I’ve been reading Ginger Vieira’s book on pregnancy and T1D and it made me feel so bad to see that my a1C should have been below 6% prior to pregnancy.
Interesting to see how as decades go by recommended hba1cs for pregnancy get lower and lower. I'm a T1, with two healthy T1 pregnancies, born of a T1 mother, who had me before glucometers were available, and I can guarantee that neither she or I had an hba1C below 6 when our children were conceived/gestated. (I was 8 years old when I was diagnosed T1 and had my first child at 30, so much the same as you.)
Look, 8 isn't an ideal hba1c to get pregnant on, but your team will have seen worse. The most important thing to do is to get straight in touch with your team and follow their recommendations. If you google hba1c pregancy and 8 you'll get lots of stories of people with higher hba1cs and good pregnancy results. Yes, higher hba1cs lead to higher risks of birth defects, but you have to remember that non diabetics also have risks of birth defects and your hba1c just pushes your risk up a bit, it doesn't automatically mean your baby is doomed or that if things do go wrong that it because of your hba1c rather than some other reason.
On top of that, I found out a couple of months ago that I have retinopathy, very early stages though.
I've had on again off again background retinopathy for decades. It's not needed treatment and comes and goes as my hba1c goes up and down. Again, it's not ideal but it's not something to panic over. One of the good things about modern diabetic care is that retinopathy gets monitored carefully so that action can be taken before it turns into something worse.
The libre is an awesome piece of technology (though it can be inaccurate so I wouldn't necessarily believe those overnight readings without doing an overnight test to back them up.) If it had been available twenty five years ago I would probably have attached a transmitter and gone for child number 3 (I lost hypo awareness during pregnancy which was an utter pain.)
Congratulations on your pregnancy. T1 diabetics have been having successful pregnancies for decades and before hba1c tests or glucometers were available to tell them whether they are running too high. Like all pregnant women, diabetic and non-diabetic, you run a risk that all does not go well, particularly in the first 3 months. Your diabetic antenatal team will help you manage the diabetic aspect of the pregnancy, talk to them asap to get yourself in the system. (I expect you'll need to start popping the folic acid, if you're not doing so already.)
Good luck.