Price of Carelessness

It's confirmed that I have Gestational Diabetes, this occurs about 3 to 5 percent of all pregnant women. It's a different type of type 1 diabetes where the body produces no insulin and insulin must be injected, and from the more common type 2 diabetes. Patients with type 2 diabetes suffer from varying levels of insulin resistance and may control blood glucose levels through diet and exercise, with oral medication, or with insulin injections.

Gestational diabetes usually develops about midway through pregnancy, at about 20 to 24 weeks, and is caused by the changes in hormones in our body during pregnancy. In addition to supplying our baby with nutrients and water from our circulation, the placenta produces a number of hormones vital to the pregnancy. Some of these have a blocking effect on insulin. As the placenta grows larger, the more hormones are produced, and the greater the insulin resistance becomes. In most women, the pancreas is able to make additional insulin to overcome this insulin resistance. When the pancreas makes all the insulin it can, and there still isn't enough to overcome the effect of the placenta's hormones, gestational diabetes results.

These are the steps that I will do to help achieve a smooth pregnancy and a healthy baby:

* Follow an appropriate meal plan
* Frequent self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) (4X/day)
* Administering insulin injections and knowing how to adjust the dosage depending on results of SMBG (30 minutes before breakfast, 1 time)
* Controlling/treating hypoglycemia
* Adding or maintaining an appropriate level of physical activity (treadmill for 30 mins.)

I will be doing the self-monitoring of blood glucose, or SMBG. I was advised to monitor at least four times a day. It requires a drop of my blood (from a finger stick) and a home glucose monitor. I already bought the equipment called One Touch Ultra.

I will need to take insulin shots, since pregnant women cannot take oral anti-diabetes medications, since the safety of those medications during pregnancy has not been established. I should use only human insulin, since the use of insulin analogs has not been adequately tested in pregnant women.
My body's need for insulin is going to steadily increase throughout my pregnancy. My insulin dose may have to be adjusted upward periodically; it may also have to be recalculated as we (my baby and I ) get bigger. I will have to log the result every time I prick.

We will go back to my endoc. next week to see If I am responding on the medicines.