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I was a big baby!

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I was happy with my 5lb 13oz tiddler! She was perfectly healthy, and just a bit smaller than I was. Her baby was a nice 8-3, an almost precise average of Mummy and Daddy's birthweights.

A friend had twins, each of whom was well over 6 lbs. She managed to push one out, then had a C-section for the other. Double ouch!
 
My lad was a nice average 7lb 14oz, 2 weeks early. I had pre-eclampsia in the last few days and was induced with him. I have often pondered all sorts of theories as to why he got T1 and not his sister. I was in hospital the last week before his birth and on various pills to bring my blood pressure down, and did wonder if they could have had anything to do with it. I'm sure really though that sort of thing would have been researched and a link made before now if that really had been the reason why. Otherwise, I didn't take a single pill or drink more than the very occasional glass of wine throughout the whole pregnancy.

One thing interestingly though, I put on very little weight in my pregnancy (only 2kg the whole 9 months after losing weight at the start) and actually struggled to eat much the last little while and threw off ketones +++ at times towards the end of my pregnancy. I am non-D so it was all just down to lack of food, and I felt awful and faint a lot of the time, and what was I told to take? Dextrose tablets! I don't suppose really that could have done any damage, but I did go through a few packets in the last few weeks of my pregnancy and again it did make me wonder for a bit.

I'm also rhesus negative, so had to have the anti-D jab whilst pregnant with him. Could that have had anything to do with it??? I had a blood transfusion after having my first child, could that have had anything to do with it??? And so the list goes on! I really would love to find a reason why. It used to drive me to distraction thinking "Have they thought of this theory" etc. And I suppose thinking it's my fault. I know that's not so, but it doesn't stop you thinking that way for a while. Maybe one day we really will know, I do hope so, and sooner rather than later please.

Any more theories anyone?
 
Tina, mothers are programmed to feel guilt... about EVERYTHING! If it wasn't D you were trying to blame on yourself, I'm sure you'd find something else!

My daughter went out with a chap with the same personality traits as her father before she met her lovely husband. I blamed myself for not divorcing the b*****d early enough (and for marrying him in the first place). :D
 
My mum was AB neg Tina and I was 6lb 7oz. And in 1972 when I got D at age 22 the Registrar cross examined my mama about my birth weight! (well he'd tried asking me but I had to say although I had a good memory I din't actually recall that, and had never enquired. I mean why would I have asked? Might have if I'd decided to have a baby but give us a chance, only been married 12 months and we're mortgaged beyond the eyeballs!)

Wonder if your mum had gestational D, undetected at the time, Benny?

How often do they test for that, in a non-D preg? far as I know only once.
 
Being non-D and pregnant twice I can tell you I had to provide a urine sample at EVERY check-up, GP/midwife or hospital. They were always dipped with the multi check strips so if there was a trace of anything, it was picked up. I guess that's how they do initially pick up gestational-D. Certainly that's how it happened to a friend of mine. She then had to go on and have the OGTT, but got the all clear.
 
Ben, you weren't a big baby, you were a HUGE baby!:D. I was a modest 6lb 13oz (the same weight as my first daughter!)
 
Sarz said:
I have often wondered the link too, I was born 11 lb and then was diognosed as diabetic when I was 11.
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Yes! Another whopper... Like you I was diagnosed at childhood age 8. Ive never really thoguht anything of the link to be honest.. and as you can see from the various responses, As long as you were somewehre between 3 and 15 lbs then you have a chance of getting diabetes!!
 
There's a variety of other things too - getting vaccinated, getting ear infections, living near a particular factory, not being breastfed, having a very clean childhood.....there's a whole range of factors that one way or another seem to cover 'the majority' of people with T1 but not in any particularly compelling way.
 
DeusXM said:
There's a variety of other things too - getting vaccinated, getting ear infections, living near a particular factory, not being breastfed, having a very clean childhood.....there's a whole range of factors that one way or another seem to cover 'the majority' of people with T1 but not in any particularly compelling way.
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Mine was completely out of the blue, aged 49 and (seemingly) perfectly healthy a week before. Hardly ever been ill in my life and you would think any influences I experienced in childhood would have manifested themselves by my age. It does strike me though, from reading people's experiences, that the older you are, the slower the onset of Type 1 so maybe whatever it is we are more able to resist as we get older.
 
bennyg70 said:
Yes! Another whopper... Like you I was diagnosed at childhood age 8. Ive never really thoguht anything of the link to be honest.. and as you can see from the various responses, As long as you were somewehre between 3 and 15 lbs then you have a chance of getting diabetes!!
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:D

12 lb?!?! Your poor mum!!! Just...wow!

