Its been a long course but TODAY is my due date! 9months of pregnancy …. which actually ends up being more like 10months and a few days. I’ve had my ups and downs and food issues throughout the whole process but today I am proud to say my gestational diabetes is under control. My fasting levels are normal and have been for over a month, I’ve actually only had a few days that they were over 92 and only 2 days they were at 95! I was able to take my pricks down to twice a day, fasting and after my evening meals.

Now to get to the point, how did I do it?

First thing I had to do was really study, but I did that for you so just keep reading, I read everything they had online, scientific journals and articles and even books about gestational diabetes. My conclusion is that there really doesn’t seem to be any one reason that woman get gestational diabetes. There does however seem to be ways to prevent it. It seems to appear more often in woman that are older upon gestation and sorry I’m not talking 40s I’m talking late 20s early 30s and beyond. I also noticed trends with first pregnancies, maybe we just don’t know what we are doing? For whatever reason it is a really scary thing to find out you have. You don’t want to put yourself or your baby in harms way and you don’t want to come out of pregnancy with high sugar levels or having to take insulin. There are many risks, but thats not what this post is about. This post is about the positive how we can overcome odds and end up healthier then ever! Also at the end of my pregnancy I think I look better then I ever have! My body is on point and so is my skin. Yes I’ve gained weight and I love my curves and my little baby bump. I feel healthy and have a lot of energy. So I took this as a wake up call and also an excuse to cut the bad stuff out of my diet and focus on a healthy me!

My typical meals consist of eating 4/5 times a day. Thats fine with me since I love food and also it keeps me full throughout the day. This is also a way to stabilize your blood sugar so you don’t have any crazy crashes or high levels. I am making a whole meal plan/recipe book for my journey so I will post that ASAP! Typically I enjoy some sort of carb with fruit and dairy and a nut fat in the morning. I enjoy a fruit and veggie snack mid morning. For lunch I go big with carbs and protein. I usually treat myself around 1 or 2 with some dark chocolate. I found that if I enjoy 70% or higher my blood sugar isn’t affected YAY! 🙂 I will wind down my sugar intake around 5pm so I will try to have another carb and some more natural sugars, then at 7 I eat a healthy protein like chicken meatballs. If I’m starving between meals I will snack on a cutie/grapefruit or mozzarella cheese stick and I always have some salt free nuts on hand.

Pretty balanced and pretty easy right! I skipped out on all sugary beverages and opted for teas, milk, lots of water, and mineral water. That was hard and I will admit I have my days where I went for a soda with splenda (mostly stayed away from diet coke). My vice was the soda machine with 200flavors, I would go and mix soda water with sugar free flavor and maybe diet ginger ale or diet sprite. I couldn’t have frozen yogurt so this was my craving cure. I also would split up drinking this into a few days, it’s hard but it’s discipline! Honestly however, as long as I was eating throughout the day I was always satisfied, and I didn’t crave sugar.

Ill be honest the first 2weeks of no sugar were awful! YES TORTURE AWFUL! I was grumpy and mad and just in a bad mood the entire time. I stuck with it and went to the gym or on a hike and took myself away from my cravings. I was able to combat sugar with proteins and healthy fats and still enjoy dark chocolate(daily).

I also exercised 4/5 days a week and did yoga on my days off at least for 20minutes. YES YOU CAN DO THIS LADIES! YES YOU CAN! It sounds hard and painful and you say where am I going to get the time, wake up 20minutes early and stretch it out. Go for a walk for an hour in the evening with your hubby and kids or dog. Go for a walk at lunch and bring a friend along for a good healthy friend date. If your friends want to have a ladies night suggest going on a hike on a Saturday or Sunday. YOU CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN! Its all about doing it. I would go to the gym and go on hikes with my friends or go for a walk at the beach. I even started to walk to my doctor appointments. Give your self a break for health and you can accomplish anything. I would do yoga while I watched Jane the Virgin or just sitting in my room. I would do meal prep on Sundays and have food for the week so I could have more time to relax and enjoy my workouts. I studied prenatal health with AFAA and group fitness and I have taught yoga, spin and group fitness and trust me its all about just doing it. The days I felt best this pregnancy were the days I just went and did it even when I didn’t want to. SWIM, HIKE, SPIN, YOGA, WALK, DO THE STAIRS!

Just remember this is your health and your babies health and YOU CAN DO IT! 🙂 The days I worked out my sugar was lower the next day, and I could even push the limits a little. I just couldn’t eat major carbs after 8, but thats ok you WILL MAKE IT WORK!

