My first concern when I was pregnant was my blood sugar. How is it trending? Can I head off an impending high or low? Is that half cup of ice cream going to make me go high 4 hours later because it was full fat? How much active insulin is left in my body? Did I exercise today? How many carbs are in that carrot stick? I could keep adding to the list that rolled through my diabetic brain at any one time every single day, but that may be a snore for some of you. Super tight control was the goal for a healthy pregnancy and healthy baby and I worked damn hard to achieve it.
Well you can guess what happen after E was born.
Suddenly I was not number one anymore. Her needs came before mine. Thinking back, there was a period of time when I barely managed to get anything to eat or drink let alone change an infusion set or Dexcom sensor. However I was nursing so I was still putting in considerable effort to keep my blood sugar stable. There are no studies to suggest that hyperglycemia in a breastfeeding mother leads to "sweetened" breast milk, but I figured if milk was being made from my body then all systems should be in tip-top shape. So while my control was not as great as when I was pregnant, it was still pretty good.
Eventually I switched from nursing to giving E soy formula. At that point my blood sugars began rising pretty consistently. It was evident that nursing had been using a lot of calories. To compensate for my slowing metabolism I had to increase my basal rates to try to get my blood sugars down. They are now set to almost twice the rate as compared to when I was nursing. During this time I sort of fell off the horse a little. I ate foods that I would never have eaten while pregnant and never gave a thought to prebolusing for a meal. Despite the highs that resulted from some of these choices, my 3 month postpartum hemoglobin A1c was still under 7%. A small victory. I am glad the results were considered "good" but it just doesn't sit right with me now that I've seen how tightly I can control my blood sugar. Is it work? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. I feel much better when my blood sugar is more stable throughout the day.
Now that things have settled into more of a routine with E, I am back to paying more attention to my blood. I am actually using the CGM like I should be instead of turning off alarms or setting ridiculously high limits so that I won't be bothered by any beeps. I have started prebolusing for some meals and am trying to cut back on carbs once again. After seeing Awesome Endo and tweaking some basal and bolus rates my pump settings seem to be doing their thing. Pretty soon I hope to add regular exercise back into the routine and hopefully by my next visit I can lower my A1c back into a more comfortable range for me. In order to take care of my daughter I need to take care of myself.
Life with E is much different but much sweeter in many ways! ;) I love her so much and I hope I can set a good example for her about how important it is to take care of your health!
