Pre-pregnancy sugar control

[Kazzerly88]

Hi
I'm 28 and we're thinking of having our first baby
I'm T1 and was diagnosed when I was 2...

I've heard a lot about the importance of controlling blood sugars before and during pregnancy.
My Q is... how well is 'well-controlled'?

I use the FreeStyle Libre. I have set my target to be between 4 and 10. Do I need to be aiming for between 6 and 7 ALL THE TIME? I struggle!!

For the past 7 days, my sugars have been 73% in that range. 10% above 17% below :S
My average glucose is 5.5 between 0:00 and 6:00AM, 5.8 between 6am and midday. It then 'spikes' to 7.5 between midday and 6PM.

This is because I do enjoy the occasional carb meal. Do I need to cut carbs completely? Or could I inject slightly earlier before eating?

I'm mostly posting on here as my experienced diabetic nurse left to work elsewhere and my new nurse seems to know less than I do about controlling my sugars.

Hope you can help me do best for me and my baby to be 🙂
x

 

[Brakersx]

Hi there . I have had t1 since I was an early teen and I knew I needed good control with diabetes to be pregnant !

But ... I don't believe diabetes is easy and I love carbs !! My hb1c was pretty high when I found out I was 6 weeks pregnant and I was so worried because there's so much pressure to get them right but I'm now 33 weeks pregnant and even though babies a little small at the moment ( not diabetes related ) they are very pleased so don't put too much pressure on yourself do your best with your sugar levels don't cut out carbs completely and speak with your gp or diabetic nurses to get some plans and advice !! But there's loads of people wth not the best control but healthy babies ....

Just try your best to give you and baby the best healthy start . Enjoy and good luck be great to see how you get on


Take care x

 

[SB2015]

It is very difficult to keep levels on target all the time. Over thing that helped me to bring my post meal spikes down was timing my pre meal injections. I base my decision on my BG which I do 30 min before the meal and then based on how high that is, and the types of food I will be eating, I deiced how far ahead of the meal to inject. It certainly helped me and my Libre is showing much reduced spikes.

I can offer no help on managing pregnancy.

 

[Northerner]

Hi
I'm 28 and we're thinking of having our first baby
I'm T1 and was diagnosed when I was 2...

I've heard a lot about the importance of controlling blood sugars before and during pregnancy.
My Q is... how well is 'well-controlled'?

I use the FreeStyle Libre. I have set my target to be between 4 and 10. Do I need to be aiming for between 6 and 7 ALL THE TIME? I struggle!!

For the past 7 days, my sugars have been 73% in that range. 10% above 17% below :S
My average glucose is 5.5 between 0:00 and 6:00AM, 5.8 between 6am and midday. It then 'spikes' to 7.5 between midday and 6PM.

This is because I do enjoy the occasional carb meal. Do I need to cut carbs completely? Or could I inject slightly earlier before eating?

I'm mostly posting on here as my experienced diabetic nurse left to work elsewhere and my new nurse seems to know less than I do about controlling my sugars.

Hope you can help me do best for me and my baby to be 🙂
x

Hi Kazzerly88, welcome to the forum 🙂 I have no personal experience of pregnancy, being a bloke, but you might find this Diabetes UK page helpful:

https://www.diabetes.org.uk/Guide-to-diabetes/Living_with_diabetes/Pregnancy/

Your levels look pretty good to me. The 'ideal' range is between 4-7 mmol/l, but the occasional one outside that very tight range won't be a problem. What insulin regime are you on? Timing your injections can be a big help with preventing post-meal spikes, but obviously you need to be careful and monitor it closely to avoid hypos before your food has begun digesting.

Good luck! 🙂

 

[Cleo]

Hi, you sound like you're doing really well!
I have a 2.5yr old and a newborn baby (8days old!). Both times my targets were :
- hba1c of less than 7% for a few months before stopping contraception
- to achieve this is tried to aim for the level of control that's needed during pregancy so :
- fasting BGs 4.5-5.3
- pre lunch and dinner : 4.5-7.5
- before bed : 6.5-8
I'm not going to lie - I found this difficult during the pre pregnancy planning phase as it requires a lot of effort and when you're not even pregnant it's even harder - but I personally found it useful as a guide.

During pregancy they wanted my 1 HR post prandial readings to be les than 7.5.

It is doable - with a lot of testing - I was testing about 10-14 times daily.

You def don't need to cut out carbs as you need to have a healthy balanced diet just like every other woman but I was careful with my portions and i
Carb counted for absolutely everything.

And don't worry - you don't have to have perfect readings all the time as that's just not realistic - but def the majority of the time. They will keep a very close eye on you and baby (ante natal clinic every 2 weeks was the case for me - when I got to 35 weeks they were weekly) and you'll have extra scans as well .

Hope that's helpful and wishing you the very best of luck !

 

[Cleo]

Also I agree with SB's comment re timing of the injections - this helped me immensely in Maintaining good control esp in the mornings in the 3rd trimester when the insulin resistance really kicks in .