 

 

YAY! Its that time of pregnancy where your friends and family all get together and shower you with gifts and compliments and love! WHO WOULDN’T WANT THAT! 🙂 Especially when your 9months pregnant… you girls know what I’m talking about!

Our baby shower like most parties planed by family and friends had a few chiefs in the kitchen but once everyone got on the same page it went swimmingly well! It was one of the best days of my pregnancy!

We went with a DIY ADVENTURE theme! My friend Jeannie has recently got me addicted to Pinterest so naturally when she started the planing the first thing we did was make a pinterest board. We pinned ALOT I then turned that into a presentation for a model of what we were thinking and then Jeannie and I made the decorations a reality, while my mom and sister made the PINK GLITTER & FOOD happen! I think you will agree with how adorbs it was and how much our friends LOVED every minute! So I have to say a big THANK YOU to Jeannie, my mom Noreen and my sister Elissa for making this day a reality! 🙂 (esp. since they had to fly out to make it happen!)

So more about the party!

We wanted to go with an adventure theme based off of a picture that LoveDesignShop had created for us!

The entire shower was made from the theme of this!

So added from this theme to the rest of the party… Brendon and I had been on so many fun adventures that we wanted our guests to come to our party and feel like that had an adventure waiting for them when they walked through the door.

First thing in an adventure is food obviously so we went with DIY candy & cookie making, I dipped the chocolate which you can find recipes on my youtube page DIY Candy Making! Doesn’t that look amazing!

 

 

Ill post a blog about how to make the chocolate dipped pretzels, shortbread cookies, pink rice crisps balls, and the chocolate dipped wafers. YUMM! The rest of the food was amazing too. We went with two kinds of sandwiches, vegetarian stuffed olive leaves, grilled chicken salad, chicken meatballs, shrimp, veggies and fruit platter and of course chips and dips. These foods were simple and easy for people to snack on. We had a few food stations for easy access. I think what I learned at the baby shower is don’t make food to complicated. Serve finger foods for people to munch on and a lunch type food, we had about 40-50 people at the party and we had food left over. The meatballs and olive leaves went fastest. People love to snack on finger foods.

We wanted our guests to enjoy the outdoors so most of the party was outside, after they grabbed a mimosa , beer, water or mocktail they headed outside.

 

The first thing we had set up was a craft table with help make #BabyBrenchel baby tutus, baby barefoot sandals, baby head bands, decorate a onesize and craft a necklace! It was a lot for the guests at first but once we explained this to them they understood what they were going for. I think if I could redo this part I would have had someone at the table the whole time to explain the crafting to them. I explained the crafting basics to a few people and they passed the word along. It was more about the guests being creative for baby brenchel anyway! Check out some of what they made!!

We had a help make BRENCHEL BABY an ABC Book this was fun because it gave the guests a chance to decorate a page and also get creative… but also a nice memory for us rather then a guest book. I think the most fun of this was reading the baby book at the end of the day.

For this idea all you have to do is get a scrap book, some card stock, a lot of stickers, markers and some stamps. The guests do the rest. We made a starter page for them to get the idea but they really took it away when they start adding their own ideas.

No adventure is complete with out some face painting, flash tattoos and kids crafts. Since this was a baby shower and we had asked guests to come out we didn’t want to leave their kids out of the party so we had plenty of little kids things set up by the TP.

I envisioned the kids playing in the TP with some of the crafts, and playing with the bubbles or the face paint doing a flash tattoo(but lets be real I did one too) but a lot of the kids just did the sticker tattoos and grabbed the bubbles.

Ok on to the backyard decor!

Jeanie and I spent a full day working on the hot air balloon lanterns for the theme, the dreamcatcher I made to go with the TP(this took about a day) and the TP Jeanie and I started and I finished(Ill post a blog about all the DIY stuff) and also as an accent for the nursery and we used the beauty of the back yard as the back drop for the rest of the decorations. We really liked the touches that the hot air balloons brought to the party and the significance was that Brendon had taken me on a hot air balloon ride to propose!

No party is complete without your take away bars. We had a popcorn bar and a candy bar! We also made up mini baby bottles filled with candy for the guests to take home and as an added touch with the thank you notes they will be receiving tea with cute reusable strawberry tea filters.

 

MORE PHOTOS THANKS TO OUR FRIENDS FROM FACEBOOK 🙂