Bridget's Pregnancy Blog

So, after many blood tests and drinking unpleasant glucose solutions, I’ve been diagnosed with mild gestational diabetes. It’s not very severe in my case- of my four tests during the multi-hour screen, two were a little high, which is the minimal diagnostic criteria for gestational diabetes.

This condition is not really rare, but it does require a bit of meal planning to deal with it. My doctor recommended eating small meals and snacks all throughout the day- at least three meals and two snacks. Each meal or snack should have some protein and some carbohydrates, with the goal of keeping my blood sugar from shooting up quickly. I was also told to make sure to eat something before bed, since it can help prevent blood sugar from dropping overnight, which could cause a blood sugar spike when I eat breakfast the next morning.

The danger of gestational diabetes is that if the mother’s blood sugar fluctuates wildly, whenever it goes up quickly, the baby’s blood sugar will also rise, since he’s getting blood from her system. When this happens, his body will produce insulin, which will cause him to store excess fat. This is called a macrosomic baby, and it can be dangerous if he gets too big to safely deliver. It can also cause a blood sugar crash when he’s born, since his own food- breastmilk or formula- won’t have such a high sugar content as his mother’s blood did.

Learning this, I know I need to work hard at keeping my sugar levels stable so that my baby won’t be affected. This isn’t turning out to be too difficult. I’ve started trying to avoid high glycemic foods, like white bread, sodas, refined sugar and things like that. Instead, I’m trying to eat more whole wheat grains as my carbohydrates and also have some protein, such as an egg or handful of nuts or some cheese, whenever I do eat carbs.

It’s important for me to get enough carbohydrates, though, so I can’t limit carbs too much. There is a balance, because the mom’s body has to get most of her energy from carbs. If she doesn’t get enough, then her body will burn fat and produce ketones- which is also bad for the baby.

Luckily, after following the diet recommendations for a week, the next blood test- taken two hours after a normal meal- showed that my blood sugar was fine. So it seems like as long as I continue to eat well, the gestational diabetes should not be a problem and both me and baby should stay healthy for these last few months.