Advice please

[Lauren]

I am considering trying for a baby. I am 25 now and my reasoning is I would like to have two or three children and as my DSN advised me to have children before I am 30, I decided now would be the time to start getting ready for pregnancy.

I am feeling a bit nervy and panicky about it. When I was 20 I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks and I hadn't had much in the way of care from my then Diabetes Team and wasn't sure what to do with regards to the rapidly changing BG levels.

Now I have a new Diabetes Team and I am on a pump so I think I will be ok. But I am wondering about what sort of foods to eat. I am strange with my eating habits, I go through phases of trying really hard to eat very healthily and making my own juices and eating lots of raw fruit and veg, but other times when I am busy I will live off crisps all day. I'm not very good at cooking but I realise that in order to have a healthy baby you need to eat lots of good foods and cut out junk. I would like to get my eating habits sorted but I'm not sure what sort of meals I should feed myself to get all the nutrients I need.

Also I suffer from Dawn Phenomenon. The longer I wait to bolus and eat each morning, the higher my BG rises, even with the pump. Would I have to get up very early each morning to bolus? I suppose I would but I remember feeling extremely tired last time and it worries me that this might stop me getting a restful sleep.

Sorry for the essay-length message, just feeling like I need to know these things before I make a definite decision.

 

[Copepod]

Just bumping this for more people to see and help you, Lauren.

You may well be able to attend a preconception clinic (usually run by both diabetes and obstetric / midwifery staff) if you're considering getting pregnant, so worth asking your GP and / or diabetes team about that.

 

[Lauren]

Thanks Copepod, I will look into that 🙂

 

[Lizzzie]

Hi Lauren

The preconception team I went to see first time round were very helpful and I'm sure yours would suggest things to keep your morning levels more stable. I have a relatively huge basal during the morning hours and now inject a long time before eating too, which helps me, but everyone's different and the DSNs are the experts.

I found the preconception thing frustrating (I just wanted to get on and start trying, dammit) but stuck with it and had a much smoother early pregnancy last time with far less time worrying about my BGs being too high. This time round (I'm 8 weeks in) was an accident and has been much more traumatic.

My DSN says it doesn't matter what you eat, it's timing the injections to counter it that's key.

Anyway hope some of this helps but they'll help you much more, definitely go see them and good luck!!

 

[Twitchy]

Hello 🙂

Just wanted to mention that ideally you need to be on a 5 mg (think it's mg?!) dose of folic acid for 3 months before trying, as it reduces the risk of birth defects. Also heartily recommend the 'diabetes & pregnancy' booklet by DUK (?3 ish?? Via website)...my GP hadn't heard of the folic acid thing but armed with a copy of that he agreed without reserve, plus it helped when explaining that no, actually I hadn't suddenly developed some kind of testing fever but I did actually need my prescriptions increasing for valid reasons lol 🙄 All good fun... 🙂 Best of luck! X

 

[Monkey]

I'd 2nd/3rd pre-conception care. Yes, it's a bit weird telling your DSN that you're thinking of a pregnancy but the care I had this time was brilliant in helping me get in the best possible shape.

They put me on folic acid straightaway, so in reality I did about 6months before conceiving. It's not harmful tho.

In reality, early pregnancy does funny things to what you want to eat anyway, for most people, so balanced diet does go out of the window a bit! There's no doubt that balancing diabetes and pregnancy is harder than just doing pregnancy, but it's doable, certainly.

 

[Mark T]

I think the "30" thing is a general advice for would-be-mothers rather then a specific diabetes thing. After you hit 30 your fertility starts to decline (mostly the quality of eggs).

But if you want children it's probably not a bad idea to get started as if you do have problems it can take the NHS a couple of years to start giving you any help 😱

 

[hyper-Suze]

Hi Lauren,
Just wanted to add my comments as I'm in my first pregnancy at the grand old age of 31!!

Per conception care is key as others have said, folic acid is vital as is a good hba of (ideally) 7.5% or under.

Just a quick question though, why are u needing to bolus for dp? Surely ur pump team would help with dp/rising levels by adjusting ur basals in the early hours?

A few night tests are useful throughout pregnancy but I was lucky that my care team funded sensors for first 12wks!

As for your funny eating habits...here here me too! I used to live off crisps and snacks. I tried really hard to eat healthy but as monkey said, tastes change and I developed really bad morning sickness to a clinical state and found I went right off ALL foods and no desire to cook. I knew I couldn't live like that or look after unborn so resorted to eating whatever I could. Started off with heating up oven ready meals and built it up, now I'm cooking normal meals again but still have my 3 bags of crisps each day!!! I also crave and live off Subways, but as they Are fresh and have salad then it's not as bad as Maccies or nothing at all!

Good luck with your planning and have fun trying, I got stressed out about it and it took us a year to conceive and I'm now almost 27wks.

You'll find each trimester brings different by challenges but I found my pump a god send in getting control, using temp basals and tweaking levels. The 1st trimester I had many hypos, 2nd was a stable time and i'm now becoming insulin resistant which is annoying but normal!

Good luck and ask away if u need to know anything else!

 

[Lauren]

Thank you all so much for your replies, I feel much calmer about it now!

I am definitely going to get onto my team about the preconception clinic and folic acid and I'm going to buy the Diabetes and Pregnancy booklet 🙂

 

[allana]

If you ring diabetes uk care line they may send it to you for free! They did for me

Good luck xx