It's been a rough few weeks for me with this whole gestational diabetes thing. Initially, it seemed like it might be alright. After all, all of my numbers responded well, except for the morning fasting number. But, the dietitian had said that was the most difficult one to get in order, so I was frustrated, but I still felt properly motivated by the proper response of the after-meal numbers.
Then came the day I almost met the fasting number. I need to be below 95 and I got a 96. I was ecstatic! Then came my after-breakfast number. 121. What?! I eat the same breakfast everyday. How could that number suddenly be outside the acceptable range (100-120)? Worse, it also managed to throw off my numbers most of the day. So, after running high all day, my fasting number the next day was high again--but the others cooperated. Then, I discovered that lunch is almost always below my range. I get in the 90s. So, I started eating more carbs at lunch. I got as high as like 80 carbs (I'm only supposed to have 60) and was still getting around 109. Weird, but everything else (except the fasting number) seemed fine, so I just added more fruit to my lunches. I also discovered that not all carbs are created equal--and I'm not just talking about the junk food kind. I could eat 40 carbs for a late-night snack if I ate pretzels with peanut butter and get great morning numbers, but have only 30 carbs of ice cream and get much higher numbers. Turns out that milk and fruit sugars hit me harder than the others and my blood sugar just doesn't recover the same way.
So anyway, I think I've finally hit a good groove with getting all my numbers but my fasting one within range. About a week later, I again achieved the magic 96. As before, I ate the exact same breakfast I had eaten for the previous 2 weeks. Breakfast number--164! I didn't even get a number that high the morning I had eaten 3 McDonald's breakfast burritos and a 32oz Sweet Tea! At this point, I was ready to go out and get myself a nice big meal from McDonald's and chuck the whole plan. If the numbers refuse to have any correlation to what I'm eating, what is the point. Well, the point is that I would be hurting both myself and my daughter. But that didn't really stop the frustration.
See, I am almost entirely motivated by results. If I work my tail off and get nowhere, I don't see the point in working that hard anymore. With my willpower failing and my frustration at an all time high, I called the dietitian. I told her my problem and she reiterated that morning numbers are the most difficult to get into line. I told her I understood that, but what I didn't understand was why the same breakfast gave me such wildly different numbers, especially when I would get so close to the fasting number, and yet could carbo-load at lunch with no consequences. She suggested trying to eat a few more carbs on those mornings when my number was lower, counter-intuitively. She suggested maybe my body thought the number was too low and was pumping out sugar to compensate, thus raising it too high. I have not had the opportunity to try this theory out yet--hard enough to find that magic 96 in the first place--but I plan to try it when I do.
The best thing she said to me, however, was that this sometimes happens and that she understood how extremely frustrating it was for me. Turns out that there isn't necessarily a one-to-one correlation between what you eat and what your blood sugar is. Eating the same thing at the same time every day can give you wildly different results. She also indicated that as my daughter grows, I'll need more and more insulin, meaning that my numbers may get progressively worse without my doing anything different--I'm just getting more resistant. Frustrating, but nothing I can do anything about, except keep doing my best to follow the rules. I'll see the doctor later this week to go over my numbers and see what they think about how I'm doing. I'm hopeful that they'll tell me my numbers are close enough. If not, well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
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