• Guest, the forum is undergoing some upgrades and so the usual themes will be unavailable for a few days. In the meantime, you can use the forum like normal. We'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Trying to get pregnant type 2

coleyd

Well-Known Member
Hello

I'm a bit sad today. I just got my hba1c. It's the 1st in 2 years . 2 years ago I was heavier and it was back at s normal persons so I gas high Hopes. today my hba1c result is 6.7.

Upon looking into it it seems anything over 6.5 is basically bad for pregnancy. I'm not on meds I use diet.

I am worried that if if dont do better or it's worse In pregnancy they will put me on insulin...

I have chronic fatigue syndrome so exercise is difficult.

I tried a low carb diet and I'm constantly constipated anyway so it was worse on low carb.

I'm feeling super low now about trying to get pregnant. Any advice?
 
First of all - @coleyd - you can't be put on anything you disagree with being put on! My understanding is the relationship between medical professionals and their patients is always supposed to be consensual, negotiated, agreed upon. It is part of a medical person's professional code of conduct and ethics. And putting someone with a recent HBA1c of 50?(in my countries of residence - just in the diabetes category) on the most dynamite treatment, ie insulin, is very odd professional conduct indeed! (I doubt it would happen...)

But dealing with feelings - and with frustrated efforts at getting pregnant. Yes - difficult to live with indeed. I've had insulin resistance (the underlying condition of much of type two diabetes) for decades, and through my trying to get pregnant as a young woman, and my pregnancies and raising young children. Are you operating from a position of being subfertile with insulin resistance? ie with PCOS (where the ovaries are affected and don't have the eggs coming out as they should). If so you are already doing the best thing you can - lowering your carbs and therefore your insulin levels.

The good news is insulin resistance is 'just' subfertility, and you can still get pregnant - it just might take longer. (It took me a year and a half to get pregnant with my second child, for instance.) You are already doing, absolutely, the right thing by lowering your insulin resistance by lowering your carb intake. Neither me nor my doctors knew anything about lowering carbs to get better with subfertility back in my day. So you at an advantage in this regard!

And you know what kind of way of eating you want to be on in order to lower your carbs - this is very good news indeed, and cause for being positive. You have already come a long way - so can afford to be pleased - at least a little? (And more than a little?!) That you are on a sensible path to fertility. At least your own! (We must remember the prospective father's role in making babies too I guess! .)

The constipation is a tough one to deal with (and no wonder you are feeling low as well with that) - there must be threads in the forum on this subject? Or, any other posters to take on this here? I believe it is a lot more complex a subject than we have thought in recent decades...
 
Hello. Thank you ! And yes I have pcos and no dr even told me that it was linked to insulin resistance or I would have taken it more seriously over a decade ago before becoming type 2. I have an almost 6 year old . This would be baby number 2 to complete our family unit and give our daughter a sibling.
 
Both books Dr Jason Fung's The Diabetes Code and Michael Moseley's Blood Sugar Diet mention PCOS being sorted out by going low carb. Good luck.
 
Thank you will check it out. I think lowering my carbs further is best. Typically my meals are ( with some homemade snacks )

Breakfast- eggs and oatcakes with maybe avocado, or leftovers

Lunch- tinned salmon or sardines with potato and courgette maybe some mayo

Dinner- meat or fish with rice, potato, quinoa ( carb choices) and veg

Snacks are, coconut oil almond butter fudge, buckwheat flour pancakes, hummus and carrot sticks, used be lots fruit and dark chocolate but not anymore as I have gut issues.
 
I stopped pasta and bread months ago as I am gluten free by choice and they are worse ever for carbs/ sugar as gluten free.
 
So it seems a 6.7 hba1c is a daily average of 8. 1 or something. That is crazy based on how much I watch what I eat
 
Um guys I need to check tomorrow but this just popped into my head. I think I heard the nurse say it's a non fasting glucose test she was doing. So 6.7 would be ok... I had mentioned an hba1c so I dont know why they would opt for a non fasting glucose blood test instead? Any ideas ? Obviously it makes a big difference which test it was . Also the receptionist was unhelpful just told me it was 6.7
 
Hi again @coleyd. An 'on the spot' blood glucose test is different to the HBA!c - the HBA1c measures your blood glucose levels over the last 3 months (more or less), and the ordinary blood glucose test gives you a reading for that moment. It doesn't make any difference if you have an HBA1c from a fasted state or not, but it definitely does for an ordinary blood glucose (BG) test. Fasting BG (FBG) tests are very important, as it shows how much glucose your own body is making and putting 'out there' in your body, and why on the forum you have folks (especially folks like me with severe insulin resistance where my body puts a whole bunch of self-made glucose out there in my bloodstream) go on about their 'Dawn Phenomenon' and their FBGs.

Hopefully you do not have this issue coleyd. And you won't - by lowering your carbs, and therefore your insulin.
 
Potato, buckwheat flour, and oats would be too high in carbs for me. Are they for you too? The only way you are going to know is if you 'eat and meter' - use a home BG meter, and take a test two hours post eating a certain food - especially a food that is high/er in carbs.

BG testing is a whole new ballgame, but most of us here in the forum see it as an absolute must when it comes to determining what we can eat and what we can't. There is a huge amount of information here and online about the most cost effective meter, and the really pricey item - the blood glucose test strips, and this differs between different countries.

Your nurse uses the percentage method for reading your HBA1c results, so I am wondering if you are in North America? (Just thinking about whether yours will be subsidised or not. Or, you have insurance funding issues?)
 

Don't get me started on this subject! . The only thing I can say is, our doctors, and even specialists just can't have been trained in the relationship between food, insulin resistance and PCOS. We can safely say they weren't. And it is our bad luck that fertility is the first thing that gets affected by blood glucose/insulin dysregulation (for men too, it seems, to do with blood flow issues, shall we say). The knowledge was there, but the connections were not made? It seems so.

With the knowledge that was actually 'out there', ie about insulin and blood glucose, and hormone regulation, women like us who began with compromised ovary function should never have gone on to type two diabetes. But those connections were just not made - with what we are eating. At least my longterm doctor was able to diagnose me, and kept an eye on me, so when I did become type two, she was on to it. But she was not able to prevent it. And, in fact, gave me wrong-minded dietary advice when I started getting lipid issues, prior to my type two and gallbladder issues. I mention these things with armed with what I know now - they were all signposts to change what I was eating. But, who knew? Not my doctors. Nor even the specialists. Certainly not me.

But you do now, which is wonderful.
 
I live in the UK (Scotland) and yes testing regular is expensive. I was getting free test strips on prescription but they stopped it. I think they are only keen to give them if I was on medication. I have some of my own I bought so I was getting 4s yesterday 3 hours after eating. I need to remember test at the 2 hour mark. I forgot. Thanks for all the replies.
 
So the drs reception was wrong... my non fasting glucose is 6.7... my hba1c is 35! Non diabetic levels. Will be having yearly checks just to make sure I dont go back into diabetes ! Carbs reduction and very little sugar is the way to go for me !!!
 
The HBA1c of 35 is marvellous @coleyd - very good news indeed. Very little sugar and carb reduction a great way to go to keep you blood glucose and insulin regulating normal, and gestational-diabetes-free (when the time comes!)

Best wishes for the baby-making!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…