# How is everyone?



## Monkey (Jun 22, 2012)

I feel like I've been a bit absent just lately, so thought it'd be good to see how we're all getting on - new mums, new mums in waiting and the rest!

I'm ok. 8+4 now and feeling, well, fairly rough, but as expected. We went to a wedding at the weekend, and despite taking it easy and getting a fairly early night I was pretty queasy for the rest of the weekend and slept a lot.

Doing a lot of eating what I want and not worrying for now - if it's anything like last time, I'll be feeling more normal before too long and can worry about fruit then.

Over to you...


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## RuthieG (Jun 22, 2012)

Hi Monkey

Glad to hear you are ticking along, if a little sick. 

I am now 34+1 and finished work today! 

Health wise I seem ok. I have another growth scan of Tuesday where hopefully the baby will be a reasonable size. At 29 weeks it was big but at 32 weeks had come down a bit, so hoping for more of the same. 

My control seems OK at the moment although I have suddenly started having a few night time hypos, but not always. Not good.


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## allana (Jun 23, 2012)

Hi,

Sorry to hear your feeling rough, the 1st trimester is defiantly the worse! Hopefully you will be feeling better soon!

I'm 33 + 3, had clinic last week and was told I have above average water, and that the baby cold have trouble with swallowing and breathing when he/she is born. I'm just hoping the next scan at 37 weeks shows normal fluid! I'm trying to just hope for the best and being super strict with my blood sugars x


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## hyper-Suze (Jun 24, 2012)

Hi all, 

I know what you mean monkey, I haven't been on as much, I felt I was asking far too many questions and possibly making a nuisance of myself!!!!!!

Feeling ok in terms of ms, getting tired and having naps after work! LOL and my hiccups are driving me crazy!!

Think I could have overdone things today, getting a few twinges in lower stomach which makes me think my body is saying...slow down!
Been lifting a few boxes(not too heavy)!!! Oops!

Got my eye screening on tues, booking app on wed so busy busy!

I too am eating, when and what I want...I am trying my 5 a day and on some days find the fruit quite palate cleansing and then usually the next day I have a greasy happy meal! LOL

My clinic are meeting with me weekly to monitor bloods, they say I;m still having too many hypos but following their adjustments to my basal rates I have actually been running higher this week at, on average around the 8's!!!!! Not a happy bunny!!!!

How is your pump quest going Monkey?

Wow Ruthie and Allana....it is getting close, and exciting for  you both....I am watching your posts with baited breath(not literally....fish bait smells gross!!!) Are you both getting nervous? What are your birth plans, are you both hoping for natural delivery?

Hope the fluid and size issues resolve themselves!!! eek!


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## RuthieG (Jun 25, 2012)

I am hoping for natural birth but with realistic outlook that it may not happen. My obs seems to favour nature too so fingers crossed.

I have growth scan tomorrow and providing that is ok I think they will do another in a fortnight and then see how we go. The baby is a bit big but not too bad but at 30 week scan looked v big (I mention this as have seen a few people for who this was case in case you get same) but after that it has evened out a bit on the graphs.

I am quite tired again now (like first trimester but not as bad!!) but feel good overall. All the way through I have had too many hypos and have just started having night hypos which is a bit odd. My hba1c has been great throughout but individual readings have been much more up and down.

Hope you are all keeping well. Suze - ask all the questions you want! 

Ruth x


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## Monkey (Jun 26, 2012)

Suze, there's never a stupid question, really. I bet someone's asked it before! Twinges are pretty normal, from experience - everything has a lot of stretching to do in the coming months, so it's warm up for that!

I'm impressed at your fruit - I'm struggling with fruit and veg, but just working on the basis of what I can, when I can. Had an amazing roast on Sunday tho, and ate heaps of veg for a change!

No more pump news  - waiting for the CGM date first. I think I'm now firmly on the side of giving it a go, so hopefully my team'll agree.

