Personal Essay Part 2
When thinking about a personal essay a few topics came to mind but one really stuck out. It was my pregnancy for my youngest son. During that pregnancy I had all my routine tests done to make sure everything was going okay, until I was given the test to check for gestational diabetes. The doctor always said after every test that no news was good news, meaning if I didn’t receive a phone call everything was fine. But after that test it was different, the phone rang and on the caller id was my doctors office, I knew right away it was bad news. I was afraid to pick up so I let the phone ring and they left a message for me to call them back. I waited a day because I was afraid to hear the news. In the back of my mind I new it was my fault. I read all the pregnancy books and knew the causes for gestational diabetes. One of them is age, it’s common in older mothers, and another is obesity. I new which one pertained to me being that I was 25 years old- it was my weight. I was about seventy pounds overweight and had very poor, unhealthy eating habits and didn’t exercise. I called the office back the next day and she gave me the news that I was expecting, that I had developed gestational diabetes. Right away she informed me that I would have to attend a diabetes clinic at the hospital and be put on a very strict diet and would have to check my blood sugar levels after every meal. This really scared me; to have to draw my own blood. I was very upset and afraid after I hung up the phone. I remember immediately crying. All I could think about was how this might affect my unborn son and how it was my fault if anything was wrong with him when he was born. I thought of how unfair it was to him.
So I went a few days later to the diabetes clinic at the hospital. There were a few other women there and we received instructions for the diet we had to follow and how to use the blood sugar meters, which wasn’t fun. I remember leaving the hospital and thinking this was the worst day. All I could think about was the horrible diet I was on and how I would be hungry all the time, on top of the worrying about how this was affecting the baby. So before I left I was told to make an appointment with a nutritionist and to keep a food journal that I was suppose to bring back at my next appointment. During my first appointment with the nutritionist my husband went with me. The first thing she had me do was step on the scale, all I could remember is telling my husband not to look and for her not to say my weight out loud which was embarrassing to have to do. After looking over my food journal she had a talk with me. She told me the best thing for me to do was stick with the diabetes diet after my pregnancy. I’m thinking to myself “your crazy lady!” I’ve had enough of this I can’t wait to go back to my old eating habits then the next thing she said to me caught my attention. She told me if I continued with my old eating habits that I had a fifty percent chance of developing diabetes by the time I’m 50. At that moment something clicked. I started looking at this experience as a blessing because if I had continued with my old eating habit who knows how much heavier I would be right now, or worse the damage I would be doing to my body. So I continued with the diabetic diet and monitored my blood sugars and did everything I was supposed to do up until I gave birth and thank goodness my son was fine. I remember after I gave birth how I ordered my meals at the hospital. I made all healthy choices and I continued with the healthy food choices after leaving the hospital and started exercising and losing weight. To this day I’m a lot closer to what my weight is suppose to be, not the 70 pounds overweight that I was. I still have a little way to go but I’m a lot closer than I was five years ago. On the negative side I was afraid for my unborn sons health however, the whole experience made me change my life for the better.
