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| 18 weeks pregnant with #3. |
Expecting Baby Number Three!
Surprise! I mean, it certainly was for us. I am diabetic. I don't know if I ever mentioned this before. Being pregnant and diabetic is not easy. I was diagnosed when I was 20. I wasn't even able to legally drink yet! So not fun. I have been on insulin since week 12 of my first pregnancy. This was summer of 2008. I gained negative weight during that pregnancy. Negative 5 pounds. I ate really well and my body tolerated the insulin really well. Then I lost 35 pounds in the first six weeks post partum. With my son, (pregnancy #2) I got pregnant in early August of 2009. My daughter was 6 months old when I found out I was expecting again! I gained 50 ish pounds during my second pregnancy. What can I say. All I wanted was fries dipped in mayo! I was perfectly happy for 25 years hating mayo. My son, apparently thought the stuff was wonderful. I lost all of 10 pounds from my second pregnancy. My son weighed 10 pounds 7 ounces. Yeah... in other words, I didn't lose any of the weight I gained while I was pregnant with my son.
So, I say all of this to say that I started this pregnancy all WRONG!
I had become lax with my blood sugar levels. My son had self weaned at 17 months. He is now just older than 2! Now that my breasts weren't being used for food, I would drink wine occasionally* (dude, I know... alcohol?!?!) YES! Wine! It's not bad for you (well, YOU anyway) It is bad for me because I am diabetic and drinking wine is like eating spoonfuls of refined sugar for my pancreas! I ate poorly, I would eat CHEESEBURGERS! I would eat pasta and ice cream and drink super sugary coffee drinks and everything else that is on the DON'T TOUCH IF YOU ARE DIABETIC list. Long story short: (don't say "even longer"? please?) My blood sugar levels were not ideal far baby making.
Apparently it didn't matter that I was being awful to my body.
*sigh*
Yay!!! Baby number 3 is on the way. From the moment I found out I was expecting I changed my diet. However, my goal of being off insulin by the time I got around to baby number 3 seemed to be a loss. I FAILED. I got pregnant with an overweight and diabetic body again! I felt shocked, then guilty, then depressed, then... I got over it.
I decided that pregnancy lasts awhile and I had time to make up for a bad beginning. At first, I started with a no carb diet. After a week this did not help my diabetes in the slightest, which alarmed me. You would think that if no carbs(sugar) were being consumed that my blood sugar would be normal. My Doc told me to steadily increase my insulin doses. This worked well enough until just before week 12. At week 12 my Doc put me on a sliding scale with my insulin. This means that I had to give myself a shot before every single meal and snack. This was the best control for my blood sugar yet. I was able to eat what I wanted (within reason) and not have the worry of high blood sugar. You would think this was the answer for me. I could eat well, or not so well and just take insulin in a similar manner to how my pancreas works, right? Wrong. Shooting insulin is not the answer. For a short while, it's not a bad thing. It is not the only answer to a diabetic though. Insulin is a treatment, not a cure.
My food habits needed a change. Taking up to 8 shots of insulin a day is no way to have a healthy pregnancy. Eating whatever I felt like led to a weight gain of 16 pounds by week 16. Any weight gain for me in pregnancy is not advised as I started out really overweight. I managed to gain weight even though I was really sick from week 6-16.
I needed a better option for food. I needed food to heal me and not to hurt me. It was suggested that I check out a documentary and so I did.
I watched the documentary titled "Simply raw: curing diabetes in 30 days". This movie has changed the way I think about my diabetes.
'Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food' - Hippocrates
Stay tuned for Part 2
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