Counting Carbs

On Thursday afternoon I had my first consultation at the Diabetes/Endocrinology Center in Scarborough. Nick came with me, to make sure I paid attention to the dietary recommendations, and because he’s really the better cook between the two of us, so we thought it important that he be there to know what I should be eating. There were only two other women in the class with us. Both were rather large women, and had they not been in a gestational diabetes class, I would not have realized that they were six months pregnant. Neither had a discernable baby bump. One of the women came to the class late, scraping the bottom of a cup of chili from Wendy’s.

The class was much more informative than either Nick or I were expecting. The instructors gave very specific guidelines as to how many grams of carbohydrates can be consumed at each meal (45gm) and snack (15gm). I was also given a glucose testing meter, and have been instructed to check my blood four times per day. Testing my blood consists of pricking my finger with a tiny needle, called a lancet, then placing the blood drop on a small plastic receptor strip that is inserted into a glucose meter. I check my blood upon waking (the fasting level) and two hours after every meal. My first reading, two hours after my usual breakfast of whole grain cereal and soy milk, was too high. Every other reading of the past four days so far has been normal.

I stopped eating cereal, and replaced it with a breakfast of yogurt and frozen blueberries, and a fried egg and cheese on a sprouted wheat English muffin. Delicious and filling, and seems to keep my post-breakfast levels lower. The meal plan they recommend is really not so different from what I usually eat—I just have to watch my carbohydrate intake, and limit sweets. Last night for dinner, I made whole wheat penne with chicken, broccoli, and parmesan, and two hours later for dessert had an organic ice cream bar dipped in chocolate with almonds. Both are perfectly acceptable on the meal plan. Neither spiked my blood sugar levels. The trick is to count carbs and space out meals and snacks every two to three hours so that my blood sugar never has a chance to dip too low or get too high.

I’m feeling less guilty about how this happened. I realize now it’s less a problem of my diet than the fact that my body simply isn’t producing enough insulin during this period of pregnancy. The placenta blocks the absorption of insulin into the bloodstream, meaning there is more glucose traveling through my blood, and not getting into my cells, where it belongs. All I can do to counteract that fact is watch my intake of carbohydrates, so my glucose levels don’t get too high, and exercise more to burn off whatever extra glucose is leftover. Between counting carbs and walking more (I walked for two hours yesterday while doing errands), I think I’ll get this under control.

Owning Up

I thought I was reasonably healthy. I read labels, scrupulously avoid high-fructose corn syrup, and whenever possible try to eat minimally processed foods. I eat organic, whole-grain cereal with soy milk every morning. I eat red meat sparingly (once or twice a month), and I snack on things like oranges, almonds and yogurt.

But I have some bad habits. I crave chocolate almost every day at 3pm (strangely, this only happens during the workweek, not on weekends), and indulge my sweet tooth with a chocolate or two, or a few cookies. I love French fries, and would get the fries at Duck Fat at least once a week if I could, but tend to resist so that I have them only once or twice a month. And if I have chocolate ice cream in the house, I will eat it. But then again--I can buy a pint of Haagen Dasz and make it last for a week--and I am pregnant, people! So I think my dietary habits, while by no means perfect, are not horrible.

Yet, last week, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. The good thing is that by making changes now, in the next two weeks, there should be no ill effects on the baby. What can happen is that babies can grow excessively large when the mother has gestational diabetes, necessitating a C-section. The babies can also have problems with their own blood sugar, and they are more likely to grow up to be obese and to develop Type II diabetes themselves. (Type II is also called adult onset, or late-onset diabetes.) Gestational diabetes usually disappears in the mother about 6 weeks after giving birth, unless the tests in pregnancy merely caught a previously undiagnosed case or the disease.

The frightening thing is that I THOUGHT I was being healthy, until I got the results of this test back. I know I ate a lot of extra treats over the holidays—homemade toffee, chocolates, cakes, pies, cookies, etc. etc.—and compounding the effects of this candied cornucopia was my lapse into a completely sedentary lifestyle beginning about two weeks before Christmas. I generally like to walk, whenever feasible, but with all the snow we got here in Portland, walking around outside was extremely difficult. There is no city ordinance enforcing people to shovel their sidewalks, so a day or two after a snowfall, the sidewalks in our East End neighborhood would be about three inches of treacherous ice thick. Forget about the beautiful walking paths along the Eastern Prom—they were still buried in snow. Those conditions, plus the early darkening of the sky, relegated my walks with Nick and Ting-Tong to weekends only. And even then, I’d find myself exhausted after short routes around the neighborhood.

I also stopped doing any stretches or formal yoga routines. The reason for that wasn’t clear to me, until I found out (also last week) that I’m also anemic, which explains my low energy and motivation for doing any exercise in the first place. So put the two together—the exhaustion and worn-out feeling of anemia, and the high blood sugar levels—and I have been feeling completely tired, overwhelmed, and exhausted lately. Sometimes my exhaustion manifests itself in uncontrollable crying jags that seem to come out of nowhere. Other times I feel weighed down by inertia.

