Carbs! Carbs! Everywhere Are Carbs!

(Sung to the tune for Signs)

I met with the Diabetic Dietician yesterday.  All in all it’s not a hard ‘diet’ to follow, you have to limit your carbs and sugar intake.  The hard part for me is that I eat a lot of carbs!  I didn’t realize how many carbs I actually eat.  My goal is to get 3 carb choices (1 carb choice equals 15 grams) at each meal, and 1 carb choice at each snack.  Breakfast is going to be my hardest meal to adjust because all I eat for breakfast is carbs and sugar – toast, oatmeal, chocolate milk, cereal.  Don’t get me wrong, I eat carbs at lunch and supper, too, but those I can adjust a lot easier.  Going out to eat is going to be a challenge because again, it’s usually mostly carbs. 

In addition to watching my carb and sugar intake I also have to test my blood sugar levels 4 times a day.  I do finger pokes before I eat first thing in the morning and one hour after each meal.  After the meals I want my levels to be under 140, and for my ‘fasting’ level it needs to be between 60 and 95.  I failed my fasting level this morning but not sure why.  But my ‘after meal’ levels have been good so far. 

The good things about finding out about this:

• it’ll help keep the baby a little smaller (probably still not having a 7 lb. baby but maybe not a 10 lb.er either!)
• the new ‘diet’ will help me see how terrible of an eater I am and will help me post-baby to lose the baby weight (I hope)

So, what did I have for breakfast today?  Scrambled eggs (no toast, boo) and a glass of chocolate milk.  Was chocolate milk the best choice?  No, but it was within my 3 carb choice limit so I went with it. Baby steps!  I have to try to reach that 3 cc, can’t give up carbs altogether, so was fine using them up that way today.  And my sugar level was 126 an hour after eating, so my body was happy with that, too.  Did you know that 1/2 c. of orange juice is 1 cc?  When I first wake up I am always SUPER thirsty, 1/2 c. is NOT going to take care of that wicked thirst!  At least 1 c. of milk is 1 cc, so that’s a little better for quenching the thirst.

One thing that’s hard to wrap my head around is how fruit can be ‘bad’ for you with diabetes.  All of that darn, delicious, natural sugar!  We’ve always told the boys that fruit and veggies are freebies, they can eat as many of those as they want.  So I will use my 1 carb choice at snacks for my fruit (one medium orange is 1 cc).  I can still have all the veggies I want (which tends to be none).

Thanks for all of the encouragement about this. I’m not at all upset about having GD (weird for me), I’m just worried about changing my diet, especially at this time of year when you have no control over what’s being served at parties and gatherings.  I’ll just try to make the best choices I can and hope for the best.

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I am so excited, my Christmas/Easter/Bloom-Whenever-You-Want Cactus is blooming for Christmas this year!!!  Last year I figured out that these plants like a lot of sun prior to blooming so I moved it to the SE window in my living room and it started blooming within a few weeks of moving it there. That was just before Easter.  So this year I stuck it right in that same window when I brought it in from outside in October and it’s starting to bloom!!!  Yay!  These pics show just the bloom, it’s not opened up quite yet. 

Dynamite has been having some fun this week.

Today is a great day for me, Andy comes home from his 3 day conference.  It’s been a really tough few days without him.  The poor guy has such a big burden on his shoulders of always trying to keep me calm, relaxed and happy.  You all know I’m a crier as a rule, but when I was pregnant with the boys I didn’t cry very much at all.  I kind of thought something was wrong with me because I’d heard that pregnancy makes women super emotional, and here Miss Emotional wasn’t crying!  Well all of that has changed with this baby.  I cry ALL THE TIME!!!  Happy tears, sad tears, worried tears, no reason tears.  So, you can imagine all the tears over learning this GD stuff.  Poor Andy got a sloppy, mush-mouthed, can hardly understand me message yesterday while at the conference.  Poor guy.  He was about to run out of there and come home to take care of me, he was so worried about my emotional state.  I finally convinced him to stay, let me take a nap and see if that helped some.  So today he will be here!  I can’t wait to see him!

Brennan and I are making sugar cookies this morning to take to school for his class to frost tomorrow for their Polar Express day.  He is so excited about this he can’t stop asking me when we are making them.  Soon! Better get done with this and go check to see if the butter is softened up enough.

Have a great Thursday!

Erin