I was around 6 months pregnant when my doctor had me go in for a standard test to make sure I did not have gestational diabetes. Only about 4% of all pregnant women have gestational diabetes and I came to find out that I was in that 4%. To be honest I was not all that surprised, because I have strong family history of diabetes. Luckily with gestational diabetes chances were that it would go away after I had my son.

My doctor had me take all the necessary precautions, like what I should and should not eat and checking my blood before and after every meal. I kept a record of my sugar levels for 2 weeks. Unfortunately my sugar levels still were way higher than they needed to be.

My doctor then had me do a more extensive test to find out just how bad my diabetes was. We found out that I would need to give myself shots of insulin to control my diabetes. Now not only did I still have to prick my finger 7 times a day to check my sugar, but also I had to give myself 3 shots a day – so ten times a day I was poking myself.

It was very hard on me. I had to quit work, because every time I turned around I was having to check my sugar. Or I had to stop and eat something. With being on insulin, it was very important that I ate or else my sugar could drop drastically, which is just as bad – if not worse – then being too high.

There was one occasion that I had given myself my shot, and then I fell asleep on my couch. I was pregnant and tired all of the time. After about an hour, I woke up completely disoriented and could not see straight. My husband made me lie back down while he checked my sugar level. It had dropped to the very low 40’s (90 is normal). My husband made me drink 3 or 4 Sunny D’s to bring it back up. It was very scary. If it dropped any lower, I could have slipped into a coma.