The idea of all the glucose testing plus insulin injections plus the fragmin injections from 28 weeks makes me feel abit overwhelmed if I'm honest. I'm sure it won't be too bad, it's just scary
The needles are absolutely tiny, 4 or 5mm long, and very thin.
Most people get freaked out by injections because they think about nurses putting a heavier guage needle in a vein, but it's nothing at all like that.
You're controlling the insertion rate, and it's just popping into subcutaneous fat on your stomach.
It obviously takes a bit of getting used to but after a while it's about as much hassle as using a lip-salve.
Most of us find it's not even remotely painful. There's an occasional sting if you inject too near a bundle of nerve endings, but that rarely happens, can't remember the last time I had that, a few years ago maybe?
The main thing to watch out for with insulin is the after effects. If you inject too much, it can drop you too low, below 4, into hypoglycaemia. That can be unpleasant, not painful, more a confusion of thought through the brain not having enough glucose to run on, and often some jitteriness and shaking through a surge of adrenalin.
But the dividing line between that and normal bg is fairly narrow, so 10g or so of fast glucose will usually do the trick, rinse and repeat if it doesn't.
There's also devices called cgm, continuous glucose monitoring, such as Dexcom, which read your levels every 5 mins and alerts you if you're heading too low so you can have some glucose to tail off the drop before it happens.
They're about £100 to £150 per month, but worth asking your docs whether they'll prescribe it for free. From April all pregnant T1s will be offered it on prescription, so even though you're not T1, you might be in with a chance if you're on insulin for the pregnancy.
