Hellobee Boards

Great idea! I'm not pregnant but when I was (and had GD), I lived on:
- Nature Valley protein bars
- Apple with nut butter
- Peach with cottage cheese
- Chili
- Rotisserie chicken

I had it for my last pregnancy and I liked:

Clif Bars- Peanut Butter Flavor
Hard boiled eggs
Peanut Butter
Rotisserie chicken
Sardines
Cheese

I will try to find my old diet plan!

@Dandelion: Haha, I wish we made homemade. TGIFridays here too. It's a really easy meal with the rotisserie chicken. And don't be too jealous I'm almost done, I was diagnosed at 10 weeks, so 28 weeks of this and I am SO DONE.

@Dandelion: Ugh, that's rough. My advice - don't be afraid of having to take insulin. I avoided it for so long, and eventually I just couldn't any more and it was kind of a weight off my chest because I have more flexibility with food.

I had to take insulin for my fasting numbers and lunch, and I agree with @ShootingStar: it helped to take some of the food pressure off. Once you get over the needle part, it's easy!

I ate reduced sugar ice cream, apples with peanut butter, peanut butter cookies (just PB, Splenda and egg), lots of eggs, whole wheat pasta, etc.

@Dandelion: They had me fill out a log 4 times a day with my blood sugars and meet with a nutritionist and an endocrinologist. I was able to manage it for a long time with just diet and Metformin - from May to September (I found out at 10 weeks). But my endocrinologist didn't like me being on Metformin so long, even though it worked so well, and then my numbers kinda went to hell.

I kept in close contact with the endocrinologist and eventually she convinced me that we had such a short amount of time to make a difference - <10 weeks at that point, that I should try the insulin. I was SO resistant, but it ended up being absolutely necessary for me. As pregnancy goes on, it's really common for the placenta to block more and more insulin, which is what happened to me. As my doctor put it, you're constantly trying to hit a moving target.

If you have any questions about the insulin, let me know. I did 3 different types based on my lifestyle, but there's a ton of options. And the injections really are not bad at all. You can barely feel them.

@Dandelion: It's seriously not suffering! The diet is way worse than the insulin. And the insulin gives you a little bit more leeway in what you eat.

@Dandelion: Since you don't have much time left you could ask about doing a long acting insulin, that works for about 18 hours. I think normally they'd have you do what I did - track meals and sugars for a while and then if you can't control it they'd talk insulin. But with not much time left you could always ask if you can start on insulin right away instead of having a week of bad sugars, then trying to adjust diet for a week or two etc, and meanwhile it's not under control.

@HLK208: My doctors told me 90 and below for morning fasting score and 130 and below for after meals (1 hour after the start of a meal). I think recommended carb intake for meals was 20-30 grams and snacks was 10-15 grams. I was able to control my GD with diet, but it was really hard at first. I also didn't follow the recommended meal carb intake because it was too high for me.

My typical meals looked like this...

Breakfast - oatmeal, eggs, bacon/sausage, 1/2 avocado
Snack (after breakfast, lunch, and dinner) - milk, peanut butter with celery, hummus with carrots, nuts or pretty much whatever I wanted to eat within reason as long as I ate my snack an hour - 2 hours after my meal
Lunch/Dinner - lots of veggies and protein (think Paleo diet)
Dessert - cake, ice cream

The key for me was to keep my metabolism going throughout the day, which meant eating frequently. The morning meal started my metabolism, and I didn't want it to dip throughout the day because it would affect my glucose. So as long as I ate great meals, I was able to enjoy my snacks. Sometimes my snacks resembled more of mini meals, but it really worked for me. I went in for routine check ups (every month, which turned into every other week and then 3x a week), and DS2 was very healthy. He was actually on the smaller side, and the reason for the frequent check ups was due to his small size and not the other way around.

Oh and there are plenty of carbs in the food we eat. I chose to stick with healthy foods for my meal carb intake like vegetables and an occasional piece of fruit.

@HLK208: Oh, and when I saw the dietician, she definitely said I had to eat carbs. It's funny cause my numbers will be ok or just slightly high when I think I eat more carbs than I should.