Just a note that GD is a placental issue that isn’t caused by what we eat. Some people can and some people can’t manage it with diet, but my understanding is that the screening test is fairly independent of what people are eating prior to it, because it’s screening for how your body reacts to a high sugar drink.
I know we all want to feel we’re doing all we can to keep our kids and pregnancies safe, but I also feel really strongly that it’s important to recognize the things that are out of our control. I’ve known so many people blame themselves for things that go wrong during pregnancy and many times it’s really out of our control.
That’s interesting. When my mom was here she made me ask the doctor about it since she had it and the doctor told me that it isn’t necessarily linked to weight gain (I thought my mom had it because she gained 80+ lbs when pregnant with me) but that it is highly impacted by diet and exercise so as long as I continued to eat healthy and exercise I didn’t need to worry about it. Maybe that was her response taking into account that I didn’t have it the first time around?
I ended up having a very long appointment. The doctor was worried about the contractions on Saturday so she measured my cervix and had me do a urine sample that she said will indicate if there are any more warning signs for pre-term labor. I’ve also officially been put on modified bed rest again due to my low blood pressure. She said I can try doing a walk per day to still get some exercise, but otherwise I’m sitting around with my feet up from here on out and wearing compression leggings if I have to go anywhere. I’m still showing signs of anemia too, even after taking iron supplements for 2 weeks, so if the bloodwork shows that I’m still low I’ll have to increase the dose. Then I went down to do the GD test, which was horrible like always, and then back up to the office to get my Rhogam shot. I ended up being gone for 3 hours (and I live 5 minutes down the road!).
Thank you for addressing this! Common misconception but I didn’t have time to write anything. But can be very damaging to people who then blame themselves for GD.
It’s super complicated, because YES exercise seems to have a protective effect and YES pre existing obesity or insulin resistance seems to increase your odds of getting it. And it’s CORRELATED with high weight gain, but it’s the GD causing the gain and not the gain causing the GD. And ultimately, placenta is a whole damn organ not of our own genetics and so things get weeeeeird.
I appreciate both of you piping up on this. Because my survival during pregnancy has required McDonald’s quarter pounders and literally anything at all that I can convince myself to eat. In both HG and GD, the placenta is the cause of the fun (plus our own genetics).
@economista I think your doc may have meant (or, should have meant) that you’re already eating fairly in line with what someone diagnosed with GD may have to eat anyway, so it wouldn’t disrupt you too much whether you have it or not.
I am currently looking for ways to get out of my test and wondering whether my blood test place will allow a juice alternative.
The placenta is SO interesting and I can’t wait for us to learn more about it.
Even during my first pregnancy, I was pretty aware that a lot of things are out of our control, but after having a loss, I’m really feeling a lot more sensitive about the language around what we can and cannot control because I’ve realized how much our own attempts to control the fates can come across easily as judgment on others when the things we’re trying desperately to avoid happen.
Mine also, but a less stern word - we think I was developing cholestasis of pregnancy at the end with Duckling, but I went into labour the next night. Placenta needs to calm down.
There’s a great section in “Like a Mother” by Angela Garbes all about the placenta (and Susan Fisher, a placenta researcher from UCSF). My friend read it and it inspired her to write that she wanted to see her placenta in her birth plan. I took a look at mine too and it was really cool – a vivid amorphous mesh of red and blue blood vessels.
Yep…I didn’t gain a lot of weight with my first and we eat pretty darn healthy around here, and move a good bit, but I got GD anyway. Basically expecting to have it again this time but we’ll see. I do the right things (except now when I’m having trouble keeping things down), so it’s a good reminder that I don’t have a lot of control/blame over it.
I was amazed when I saw mine. I’d read all the hippie “tree of life” things people say about it but the way they’d laid mine out I could really see how people see that and it was fascinating. Also riding high on having done the damn birth thing I was so fucking proud of myself for growing a healthy baby AND a whole new organ. Bodies are awesome sometimes.
…and then H and the one midwife started poking at it with instruments because he is a lifelong anatomy nerd.
Also re: controlling things in pregnancy…yeah. That shit’s rough. Until about 10pm the night before I had to give up on my home birth and go into the hospital with preE I was trying to convince myself I could somehow make myself “calm down” (because that’s all high blood pressure is, right??) and I could still do everything the way I’d planned. I was literally sitting on my meditation pillow in the middle of my dark living room trying to will my labor to start even though the drugs hadn’t kicked anything off the previous 12 hours. I still have some squishy feelings about it and I sometimes think about how I’ll prevent it (again, clearly 100% within my control right?) if we get a next time.
It’s REALLY good. Really really good. Highly recommend. Even Eddie devoured it and brings up things we learned from it still.
There’s a chapter about how fricking cool breast milk is but also how not everyone can easily breastfeed. There’s a chapter about miscarriage. There’s a chapter about how snippets of dna from every kid we have ever carried remain in our bodies for the rest of our lives. It’s part memoir and part geeking out and it’s amazing.
Related, the term “natural childbirth” is used because people don’t want to say vaginal, isn’t it. Also faux morality, but is suspect prudishness about vaginas is a big factor at play here. I now have a perverse desire to only use “c-section or VAGINAL birth” and make sure it’s all caps wherever used. I may be in a mood today.
I think this is a big reason people persist in saying “gender reveal” too, because the word SEX is bad so “gender of the baby” is so much socially safer. (Obviously ignoring the assholes who won’t say that because of their “politics”)
Ughhhh.
“Was it sliced out or is it a crotch goblin” is probably frowned on, eh?
I wanted to see my placenta. The doctor was excited to show it to me. Then it had to be removed by hand in pieces so I didn’t die of blood loss, right after it tried to kill me with pre-eclampsia.
.
so “gender of the baby” is so much socially safer. (Obviously ignoring the assholes who won’t say that because of their “politics”)
