Pregnancy Update---The Glucose Debacle

Well folks I'm 27 weeks pregnant now!! That means 9 more weeks and I get my baby!! My little guy is getting big and strong, thank God!! At 25 weeks I was distributed betamethazone shots (a steroid that helps the baby's lungs and vital organs develop faster) in case we have to deliver even earlier than we are aiming for. To be honest, they are not painful a little uncomfortable but certainly not painful and well worth the investment! So far my Bean has been measuring a ways ahead but my OB still felt that it would be a good precautionary measure and so I oblidged.
That same week I was handed lab paperwork to go get a 1hr glucose test (standard testing for most pregnancies) and me being me decided to go do it the day of my second betamethazone shot...word of advice DON'T DO IT!!!! This steroid tends to make your glucose go sky high. So of course, I failed and was subjected to the horror that is the 3 hr glucose test. Now this too wouldn't be a big deal except for the fact that I have horrible veins every time I have to get blood drawn the person doing it has issues and will end up sticking me multiple times or worst...dig around for my vein...eeeek!! So the way the 3hr glucose test works is you fast for at least 10hrs, you go in and they do the baseline blood draw, then you drink that delish (NOT!) little orange drink, then you wait an hour, get your blood drawn again, wait another hour, get your blood drawn again, wait one more hour, get your blood drawn and then you finally get to eat. Needless to say the Bean was going nuts not only because I hadn't eaten but because of the crazy sugar drink they made me take.
So a week later, the day before my OB appointment the Dr's nurse called and told me I had failed *imagine my entire world freezing at that moment and dramatic music playing because that's how it felt* she told me that they'd have to schedule me to talk to me about measuring my blood sugar and about diet restrictions but that the good news was that I had only failed very marginally and that chances were I wouldn't need more drugs.

*imagine me having a complete meltdown*

I felt a giant sense of disapointment. Here I was working my butt off to be healthy, working out regularly, eating impecably well with no salt, little fat, little cholesterol and still I was diabetic! I was going to have to sacrifice more. I was angry because all I wanted was a semi-normal pregnancy I had made peace with the fact that I would have to watch my diet and exercise a long time ago and that I would have to undergo tests thru out my pregnancy to make sure my heart was working right but I never considered that I would have gestational diabetes because I was watching my diet and exercising!!! I MUST have done something wrong was all I could think about.

So the next day we go in to the Dr's office and we get to see our little active guy flipping around everywhere (even tho he's running out of room LOL) I got hooked up to the fetal heart rate/contractions monitor for the first time (it's aparently something my Dr likes to do every once in a while to make sure everything's ok) and the Bean was not cooperating one bit, he kept kicking the monitors out of place causing disturbances in the monitor's print out...we thought it was cute but the lady monitoring me thought it rather frustrating. Then we got to talk to the Dr. I asked her what I had done wrong, by how much I had failed, and told her how disturbed I was by the news. She told me that I did nothing wrong, that it actually meant I had a really healthy placenta. What happens with gestational diabetes is that the placenta creates this hormone that is great for the baby but can sometimes cause moms to not be able to process glucose very well. That it was important to get it under control because if my glucose levels continue to be high, that the baby can suffer a blood glucose drop when he's born because he will no longer have the placenta creating so much sugar but his body would have gotten used to producing a lot of insulin. And that my results were extremely marginal so techinically I'm "pre-diabetic" not diabetic and that I should be able to control it by reducing the carbs in my diet. And when she means marginal she means it!! The first two blood draws came back normal, the third came back 3 points higher than normal, and the fourth came back 2 points higher than normal.
Although I was still upset about the whole situation (because I'd rather be healthy!!) I felt much better knowing what it was and how mild my case was. So tomorrow I have to wake up early and go see her nurse so she can talk to me about specific diet restrictions (which I have been researching because I try to never go to a meeting unprepared) and about measuring my blood sugar levels every day. I have a lot of questions so I hope she has a lot of answers for me. Oh!! We're also going to register at the hospital we've chosen so I'm excited about that :).

I'll update tomorrow!