39 Weeks....Just Kidding!

Today I would be 39 weeks and 1 day pregnant, eagerly anticipating our induction date on Thursday. Our little girl had other ideas, and after my testing appointment on May 22, I was admitted to the hospital for induction. My fluid levels had just gotten too low, which one of the doctors later explained was a sign that the placenta was just sort of giving up the ghost.

Maybe one day I'll write about my induction, labor, and eventual C-section (pushing caused her heart rate to drop, so we did the safest thing for her), but maybe I won't and just show pictures of my sweet girl instead?

Marina was born on May 23 at 3:56 am at 37 weeks and 5 days. We both came through well and I cannot even begin to explain the love I have for my daughter.  All three of us, plus my incredible team of doctors, worked so hard to get her here safely. Diabetes complicated some things, but it also allowed us to see her more frequently and ensure her safe growth and development along the way. 

We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary in the hospital when she was one day old. Funnily enough, my sister's first baby was also born the day before her wedding anniversary!

A family portrait at 8 days old

And can we talk for a second about how much I adore Marina's father? And how much she adores him?? She's a smart cookie, dazzled by him every time he holds her. It's incredible to see their bond emerge so quickly and makes my heart grow three sizes every time I think about how incredible my husband is.

I love our little family and am thrilled for the adventures to come, to see what she will love and who she will become. Our girl is so perfect to us, no matter the efforts of being pregnant with diabetes, being far from family, and being significantly sleep deprived. I never knew how much I could love and am so grateful for being where we are right now.

37 Weeks

With the dissertation, defense, graduation, and trying to get everything ready for baby, my bump pictures and updates here have been seriously lacking. But, I am in the home stretch and have no idea how much longer baby girl will be on the inside here, so I thought I'd do another post for good measure. No big deal, just 11 weeks have passed since that last one....

How big is baby: Swiss chard. This girl is somewhere around 6 or 7 pounds already.

Weight gain: Somewhere around 18 pounds. My weight has fluctuated a bit at my last few OB appointments.

Sleep: Mostly ok, but the last several weeks have been increasingly uncomfortable. It's the weirdest thing to wake up sore. I've been sleeping with a pillow between my legs trying to support my hips, but it isn't awesome. It also isn't awful.

Diet/Cravings/Aversions: I had to swear off a few certain sweets that were just too tempting and too risky on my blood sugar. No real cravings or aversions.

Exercise: I got in a lot of activity with graduation and my parents being here this weekend (lots of errands running), which came with a few gnarly lows. I'm fairly active, but it isn't really dedicated exercise.

Movement: She is still quite the mover and shaker. I love that now I can identify body parts when she jabs them out. The rump and her little feet make frequent appearances.

Belly: Behold:

I definitely had some weirdo dudes last week make comments about how big I am ("Are you sure you aren't due May 8??" "Is it twins?"), but really the bump is fairly petite for how far along I am. I feel pretty massive, but have pretty much forgotten what I used to look like...

Symptoms: Getting stuck in seated positions, difficulty bending over, a giant belly....lots of Braxton-Hicks contractions (and some that have started resembling real ones, but not regularly). Basically, I a super pregnant.

Diabetes: I seem to have hit a pretty good groove with no major changes to my dosing in the last few weeks. My numbers are mostly in the target range, with a couple post-prandial highs (that really aren't too high) and a few lows here and there. I'm pretty happy with where my doctors and I are right now with my care.

I've had my induction date set for awhile now, but my docs are becoming more and more convinced I won't be making it all the way to June 5. My twice weekly non-stress testing has shown that I could be admitted any day for delivery. When I found that out last week, I was quite panicky. Now I've come to terms with it, and must admit I'm rather eager for her to get here soon. Of course, her health is my first priority, so staying in to cook a bit longer is just fine with me. But, I just cannot wait to meet her. I know I will ache a bit to not have her as an actual, physical part of me once she's born, but I think I'm about ready to meet her and share her with all of these other people who already love her so much.

#DBlogWeek Day Six - Saturday Snapshots

The last couple of days have been full of calibration errors, lost signals, and multiple sensor errors, with a few moments of my sensor working correctly.  I'm thinking my transmitter is dead....hoping when I call Medtronic that this can get taken care of ASAP. I'll be 37 weeks pregnant tomorrow and my CGM is my partner in all of this.  

Perhaps a more stressful sort of day-in-the-life, but this is how diabetes has been driving me mad today.....

#DBlogWeed Day Five - Diabetes Life Hacks

The prompt: Share the (non-medical) tips and tricks that help you in the day-to-day management of diabetes.  Tell us everything from clothing modifications, serving size/carb counting tricks to the tried and true Dexcom-in-a-glass trick or the “secret” to turning on a Medtronic pump’s backlight when not on the home-screen (scroll to the bottom of this post). Please remember to give non-medical advice only!

Life hacks! I love finding tricks to make life easier! I must admit, I've been struggling with this one a bit since I read the prompts when Karen announced them. I'm not sure I have any good tricks that people aren't already aware of. Here are some things I do that aren't medical advice in any way, but are also quite logical (hence why I think they might be too obvious to count as hacks...)

