Diabetes.............

I think that life is full of inconveniences: some mornings I find it inconvenient to have to get up; sometimes I find it inconvenient to go shopping or mowing the lawn or putting petrol in the car or shaving. Likewise, I sometimes find it inconvenient to test my BG before a meal or before I drive; to remember to take some glucose tablets with me before I go out; to have to calculate the CPs in a meal; to try not to be conspicuous when I inject at the table in a restaurant. As I said, life is full of inconveniences - be they medical or non-medical, but we deal with them.

Alan

Everyone has a fair point and i wouldnt rule out anyones opinion. I only got diagnosed 4 years ago, but my brother has had type 1 for about 24 years ... so i did grow up with it... and yes i agree it doesnt have to 'rule' your life, but it does stop you from doing some of the things you want to do, just like other conditions/diseases/illnesses. My brother was desperate to be a stunt man.. wasnt allowed... then join the royal marines...wasnt allowed... be a scuba diving instructor ... wasnt allowed (but he fought for this through PADI for a year and became one). Children with diabetes do have to adapt to it, they cant always do the same things as other children. Just like as adults we have to adapt to it and i suppose it is how you deal with it that is important. Although it is not 'stopping' me from getting pregnant, i would never risk conceiving until my Hba1c is what it should be, therefore having diabetes and waiting to be able to conceive is a HUGE inconvenience. Diabetes doesnt have to be as negative as i generally think it is, but at the moment when all i want in the world is baby, it doesnt feel easy or convenient!
Hopefully, now ive done dafne and found this site i can get advice and opinions from other diabetics, not just health professionals.

Hi, I have been diabetic for 19 years. I was diagnosed when I was 19 right in the middle of that growing up stage. I went through my down times but I came out of it the other side stayed with my partner who was great never saw it for anything other than a good diet and jab a few times a day. We got married and I went to all my doctors appointments to find out about the chances of getting pregnant etc and without knowing I had already conceived. I stuck to my diet as closely as possible and at 35 weeks gave birth to a lovely baby girl. For four years I controlled my diabetes ready to have another baby but nothing happened, I gave up basically and what happened number 2 came along and a healthy baby girl again. A year after her birth and after caring for my mum who had been diagnosed with cancer and I was drinking nightly became pregnant again and this time a healthy baby boy! Although in the ideal world by HBA1C could have been better but with good ish control and help and support it all worked out well and they are now 13, 9, 7 and no diabetes yet!!!

Hi Nat,
Really nice to hear that someone has healthy kids, it is a bit scary when youre pregnant hey? (i got diabetes during pregnancy, but was very controlled and gave birth to a healthy boy) ... 3 years later and my hba1c is terrible! was 16% then 13% now 10% ..but im sure its higher then 10 now ... my consultant would be happy if i tried to conceive at 8% but i just cant seem to get it down... hopefully now ive been on dafne it will really help. Can i ask what your hba1c was when you conceived? A girl in my dafne class said hers was 10% and her baby was fine and then she got better control throughout her pregnancy. Although, ive been told conception and the first 8 weeks is the most important for good control. The more desperate i become the more i 'rebel' against the diabetes and give up. On the dafne course they said the risk of a child getting diabetes with a type 1 mother is 1 in 50-100, but for a father with type 1 the risk of the baby getting it is 1 in 20! so at least this is a positive (well for us anyway)

Claire
You will be fine to be honest I don't know what my hba1c was on the last count. My first daughter is was well in the 13s as like I said I was so desperate I just went ahead and conceived. I do find though that once I am pregnant things settle down quite well although I am totally white flour intolerant so all the nice stuff was off the list. My babies all varied in weight due to the diabetes 6lb 15oz at 5 weeks early, 9lb 10oz but one week late and 8lb 15oz at 3 weeks early but both my husband and I were 8lb babies so was it all diabetes or something in our genes!! I think as long as you aren't eating chocolate and really bad stuff day in and day out you have to be happy and you can't think that you can't have a family because of it. I was certainly more concerned the second time round and it took me 4 years to conceive and stress certainly plays a big part in your blood sugars. When my middle child was born she was so quick 1 hour 20 mins from start to finish I didn't have time to go on a sliding scale infusion and gave birth on one banana ha ha !!! I have no worries over the children, my first daughter was born with low sugars and they put her on a glucose drip and I didn't know any better but with my second daughter (the banana) I refused to let her have the glucose and demanded that they let me breast feed her as I had read that breast milk (or colostrom - excuse spelling) was better at regulating blood sugars and after a good old feed her sugars were perfect. My son had other (non diabetic related) complications so he had to go to special care and have glucose but it took him a good couple of days to regulate his blood sugars.
Just make sure you take your folic acid as that is very important to and remember that you still have to live and with all the control in world doesn't always mean things work out perfectly so just do your best.

Thanks Nat!
That makes me feel so much better! Im definately a stress head and really think that must help to make my bg's high. When i was pregnant i found it easy to control because i was doing it for a better reason... but now i find it so hard to have good bg's because it seems so long before the consultant will agree to me trying for a baby. Last year i was in intensive care with ketoacidosis and my hba1c was 16 then... but now ive worked hard to get it to 10% and i just dont know how much harder i can do... feel like giving up! i know that once im pregnant i will control my bg's much better and be able to resist all the 'bad' stuff but am so scared to conceive until ive got a good hba1c as the first baby i conceived (before i was diagnosed with type 1) i lost... and i know a type 1 who went through the whole 9 months and then had a still birth.. it terrifies me! To be honest the hospital scare me more because they're constantly talking about the risks of me getting pregnant without having perfect hba1c to conceive (they say 6%!!!) ... i say '6%!!!! they must be bloody joking, its going to be hard enough for me to get to 8%) ... so they agreed i can start taking folic when im 8%.
i breastfed my son for 8 months.. but when he was first born the nurse gave my baby a bottle because she said if i didnt bottle feed my baby would go in intensive care (which i later found out was a lie!! ...but thats another story- they just couldnt be bothered to show me how to breastfeed)
Thankyou so much Nat, because i rarely meet any type 1's who have been pregnant let alone had 3 healthy babies and still lived a 'normal' life

p.s how comes they let you go a week late with one of your babies? i was told they wouldnt let me go further than 38 weeks? As it happens my son was born at 36 weeks. My son is nearly 4 now and i have wanted another baby for a year

My kids are all healthy apart from the two youngest being diabetic, which is hereditary in my family!
Good lluck with conceiving claire, if you go with the flow of things and keep working at your bgs, im sure will all come good.
All three of my children were born early at 11lb+ ( BUT that had nothing to do with my diabetes)
Good luck

I have only ever referred to my diabetes as an inconvenience during 27 years of it.

Claire,
I only got to 35 weeks and 37 weeks with my first and last but with the middle one there was a discrepancy of 3 weeks in the dates mine was 1 week late and theirs well you can guess the rest. I was told that all diabetics have big babies due to the amount of insulin in their systems and that is why they scan you so much because their shoulder and tummy areas increase rapidly hence the reason they induce you early before you get to that stage.