I Can, I Will, Accomplish This

It amazes me how much pregnancy hormones come into play with blood sugars! I read other bloggers that write about their T1D and pregnancy experiences and even the one book that I found on T1D and pregnancy and as encouraging as their posts and the book were, at the same time I’ve read time and time again so many say that insulin resistance didn’t really seem to kick in and effect them. Or that that their A1Cs stayed 5.4 the entire pregnancy or that they ate whatever they wanted just bolused for it and had no issues. Or that they would cry when they saw any number above 150. I read how one woman ate a big bowl of ice cream every night with no issues. Good for her! I’m glad she was able to do it, but that blows my mind, and is a bit disheartening for me. Why? Because I feel like I’ve struggled so hard to keep a fantastic A1C, that it has not been a walk in the park and I don’t have occasional highs, but daily and it’s always a rollercoaster of BGs. No smooth sailing for me. I’ve discovered that I can eat light or fat free frozen yogurt and it won’t send my BGs through the roof like ice cream will, for the most part, but sometimes, it does. I feel like I may have 1 maybe 2 good days a week if I’m lucky where I don’t go above 150, but other than that, I still see a whole lot of 180’s, 190’s and 200’s several times a week, and even multiple times a day. I don’t believe this is because my CDE and I aren’t making aggressive enough changes or that it’s my fault or what I’m eating. It’s just plain old dumb diabetes and pregnancy and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise. This is just how my body works.  I’ve come to the point for the most part, not always, sometimes there are tears and fear of what is this doing to my baby girl, but I’m getting to the point of just waiting them out, praying and trouble shooting and sometimes, okay a lot of times doing some SERIOUS RAGE bolusing. Especially on the weekend if things go really wonky and I won’t be able to talk to my CDE until Monday about making corrections. With all of this being said, when I got all my blood work done this week for the scare that my doctor put me through, (you can read that here if you didn’t already) he also checked my A1C and I still had the best A1C I’ve ever had! 5.1%. Hallelujah!!!! Wowza! I actually did a double take and made him show me the paperwork cuz I really didn’t believe it. This really really hard work is paying off and as long as it continues once I see my little one face to face I will feel that she is the biggest accomplishment of my life! My CDE and I made even more changes to my pump yesterday, second time this week. There have been other weeks we’ve made changes 3 times. First was Monday and there were quite a few changes to be made in just the 3 days since talking to her. It blows my mind how quickly my insulin needs change on a daily basis even. I’m definitely going to be hitting 3x the amount of insulin I used before pregnancy, and I know at the rate things are going that I’ll exceed that.  Pre-pregnancy I was using 17 something units of insulin a day for my basal, amount going through me on a 24hr basis. Now??? I’m at 52.7units of basal, and then you have to add however much I’m taking at meals. By Monday my needs will have increased beyond the 52.7 units. I’m going through insulin reservoirs sometimes every other day depending on if it’s a couple of bad days or I’m eating more. Each reservoir holds 300 units of insulin and I’m getting to the point that on some days I’m going through 100+ units of insulin in a day! All the research and all the inquiring and all the reading really and truly cannot fully prepare one for going through pregnancy as a type 1 diabetic. I’m doing it, it’s doable, but it’s hard, but like I said, when I see my little beauty for the first time I’m going to feel like the most accomplished woman in the world!