Pregnancy Update

I'm 35 weeks along now, and I had an appointment yesterday afternoon at 1:30. Everything looks fine, and the baby's head is down. We talked a lot about my glucose numbers. I did really great until the girls got sick in Ohio, and I had several nights of very little sleep. SInce then, I've had a harder time keeping my numbers under 120 during the day. What I've found is that if we have a quiet day, where I do my exercise, and we don't leave the house, then I don't ahve any problems. But as soon as we run errands or something, then my numbers will be higher. Not too high--like 121 or 122--but higher than they want.

For example, I ate a turkey/cheese/spinach sandwich and 1/2 pear for lunch on Monday. Then we went to the health food store, library, and WalMart. I rushed back home, put the girls down, and took my reading, and it was 121. Yesterday we had co-op, where I had to stay and work as a "floater", mainly helping in the K-4/K-5 class, then we left from there and drove to Bethesda, after I ate a peanut butter sandwich, carrots, and an orange for lunch. My reading, which I took after parking and walking in, was 123. Then we spent the entire afternoon at Bethesda because I had an appointment for Anna, Caleb, and Jonathan after my appointment, and they had to get shots. We ended up waiting over an hour to get the shots, so we didn't leave until around 5:00, and we didn't get back home until 6:00, so that was a stressful, tiring afternoon with neither girl (nor me!) getting any sort of nap. After dinner, my number was 122.

So the doctor said it could all just be stress, or it could be that my body is just becoming more insulin-resistant as I get more and more pregnant. I'm going to go back next week on Thursdya, and if I have had more high numbers, then she will start me on a pill that stimulates my pancreas to create more insulin. It's either glipizide or glyburide, I'm not sure which one. I did some research on the computer, and I guess neither one sounds awful. All the websites do say that only insulin is approved for use in pregnancy, but that studies have shown that these 2 drugs don't appear to corss over the placenta in large amounts and aren't harmful, etc. I wouldn't be taking it for very long--just a few weeks. I don't want to take anything, but the fact is, it is very stressful to realize that no matter what I eat or how much I exercise, my numbers will probably by high if we go out and do anything. I feel like such a failure when the number is high on my little monitor! And let's face it--I'm trying to get a lot of stuff taken care of these last few weeks before the baby comes. We have lots of various doctor/dental appointments scheduled (next Tuesday afternoon Grace has her well-baby appointment, plus shots, so that will be another stressful afternoon at Bethesda!), plus I need to go to the commissary and do other things. There aren't going to be a bunch of days where we just sit at home and relax, unfortunately.

So we'll see what happens this week, I guess, and I will mentally prepare myself for going on medicine. I'm not sure if that will mean more pricking or not. I know one of the risks, similar to insulin, is that my blood glucose would get too low, especially with exercise, so I might have to test more often. What a hassle! I'm tired of all this. Five more weeks . . . The doctor did say that they won't let me go past my due date, although they might let me go up to it.