are ok to eat as long as you measure your servings and stick to the allotted g of carbs per meal.  WARNING:  some fruits also masquerade as vegetables... shady-ass tomatoes.
6.  Pay attention to your body and your readings.  If you know you are obeying the rules and you still have seemingly random spikes in your blood sugar, try to connect the dots.  Some people are more sensitive to certain types of carbs than others.  One thing that I have noticed about my own body is that, for the most part, I do not seem to be sensitive to fructose or lactose.  Bread products have a dramatic impact on my blood sugar, but I can go to the top end of my carb allotment with fruit and it doesn't seem to touch my readings.  Look out, bananas, here I come!

I guess I wanted to let you all know this because the next few posts will focus on eating to support a diabetic system.  I will label them as such (the GD diet #1, etc.) and will try to post at least weekly with delicious and filling recipes that I have discovered.