Is This Thing Still On?

 

Hello.

It’s me.

I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to…

HA.

Just kidding.

But it has been awhile, hasn’t it? Nearly a year! And ironically (or fortuitously) the break came on the heels of a blog post about diabetes burnout in which I said, “Give yourself a break. Just like diabetes, we’ll still be here.”

Well, hopefully this is true. I took a nice long break and the diabetes is definitely still here, so I hope you are too!

So why am I back?

It turns out that I only like blogging when I feel like I have something to say. Actually that probably pertains to every writer, ever. But I digress. For awhile now, I haven’t feel the urge to write about my adventures in blood sugar whispering because nothing very interesting was going on. It was pretty status quo. That’s not even sarcasm or hyperbole. My A1C was 7.8% THREE TIMES IN A ROW. I wasn’t trying any new drugs or technology. I’ve mostly stayed out of the advocacy fray, save for the occasional digital signature on a petition. Literally nothing about my diabetes was changing so I didn’t feel like I had much to add to the conversation.

But that’s all about to change… Eventually.

First of all, the A1Cs are changing. For the better. They’re getting lower. Slowly. (Sloooooooooowly.) But they’re getting there. In March, my A1C was 7.6%. Yep — a whopping .2% lower than the previous three A1C results. My latest endocrinologist appointment was last week, and that A1C rung in at 7.1%.

We’re almost there…

Can you see where I’m going with this?

Do you need a little bit more time to think about it?

Okay, okay, before you get too excited I am not pregnant. But I’d like to be! Soon. Ish. You know, soon but not too soon.

If you follow my other blog (which is sadly probably going to be replaced with this one for the time being — yay flexibility and personal freedom!), you may know that I start my internship for my Marriage and Family Therapy program next month. This, coupled with a massive paper I have to write, heralds the completion of my Masters program next Spring. (Cue the freak out.) After which I will take a super hard exam and become a Licensed Associate Marriage and Family Therapist. It takes another 2,000 hours of supervised instruction and an oral ethics exam to actually become a fully licensed LMFT with all the right and privileges granted herein.

All that is to say: I want a baby. I wanted a baby, like, yesterday, but you know, timing. 

As I mentioned before, my A1C isn’t low enough. In fact, I’m right on cusp. But there’s something about making the leap from the 7s to the 6s (just like the 8s to the 7s) that is so insanely hard. So even though most people start pregnancy blogs later (when they’re, gasp, pregnant), I want to start it now.

Because when you’re a woman with diabetes, pregnancy doesn’t start when the sperm hits the egg. It doesn’t even start with the “Hey, do you want to make a baby?” Pregnancy for a woman with diabetes starts weeks, no, months earlier with a “Do you think perhaps you will want a baby in like six to nine months?” Because it could honestly take you that long to break your A1c Groundhog Day cycle and get it to where it needs to be. (And this doesn’t even take into consideration all the other legwork a woman might need to do to get pregnant — screw nine months, it’s takes freaking years to have a baby).

That’s where we’re at right now and that’s what I’m going to start writing about. All the changes — big and small — that I’m doing to dial that A1C down into the 6s (without the help of Victoza, because sadly, it’s not kosher for baby).

Oh! And another reason I wanted to start this up is because I’m having the damnedest time finding any diabetes pregnancy blogs! What gives? I know of the obvious one, but she’s giving birth next month so that almost doesn’t count. I have found a handful of diabetes pregnancy ladies on Instagram, and while I love Instagram it’s not really the same. So if you are pregnant and have type 1 diabetes, leave a comment!