Ruthie, that sounds a very sensible outlook. We opted for induction with C (was offered elcs) but with the understanding that we were told at our hospital, 75% of 38-39w inductions due to T1 ended in emcs. Mine did, but it was such a positive experience, and my mw this time even thinks I might be allowed to try a vbac if I want to - we'll wait and see tho. Hope your scan's gone ok today.

allana, sounds like a good theory. I think they try and prepare you for the worst news rather than springing stuff on you, so hopefully everything'll be juts fine. 



RuthieG said:


> I am hoping for natural birth but with realistic outlook that it may not happen. My obs seems to favour nature too so fingers crossed.
> 
> I have growth scan tomorrow and providing that is ok I think they will do another in a fortnight and then see how we go. The baby is a bit big but not too bad but at 30 week scan looked v big (I mention this as have seen a few people for who this was case in case you get same) but after that it has evened out a bit on the graphs.
> 
> ...


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## Nic (Jun 28, 2012)

Hi All,

Sounds like you pregnant ladies are all doing well! Monkey I am not envying your morning sickness...brings back horrid memories, won't enjoy that again if I have another!!

Arthur is now 4 weeks and guess what his official due date is tomorrow! Of course I always knew that he would be earlier than 40 weeks, it's funny when I see the date in my diary though.

My BGs are a little erratic at the moment but my DSN doesn't seem too concerned. In fact they have told me to stop testing so much! I only need to test before meals and stop correcting when I test in between meals! It's a little difficult as I have had some very high readings, but even running at say 10-12mmol/L doesn't feel great after working to pregnancy targets. 

I'm also still going with expressing breast milk for A which affects my BG, but I can't see a pattern of how it affects them which also makes things tricky. I am on the verge of deciding to switch completely to formula milk in the next few weeks, he has had a good spell of the best stuff, hopefully this will help stablise my sugars. I read on the internet that if your BG is high when you BF/Express the milk is sweeter and the baby can develop a sweet tooth but my DSN said it didn't matter if your BG was high. So confused on that one!

Glad you are all doing well, take care ladies! x


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## Babysaurus (Jun 28, 2012)

Hi all, 

I too haven't been on for a bit - I have been too tied up with baby related things I think, and cannot log on properly when feeding with one hand! 

Nic - I have given back the hospital pump and am now whittling down the number of expressed feeds I do. I have come to the conclusion that breastfeeding is not for me, and I have stuck nearly a month of it so hopefully he has had some benefit. Writing it down I feel bad with my decision but while I was expressing or trying to feed (although not done that for ages, since we both had thrush in fact) I hated it! I think I have been SO controlled and consiencious for so long that now I just want my body back and hearing people say to stick with it as it's gets easier after 6 weeks or whatever isn't working for me! 6 weeks sounds a bloody long time! 


Ruthie, this may be a controversial thing to say but I have come to the conclusion that, a lot of the time, the HCP's make it up as they go along with regards to diabetic births and pregnancies. If you recall, I too was told the baby was huge at 30 weeks and then, after the second scan showed he was in the middle of the two top lines, told it may have previously been a growth spurt which made him look big. But then, a midwife said the drop in size will have been due to him stopping growing - not that this concerned me as nobody else had suggested this and all tests and monitoring (this was said when i was admitted the week before for monitoring) showed he was fine. 
I think that when they see the Type 1 (or maybe other types) on the notes they overassume and guess at things which can often be misleading and / or worrying. (When my baby measured 'normal' at 26 weeks I was subsequently told he was 'probably too small' - in short, you can't bloody win!) While I realise that they have to be careful, and I know why they have to be careful, I also think that it would have been nice to have been told that everything looked as it should occassionally instead of looking for something 'wrong' all the time. If Herbie was big he would have been big regardless (as it was he was a perfect 7lb and had no blood sugar issues at all) and has had none of the losing too much weight / putting on too much weight issues they said he would have either. One midwife decribed this as 'lucky' which made my husband, through gritted teeth, say that luck had nothing to do with it! 
The reason I am going off about this at the moment is because I want to say that, as your control has been almost identical to mine, try not to get bogged down with the diabetes side of things too much.


