Hello!

Hi, my name is Sarah and I am here to blog about the troubles and triumphs of the last few weeks of my pregnancy while dealing with gestational diabetes. I started this blog in hopes of putting together as much information about gestational diabetes as I can for other women. I hope to inform you about the risks and also offer a bit of hope.

I tried searching the internet for a decent site containing meal ideas, maybe a few meals plans, and recipes for women with gestational diabetes (from here on out referred to as GD). No matter how much I looked, there was no one site that held everything I wanted. Those that had anything about GD were sub par and didn't help me out very much.

Yes, GD is a medical condition brought on by the stress (not to mention hormones) a woman's body takes during pregnancy (usually caused by genes and beginning the pregnancy overweight and unhealthy). But there is so much more to the whole deal that even the dietician doesn't bother to explain.

Let's face it, we're not used to eating like we have to while on the GD diet. If we were, we most likely would not be having this problem. So to just give us a list of good and bad foods, a generic meal plan, and a few pointers, really doesn't help us out much. If you're anything like me, you end up standing in the kitchen staring at food label after food label, adding up carbs and proteins in your head or on your hand, hoping that you get the right amount of everything. It's daunting, it's tedious, and downright annoying!

All I want is a master list of foods (a list that includes even a load of bad-for-you processed junk), a little booklet with meal plans for every day for 12 weeks, and then some amazing recipes. I'm sure there's some huge book that goes into detail about everything but you end up having to sift through all this information you really don't need. I'd much rather have something short and to the point. Something I don't have to give an arm and a leg to have. I believe information like this should be given free of charge. Why should we have to spend wads of cash in order to be healthy? Whose right is it to make money off of us because we don't happen to be doctors?

So, again, with this blog I want to put together as much info as I can in order to help other pregnant women with GD easily deal with their condition. To some, 12 weeks might not seem like a lot, but to those of us having to change our entire way of eating, it can feel like a million years.

***A Little About Me***

As I said in the beginning, my name is Sarah. I'm 23 and am currently 31 weeks pregnant (yes I know the blog is 12 Weeks and Counting, but it took me this long to figure out I'm S.O.L. when it comes to getting info on food and meals for GD) with my first child. I live in Alaska and have since December 1999.

Pre-pregnancy I weighed 230lbs. As of Monday, August 29th, I have gained only 15lbs. It's a little more than I had wanted to gain by now, but certainly much less than I could have. I barely changed my eating habits after finding out I was pregnant. I did cut down on soda (though I didn't drink much to begin with), didn't have fast food for months (it was one of my aversions), and tried not to eat too much at each meal. I'm not a sugar junkie and though I do like junk food I don't eat many potato chips and whatnot.

If you're wondering where my 230lbs came from, it's leftover breakup weight from 2007. I'm pretty good at maintaining my weight but not so good at losing it.

Well, diabetes runs in both sides of my family and my oldest sister (I have two older sisters, no other siblings) had GD with her first pregnancy. Still waiting to see if she'll have it again with this one (she's pregnant, too, due 7 weeks after me). So with my weight and genes against me, there wasn't much hope of not having GD. I'm just trying to make the best of it.