I was 7lb 12oz I think. and was breastfed.

My babies were 8lb 13.5oz and 8lb 12oz so almost exactly the same. both breastfed too. I didn't have diabetes then though.

As for Gestational Diabetes....they are testing more and more women for it these days. If BMI is over 30, or obviously if traces of glucose are found in urine etc. I had not one sign of anything throughout my two pregnancies and craved sherbet & fizzy sweeties during my first 😱 Imagine that now....

The main risk of diabetes (of any kind) in pregnancy is that the baby gets too big, but also something about more chance of the placenta failing towards the end. I would like to know more about that though....as I have a feeling their "data" is probably very old compared to more advances nowadays with monitoring etc.
 
Northerner said:
Mine was completely out of the blue, aged 49 and (seemingly) perfectly healthy a week before. Hardly ever been ill in my life and you would think any influences I experienced in childhood would have manifested themselves by my age. It does strike me though, from reading people's experiences, that the older you are, the slower the onset of Type 1 so maybe whatever it is we are more able to resist as we get older.
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Yeah this is really interesting I think too.
 
It does strike me though, from reading people's experiences, that the older you are, the slower the onset of Type 1 so maybe whatever it is we are more able to resist as we get older
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It could be the nature of the immune response. In children and adolescents, the body produces white blood cells extremely quickly to adapt to a wide variety of infections - that means they have an extremely effective immune system that may not stop them getting ill in the first place but they will shake off the illness very quickly.

In adults, there is essentially an army of tailored white blood cells which mean you have more of a natural immunity. But I think adults will produce novel white blood cells at a slower rate than children do. So assuming there was an immune system trigger for your diabetes, what probably has happened is that you've had good immunity throughout your life, then encountered something new, your body has made new white blood cells but at quite a slow rate, which means your islet cells had more of a chance to grow back - thus meaning it's more a gradual destruction process rather than the abrupt impact you'd expect from a younger immune system.

Just speculating, the above could be nonsense but hopefully the logic's consistent.
 
DeusXM said:
It could be the nature of the immune response. In children and adolescents, the body produces white blood cells extremely quickly to adapt to a wide variety of infections - that means they have an extremely effective immune system that may not stop them getting ill in the first place but they will shake off the illness very quickly.

In adults, there is essentially an army of tailored white blood cells which mean you have more of a natural immunity. But I think adults will produce novel white blood cells at a slower rate than children do. So assuming there was an immune system trigger for your diabetes, what probably has happened is that you've had good immunity throughout your life, then encountered something new, your body has made new white blood cells but at quite a slow rate, which means your islet cells had more of a chance to grow back - thus meaning it's more a gradual destruction process rather than the abrupt impact you'd expect from a younger immune system.

Just speculating, the above could be nonsense but hopefully the logic's consistent.
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Hmmmm also interesting!
 
I dunno. Is the turnover of haemoglobin slower in adults than children?

I mean they tell us the A1c is an indication of 3 months-ish control cos the life of our Hb is 120-160 days.

Is it the same for little uns and if the Hb does have the same turnover, wouldn't the same apply to white cells too?
 
You guys are way too clever for me. I just wanted to show off cus I was a fat chunky baby
 
Is it the same for little uns and if the Hb does have the same turnover, wouldn't the same apply to white cells too?
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It's not necessarily a question of turnover, it's how quickly the body can respond to a threat. I guess the best metaphor is to imagine the difference between guerilla fighters and the US army.

The way I see it, a child's immune system is like guerillas - they start from nothing but can respond very quickly and effectively to a threat. Whereas the adult's is more like the US army - big, powerful, keeps most threats at bay but when there's an incident in some part of the world that they've not been involved in, it takes a while for them to find it on the map, get over there, get a plan together and take action.
 
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