And as everyone else said, I know you are doing great and working hard, and it is all going to pay off!
All of my non-diabetic friends have had much smaller babies than their measurements were. One friend was induced early because her baby was measuring almost 10lbs and they didn’t want her getting any bigger (her family tends to have huge babies. Her brother was over 10lbs and cousin was close to 11lbs). They were all prepared for her to push out a huge baby and she turned out to be barely 6lbs. She’s still tiny, at almost 2 years old.
Also, I’ve been watching a lot of shows on Discovery Health about labor and such and I’ve noticed that people have really big babies. I always thought between 7-8lbs was normal but in one show that I watched 3 women had babies and NONE of them were under 8lbs. Also, these were all non-diabetic babies.
the ultrasound are only an estimate, the doc thought my son was going to be 8 or 9 lbs and he only weighed 7.6
Am now officially on the big baby boat and so discouraged! At 27 weeks his ab circ was in the 47th percentile, and now at 30 weeks it is 80th. I was hoping thamt my tight control would address this, but apparently it wasn’t meant to be. Sometimes this diabetes + preggo business can be really demoralizing. 
Welcome aboard… though sorry that you had to join us too!
My endo and OB-GYN have hypothesized that this could have something to do with the injected insulin we use, which they don’t have any proof for.
In any case, they said that they see many cases of type 1 women with awesome blood sugar control ending up with big babies.
Another thing to keep in mind is that his growth rate can vary. Our growth was exponential from weeks 29-33 and then it slowed some until week 36 and now he grew a lot. Babies can grow at different rates at different times. Someone without diabetes would experience the same thing as you did and think nothing of it! Our fear of big babies makes us more sensitive.
Are you still taking vitamins? My endo told me to stop taking the daily vitamin once he started measuring big.
It is hard being diabetic and pregnant and everyone looking at you like how can she do that? Be diabetic and have a healthy baby? My boyfriends mom and ex husband have both asked me how this all works bc they are both in thier 60’s and about 40 years agothey knew a lady who died due to her diabetes after giving birth to a child… I don’t know all the details, but it hurts to hear these stories and that idea be put in thier heads. Technology has come so far and we are all capiable of having healthy babies 40 years ago things were a lot different. It sounds like your baby is healthy and like you said normal women sometimes have big babies maybe it really doesn’t have anything to do with your diabetes, but I do understand how it can make you feel like your a failure, but your not. YOUR DEFINATLY NOT. I’m almost 15 weeks and just wanting to get through this just so I know my baby is perfect but I got to let him or her bake a long while more. Congradulations you’ve made it this far and you’ve given me a lot of motivation. I’m happy also to know there are people out there who understand what we’re going through… it’s not easy but you did it.
No more vitamins? Interesting–I wouldn’t have thought that would affect his weight much. Did your doctor explain why?
She said that the fetus then gets more nutrients than needed. Since I am anyway eating a healthy diet, she told me to stop taking the vitamins as soon as cold and flu season was over. I still occasionally took some vitamin C (as well as iron with folic acid since I had anemia during pregnancy), but no other vitamins. I have heard about NOT taking calcium in the last trimester as this can cause the baby’s skull to solidify more than it should before birth (the skull is not supposed to become completely solid until after birth to ease the birth process). Of course the baby still needs some calcium, but it is better to get it from a health diet than from a supplement.
P.S. Obviously it was not the only factor affecting his weight, as I stopped taking vitamins and still he grew very large. But it was my doctor’s theory about why babies (of mothers with or without diabetes) are much bigger than they used to be.
Whoa, how interesting. I’m generally pretty anti-supplement as long as a person is able to eat a healthy diet, but of course I am taking prenatal vitamins, just because everyone says “they can only help.” I’ve never heard anything against them, but this argument is very interesting. I was taking extra folic acid (on top of what was in my prenatal) in the first trimester, and my doctor never told me to stop, but when I asked her, she said it wasn’t necessary once the neural tube was formed. Maybe I should ask her about vitamins, too! Thanks for the food for thought.
Yes, my doctor told me that the folic acid was no longer important after 12 weeks, but for some reason the supplement that she prescribed for my anemia does have some amount of folic acid in it, but less than what I took during first trimester.
I would be curious what your doctor says!
I guess the supplement you’re taking has iron and folic acid because the body needs both in order to produce red blood cells.
I’ll try to remember to ask my doctor when I see her on Tuesday and let you know.
Interesting! Wow, thanks!
I had gestational diabetes with my pregnancy 5 years ago. I was not taught how to keep my blood sugars under control just given a meter and told to test after meals and had no idea what was even normal or what to look for so I know my bg was out of control the last 3 months of pregnancy. My doctors had already told me to prepare myself for a c-section and said my baby was measuring large. I was dilated 2 cm at my 38 week appointment so they allowed me to be induced vs c-section and my baby came out at only 7lbs. 15 ozs which is perfect! They were estimating him to be 9lbs+, so do not be too hard on yourself your baby is perfectly healthy and you have worked very hard this pregnancy so give yourself a pat on the back, take a deep breath, and just try not to worry about the babys size.
Hi Kristin, I delievered my baby 6 weeks ago my high risk OB said my baby was measuring bigger than normal at 34 weeks pregnant which was my last appt before I went in labor my doc told me my baby measured at 7lbs 4ozs this freaked me out because I was only 34 weeks and wasn’t being induced until 39 weeks… Anyway i went into labor at 35 weeks and my baby girl only weighed 5lbs 9ozs… so don’t stress yourself out… Good luck!
So I asked my doctor today. She said she had never heard of your doctor’s theory and that it didn’t make sense to her, since prenatal vitamins don’t contain calories (obviously). I still think it’s interesting though. My doctor was also fascinated by your eating schedule and really impressed that you’ve been able to keep it up! Nice work!! 
Thanks for asking! My doctor didn’t make it sound like a very scientific theory, but just something that she thinks about. It seems to make sense to me that oversupply of calcium (even without the addition calories) could cause faster growth, but who knows!
Thanks for your comment about the diet. Honestly at first it was hard for me to adjust, but ALL my doctors pregnant patients live with this schedule. So I just decided that I had to accept it. Then last week, they were talking about how I was the most disciplined patient and I realized that maybe not everyone follows it so closely Oh well, it worked well for me and I think that I may try to use it in the future too!
If I had a CGMS, I think that it would be less important, but I find that my blood sugars behave much more predictably this way and we were able to find the patterns really quickly and adjust my basals and boluses. I was also able to get by with only checking my blood sugar 7-12 times a day, which helped keep the cost of extra test strips down.