The Great Divorce and SweeTarts

Unfortunately this won't be a commentary on C.S. Lewis' book, but an announcement that the Big D and me are finished! After much consideration, my diabetes and I have come to a fork in our relationship and I've decided that due to our irreconcilable differences, we are getting a divorce! I'm so over it.

In all seriousness, I've hit a point in my pregnancy where my insulin resistance is getting pretty intense and not to mention frustrating! I'm just about 24 weeks, and have noticed a huge change this week in my insulin dosages. I've had to triple my dosages so far in my pregnancy, and have more and more resistance every day. Even without carbs!! I've noticed that my needle sites don't last more than 2 days. Oh I long for the days when I could leave them in for 5 days! I’ve had two nights this week now where I’ve had to change out my sites in the wee hours and then wake up every half hour to make sure my blood sugar doesn’t crash low. At least I’m finally caught up on late night television. LOL.

It is a bit scary to have this resistance though, because I'm so used to have my post meal blood sugars range from 100-120ish, and now I've had a few posts in the 150's, and it's just plain frustrating. I'm so scared of hurting the baby with out of range blood sugars. But I'm constantly reminded by both my loving husband, and Endo that sustained high blood sugars are the only ones that are detrimental. First trimester seems like a breeze now....

I had a hard time in the beginning of my pregnancy connecting with our growing little baby because I had such a fear of something bad happening as a result of my diabetes. But with a lot of help from Dave and good education from my Doc's, I really have been able to move past that and embrace this growing life in me. But now because I've truly connected with our little girl, it makes everything so much more real and scarier. I just started to feel her move around and kick in the past month, which is a tremendous reassurance that she's alive and healthy. On the flipside, when I don't feel her move around for a while and have had some out of range blood sugars, I start to freak out that something has happened to her. It's a delicate balance for me every day; I walk a fine line between having faith and having freak out moments. I'm not sure if all new Mom's experience this, or just uptight diabetic Mom's like myself :-)

Although it has been a tough week, I do have good news to report!! SweeTarts. I've found the silver lining in diabetes. Ever since I was diagnosed at 3 years old, I have always treated my low blood sugars with juice or glucose tablets. During my first trimester I only could use juice to treat my lows, glucose tablets literally made me sick. Needless to say, we should have bought stock in Juicy Juice. I have never received so many funny looks grocery shopping as I did during my first trimester. I ran low a lot, and thus needed to buy Juicy Juice in bulk. If they had my favorite flavor in stock, I would often buy the entire stock. Then came the check out line, when I loaded up 20 packs of juices on the conveyer belt. No kid in tow to explain the mass quantities of child-sized juice boxes. Sometimes the checker would comment, sometimes they wouldn't, but I always knew they thought I was strange :-) But NOW because I need to only treat my lows with about half as much juice, my Endo told me this week that SweeTarts contain dextrose, that won't spike my blood sugars and is easy to carb count with. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Yes please. I've always thought that treating with anything aside from juice or glucose tabs was poor diabetes management, but it came from the mouth of a professional....and frankly I'm not going to argue. Ever since Monday, I almost WANT to get low now just so I can have SweeTarts. Oh yeah! I’m hoping more discoveries like this continue to happen during my pregnancy!