Today I had my first appointment with the High Risk Pregnancy NP. It was quite informative. Quite. Never in the time that we were trying to get pregnant or when I was pregnant with Emma did I think this would be something I would have to worry about. I always kind of went with the idea that ‘that won’t happen to me’ and to be perfectly honest, in the grand scheme of things all of this is not really that bad. Everything could always be worse…it’s just frustrating.
My blood sugar levels have been really good all day long, but during the night when your pancreas ups your hormones it’s too busy making crazy preggo hormones that it’s completely ignoring the fact that I need insulin. I’m supposed to have a snack right before I go to bed to help keep my blood levels down then when I wake up in the morning I have to test my blood and those numbers should be relatively low. Unfortunately, mine have not been consistent. I haven’t been in the danger zone, but I have been close and then I’ll have a couple of days where everything’s fine and then it will spike up again.
And there is nothing I can do about it. It isn’t something that can be fixed by changing my diet. They’re all very quick to assure me that it’s nothing that I’m doing, it’s just my pancreas. (In case you’re wondering, my pancreas and I? We’re not friends right now) So because I’m only got about 9 weeks left it’s time to take action before it gets too late.
Which means medication. For the duration of my pregnancy I’ll be taking a very small dosage of a medicine that will stimulate my frenemy Pancreas to release more insulin. Hopefully, this works. If I don’t see any improvement they’ll up my dosage. If there still isn’t any improvement I’ll have to start giving myself insulin injections every night. BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Once I had to give myself one of my fertility injections because I forgot to bring it with me to the office. It was NO FUN. I thought I would take it to my mom (she’s an RN) and she’d do it for me, but she said no way.
But I’m optimistic that this medication will be fine. The other complication is if this medication makes my pancreas release too much insulin. Then they’ll just pull me off and stick me (literally) with insulin. So we’re rooting for that not happening.
With all this fun stuff comes bi-weekly appointments for stress tests where they monitor the baby to see how she’s coping in there and at least one, but most likely two more ultrasounds to measure her belly. If her belly gets too big at 36 weeks they’ll have to pull her out of there. So we may have a September baby instead of October.
Like I said, I’m optimistic. My blood sugar levels have been excellent after every meal and I’ve felt really good. With Emma in school now I’ve been either walking or riding my bike to pick her up so my NP was very excited about all that exercise. Hopefully, things will be just fine.
But for right now, me and my pancreas are gonna fight.
Ugh gestational diabetes is something I'd have a huge problem with, given my sweet tooth. Obviously I try to eat better while pregnant, but it's more like adding healthy food to my existing sugar fix than trying to remove it completely. Look at this way, you don't have long to go, right?
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