Pregnancy Health Monitored

I am now 29 weeks pregnant with my twins. So technically, I have around 9 more weeks to go! I guess I should do a weekly countdown starting this week.

Recently, the health practitioner at our public clinic diagnosed me with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). So I’m doing my very best to control my diet. The counselling session with the nutritionist was very helpful. I learnt a lot of new things I wasn’t aware of previously. For example, I can only eat one plate of rice a day consisting of 3 serving spoons of rice, half a plate of vegetables and a serving of lean meat or preferably fish (steamed, roasted, stewed or grilled). Fruits should be taken but only after meal. There are also several fruits to be avoided or taken in moderation such as bananas, watermelons and durians. Apples, oranges, honeydews, guavas, dragon fruits are fine. Milk should be taken skimmed and only once a day. When drinking hot beverages like horlick or other brand of malt, take it with oats to bring down sugar level. For bread, choose the wholemeal type. The same goes for rice, where brown rice is best and glutinous rice should be avoided. Also oily and fatty food are a big no-no. I guess the same goes for anyone aiming for a healthier diet.

The recent Eid holiday was spent at my in-laws. What with all the delicious food my mother-in-law cooked up, it sure was hard resisting. Now back at work, I feel my stomach is unsettled and a bout of nausea come and go.

My feet are also both very swollen. They look fine when I wake up in the morning after a night of putting them up on a pillow. But after awhile, fluid will gather and make them look all puffy again. To make matters worse, I’d been up on my feet a lot yesterday due to my hunt for a new laptop. But I guess it was all for a good purpose and pain worth suffering. After heeding advice from my husband, I finally bought the lower range version of the ASUS N series which had all the qualities I required of a laptop: sufficient for word processing (for translation work), big screen (15.5 inch) that are friendly on the eyes and with keyboard backlights to enable me to be up doing work at night without having to flood the room with lights. So with this new equipment in my possession, I should be more than ready to start taking translation jobs which I plan to do during my 5 years hiatus post delivery.

Other health concerns: low hb, occasional nose bleed (only coming from the left nostril though), and seeing stars when I get up after sitting on the floor. Apart from that, I guess all is well. The twins are doing great too judging from the active kicking I get from them. And for that, I am thankful. Alhamdulillah..