Gestational diabetes any advice or experiences? Very nervous re list of possible complications

[Jess994]

I’ve found out that I’ve got gestational diabetes. I passed the fasting blood test but failed the 2 hour one. Just wondering if anyone has any advice or experiences. I’m feeling very anxious and it doesn’t help when you read the list of possible complications

[Seb9]

I had gestational diabetes with my first pregnancy at my GTT test at 28 weeks and this pregnancy I got diagnosed at my 8 week booking appointment this time round.

You should have a meeting with your diabetes team and be given a blood testing kit, I have to test my blood in the morning before I eat anything, then after breakfast, lunch and dinner. My fasting sugars in the morning have to be below 5.3 and below 7.8 after my meals.

You have to watch what you eat in terms of sugar and carbs and exercise helps after you've eaten too help lower your sugar levels. It's really it and miss what you can and can't eat. I cannot tolerate things you'd think we're healthy like Porridge or bananas, because they spike my sugars, but I can have two Ryvita crackers with cream cheese. The gestational diabetes website is really helpful for different recipe ideas.

My first pregnancy I mainly controlled it with diet and exercise, but this time I have it worse so I'm on medication and insulin.

They offer you lots of monitoring and help through your pregnancy.

Currently I'm 22 weeks and have an appointment pretty much every 3 weeks with my diabetes team. From 28 weeks I'll also have extra growth scans too.

They mainly want you to control your blood sugars so that baby doesn't grow too big and that when they're born that they don't have a real low sugar crash, because they'll be getting lots of extra sugar from you which will stop as soon as they're born.

I have an app on my phone that's connected to the hospital and I upload my results and my nurses and consultant can check them remotely if I'm struggling, but I'm not sure if that's the same for all hospitals.

At the end of your pregnancy if your babies weight looks good they'll often let you go to full term, but they won't let you go overdue and will advise you to have an induction at some point to reduce the risk of having a large baby.

It sucks that you have to have such a fun free diet for your pregnancy but it's definitely worth it. Hope your diabetes team give you lots of support xx

[Dave_Court in reply to Seb9]

Hi Seb9

Thanks for your post.

My girlfriend has just been told she has this too and is at 26 weeks. She’s upset about it and I have been looking for someone like you (/your post) to understand what it will mean for her.

It sounds like it varies from person to person and that depending on the severity, you may be able to control through diet and exercise but that’s not always the case.

She’s currently having to do lots of meds and injections every day for other conditions she’s managing so for her this just feels like one more thing to do and that it’s a lot. She’s had to do thyroid meds, blood thinning injections, b12 and all sorts of tablets!

It would be good to find out more about what this is like for people and how they manage it. Hope it all went ok for you.

Dave

[Jess994 in reply to Dave_Court]

Hi there

I managed to stay diet controlled to the end. I was induced week 39 and baby was born healthy passing his sugars and we were able to leave hospital the day after he was born. I was so scared when I was diagnosed but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be