Last night, Nick made me a healthy meal of broiled salmon, brown rice, and corn-crab chowder. It was delicious, and there’s no doubt it meets the requirements of my new healthy diet. But I wonder about the rest—the bean and cheese and rice burritos, vanilla yogurt, and even the soy milk I drink every day. Are they too high in sugars and carbs? Tomorrow I go for a consultation at a diabetes center, where I will be put on a meal and exercise plan. I never would have thought I’d need to be told how to take care of myself, and I feel both embarrassed and guilty. But I also feel indignant: Eighty to 90% of cases of Type II diabetes are found in people who are overweight or obese. At 6 months pregnant, I’ve gained 20 pounds, which my doctor assures me is right on target. I do have a family history of diabetes, which I only just learned about last summer, so that might explain some of this. As soon as I found out that I had gestational diabetes, I stopped eating anything with sugar in it, and was disappointed to find that three days later I’m still as tired and drawn out as I was before.

I guess this is just one more thing I can’t control with a few days’ notice, along with my growing belly and breasts, my decreasing bladder capacity, and my lessening ability to get a good night’s sleep. I think one of the hard things about having a baby later in life is that as an adult you get so set in your ways (especially as a formerly single New Yorker who did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted) that it’s hard to relinquish the control I’ve so carefully cultivated over my life and body during this last decade of being single, footloose, and fancy-free. The baby’s not even born yet, and already I have to account for my actions, even as I’m still navigating the in and outs of learning how to live with a man I’m also accountable to.

This is all new to me, and it’s all happening at once.

Week in pictures

Not a lot has been happening around here. The first full week back at the office in a while was slightly tortuous, so much so that I couldn't even drag myself in by the time Friday rolled around. Luckily, I'd brought home some files and was able to work from home before my afternoon doctor's appointment. I probably got just as much done in a morning of intense concentration as I usually do in a whole day in cube-land trying to fend off unwanted conversations from Chatty Cathy and trying to ignore the feet stomping and sighing and shouting over the top of my cubicle that comes from my neighbor, CB.

CB drinks nothing but diet soda (she claims to get her water from the ice that melts in her giant igloo/thermos that she keeps filled with Diet Coke all day). She just spent an entire week home with some sort of illness that left her dehydrated and vomiting. By Thursday, we began to notice a strong odor in cube-land. The financial manager who directs the other women I share space with had them call maintenance. I wasn't there for this part, but apparently the maintenance crew pulled open vents and looked behind every nook and cranny, expecting to find a dead rodent. Ultimately, it was Kathy from California who found the offender: a chicken sandwich, sitting in a bag under CB's desk. It had been there for a full week, including the previous weekend. Just, please, get me out of there, now.

Ok, now for the pictures. I don't know if you can tell from this first one, but we had some cold weather recently:
Wiley tried to bundle up in my maternity sweater:
I FINALLY finished my mom's scarf, and even mailed it off to her the same day:
The Penney Ugland came to visit:
And Thumbs got comfortable in her new pad:
Do NOT try to rouse her:

Practice Run

My nearly two-year-old niece Eve came over early on Sunday morning for a visit while her parents were busy with other obligations. Nick and I took her on a walk to the coffee shop, where we got her a cup of hot chocolate and shared a bagel with her. I think she felt really cool, hanging out with the big kids. Afterward, as we waited outside the shop for Nick, I rested my foot on a snowbank, and Evie did the same. Her foot was at a really awkward angle, and it couldn't have been very comfortable, but I think she just was just getting in the spirit of being a big kid.

My bump

It's getting bigger all the time! Actually, it looks sort of lumpy here.


Oh, and it's not an it--it's a girl!!!

Photo taken December 13th.

Holidays on Ice

It's been 3 weeks since I've updated the blog, but I've got some good excuses. A flurry of excuses, in fact.

First, of course, that perennial excuse: "It was the holidays." This year I made all my own gifts, which included a knitted scarf for my year-old niece, three "sleeping bags" for my 3 to 4 year-old nieces' dolls, a doll "diaper" bag for my toddler niece, a large batch of shortbread cookies for everyone in my department at work, candied nuts for the women I live with every day in cube-land, and this, which isn't even done yet, and yes, it's after Christmas:

This damn thing is my first foray into lace knitting, and while technically the stitches are easy enough to create, what's hard is following the pattern. At first, I was following the written instructions, which go something like "k3, ssk, yo, ssk, k1, [k2tog, yo] 2 times," etc. Once I got the gist of it, I started using the charted pattern instead, which looks something like notes on a musical staff, with five different lace rows, each followed by a simple purl row. As I said, the stitches themselves aren't hard, but I'm having a hell of a time not losing my place as I go along. Whether this is due to mild ADD or just a matter of being an inexperienced knitter, I don't know. When it's going well, I feel like a virtuoso, knitting in an imagined rhythm that corresponds to the charted "notes" on the page. But then I get to the end of a row and discover that I'm one stitch short, so I end up going back and counting and counting again, only to end up ripping out 5, 6, 7 rows at a time just to get back to a neutral place where I can start over.

