conception and pregnancy

Hi Pinkemz

I don't think I have any good advice for you, but just wanted to tell you I understand what you are going through. I've been t1 for 8 years now and me and my partner are starting to think about it too. My HBa1C's are exactly the same, not very good at all and my readings are very unstable.

I am desperate to get my readings good and stable as soon as possible so we can start trying as well, but you're right, to get there will take a lot of time. However, it is for the best because I would not want to risk getting pregnant now and something happened to my baby. I am desperate to get an insulin pump so hopefully that way I can stabilise my glucose levels and get my body all baby-ready, but the hospital doesn't seem to be very keen on giving me one at the moment, which makes me quite angry and frustrated!

Are you on normal injections too? Is there a reason why your levels are unstable at the moment? HAve you talked to your nurse or specialist about this yet? Did they give you any advice? I have an appointment on Monday and I will address the issue then, can let you now how it went if that would help? I think you should stress to your nurse or specialist that you really want this; hopefully they can help you!

Good luck, hope you get everything sorted as soon as possible!

I am using Levemir and NovoRapid at the moment. Since I've been trying to get my readings better I have only ended up getting several hypos a day instead, which is really frustrating! I'll be getting a continuous glucose meter Monday as well to monitor my glucose levels for a week so hopefully they will be able to help me get them better afterwards!

I'm just thinking that with everything I've read about insulin pumps it would be a better idea to start using one of them, especially when you are thinking of getting pregnant. They allow you to manipulate your insulin a lot more than when you are on a long acting insulin which you take once a day, and if everything is set up correctly they should help you achieve much better and more stable results. I am really going to try and push for one, especially because in the 8 year's I've had diabetes now I haven't managed to get a HBa1C reading under 7 ever! They're always between 7.5 and 11...

I'm not taking any folic acid just yet, I will start that as soon as I feel my glucose levels are better and stable. I'm hope your appointment on the 24th goes well, let me know if they tell you anything that might be useful to me too! You can always send me a PM if you want to talk as well, btw!

hiya whilst I have not had my baby yet and don't want to be tempting fate by saying nothing will go wrong, I'm at week 38 now and so far no sign of any probs with the baby. My hba1c was around 9 at conception - the pregnancy wasn't planned.

There is a higher chance of birth defects and miscarriage with higher hba1c's but statistically you are still more likely than not to have a healthy child. I think it is something like 20% of babies conceived to diabetics with a hba1c over ten will either miscarry, be stillborn or have a birth defect. There are various stats out there - believe me I know as I did nothing but search around on the internet when I found out I was preggers - which may not be the best thing to do.

So because obviously it is such a tragedy to lose a baby at any stage in the pregnancy the docs err on the side of caution and advise you to have a hba1c as low as you can before conceiveing. If you go ahead and conceive with a high hba1c you are running a risk that something will go wrong - obv there is always a risk for any mum but its a much higher risk. I suppose it's a bit like if you were a heavy drinker and you got pregnant - you may get away with it but then again you may not.

I guess it depends whether or not you want to minimise that risk whether to get pregnant now or wait for your hba1c to stablise. Having conceived, albeit unknowingly, with a high Hba1c I would really advise against it as I was a bag of nerves during the earliest months convinced I would miscarry and I only really began to believe I would have a baby after the 20 week anomaly scan came back clear. I am still a bit nervous to be honest that once the baby is born they will find something wrong, until he gets the final all clear I don't think I will truly relax, but I am a bit more confident now that all the scans have been ok. Also I was lucky in that once I realised I was pregnant, at two weeks after conception, I got things under control pretty quick but I know that may not be so easy for some people - if you are having problems with control now pregnancy will only make that a lot harder as the targets are so strict and later on your body will produce all sorts of hormones which work against the action of insulin.

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

Hi Pinkemz

Thanks - it did not take me long to drop my hba1c as soon as I found out I was pregnant I monitored my bg's religiously and got my ratios sorted, got my hba1c down to 5.7 by three months. You can drop your hba1c quickly if you set your mind to it but you must test before and after every meal and get your ratios right.Also the nice guidelines are not to go above 5.9 before meals and 7.8 after - difficult to get control this tight without going hypo. To meet these targets (and my own consultant wanted me to go even lower 5 and 7) I was erring on the side of overinjecting rather than underinjecting and I also injected for snacks (basically if I wanted to eat more than 15g or so carbs inbetween meals I would inject) which meant I had a lot of hypos (still do!) but that's the price you have to pay for a low hba1c I'm afraid.
So far no probs at all on the scans I have been scanned every four weeks. I hope and pray that means baby will be fine but there's always a chance something could be wrong, I try not to think about it, no reason to think there would be though just me being paranoid/irrational.
Being induced on Monday, will be good to go back to being a 'normal' diabetic and not testing 12 times per day as I have been for the last eight months but should all be worth it if baby is ok.
I'm sure you can get your hba1c down and it will be a lot less worrying to get pregnant if you are within the recommended levels, so good luck - you'll be fine.
I'll let you know how it goes - not long now!
AC

Hi

I have been diabetic for over 15 years - half my life as 30 now....I was on four injections a day up until Jan 2011 when on put on the put as having bad hypos through the night and planning a baby.....the highest my hba1c as been in the past is up at 15.2 then I tried so hard and got it down to 8.2 overtime but never been below that.....until been put on the pump 3 months later 6.8 and my last result last week 6.6 so very very pleased

The pump is not as easy as you may think you must test your blood at least 4 times a day (it records everything too so they will know if you don't) and be very good at carb counting but I love it and I much prefer it than 4 injections.

Try to get the pump show them you test your blood and understand carb counting - buy carbs and cals book its a real help

Hope this helps