waywardsister
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Gestational Diabetes, hypoglyceimiaA friend of mine is pregnant, about 33 weeks, and has just been dx'ed with GD.
She is quite slim, has only gained baby weight. However, she (I suspect) has hypo. Before her pregnancy, she had to eat constantly, was always hungry, and felt ill and shaky if she couldn't eat. She has several food intolerances (wheat being one) and IBS, and ADD (all food related, IMO). And she loves her carbs.
She's having a horrible time with the idea of giving up bread (she eats spelt, etc, even though I've told her that a problem with wheat means she'd be best off ditching grains entirely) and other carbs like rice, etc. She's also worried about "eating enough carbs for the baby".
My understanding is that her baby is going to be at a much greater risk of T2 and other metabolic disorders; also, that babies don't require anything as far as grains go. People have been having babies for millenia without any bread, rice or other starchy carbs. I've never been pregnant though, and since she's asked for my advice I want to give her information from other LCers who have been there, done that.
She is monitoring blood sugar at home.
Anyone here experienced with GD? What helped, what didn't? I am assuming she can LC just like the rest of us, maybe keep the carbs a bit higher than we would (I've read 40-60g) and keep them coming from veggies as opposed to starches and fruits? She loves juice. She hates the idea of low carb (some addictive tendencies here with grains! I can relate) Also, what does her baby need/have to watch out for, since mum is GD? I'd imagine that baby would benefit from a LC way of eating. After all, it's how we evolved. But I'm just someone who's never had a baby and "eats weird", so.
Any advice, opinions, links etc are appreciated! I am going to send her some info from Weston Price, Nina Planck etc.
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Jaybird
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With my first pregnancy, I was diagnosed with "borderline GD". I was put on the diabetic diet, which I trashed and just got back to low carb. I had been on Atkins right before getting pregnant and unfortunately didn't stay low carb for the first half of that pregnancy. But I felt fine, I got back to fairly low carb ( but would be actually in the range of 75 to 100 grams carbs sometimes). My son was 7lb 6oz, not too big or anything like they worry about. My second pregnancy I refused to do the regular glucose tolerance test because I had read you can get false positive results...with that horrible sugary orange drink. So I insisted on doing the GTT a different way, which was with a meal instead of the drink. I think it was eggs fried in coconut oil and maybe half a slice of sprouted grain toast with plenty of butter, and even though I was more overweight in my second pregnancy I didn't even have border line GD. My daughter was a nice healthy 8lbs 6oz when she was born. Regardless of what she is diagnosed with (cause it could very well be a false result situation) low carbing is definitely great. But even someone who already believes strongly in low carbing, you can have horrible carb cravings when pregnant..especially at the end!!!
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