Gestational Diabetes - When Someone Else's Life is Depending on It Too

Then I became pregnant for the third time. I developed hyperemesis and started having hypoglycemic episodes almost immediately. By that point, well acquainted with blood sugar monitoring, I started checking it at home from the beginning. About halfway through the pregnancy, I began taking oral medication which helped with the high sugar, but also caused more hypoglycemic episodes. That labor was traumatic and scary - after crashing from a reaction to something in my epidural and requiring two shots of epinephrine, my blood sugar tanked and then skyrocketed. At birth, she was hypoglycemic and needed formula supplementation for the first two days to stabilize her.

The fourth one was more like the third in terms of the blood sugar itself, but I was better equipped to deal with it than the time before. I was also on oral medication and intentionally avoided an epidural because of what had happened before. He was transitionally hypoglycemic, but required formula only a few times to stabilize.

All of my children were premature. None of them were large babies, they were all delivered vaginally. The most I gained with any single pregnancy was 24 pounds, but most were in the 15-18 range. 

I saw an endocrinologist once in all of that time. I refused dietary counseling after the first woman I saw condescended to me and talked to me like I was a child. She shamed me for coming into the pregnancy with some extra pounds, never bothering to ask why the timing worked out the way that it had. I wasn't about to explain the cancer or the miscarriage or the infertility to someone who didn't seem to think I could wrap my head around portion sizes.  

Help might have been nice. Instead I was shamed. Warned about all the things that could go wrong. Shamed some more. Told that I would need a c-section because the babies would be huge. I told her to just give me the monitor and I left.

I taught myself how to count carbs in a hurry. I knew it wasn't just my life depending on this. My blood sugar was always very tightly controlled. When it edged up, I called my OBGYN (who was smart enough to realize that I was smart enough to manage it) and we adjusted my dosages. I did struggle with fasting sugars, though, and for the last three pregnancies would get up in the middle of the night to eat and check myself.

Pregnant women need real resources to deal with this condition. Shaming them about being overweight and pregnant will not do anything to help them right now. Not long after I dealt with it for the first time, a friend of mine developed it as well. My very thin, very healthy, very athletic friend. Seriously, she's probably the most in shape person I have ever met in my life. And she still had to deal with it.

It doesn't just happen to the big girls. Honest.

Gestational diabetes has a genetic component to it, just like every other form of the disease does. It's fairly uncommon to have symptoms of GD, because the desired blood sugar range is smaller than with T2. Often the only way to catch it is with screening, and the mild form of it most often doesn't show up until the third trimester. For most women, it will disappear after birth (the placenta disrupts your body's use of hormones, including insulin), but approximately 50% of women who have it will develop Type 2 down the road, with those odds increasing with each GD pregnancy.

With 4 GD pregnancies and family history, I'm screwed.

There ARE real risks associated with this condition and I don't mean to diminish them, but I can tell you that scaring pregnant women isn't the way to go. 

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With love and respect, the stories of other women who have dealt with this condition.

You mentioned the other day about having GD with your pregnancies. I was recently diagnosed and am having to learn that 1. We don't really have a diabetes friendly food supply. I literally find myself spending an hour or more at the store reading labels trying to find something that I "might" be able to eat. 2. You would think that with how common GD is (well diabetes period if we are being honest) that there would be more support from the medical community. My experience has been "this is where we want your numbers, so make it happen" and "well I'm sorry that having the numbers we need makes you feel out of it, you're just going to have to learn how to deal with that." I have honestly gotten more support and guidance from other moms than I have from with my dietician or OB.

If we are being honest I am finding that diabetes is in many ways like mental illness. To most people it is a big mystery and in many ways kind of taboo. We claim to be supportive and that we are working to make it easier to live with. The reality though is that we seem to just want to push medicine. I am one of those moms who won't even so much as take a Tylenol while I am pregnant because I don't want that to get to my baby. So how do you think it makes me feel that instead of getting any kind of guidance on how to make it work with my diet I am told "well we may just have to put you on a pill or do insulin shots"? I honestly think I have cried more in the last month than I have this whole pregnancy.
- Whitney Cauthen

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When I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I didn't realize how scary it could be. I managed it well, for the most part. Controlled it by strictly watching what I ate and when. 

There were a few times that if my family hadn't been around, I don't know what would have happened. We hadn't been to one of our favorite Chinese restaurants in a long while. I thought, I will skip lunch and snack, so I can eat a little more there. I remember sitting on the computer and suddenly it was like I had no control over my body. I tried to stand up and immediately fell back onto the chair. I was shaking uncontrollably and freaked out. I remember telling Anthony I didn't feel so good and him asking what I needed. He brought me half a pb sandwich and some of his Dr. Pepper. When I stopped shaking enough to test I was at 52. I don't know how low it got, but it scared me enough to get it into my thick skull how important it was to mind my diet very closely. 

The rest of my pregnancy went well, and when Lydia was born, she was 9 lbs, 10 oz. She is 9 years old now, and am borderline diabetic. I have blood sugar drops, not nearly as scary as the time I told you about. I am trying so hard to eat decent meals, because I never want to live with diabetes again. My mom has type 2. My grandma (her mother) died from complications of type 2 and cancer. A cousin, barely 45 died from complications uncontrolled type 1. Several more cousins have had gestational diabetes. This disease runs amok in my family and has caused all kinds of pain and suffering. I hope eventually there will be a cure. Thanks for bringing awareness to this horrible disease. Hopefully someone will be helped by the things they read in your blog. 

- Rebecca Osborne

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