To my utter and complete disbelief, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes whilst 28 weeks pregnant. I didn’t have any of the obvious risk factors. I wasn’t overweight (BMI of above 30), my siblings don’t have diabetes and as this was my first pregnancy, any factor associated with a previous birth didn’t apply. The only reason my midwife referred me for a glucose tolerance test was because of my ethnicity. 

I went along just to ‘tick off’ another pregnancy related test. I joked with my husband after the test and said we should go to Starbucks for a frappacino as it might be the last one I have for a while! We didn’t go but fate came back and kicked me in the backside later that afternoon when the nurse called and told me the news. “Those pesky pregnancy hormones can sometimes go all over the place and it’s not your fault but you have gestational diabetes. You need to come in later this week,” she said. I was dumbfounded. So many emotions ran around my head. More than anything, I couldn’t believe it. I was convinced the test was wrong. I was also annoyed at myself as my  2-hour plasma glucose level was EXACTLY 7.8 mmol/litre. If I had maybe, just maybe, sat up and down a couple of times instead of sitting still like the nurse told me to, I wouldn’t have been on the threshold!! Aaaarrgghh was the voice in my head!

The nurse asked me to keep a written record of my diet for the next few days as it would help the dietician advise me when I met her later that week. I did this and used the Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker by MyFitnesPal (the free version). It was super easy as most food stuffs are preloaded on the app so calculating the sugar content etc was a piece of cake! 

The nurse gave me a yellow sharps container, a glucose testing kit and an orange book to record my blood glucose levels. That just made me 🤢. I HATE needles… I faint every time I have an injection so the thought of pricking myself 5 times a day made me so queezy. Just thinking about it is sending chills down my spine. Urgh!

I also saw a dietician who gave me a pamphlet of all the low glucose foods to try. And thus began the hardest diet I’ve ever had to be on! It was a mission, but it meant I avoided any drugs throughout the remainder of my pregnancy. 🤗