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## RuthieG (Jul 11, 2012)

Hi everyone

I just retread these posts and relished I had missed some. Glad you are doing well with your boys nic and babysaurus.

Things have moved on for me now. After 5-6 growth scans which all seem to be following the same trajectory on the chart, the decision has been made to induce me on Sunday night. I am sort of happy with this because I really want the pressure and stress over! I do trust my Obs consultant and think he has understood that I didn't want induction but we have agreed now that it is for the best. The baby's belly is MASSIVE! So at 37 weeks and 3 days we are going for it.

At my appointment yesterday I spoke to a student midwife who said 'it is just a typical diabetic baby'. Now she obviously doesn't know me so I promptly assured her that I am not a 'typical diabetic' (whatever she thinks that is) and we did better after that! She was actually helpful in the end.

Someone on here mentioned about expressing colostrum before induction in case of problems with the baby's blood sugars or feeding and I asked about that and the midwife seemed quite impressed and was great at explaining and has supplied me with syringes and labels so I can give it a whirl. It looks very tricky though so who knows how I will do.

So hopefully I will have good news for you next week!

Ruth


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## Babysaurus (Jul 12, 2012)

Oooh, Ruthie, good luck! 
And also good on you for pointing out that you are not a 'typical diabetic' (and even if you were, comments like that don't make anyone feel good!) 
I tried the expressing and failed miserably - not a sausage (not that I was expecting sausages but you get the idea...) Hope you have more success. 

Looking forward to hearing your news! 

Bx


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## Monkey (Jul 12, 2012)

Fab, Ruthie, how exciting! Good luck.

FWIW, you probably know that C was big (10 11oz born 38+2) and my friend with T1 has just had a boy at the same gestation, 10lb 5oz. NOT intending to scare, just point out that we both had good control (hba1cs in low 6s, not pumping) and still had big babes.

It was probably me who mentioning expressing colostrum - I wrote a piece for my hospital that I can copy and paste here for you - will do it just in case I miss you before Sunday, but PM me if I can help further. It's worth hunting out some good info on hand expressing (try kellymom.com) but don't be disheartened if you don't get much - that's totally normal at this stage.


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## Monkey (Jul 12, 2012)

Here you go. It's a bit mammoth, and bear in mind it was written for a not-diabetic audience, really!

The first I'd really heard of colostrum harvesting was at my 16 week midwife appointment., where my midwife mentioned it in passing and suggested I perhaps looked into the details to see if it was something I'd be interested in doing. Having had type one diabetes for 18 years, and being determined to breastfeed our baby, I was really interested to find out why it might be a beneficial thing to do.

I knew roughly what to expect about being pregnant with diabetes, having read the NICE guidelines and the various information available from organisations like Diabetes UK. In short, due to my diabetes, there was a risk of my baby being larger than average and having difficulties controlling his or her own blood sugar after birth. Basically, the baby of a diabetic mum is exposed to his or her mum's blood sugar levels during pregnancy, which, however well controlled you are, will be different to the norm. Therefore, their body often produces extra insulin to help deal with this. This doesn't stop automatically after birth, so baby needs a little while to re-adjust their own insulin production, and are at risk of low blood sugar during this time. My understanding was that this is when the pressure to give a formula feed can become greatest ? and although giving formula as a one off in the early days doesn't mean breastfeeding will fail, I was aware that it isn't always the most helpful solution when trying to establish breastfeeding. 

As you probably know, finding any sort of information about pregnancy and diabetes in standard pregnancy books is pretty impossible ? you usually come across a paragraph or two telling you about the risks and dangers, but not much practical information. Info on colostrum harvesting is much the same! - 

What I managed to gather was that by expressing some colostrum ante-natally, you could potentially help baby in the case of low blood sugar after birth, potentially avoiding the need for formula or other intervention. Any mother will tell you that giving birth is exhausting, and the idea of a 'back-up' feed, almost, seemed a sensible enough idea for me! I was lucky that my husband was, and is, very supportive of breastfeeding, and agreed that this seemed like a good idea.

