First Post

OK this is not a blog for anyone else's benefit - more just a record for me really.



I am 28, happily married and have been a type 1 diabetic since I was 14 (ish). Recently my husband and I talked about trying for a baby. Now don't get me wrong - I am in no rush to do this (we were actually thinking to try in about 6 months) - but TRYING to be a sensible person and very aware of the impact this will have on my health I decided to speak to my doctor at the diabetic clinic the next time I was there. Which was yesterday.



I have had alright control over my diabetes really. I mean - when I was 18/19 I discovered alchopops and seemed to forget my injections which was maybe not the best. Being 7 stone effortlessly thanks to my badly-managed diabetes just seemed easy. That was until I went to University and a girl in my course brought her guide dog into class. I then found out that she was diabetic and had lost her sight due to bad management. That was it for me. I bucked up my ideas and started looking after myself. Now lately I have just become a little complacent with it - I always was able to tell if my levels were too high or too low and so never kept a diary of my sugars. Unfortunately my diabetes-sense (like spidey sense only...er diabetic) have left me and over the past few months I have been getting quite a few scary blood tester reading (once they were so high that the meter couldn't read them and just said HIGH. On other occasions they have been around 1.2) and so I figured that when I attended the clinic I needed to be completely upfront and see what I could do to manage things better before even considering conceiving.

Soooooo there I was sitting in the doctor's office. The first thing he said was "well your control seems great" (turns out that if your levels are high but then incredibly low, it averaged out pretty well). Now normally I would say thank you and walk out quite smug that I'd got away without being told off (what used to happen when I was 14 and at the clinic). But this time I figured that I was an adult and needed to be honest if I was serious about ever having a healthy pregnancy. 20 minutes of telling-offs later about how I needed to keep a diary of my levels and manage them better(haha served me right eh?) the doctor said that we would start monitoring my levels closely. I was given 2 new sugar levels diaries to monitor my levels (which I need to do 7 times a day!!!!) and given a prescription for folic acid. I wasn't sure it was necessary but the Dr said that it's not going to do me any harm so "just in case". I also have to return in 2 months, instead for the normal 6 months, and an appointment will be made with the nurse for me to discuss things further.

So yeah - this is the start of things. I worry that I am panicking my husband by suddenly taking folic acid and monitoring my levels so closely when we still have 6 months until we start trying but alas for a diabetic this is what is needed...

As the doctor said just as I was leaving his office "OK....So here we go. This is the start of it all".

Average blood sugar levels: 10.1
L.xxx