Blood Sugar Update

I had an appointment with the diabetic nutritionist on Monday. My blood sugar levels were pretty low for the week so they are encouraged as it seems that the diet is controlling the diabetes. If this continues I will not need insulin and the diabetes should go away after the baby is born. I don't have another appointment for a few weeks, but they want me to call in this week for a phone appointment. When I arrived they were running behind so I had an opportunity to talk to some other gestational diabetes patients. Their levels were all pretty high and they were worried. I have the opposite problem, mine are sometimes too low.

Blood sugar needs to be 70 or above to be healthy; anything below that is considered hypoglycemic which brings its own risks (one of them being death). At least once a day I have slipped into the 60's and even the 50's. The nurses could not figure out why I was dipping so low and questioned me about what and when I ate. I always dipped that low before lunch or before dinner. They said it sounded like I was following the diet to a "T" and made some adjustments because of the lows and the fact that I was spilling ketones into my urine. The adjustments worked for a day or two then my blood sugar started dropping into the 50's again. I have to call in tomorrow and see what is going on. My blood sugar has never been close to the upper threshold, even the time I cheated and ate a cupcake (insert guilty face emoticon here).

Last night was really scary. They no longer have me test my blood sugar before lunch and before dinner because my levels were always so low that they weren't worried about them. I tested before dinner last night because I felt my blood sugar might have been high. Wrong. It was at 48. When blood sugar plummets to the 50's the brain is not getting the sugar it needs to function properly. When you reach these levels you are supposed to eat sugar to bring your level up to safety, then, to sustain it, you're supposed to eat a meal. I ate some chocolate cake that a member of the ward had brought as a welcoming treat, a hard candy, a glass of milk, and half a soda and tested again in 15 minutes. My blood sugar had increased to 69. I then ate dinner and tested two hours later (this is the norm). My blood sugar was 92; after eating all of that it was only 92 (120 is the upper threshold for two hours after a meal). This has left me wondering if I really do have GD. The nurses told me at my appointment that I might have had hypoglycemia before the pregnancy and that untreated hypoglycemia can turn into Type II diabetes. We'll see how the phone appointment goes this week.