I am almost 14 weeks pregnant. As some of you may know from previous posts, during the first few weeks of my pregnancy I was having high numbers. I had to up my basal and bolus. Well, about 2 weeks ago the lows started. I will check my blood and be perfectly fine, an hour or so later the room is spinning and I feel hot. I check and I'm in the 40's. I don't know why, but I simply don't feel anything unusual until I hit about 49, 48, or 47. I have lowered my basal and correction dose scale. So far I have not lowered my bolus because my post meal numbers are fine. The lows are just so random and sporadic. I check my numbers and I'm fine, let's say 130, then 2 hours later I am the 40's. I talked with my diabetes nurse about this, but she doesn't really know what to tell me. Just monitor my numbers a lot, lower basal, and don't take big correction doses. So... what do you ladies think? And most importantly, I am worrying myself to death that these sporadic numbers are going to hurt my baby. I don't even know what I would do if my child was born with a birth defect because of my poor control. I'm trying not to stress myself. All I can do is my best. But it's always in the back of my head that something bad could happen because I can't seem to get super good control.
I was in the same boat, but currently at 25 weeks I am having more troubles with sporadic highs. Another option is to use your temp basal rate to decrease when you see yourself going low. My sugars are so unpredictable right now. I am heavily relying on both my Dexcom CGM and testing frequently (10+ times a day). I have also resorted to eating very small meals/snacks, no more than 30 carbs tops. I just eat more frequently (every 2-4 hrs) so that I can get my fill, but the lower carb counts help to prevent any major highs or lows.
Theresa, thanks for your reply! I do certainly use my temp basal a lot lately! It has become very handy! I do not have a CGM, but I have been testing A LOT. I feel at my wits ends right now though. I know my doctors want me to have extremely tight control of my numbers during pregnancy, and I feel like I'm doing a horrible job. Have any of you ladies previously had healthy babies (and had not so perfect numbers during your pregnancy)? This is my first pregnancy.
Hi Theresa,
I'm currently 15 weeks pregnant and I had my lows from weeks 11-13. According to my endo, it's just something that happens to pregnant type 1s around weeks 12-14 called insulin sensitivity. Doctors don't know why it happens, but it does for most women. I had the same problem, I'd be 84 and in a half hour I'd suddenly be 40 while doing nothing and not really feeling it.
Like I mentioned, it only lasted 3 weeks for me. You just have to test more than you thought and be careful about what insulin you take. For example, if I were in the lower 200s, normally I would take 2 units of Novolog to get back. During my sensitivity period, that would make me 30 in an hr! My endo told me to not take any insulin between meals (I don't use a pump). That helped a lot, but I still had some crazy lows.
Luckily, they told me my lows probably would not affect the baby because most of the organs are formed by the 12th week. My doctor also thinks highs are worse than lows for the baby. I did pass out one afternoon, but the doctor wasn't worried about what would happen to the baby. All my check ups since then show normal, good growth.
Hope this calms some worries!
It sounds like you're doing a great job. My kids are 33 and 32. No blood glucose testing back then. I do remember dragging my 15 mth old to a friends house because I didn't know what to do (too low). Luckily they guessed. Thank the Lord both kids are and were fine. I had no clue about the bad things that could happen. All I knew was that my babies were going to be larger. They were 8lbs 3ozs and 8lbs 12ozs. Induced 1 1/2 weeks and 1 week early. All the best to you!
i had the same thing going on, I wasn't feeling lows until i was in my 30s! Do you work with an educator or someone else that you can call and monitors your numbers and changes your basals and boluses? I don't know what I would do without mine. At this stage of pregnancy they said that we are more sensitive to insulin... my fingers look terrible from all the testing I did but it's worth it. I'm at week 18 now and bgs are leveling out again.