- I reuse my old test strips containers to house used ones, and usually change it out once I empty a test strip bottle.
- When I have my CGM in the back of my arm, I sleep with my insulin pump in my hand. Otherwise, my poor little low-range Medtronic will alarm all night.
- When traveling, I take old pill bottles with me (these days from prenatal vitamins, but before from my blood pressure meds) to use as sharps containers on the go. That way I'm not risking any dangerous disposal techniques and just take care of it mysel.
- This one is from my dad, and is really just a life hack for anytime you need to remember something. If I'm staying only one night somewhere or am anywhere that I've put insulin in the fridge, I keep my car keys there too so that I don't forget it when I leave.
- My new go-to way to wear my pump with a dress is to use the top part of a thigh high around my leg. I used to put it in my cleavage, but had too many experiences where it would lose the CGM signal or that I needed to bolus and didn't feel discreet enough just reaching down the front of my dress. Oy. I got the thigh high idea from another D-Blog, but I can't remember which one!

And that's all she wrote! Maybe some of these will be helpful to others. I can't wait to read other people's suggestions!

#DBlogWeek Day Four - Mantras and More

Here's the prompt!
Yesterday we opened up about how diabetes can bring us down. Today let’s share what gets us through a hard day.  Or more specifically, a hard diabetes day.  Is there something positive you tell yourself?  Are there mantras that you fall back on to get you through?  Is there something specific you do when your mood needs a boost?  Maybe we've done that and we can help others do it too?

I think the mantra that I use most often is quite ironic given my post yesterday about what brings me down. I wrote then about how the bad days often make me pessimistic. But my most common mantra is reminding myself that a bad day is only one day, that tomorrow can be better. I think we people with diabetes have to try to look at the positive, even when things bring us down. So when my pessimism begins to get the better of me, I try to remind myself that I have to take this one day at a time and that I can always do better tomorrow.

The other major thing I try to keep in mind is that things could be worse. I could have a completely untreatable and debilitating illness. Diabetes, despite its never-ending nature, is something I can live with in a fairly normal way. I don't look sick, I can keep much of my care to myself, and it doesn't remove that many things from the realm of possibility in my life (no active military duty, scuba diving is tricky, Lasik is probably out of the question). I can live with that. It's not easy and I certainly don't always have a smile on my face about it, but I can do it. Ups and downs, no guarantee that I'll catch that ugly hypo in time, and the likelihood of developing some sort of complication down the road makes this a constant battle, but I can do this. We can do this.

#DBlogWeek Day Three - What Brings Me Down

May is Mental Health Month so now seems like a great time to explore the emotional side of living with, or caring for someone with, diabetes. What things can make dealing with diabetes an emotional issue for you and / or your loved one, and how do you cope? 

There is so much about this disease that can bring me down, and it's pretty incredible how closely intertwined this disease is with my emotions.

I know this post could easily turn into a long dirge of complaining, so I think I'll keep it short and sweet, and just mention two things that can bring me down.

The first is one that I have a feeling all of us with diabetes experience. There are lots of rough moments along the way with this disease, and then sometimes there are just all-out bad DAYS. And sometimes bad weeks or even more. But for me, when I'm having a bad diabetes day, I find it impossible to push out of my head the fact that it all starts over AGAIN tomorrow. That one bad day doesn't mean a good one the next. That even if I make it through whatever is plaguing me at that moment, the same thing could happen again tomorrow. Every day is a clean slate, but far too often there's little we can do to make it feel that way. I know it isn't a fantastic mentality, but for me it's difficult not to compound things, to start feeling miserable about how a day is going and despair that the next day could be just as bad or worse.  Sigh....

The other thing that has become an emotional issue (and I knew it would be ahead of time) is being pregnant with diabetes. I have very tight target goals and am testing so, so frequently in order to keep this baby as healthy as possible. But those targets are so narrow that I often land outside of range and that is difficult to deal with. My little girl didn't ask for a hostile environment. I know I'm doing a good job overall, but it's hard not to beat myself up over those highs that are a bit more stubborn than normal or when one of my non-stress testing appointments leads to the nurse's furrowed brow. Some days are great and I can congratulate myself on how hard I'm working, how stellar my A1c was last time it was checked, and how diligent I've been on eating as healthfully as possible. But it's hard not to focus on the negative and the unknown. She looks good on the ultrasound, but what about all those things that we can't see or know yet? If something is wrong, is it diabetes' fault? Is it mine?

This last thing has been plaguing me a bit lately as my pregnancy winds down to the last few weeks. Her arrival is imminent and I'm dying to know that she made it through everything ok. I'd like to say that I've done my best, but there were certainly times I could have done better. I know that things are probably going to be fine, and yet it's so easy to dwell on what might be and what I could have done differently.

#DBlogWeek Day Two - Poetry Tuesday

How about some haikus to show what's on my diabetes mind these days?

A fresh reservoir:
Draw, plunge, and fill the tubing
Smells like a band-aid

*********

A growing belly
Means more real estate, but now
Tubing is too short

*********

I have a sweet tooth.
Baby wants cookies and ice
Cream. I must say no.

*********

Four years ago, my
Pancreas got sleepy. Can
I get a new one?

*********

Each day is different:
Check your blood sugar, carb count,
Each day is the same.