Me, Teddy & Gestational Diabetes
When we decided to have our second child, we had no idea what it would entail. I just felt my ovaries speaking to me again and just knew we needed to have another. Those damn ovaries! I thought having another baby would be a piece of cake. I had already been through one pregnancy so I was a pro at this, right? Wrong. Every single pregnancy is different, as the saying goes, and my second one came with a side of gestational diabetes. GD is a condition where the mother develops high blood sugar levels, basically diabetes, throughout the pregnancy. There are several risks involved for both baby and mother, and for us, the main concern was that Teddy would be born too big, leading to possible issues such as shoulder dystocia, as Alfie was a large baby as well.
Prior to being diagnosed with GD while pregnant (which I often incorrectly called geriatric diabetes... thanks baby brain), I often felt hung-over, constantly tired and needed a nap in the afternoon. To be honest that doesn't sound too different than a regular pregnancy (or even on the reg), so I didn't think too much of it. But looking back, those dizzy spells were severe. I also had an overwhelming intense need to drink juices and eat anything sweet, which is quite abnormal for me as I am not a sweets person, but again, just pregnancy cravings, right?
I was whizzing through all of my check ups with flying colors and went in for what I thought was going to be a normal exam - the dreaded 24 week glucose check. I knew something wasn't quite right when I started feeling overly dizzy and after drinking the sickly sweet syrup water I was beyond nauseous. They kept me to do a second additional test, as my first reading was abnormal. I felt so sick and just wanted to go home and lay down. Finally, after what seemed like a gazillion hours, which really was only about 5, I was asked to go in and speak to my OBGYN who told me the bad news. I had gestational diabetes. Our lovely doctor, who was my birth doctor for Alfie, kept telling me that GD was something we could handle; my pregnancy could still be absolutely normal. But when you are pregnant and literally want to eat the world, all of a sudden drastically changing my diet seemed like the worst thing that could happen to me. What would I do without ice cream and *gasp* my occasional McDonald's? We were scared and frightened, less for the baby, because I trusted and believed that if I played my cards right and ate healthy, Teddy would be just fine, but how would I go about making sure I made the right changes in my diet?
I don't think all of it really hit home until 20 minutes after our appointment, when I was released from the hospital, and needed to walk about 700M to a local pharmacy to buy a blood sugar monitor, lancelets and blood sugar testing strips. I finally waddled my way over with the help of my husband and fueled by some avocado and egg (I was too fearful to eat the muffin) and lo and behold, at the pharmacy, I fainted and kept fainting. The sweet little ladies finally revived me with a banana and a piece of chocolate. We were so worried that my blood sugar would be high that we did not pay attention to the fact that after 12+ hours of fasting; my blood sugar was dangerously low. After collecting our purchases and making sure I was stable, Toby rushed me into an Uber and we made our way home. I continued feeling like I had the world record of hangovers for the next 18 hours. It was awful.
At home, I started poring over all the brochures and pamphlets we were given by the hospital, including reading material that was in Chinese (we lived in Shanghai at the time) that described a normal diet and how to adjust it to a diabetic diet. The meal used as an example was breakfast and it described a normal meal consisting of 2 eggs, 6 steamed gyoza dumplings, toast and congee. The suggested diet for a diabetic was to cut everything down – to 1 egg, 4 dumplings, one piece of toast and a small portion of congee. Literally, I sat there stunned and thought- this is utter shit. While at the time, I didn't know that much about diabetes, I knew enough that everything on that menu is carb - and in turn sugar - loaded. How could they possibly be suggesting that I eat that crap? So Toby and I took matters into our own hands and spent hours and hours researching the differences between glycemic index, glycemic load, foods that will impact my blood sugar and foods that won't. Interestingly, most of the information was through the Western media, so a lot of the foods were not tailored to our lifestyle in Asia. We had to make do and really source and recompose our diet to make sure I always felt 100%.
But it wasn't easy, there were many ups and downs and trials and errors to find out what impacted my blood sugar personally and what didn’t. For instance, eating a few bites of plain flour noodles would make me want to hug the toilet bowl in defeat. Whereas, a few peanut M&M's were ok. On top of this, I was also feeding a growing toddler and I needed to make sure that Alfie and our little bun in the oven received all the nutrition that their growing bodies needed. In the end, I removed all white carbohydrates from our diet, including rice *gasp*, noodles, bread and plain flour based goods. I substituted in whole grains such as buckwheat, millet, quinoa, spelt flour, rye and sweet potato starch goods. I controlled my portions, decreased fat intake, and made sure I was always hydrated. I also had to decrease the amount of tropical fruits that I love so incredibly much for other things, like berries and jicama.
After our bodies acclimated and we became adjusted to this diet, I realized that I was feeding Alfie the healthiest diet I possibly could given our situation. He was eating loads of vegetables, less sugar and was packed with healthy unrefined grains. We felt good and we looked good (gotta say hubs was looking damn fine). My blood sugar readings were always in the normal range and the baby was less at risk for side effects. For Teddy, the diabetes was under control, but he was still measuring quite big (apparently he was a "giant" baby for Chinese standards) and we opted to have him induced at the end of 38 weeks. I am sure glad he was as well since the little chubs was 9.3lbs and his delivery was far from uncomplicated, but that's a different story. My happiest moment was when they measured his glucose levels after birth and he was perfectly normal and did not have hypoglycemia. I did it! The healthy eating worked!
We've continued in a pared down eating manner to this day. Now as a 2.75-year-old toddler it's much easier to get Alfie to eat an assortment of leafy veggies and whole grains. Teddy is also now following suit with a mix of healthy grains, vegetables and protein and he is packing on the pounds. My gestational diabetes disappeared once the placenta left my body, but I still need to be careful. I am 30% more likely to get diabetes in older age as I have a family history and also had gestational diabetes. I can also feel spikes in my glucose levels depending on things that I eat, although my blood sugar is still reading within the normal range. This means I do need to be careful about what I put into my body, but I am thankful for the awareness and the overall benefit this experience had on our family lifestyle even though I'll still have my occasional McDonald's.
Images by Kai Picture
