blood sugar; blogging

I have had low blood sugar episodes in the past, and they seem to come on very quickly during late pregnancy. No surprise there, with another little being sharing my blood glucose. I was at home yesterday when I felt the symptoms starting, so I went into the bathroom and used the blood glucose monitor, curious what blood sugar level trigger the symptoms of dizziness, sweating and shakiness. My blood sugar was exactly 60. An online search showed that was hypoglycemic, but not dangerously low. I ate a meal, as I was hungry, along with some candy to bring the numbers up. I still didn't feel very good afterwards, and 45 minutes later my blood sugar was up to 137. Anything under 140 after a meal is OK. This morning I checked my fasting level upon awakening and it was 82, which is perfect. I think my problem is that I am insulin resistant. It showed up on my 3-hour glucose-insulin test. I recall the second hour of the test showed elevated insulin levels, and the blood sugar was resisting coming down. The first and 3rd hour numbers were more normal. If someone is insulin resistant, or somewhat insulin resistant, their body can secrete too much insulin, and the blood sugar can dip too low after meals. Yesterday I had eaten a bowl of cereal at 6am, and by 9:15am I was hypoglycemic. I used to be able to wait until 10 or 10:30am before needing my mid-morning snack, but I guess little bub needs more food than that. And I need to remember to keep snacks in the car and my purse so I don't have any "episodes" while I am out. The good news is that I am not diabetic. And while I have relatives, my mother in particular, who have problems handling sugar like I do, nobody in our known family tree ever had diabetes. I won't rest on those laurels, though. I'd hate to be the first one.

I read an opinion article this morning about posting on sites like facebook and blogging. About how we show a whitewashed/airbrushed version of ourselves, hiding our flaws. I was thinking about that recently. Yes, this blog is whitewashed. Of course it is. It is a publicly accessible record of my thoughts and family pictures. It is sort of a diary, but even with "private" written diaries, they don't tend to remain private. I want a blog that can be read by my family members someday. They don't all know about it right now, but if something were to ever happen to me, I would hope that they would find it and find comfort in being able to read more about me. So if I leave out certain lesser incidents and thoughts that happen in my life, I think that is OK. Some things are nobody's business. And personal details of the interactions between myself and my husband, for instance, should and do remain between us. So from time to time I may post about things from my past. This will be an effort to document some of the more memorable moments of my life. I may have forgotten to mention them to my kids. Or it may be that it feels more comfortable to write about them than to talk about them. I don't want all the fun/scary stories to be lost. I hope to live to at least 90, of course, but I am not going to count on it. So in that regard, those of you who know how to contact my family, if something happens to me, please do, and feel free to tell them about the blog. Thanks.

OB appt update

The appt was mostly good, but a little bad, in my opinion. I spilled a trace amount of sugar into my urine. I know my body has a hard time handling sugar, and I haven't exactly been an angel about the sweets, but in 6 pregnancies, this is the very first time this has happened. I asked the doctor about it right away. He said as long as my fasting glucose is under 105 that I don't have gestational diabetes. My last 3 readings were 90, 88 and 80. On the other hand, I feel that I probably should lay off the frozen Snicker bars and other chocolate confections. It was probably a bad idea to buy them during pregnancy in the first place. I hope I don't develop GD. To do that would put me at high risk for diabetes later in life, and that is one horrible disease. I remember when I was taking differential diagnosis examinations in chiropractic college. I told a friend of mine if the question was multiple choice, choose diabetes because diabetes causes *everything*. I'm not there yet, but I had better watch my p's and q's. So that was the bad news.

On the good side, the baby's heartbeat was 146, and my blood pressure was 106 over 67 (immediately after the nurse told me about the blood sugar). The fundus measured 1.5 weeks ahead at 36cm. Doc asked me if I felt bigger this time. I said that I usually feel miserably large at the end of all my pregnancies, so it is hard to tell. He seems to be under the impression that this baby is big. I'm not sure to set much store by that, though, as I recall he may have said that in the past and it didn't come true.

They ran a FFN test again, because I have been getting a lot of contractions. And as long as they were at it, they went ahead and ran the beta strep test as well. Doc said my cervix was neither dilated nor effaced. Typical. My cast iron cervix isn't budging, no matter how many practice contractions I have. Fine with me. A full term delivery is fine. FINE! ;-D

And I had them call in the prescription for heparin and syringes. I am supposed to switch from Lovenox to heparin at 36 weeks, so a week from Monday. That way it only sticks around for 12 hours instead of 36 hours, and so it should be easier to stop the shots when I detect that labor has started. Hopefully.

16 week belly pic

OK. 9 more days until the amnio. I'm feeling nervous about it. I feel pretty sure things will turn out fine, but I just want it over with. I'm worried about the needle puncture being dangerous to the baby, more so than a bad test result.

My blood sugar is doing great. I check it about one morning per week, fasting. It was hovering around 90 before the pg. The past 3 weeks it was 87 and this morning it was 85. I'm trying to lay off the candy. It's a sacrifice, but I'm doing it.

I need to weigh in this week. I think as of last week I had gained 4 pounds in the pg total. I remembered too late this morning.