I'm type 1 diabetic, have celiac sprue, and am about 6 weeks pregnant. My blood sugars have been quite low lately, and everything hurts, but otherwise it seems to be going ok. Every time I talk to my endo, I'm left feeling like I'm not doing a good enough job, but I'm trying really hard and keep working at it.
Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and that I've enjoyed reading through the posts so far. I've been reading about as much as I can about diabetes and pregnancy lately, and although I'm terrified, it seems like it's doable with a fair amount of work.
Oh, a general comment - I would love to hear what everyone eats for snacks... I'm unhappy with my recent choices and am looking for something more interesting to snack on. It doesn't help that I'm gluten free so lots of cracker options are out. :(
Welcome! I had a healthy baby boy after having type 1 diabetes for 28 years. There's no reason you won't have a healthy pregnancy. Just do the obvious stuff to manage your diabetes.
Your doctor is there to help you, not stress you. Are you working with an OBGYN you like? Could he/she just relay your numbers to your endo so you don't have to deal with the endo as much?
I'm not a good one to offer snack options... I tried to eat healthy but pretty much ate what I wanted during pregnancy. Lots of mint chocolate chip ice cream. One thing that did help me was to eat the same breakfast every day. During the 2nd and 3rd trimester when insulin need increased I would be able to see the upward trend at breakfast, since I knew my carb count was accurate.
I've heard the "have the same breakfast" advice from a few people now, and I actually think it's a great idea. I've been trying to do this, but have started having some mild aversion to foods that is making this a little more difficult than I want (sadly it's aversion to healthy foods). I may have found something that will work, though. Can I ask what you ate? I find the protein part a little tricky since I don't have a lot of time to make food in the morning.
I do really like my endocrinologist, but we just recently started communicating by email. He's just more abrasive this way, mostly because I think he sends the messages quickly. I'm just going to try not to let it bother me too much. I'm also emailing an RN at my obgyn, and she makes me feel a little better about how things are going.
Great question! My usual breakfast is yogurt and a banana, but both of those things made it on my icky list during my first trimester. I found bland granola bars (Belvita breakfast bars worked best for me) to be helpful until my appetite came back. I'm now back to my yogurt and banana routine...but the insulin resistance is starting to kick in...so I may need to drop the banana! What worked for me was trying to stay consistent with whatever was working at that time. Which means I switched it up to help out with morning sickness and aversions when needed, but I still had 2-3 standard breakfasts I didn't vary from. You'll find something that works for you! And don't worry about doctors being abrasive, they can totally get that way. The best advice I got (oddly from my endo) was to hand whatever doctor my pump and say "You do better. Goodluck." Haha!
Find the breakfast that works for you. I loved peanut butter through my whole pregnancy so I had an English muffin with peanut butter every morning. It got old towards the end, but it was worth it to keep my blood sugars on track.
The doctor talk reminded me of when my normal OBGYN was out one time and I saw his associate. She was a young doctor and I thought she would be knowledgable about modern treatment and tell me what a great job I was doing with my pregnancy since I had a 5.1 A1c and few, if any, lows. Instead she told me I was a "britle diabetic". I asked what that meant and she said it was because I'd had diabetes so long and I had a blood sugar of 180 and a 165 another time in the last month. I told her she was an idiot and shouldn't give medical advice when she didn't know what she was talking about.
Not surprisingly, my son now loves peanut butter and is really opinionated. =)
On a more serious note, when pregnant it also helped me to have a target blood sugar of 80. That meant I had to test often to prevent lows. DO NOT do this without talking to your doctor first and only if you aren't having frequent or severe lows. Lows are hard on a fetus and inhibit brain development.
I also bolused, ate, then tested an hour later to see if a correction bolus was needed. Helped prevent post meal highs. And in the last months I avoided really high carb stuff (like a baked potato or pizza) at dinner, but it was fine for lunch. At night the food took too long to digest and I couldn't time the insulin right.
If there's any way you can do it, see if there are expectant mom exercise classes offered through your hospital. It helps blood sugars and it's really fun to meet other moms-to-be.
Thank you Jenna and Rebekah for the advice and suggestions.
I've been looking for a prenatal exercise class near me but there seems to be absolutely nothing. There used to be a prenatal yoga class, and I was really looking forward to joining it, but they seem to have stopped running it, sadly. Perhaps I can get them to start it back up again if I can find some other interested folks. Otherwise, the closest class seems to be about 45 minutes away at a bad time. In the mean time I've been exercising on my own, though this is much less fun.
I was just thinking about switching back to peanut butter for breakfast, since I love it, and my current breakfast is a little too carby and will likely cause problems soon. I like the suggestion.
My blood sugars are pretty good, though I still get different responses from different doctors (from "these are really great" to "you should really work on this more and really ought to be more careful"). An 80 target blood sugar is impressive, I haven't been aiming quite that low, and I have been having some lows, so I'm thinking it wouldn't quite work the same for me, but I'm happy with where my numbers have been (for the most part). When did your insulin resistance really start kicking in?
Thanks again, just hearing from others that have been there is really helpful.