I made the mistake of going online to research gestational diabetes this morning. You'd think I'd know better by now, but my insatiable appetite for information got the better of me. I did find some decent sites, but only after slogging through several that were scary and anxiety-inducing. ("Gestational Diabetes is very serious!" "If you don't follow this extremely restrictive plan you will injure your baby!!" "You better watch out! You're at risk for every possible kind of health problem now!!", etc., etc.) Gah. I set up the appointment with the diabetes clinic today - I'm starting out with a 2 hour long information session at the clinic on Thursday, followed up by a meeting with a nutritionist next week.
I gotta tell ya, internets, I'm feeling some trepidation. I'm essentially a lazy, lazy person, and from what I can tell, GD is not a lazy person's disease. There's a lot of monitoring and checking and rechecking and reporting. I have problems keeping track of my car keys, for chrissakes! I get lost in my own neighborhood. How the hell am I going to remember which carbs combine with which proteins at which time of the day? And while I can't say I've really enjoyed food since I got knocked up, it still sucks major big rocks that I probably can't have any refined sugar until May. I mean, hello! Thanksgiving! Christmas! Easter! Doing without mulled wine and hot cider alone should be enough to qualify me for some kind of lower level sainthood, but no gingerbread? No sugar cookies? NO CHOCOLATE BUNNY?!?!?!
But the worst part of all is the guilt. Because no matter how much I know that lots of non-obese women get GD, and lots of bigger women don't get it, I still feel like I brought this on myself. I *meant* to lose weight before getting pregs. I knew I really needed to. I just got with child before I thought I would! And, yeah, I mean obviously no one would plan it this way, and I know there's no point in even trying to place blame for stuff like this. Nonetheless, I feel like it's something I could have controlled if I had more self-control. In other words, this is feeding into an entire lifetime of guilt and discomfort about my eating habits. So in addition to the physical discomforts, there's this whole range of psychological discomforts I get to experience. This is not fun.
Meh. OK. Enough moping. Let's squab it up and think of some silver linings here, people:
1. I have really good docs, blessedly un-condescending and highly supportive and common-sensical.
2. More ultrasounds! More getting to see the baby before it's born!
3. More exciting blog entries! I could have just stuck you with a regular ol' pregnancy, but no! I know your time is limited, your attention spans are short - you want more bang for your blogging buck, dammit, and I support that! High-risk is the only way to go!
4. Fodder for future guilt trips! Forget that tired old, "I was in labor for X hours with you" excuse, and bring on the power of "I risked a fatal condition for you!" or "I gave up sugar for 6 months!" or "I felt nauseated for the better part of a year!" That's your A-game, guilt-wise.
Or, in other words, what's that you're whistling and why is it so dark in here?
