Gestational diabetes, Part I

Everyone I know has heard the story: how I only gained 11 lbs while pregnant with Norah and had dropped 21 lbs by 4 days postpartum. How I couldn't even chew sugarless gum for the last 14 weeks of the pregnancy. How I had to check my sugar 4 times a day. How I didn't even eat cake at my own baby shower.

Of course, I think there are some who hear this story and think I am belaboring the point by still discussing after 4 years (which I am....hello...I am obsessive). And there are some who may think to themselves, "Well, I gained 43 lbs during pregnancy and still haven't lost the last 8. Whatcha bitchin' about C?"

After I had delivered N and gone through my nervous breakdown, I read a slew of books on perinatal and postpartum mood disorders, and one even mentioned that for some women susceptible to OCD (or with undiagnosed OCD), developing gestational diabetes actually throws them into full-blown OCD because of the constant checking of blood sugars and obsessive thinking about diet and exercise.

So while I think I will handle GD better this time around, it still scares me, in part because it is such a pain, but also because it likely will set off some anxiety (shit--it already has).

I was having some pre-emptive anxiety this a.m., but my doctor didn't bite. She said, "Think positively," as if my insulin and pancreas care one iota whether I'm thinking positively that I won't have GD. I am all for the power of positive thinking but I don't know that it can change my ability to metabolize 50 grams of sugary sludge.

At least this time around, if I do have it, I know there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. During my first pregnancy, I felt like such a failure, which is stupid, I now realize. Plus, I was so obsessed with having a pure pregnancy that the idea of injecting myself with insulin or taking metformin or some other diabetes med terrified me.

Sometimes I think, "Maybe there will be a miracle, and I won't have GD!," but then I think, "I could then develop something worse." I should know by Thursday.