I have been diabeteic for 20 years and I am 14 weeks pregnant now. My sugar levels are a nightmare. Was constantly low during the first trimester but i was not too worried since i was told low sugar doesn't affect the baby as does high sugar. But now it is been real crazy for the past 1 week with fluctuating sugar level between 20 to 400. My insulin resistance also seems to have increased and takes a LOOOT of insulin and time for my high sugar to get to normal. So i keep given corrections and when it starts getting low sometime hits rock bottom. Anyway that's the problem and now for the Q - Planning to use the CGM and in Belgium iam offered one of the 2 - the Freestyle Navigator from Abott and Paradigm Real Time from Medtronic. Being pregnant for the first time, the crazy sugar levels are making me really crazy. So i am looking for a CGM system that will be most realiable and useful in maintaining my sgr level between 70-120 ( big dream huh ? :) ). Well any inputs on which of the two CGMs is better would be great. Thanks !
I am sorry you are having such a hard time! I am not pregnant yet (working on it), but I have had the Medtronic Paradigm CGM and I did not like it. I found it very difficult to insert. Most of the time I could not get the needle all the way in, also the needle seems very thick and long. If I did get it in all the way it was always hit or miss with whether I could get it up and running. Another bad thing is that they say you have to insert it while your bg are in a non-fluctuating range and then after you put it in you have to wait 2 hours with out eating anything (unless to treat a low) until the cgm is ready. They also warn you about calibrating it too much because that can throw it off. I tried it for a year but most of the time I would get frustrated and just take it off. I now have the Dexcom and I LOVE IT!!! It is so easy to insert and I have not had a time yet when it hasn't worked. It is a dream compared to the minimed one. It shows trends and graphs and did I mention that I love it? It was such a dream after trying to use the minimed cgm. I have researched the Freestyle Navigator only a little bit but it looks pretty similar to the Dexcom and it looks like the insertion is really simple which is a major plus. Good luck and keep us updated on which one you chose!
I also had lots of ups and downs at the beginning. I was almost happy to get into the insulin resistance stage, lol. Then, I could just basically keep increasing insulin without the sudden crazy lows. Just do the best you can and focus on your overall a1c!
I used the dexcom 7 (7 plus wasn't out yet) for part of my pregnancy. It's less accurate during preg b/c of all the hormones and BG changes, so I got errors and had to test a lot. But, it was helpful as extra data.
Thanks a lot Rose & Sarah, for the feedback. I got the Freestyle Navigator yesterday. It is been 1.5 days of pure excellent control. It drove me a bit crazy in the night since it wasn't letting me sleep with too many hypo wanrnings. But on the brighter side it meant i didn't have to wake up in the middle of the night sweating like hell to see a reading "LOW" in my glucometer...I am able to take corrective action much sooner be it hypo or hyper i.e. it doesn't let me get into too low/high values so reviving back to normal is also seeming very easy. It is a HUGE advantage and i really really hope the good spell continues :) The accurancy of the machine has been acceptable. I only saw a big difference once - 35 in glucom and 55 in CGM but that was the biggest difference and that i would attribute to the 15 min delay between the blood test & intercell... test. I was also quite surprised that the navigator's first calibration is at 1 hour unlike the 10 hours that was mentioned in most websites...Anyway in the last 1.5 days, the kind of control i have been able to have is really amazing thanks to the Navigator. Again thanks a lot for the replies !
Cool I am so glad to hear that it is going well!! I am happy for you, it is an awesome device to have!!! Keep us informed of how its going.