Gestational Diabetes Supplies

Gestational Diabetes comes with a lot of supplies that you need or are very helpful for managing your blood glucose levels.  Luckily, it isn’t as many and is fairly cheap to obtain most of them. The medical supplies will depend on your area and insurance situation.  My biggest expense has been testing strips since they are covered under medicare here, but I am not, so I pay full price. 

Supplies

Testing Kit

Lancet device

Lancets

Glucose meter

Testing strips

Carrying pouch

Cotton balls or tissues

Kitchen Scale

Protein Bars

Glucose Jelly Beans

Water Bottle

Insulin if prescribed

Exercise clothes

The first thing that you should acquire with Gestational Diabetes is a testing kit. Your team that diagnoses you should work with you on acquiring this or give it to you.  The testing kit should include a lancet device, lancets, a glucose meter, a few testing strips, and a pouch for carrying them all.  The lancets and testing strips are single-use items and so you will need to buy more of those. You will probably only be given a few day’s supplies to begin with and will need to buy more. You will probably also want to add cotton balls or tissues to your kit for dealing with blood drops. The testing kit is the most important part because that is how you know what your blood glucose levels are doing.  

After the testing kit, the other supplies are all things that are nice to have for helping with your levels.  A kitchen scale is really useful for measuring serving sizes.  Measuring cups are helpful as well, but a kitchen scale is really cheap and more accurate for serving sizes. Plus a lot of items are measured only in weight on the package. 

Next, you will want some protein bars. These are handy for if you are out and about and need to have a snack. They also go with the next item on the list, Glucose jelly beans.  If you are on insulin you will need to have a hypo kit.  The hypo kit is just your testing kit, Glucose jelly beans or another quick-acting carb, and a protein bar.  Here is how you deal with hypos. 

A water bottle is crucial since you want to drink lots of water! Not only is it useful to drink lots of water to help manage your blood glucose levels, but it is also recommended to drink lots of water during pregnancy.  

Exercise clothes are my last gestational diabetes essential because exercise is such a useful tool for managing blood glucose levels. 

There you have it. Those are the essential supplies I use to manage my gestational diabetes. Do you have any favorite supplies I did not mention? Tell us about it in the comments!