Hi Everyone,
I’ve been following this forum for about the past year and a half while my husband and I first talked about getting/trying to become pregnant. I’m now seven and a half weeks pregnant and sooooo excited!!! Scared about diabetes, but trying to take the advice I’ve seen everyone else post on here and test, correct and move on. (easier said than done sometimes - I’m a worrier! )
I do have a question about what kind of snacks you ate while you were pregnant. I find that I do pretty well with my meals - but I get sooo hungry in between and things like crackers or granola bars spike my blood sugar too much. I’ve been eating a lot of nuts and string cheese in between meals, but am already starting to get sick of this. Any snack ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Congratulations on your baby! Other than eating the same breakfast every morning so I could see early in the day if I was having insulin resistance, I ate what I wanted in pregnancy.
I was good about looking up carbs and dosed insulin accordingly. I tried to test an hour after eating to see if I needed a post-meal correction too. This was a big help in having a good A1c and avoiding lows.
Had a thing for mint chocolate chip ice cream when pregnant and my son loves it. =) He was born with a normal blood sugar and is now a normal, non-diabetic 9 year old.
Like Jenna I’m pretty much eating what I want and taking the appropriate doses when I snack for the carbs. I do like those babybels though for while I’m at work and don’t want to bother with a shot I’m now on the same ratio for carbs from morning to night, I had to up my breakfast and snack ratio in my second trimester from 2:15 to 3:12 to match my lunch and dinner ratios so that might be why you’re having trouble with things like crackers
Oh I should add that while I might check an hour after eating, I wouldn’t correct until the 2hour post-meal check to ensure I wasn’t correcting when I didn’t need to be.
If you’re using a pump (or just like doing the math in your head) you can account for the insulin on board and correct an hour post meal. It really does reduce the post-meal spikes.
I did it successfully and had a 5.1 A1c when pregnant without any severe lows. I was just as concerned about lows when pregnant than highs since glucose is vital in brain and neurological development of the fetus. So I made sure my blood sugar didn’t drop below 60, which is normal for a non-diabetic.
On the pump yes, which is one of the pros of being on a pump.
I’m not on the pump and she didn’t specify if she was or wasn’t so I thought I’d throw that in there since you can’t on shots Unless I’m “ridiculously high” (aka above 12) at the one hour mark if I correct at that point I always seem to go low which is why I wait until the 2 hour mark to correct.
Congratulations on your pregnancy! This is such an exciting time! I’ve been snacking on bananas, greek yogurt (sometimes with mix-ins like peanut butter, berries, or canned pumpkin), hard-boiled eggs, sometimes nuts, V8, and cottage cheese. I try to keep snacks high-protein and low-carb. I’m 28 weeks now, and seem to be hungry all the time, so it’s getting more challenging. I have a Dexcom, which (when it’s accurate) makes it easy to keep an eye on my blood sugars, but I still try to check an hour after meals. I usually ignore the amount to insulin on board when correcting because insulin resistance is getting pretty strong for me, so I need all I can get.
Thank you so much for all of the snack ideas!! You definitely gave me a lot of new things to try. I’ll have to start hard boiling eggs and trying some baby bell cheeses too! I’m on an insulin pump which helps, but I feel like my sensor can be so hit or miss. Sometimes it is dead on and other times it is wildly inaccurate. The other night it kept telling me I was 43 and when I tested I was 123, but it wouldn’t recalibrate and said I was 43 the whole night, so I finally shut it off. Does anyone else have those same problems with their sensors?
I have stopped using my dexcom all together. I had a site fail after 24hours a few weeks ago and haven’t tried it since. Since it’s not 100% accurate and I was already testing 10+ times a day, I found little reason to keep using it…as it meant I lost a spot to inject my insulin when I was already limited to my arms and thighs after 7w.
Until recently I would only wake up to test at night if I woke up feeling weird or I was adjusting my insulin anyways, but now that I’m in my 3rd trimester and having so much resistance overnight, I wake up 2-3x a night to test. I imagine if I still had my dexcom beeping at me every 5 minutes after doing a correction dose I would be throwing it out the window haha.
I only eat organic so I can’t do babybel but I do snack on organic string cheese, hard boiled eggs or organic cottage cheese in the morning. And either Greek yogurt or fruit with a spoonful of sunflower seed butter in the afternoon.
Late thought but something I’ve noticed. Focusing on protein in snacks and meals has immensely helped get the crazy highs from the growth hormone under control. It has made the highs much better to deal with.
