Today’s post is going to touch on the big news I found out 4 days ago. I AM PREGNANT! It has been almost a year of me preparing for this new life journey I’m about to take on. An entire year. As a type 1 diabetic, you need to get your A1C under 6%. Based off of memory I believe I started this journey at 6.8 then knocked it down to 6.2 and the doctors still wanted me to be below 6 before I could get off of my birth control. This was a very frustrating time because I had to be extremely strict with how many carbohydrates I was eating at every meal. I was told to have 15-30 grams at breakfast, then 15-25 for snacks, 30-45 for lunch, 15-25 for mid day snacking, and 30-45 for dinner. I was told to have absolutely no snacks after dinner and to stay away from all candies, cakes, sweets, everything that I absolutely love! It took a lot of trial and error with foods because you might think to yourself that this would be easy but carbs add up fast! A large flour tortilla is 35g of carbs. Think about the filling you might want to add. Rice? More carbs. Beans? More carbs. Cheese? etc. Mexican food, pasta, and Chinese food tend to spike your blood sugars hours after you’ve eaten them. I could give the right amount of insulin and be perfect 20 minutes after eating but then shoot sky high in the middle of the night. With a ton of frustrating tears and almost wanting to quit this entire baby thing, I pushed through and eventually got used to my new way of eating and got my A1C to 5.1%! Having a CGM helped tremendously with this as well. I don’t know what I would do without my Dexcom!
Once I got my number down to it’s absolute best, my doctor gave me the go ahead and told me I could get off of my birth control. The birth control I used never gave me my period (awesome, right?), so I was anxious about getting my first period while being off of the pill. I heard it could take a few weeks up to a few months. I asked her if I had to get a period first before I could have a baby and she said nope! She told me that I could get pregnant quickly but it would just be hard to tell how far I would be because I’d be without having a period. Anyways, this takes us back to the week of July 10th. I wish I remembered the exact date I stopped the pill, but I don’t.
The Story accompanied by some TMI: A week or so later, I started getting cramps so I assumed I’d be getting my period soon. They would come on extremely strong for about 3-5 minutes but then would pass. Obviously I googled this and a ton of women said they got cramps when they were pregnant early on so I decided to take a pregnancy test. Negative. I thought to myself that I would give up on testing myself because it will probably take me forever to get pregnant. But weeks went on and this kept happening to me. I then started getting sore breasts and for sure thought I was going to start my period. It wasn’t until four days ago that I woke up feeling super bloated and exhausted. I thought this was weird since I had slept pretty well and didn’t eat anything to make me bloat. After coming home from work and doing my usual routine, I decided to take a shower. I also decided to take a pregnancy test. I didn’t tell my boyfriend I was doing this. It was the last test from the box and I told myself if it came back negative I would just give up on getting my hopes up for a while. I pee’d on the stick and then got into the shower. I didn’t even think about the test while I showered. When I got out, I grabbed my towel, dried myself off and took a peek at the test. Positive. I immediately gasped and put my hands over my mouth. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t even know how to tell Jesse about it. I opened the bathroom door, told him he needed to come upstairs quickly (all while cracking up- not sure why I thought this was so funny at the time) and he started up the stairs thinking I was laughing at something my cat was doing. When he got to the top I told him to look in the bathroom and he saw it, came close to me and hugged me and then we both started cracking up together. “You’re pregnant” and “omg I’m pregnant” and “holy shit what have we done”. We sat at the top of the stairs together and I cried. And laughed. And talked about how I thought my brother would be such a great Uncle and how excited everyone would be for us (super cheesy, I know). I thought about how I wasn’t even married yet and how bad I wanted a ring on my finger before I had a baby, even though I wanted this baby no matter what. Looking back, that was such a dramatic thought because a ring doesn’t mean anything. Sure, it would have created the perfect picture for others but it has nothing to do with how bad we both wanted this and how much we are going to love this baby together. As happy as I am right now, that night was a whirlwind of emotions. I was happy, sad, anxious, nervous, excited, and scared. Was I making the right decision? Is this really what I wanted? I have diabetes, will I end up hurting my baby with high blood sugars? How will I work while pregnant? Will people treat me differently? So many questions I was asking myself that I couldn’t find answers to. I laid in bed quietly just thinking of this little tiny human that is now growing inside of me.
Fast forward to today. I had my first ultrasound. It wasn’t my official first pregnancy appointment that supposedly takes a long time where you do a lot of paperwork and go over every little detail. Once I had told the doctors I hadn’t had a period, they wanted to see me asap to see how far along I was since I had no idea. I had Jesse pick me up from work today so we could go together. I was nervous all day today. I was nauseous and wanted to hurry up and get this over with. When I got into the room and the doctor arrived, she told me we were doing an ultrasound to see how far along I am, if we can even see anything because we weren’t sure. She also told me if we didn’t see anything, that I would have to take some tests and do them again in 48 hours. I was praying we’d see something. A few seconds pass and she looks at me and smiles. We brought Jesse into the room and she turned the computer around and showed us our little grain of rice. I cannot believe my baby is that small. A grain. Of rice. Like, what?! She told us that I’m probably 6 weeks pregnant. My official pregnancy appointment will be on Wednesday, the 6th. I think that will be when we go over a due date and a ton more information. I have tried to research as much as possible about being pregnant with type 1 diabetes and I feel like I know a good amount of information. I am going to end this post as it is crazy long but it was something I wanted to document. I cannot wait to experience this pregnancy and I feel so so so blessed to even experience this part of it. Life is crazy, guys. But I don’t know if it should be any other way.
Liz
Liz With Type One 
congrats!!!
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