Limited understanding of GDM self-management
requirements Participants struggled to make sense of
what they needed to do in order to maintain their blood
glucose within the recommended range. This confusion
was exacerbated by a limited amount of consistent information
to guide their self-management efforts. Women
described getting general dietary guidelines but insufficient
information on 'how to' effect the necessary changes. This
made the task more difficult and time consuming. Lili
explains:
You get a list of food but no instructions. . . you don’t
know “if I eat a smaller potato is that okay?” And then
you follow it (the diet) through the pregnancy. . . .You
would like to say, “Follow this diet, you’ll be fine, off
you go.” It isn’t like that, so a greater effort is needed,
and encouragement, and just well, time. . . you really
have to work it out yourself. . . Lili
This difficulty was compounded by insufficient information
about different foods and ingredients, and this
was particularly the case for women who didn’t follow a
Western diet. Tran explains:
I did get appointments where I got some information.
But I found it more outside of those appointments. I
mean it was helpful, but it wasn’t really in depth. Well
like the food for instance, it wasn’t a very extensive
list of what you could eat, it was very limited and
most of the food I eat wasn’t on it. . . Tran
The information needs of women, in this study, varied
and although many women felt the information
they received was insufficient to help them manage
their GDM successfully, others were happy with the
depth of information they received while a small
number of women felt that they received too much
information:
Well the information they gave me was very basic
so I looked up a lot on the internet and worked it
out myself really. . .Tran