I was fortunate enough to meet the Infant Feeding Co-ordinator at my hospital through our NCT course in the later stages of my pregnancy, and she was able to give me a few more pointers on looking for info. Armed with this, I re-visited my midwife, and we discussed what would be the best course of action. She provided me with sterile 1ml syringes to collect the colostrum in, and gave me some guidance on the best way to go about it. The NHS leaflet gave a basic overview of hand expressing, which was all I used to get me started.

So, knowing that I would be induced at just past 38 weeks, I started expressing around a week before. I decided to try three times a day (after meals, just to help my late-pregnancy hazed brain!) and just took myself off to what would be out baby's bedroom and did what I could. The first few times I struggled to express anything, but as I got used to the technique (and I guess as my body got used to what was going on!) I found that each time there was a little bit more. After each session, I'd put the syringe back in the packaging, seal the packet with tape, put the date on and freeze it. 

I'm not sure now how much colostrum I took into hospital when I was induced, but it was definitely worth having done! We packed it into a cool bag with freezer blocks, obviously not knowing how long it would be until it was needed. Once I was admitted to the delivery suite and assigned a midwife, we mentioned that we'd brought it with us, which caused a bit of confusion. Luckily the midwife was able to get hold of the IFC, who popped it into the SCBU freezer until needed.

20 hours after my induction started, Christopher was born by emergency caesarean section after getting his head well and truly stuck. We'd gone to theatre for a spinal and trial of forceps, but his position meant that they didn't even try forceps. Weighing in at a hefty 10lb 11oz, we weren't at all surprised! I was given help in recovery to get him latched on and fed, and he seemed to get on quite well. 

The policy at our hospital was to check baby's blood sugar every three hours, until they had three readings in a row that were within the acceptable levels (I think NICE says 2.0 is the lower limit, but ours used 2.5, iirc). Christopher's first couple were on the low side, and he was quite obviously shakey in the same way that I am when I'm hypo. It was here that the benefit of my expressed colostrum really became apparent. We were able to syringe feed him what we'd taken into hospital, giving his blood sugar an immediate boost, before letting him have access to the breast in his own time. Somehow it also lightened the pressure on us both ? breastfeeding may be the most natural thing in the world, but it does take time and effort to do it right, and any new mother will tell you that after birth, you're exhausted and overwhelmed, without mentioning the obstacle of having had a caesarean and being restricted on positioning! 

I think in total we gave two small feeds of pre-expressed colostrum, and Christopher's blood sugar was soon stabilised. We've not looked back since ? he was breatfed exclusively for 6months, and I carried on alongside solids til he was 13m old. It wasn't all all been easy - we had huge issues with early days weight loss and ended up back in hospital - but we feel sure that the knowledge and support in the early days played a huge role in helping us get this far. 

My advice? Some of it is what I say to any of my friends intending to breastfeed ? get as informed as possible before baby arrives. Have an idea of what's normal and what's not, have telephone numbers and details of where to get help if you need it. Seek the advice and support of other breastfeeding friends ? a very close friend of mine kept her mobile on 24/7 when Christopher was small in case I needed help in the middle of the night! It shouldn't hurt - anyone who tells you everything looks fine despite pain is wrong, to be blunt! From a diabetes point of view, don't be afraid to ask questions and find out as much as you can about what will happen in those early hours and days, and what you can do about colostrum harvesting to make things easier.


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## chattygirl197811 (Jul 23, 2012)

How is everyone this week? 

I am doing ok so far getting used to insulin though feels unnatural to keep upping it and I worry about night time hypos but thats just because I'm new to insulin. I've had sore tummy for weeks but I think thats normal. How is everyone this week?  x


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