A Day in the Life of a Pregnant Type 1 Diabetic

Diabetic Blog Week: DAY 1

So this is me - my day in a nutshell.  Me stuck between a rock and a hardplace.  Stuck with diabetes. Living with and married to diabetes.  It's manageable but a pain.  In so many places.

The last few morning I've been waking up with rising blood sugars.  I am in the 23rd week of my second pregnancy and my insulin resistance is rising and rising, especially in the mornings.  I don't wait to change my basal rates (the "background" insulin that trickels in throughout the whole day) until I see a pattern for a week or so (like before).  Now after two mornings of rising blood sugars, I up it.  Yesterday morning I woke up to see it rising from 6.4 to 7.5 with one arrow up (my CGM - constant glucose monitoring - is set to alert me when it rises above 7.5).  I corrected the basal right away (up by 0.1 from 7 am to 10 am) but for some reason I didn't correct the high until I saw it flatline around 10am at 10...

Then today, although I had a new basal rate already from yesterday, THE SAME THING HAPPEND.  At 7 am I was about 6.6 then by 9:15ish I was up to 10 or so.  So I uped the basal rate another 0.1 units.  I used the niffty Bolus Wizard to input my BG (blood glucose level) of 10 and then told it I am eating a 12-grain bagel with a decaf coffee with 1/2 hot chocolate = about 80 g of carbs.  A little on the high side of carbs but as my endo says, I am a carb terrorist.  He also calls me Carb Queen and other endering names.  He is surprised that I am not gaing weight (other than baby) and that my A1C is at 6.0%.  He says as long as I am doing good, keep on eating what I want.  I am averaging about 300g of carbs a day (Shocking, I know!)

Anyways, now at 11 am the BG is back at 6.7. Yay. A small victory.  Somehow though it feels like it might drop below that soon.  I am feeling very early sign of dropping sugar.  I have some yummy lady fingers at my desk at work just in case.  (PS One month from today - MAT LEAVE!!!)

Lunch is in two hours and I don't know what I feel like eating.  Earlier in the pregnancy I had some amazing cravings that kept lunch interesting.  I was craving sushi for about a week straight - and that's what I had.  I made sure to have only cooked or veggie ones.  And that Saturday night (after having sushi almost EVERY DAY for lunch) hubbie took me out to a fancy sushi restaurant on a date.  It was glorious.  Then that died.  No more sushi cravings. 

I once craved a pannini so bad that I drove 15 km on my lunch just to get the best one in town.  Then there was the week when I craved chicken salad with Ranch from Subway.  Now they've all gone away... no more cravings.  I miss them - it always guaranteed that I would have a satisfying lunch - as long as I had EXACTLY what I craved.  Oh, there was also the Chinese Food craving (during my first pregnancy I could not stand even the thought of Chinese food).  Another 15 km drive to the mall to get MANCHU-WOK.  For this one I had to bolus for about 90 g of carbs with a Dual-Wave Bolus (half of the insulin gets delivered now and the other 50% over the next 2 hours).  The first couple times that worked out well, but the last two times after the two hour delivery expired I saw my BG creep up.  So now I am doing it for four hours.  It's crazy how much changes - baby, baby, baby.

It's now 11:50am and sure enough the low I was sensing is now confired at 4.4.  Someone brough in Tim Hortons donuts and I am eyeing that Honey Cruller. What a wonderful excuse to have it - I have a low.

My after lunch BGs are okay.  Nothing exciting to note there.

My day at work usually ends around 5.  Most days are a typical 9-5 at the bank.  But thanks to my type 1 Diabetes it's never "typical".  There are highs and there are lows.   Sometimes there are more lows than highs.  But typical for me is up and down like a yo-yo. 

Dinner is unsually unplanned.  It's something that I've always struggled with.  So usually it's take out or something last minute.  Hubbie does not like this and neither do I.  It's a horrible habit and I can't seem to shake it.  I really enjoy cooking and baking but I hate planning it out.  I don't like grocery shopping either.  And my in-laws live just around the corner.  Very often when I pick up Noah at the end of the day (around 5:15ish) they offer something very delicious to take take home... still considered "Take Out" right?  Home-cooked and scrumptious but still not a meal I cooked.  It sounds awful but if I cook twice in a week - it's a good week!  Tonight is not one of those planned out dinners.  I actually do not know what's for dinner tonight.  Had it not been for this post it woudn't have even been on my radar... So now I'm thinking "What for dinner?"

My evening consist of hanging out with the little monkey and hubbie.  We eat something ( I promise I don't starve my family) and then hang out.  We play "Whack-a-Moley" or play with train tracks or play hockey with our little left-handed toddler and his favorite blue hockey "tick".  My sugars are kindda unstable after dinner... but that is usually because for dinner I most often bolus (tell my pump to give me insulin for the meal I am eating) half way through or at the end of the meal.  I simply forget I am diabetic.  Hubbie usually asks "Did you give yourself insulin?"  Most of the times it's "No, thanks for reminding me."  I'm not sure why.  How can that escape me?  I have been diabetic for 5 years and have never eaten a single meal (save for the very very random salad meals...) without taking insulin.  It takes only 21 days to establish a new routine right?  I've had roughly 1798 days to get that down... so what's up?

Anyways, we snack a lot in the evening too.  Noah's bed time is around 9ish and then it's mommy and daddy time.  We watch a movie or a show we downloaded that we missed that week.  I usually have to guess the carb content for snacking. 

Before bed I grab a glass of water for the preggo vitamins and find my purse so I can test my sugar and charge my iPhone. There is nothing more annoying then a middle of the night alarm that asks me to test.  Nothing annoys hubbie more too.  I don't mind "snoozing" that alarm but it will go off again in an hour, I think.  So I try to remember to test just before bed. 

My overnight sugars are good for now.  Somehow my snacking from the night before works itself out almost always.

So there it is.  That is a quiet day.  No infusion set to change, no needles to poke and bleed, no sensor to replace or 1-800-MiniMed to call to trouble shoot why my sensor is getting Error after Error after Lost Sensor after Cal Error alerts.  No pharmacy mix-ups or payments.  And the ever famous but much dreaded "NO DELIVERY" alert when we are sitting down at a restaurant or at a friends house.  That means right away departure.  Either make a bee-line for home or call up 24-hr Shoppers Drug Mart for my "back-up" stash of insulin.  I also keep a vial at work in the fridge with a syring in a "secret" spot so I can just inject some more insulin into the existing reservior in my pump.  Then I try to remember to change the infusion set when I get home.

Or the crazy days when no matter how much you stack and stack your insulin it won't come down.  Until it does and then you crash!

Life isn't easy but it's doable.  We are still blessed and we still make do.  Every day is not the same.  Never the same.  But maybe that's a good thing.  Who wants to be ordinary?