So each night, for every 20 rows I knit, I probably rip out 7 of them. It's kind of like paying down my credit cards: for every payment I make, the finance charges end up eating a good portion of whatever I just paid, and the progress I make in paying down my debt seems to crawl along at a snail's pace, just like this scarf. But unlike paying down my credit card, the yarn I'm working with is a tactile dream: it's 50/50 silk/wool, hefty yet smooth and soft, with a beautiful, subtle sheen. The scarf is for my mom. I showed her the work-in-progress, and she loves it. Phew.

I guess I don't have any other excuses. But here are some pics of the general white-out conditions we've been experiencing up here in Maine.

Thumbs losing her footing during the season's first snow:
After that, the sun came out, and we had some gorgeous days with the sun glinting off fresh, smooth snow. The calm before the storm:
The storm:
Nick running outside to move our car after the two cars in front of us cleared a path. We don't even have a shovel yet, so without using their tire tracks to guide us out, we would have gotten plowed under by the next snow plow, for sure:
And then, the calm once again after the storm, early one morning. It was as cold and early as I look.
I posted more cute animal photos under the weekly photos link.

Knitwit

Around this time last year, I was probably at some bar on the Lower East Side, drinking a cocktail while wearing some cleaner, smaller clothes than the outfit I have on now: a pilly gray maternity sweater, and corduroys with a wide elastic waistband to accommodate my growing belly. Now, a year later, no longer single or living in New York City, my nights revolve around knitting, sewing and cooking with my boyfriend. Life has changed drastically, and yet it feels totally natural to be living in this apartment with the ocean nearby, our three pets, and my comparatively mundane routine.

Tomorrow we find out if I’m carrying a boy or girl, and our lives will change all over again.

Here is a picture of a sleeping bag I made for one of my niece's dolls for Christmas this year. Nick hasn't found a full-time job yet, so we're on a seriously tight budget for the foreseeable future. As it turns out, I'm actually quite pleased with the gifts I've been able to make. And it's lovely to have the luxury of time to be able to do so. Without social obligations or the extra money to spend on going out for dinner or movies, I'm finding that I really enjoy this forced domesticity. I don't know if I could find as much satisfaction in it were I still living in New York, with the city buzzing outside my window, a constant reminder of what I was missing.

Animal Update

Soon enough, this blog will be filled with photos of the baby. But for now, it's the animals that keep us amused.

The animals seem to be coming to an uneasy truce. Thumbs and Wiley have been spotted sharing a couch cushion; Ting Tong reluctantly ceded her bed to Wiley. And Thumbs figured out a strategy for taking over the apartment: she paws on the deck door to be let out, and Wiley inevitably follows. Then she climbs over the rooftop and down again and peers in at us through the front bank of windows until we notice her and let her in. Then she can take over the living room for a while, without worrying about getting ambushed by Wiley. It's a bit treacherous on the sloped roof outside our front windows, so it's lucky she has those big paws and extra thumbs, for better traction. I'm afraid she'll still try to do it even when the roof is icy and frozen.

Speaking of, we're supposed to get our first big snowstorm tonight! I'll post photos of the first winter storm coming in off the ocean. But first, photos of the animalz.

My Growing Belly

Here I am, a little over four months pregnant. After three months of queasiness and uncertainty, and one month of the unexpected relief of having that queasiness lift, I am now solidly, squarely, heavily waddling into what feels like Pregnancy, with a capital P. No longer can I hide my growing belly under loose clothes. No more can I quickly bend over to pick up a dropped pen from under my desk at work. I'm almost having trouble getting up off the couch. And I'm not even that big yet.

I'm a little nervous about the physical discomforts awaiting me. I've always been a bendable, flexible, small person. Always the one who had to sit on the hump on car rides. The one who would sit on someone else's lap in a crowded space. The one my (younger) brother used to bench press, as a joke. I've been carrying a little extra weight for the last few years, but to have what I can only describe as a whole new organ suddenly sprung up around my middle is a foreign feeling altogether. There's this thing there. A compressible ball of some sort, that lets itself be known whenever I try to move too quickly, or bend over too deeply, or even when I sit on the toilet, for crissakes. I'm trying to get used to it, but so far it just keeps surprising me, like walking into your kitchen to find a stranger standing there, after forgetting that you invited him over in the first place.

I guess it's good training for the little bundle that will make its presence known, in oh so many ways, a mere five months from now.

Finished!

I thought I was just going to hand sew this curtain. What was I thinking? It took me about 10 minutes, when all was said and done, to stitch the hems with my Shark mini-sewing machine. Nick and I held a ceremonious deveiling of the shower curtain he had so ingeniously rigged up in the meantime.