Diabetes

My post about the new job reminded me that I rarely post about myself anymore. A big part of the reason for this blog is because I'm not keeping a real baby book, so I'm trying to record things here for the girls to read. But I am realizing that it will also be important to them what ELSE was going on in our lives, besides them (you know, in the 2 or 3 minutes every day that we're not focusing on them).

I developed gestational diabetes around week 17 or so of pregnancy. After trying some oral medication with no real results, I was hospitalized for a weekend in November of 2008 to start insulin therapy. On insulin, my blood sugar was very well controlled. I also had a consultation with a diabetes specialist/dietician, and my maternal fetal medicine nurses required me to check my blood sugar 4 times a day and fax the results to them every Monday morning. (If it wasn't there by 10am, they'd start hunting me down.) It was actually harder for me to check my blood sugar (finger prick) than to give myself the insulin injections every day. I had very specific carbohydrate targets for each meal, and I could stick to them, because I knew it we had a specific goal. I also stopped working in late November, so I didn't have much to do except eat, check blood sugar, eat again, check blood sugar again. Once the girls were born, my blood sugar would go back to normal.

Except it didn't.

It's been over a year now. I'm still carrying way too much extra weight, which is probably my biggest issue. I don't exercise enough, because I can only find time once the girls go to sleep, and I'm exhausted by then. If I do make it to the gym, I have to worry whether someone is going to wake up before I can take a shower. If it's just one, Greg can handle it (we take turns going to the gym and doing the massive nightly clean up at home), but if 2 of them start crying, it's a lot to handle. We have made a lot of dietary changes in the last few years, but it doesn't seem to be enough. My fasting blood sugar first thing in the morning is ridiculously high, despite medication.

We are still trying to fine tune my medication. Some of it makes me miserably sick, some of it drops my blood sugar way too fast. Right now, I take the one that drops my blood sugar really fast in the morning, so my blood sugar actually drops before I get hungry for lunch... so I eat lunch earlier. And get hungrier in the late afternoon. It's a cycle I can't seem to get out of. And then I take the one that makes me sick (if I take too much of it) at night.

Diabetes is a serious disease. It scares me. I'm trying to live my life, and set a good example for the girls, and do everything I can to be around for as long as I can for them, and for Greg. My food excuses are that I don't always know when I'll get to eat again, I'm always hungry, and I don't know how long I will have to inhale some food before someone throws a tantrum. For the most part, we don't eat *bad* stuff. Just too much.

I read something the other day about someone who had been living with diabetes for 10 years and needed a kidney transplant. What?!? No.

I really need to make some more changes. Lose this weight.

I was doing weight watchers earlier this year, with meetings at work. But I wasn't really getting anything from the meetings - it was all stuff I learned while doing WW online a few years ago, except now I'm surrounded by a room full of people talking about food for an hour. I went to a few meetings, lost a little bit. Then gained a little back. And quit going. I wasn't tracking what I ate. I wasn't measuring.

I need to get it together.