Discoveries.

With a month of momhood under my belt now, I'm noticing a few things:

• If you're going to snuggle a baby against you, probably go ahead and get your insulin pump out of your bra (who wants to snuggle against hard plastic/metal - no one).
• If you're going to take it one step further and snuggle that baby with the use of a wrap, definitely get that insulin pump out of your bra because now you can't bolus without beeps and/or buzzes letting loose right next to their teeny, tiny, sleeping self.
• Trying to figure out where my basal rates (or really, anything) should be at post-pregnancy is really hard. My body is still healing and readjusting to the baby being outside so simply going back to pre-pregnancy settings on my pump doesn't quite cut it. My CGM graphs are resembling [insert name of well-known roller coaster here]. 

• How does anyone get anything done when there is a baby around? I'm lucky if I get to shower before 3:00 pm now, much less appear (clean, dressed, and coherent) at work on time. I have around 6 weeks left in my maternity leave and I have no idea how to go back to real life, or how to get into pants that don't stretch, or what "well-rested" feels like.
• It's really, really hard to have to momentarily ignore my daughter's cries because I have to handle a low blood sugar. There's no way for me to communicate to her yet that while I know she needs me and more than anything I want to pick her up and take care of her, for her safety it's not a good idea right then. It upsets me every time it happens.
• Also really hard? Dealing with a very fussy baby with a blood sugar of 376 at four in the morning without letting myself get cranky about it.
• And lastly, I'm digging this tote from Tallygear (disclosure: I received this tote for free and while I am not required to write about or mention it, I like it, so I am), as a convenient way to carry my CGM, phone, a tube of GlucoLift and some lipbalm while taking a stroll with the Rabbit. The viewing window in the front of the pouch means I don't need to dig it out each time I want to see my CGM screen - super thoughtful! Getting out into the world - and the fresh air and sunshine - for a little bit each day helps to curb the cabin fever 'round here.

What Do You Wish Health Care Professionals Knew?

Editor's note: This is a post that was written for me (which is nice, since I'm up to my ears in baby-tending) (speaking of which, she's starting to stir again, quick quick quick type faster) in relation to a research study being done on how HCPs might learn from online health communities like the DOC. If you think this sounds like something you're interested in, please feel free to spread the word and/or participate in the study. Thanks!

A researcher in a medical school in Quebec City, Canada (who is type 1 herself) is doing a study about how health care professionals might learn from online communities of people living with conditions like diabetes.

I have been collaborating with her on this study since November 2012. Other people in the DOC are involved. I encourage you to participate in the study and to spread the invitation to be a part of this.

This study is open to anyone who has personal experience with diabetes. You may have type 1, type 2, LADA, gestational diabetes, or another type. You might have diabetes yourself or you might be a family member or friend of someone with diabetes.

Tell us what you wish that health care professionals (doctors, nurses, dietitians, physiotherapists, counselors, you name it) understood better about diabetes.

If you want to participate, sometime in the next two weeks, put up a blog post or post a video, and then post a link to it here: https://ulavalfmed.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3D9FOiaWQgy4wUl Tell us what you wish health care professionals knew!

After the two weeks are over, we will ask you to vote to help us prioritize which ones we should show to health care professionals first.

If you have questions about the study, contact Dr. Holly Witteman, PhD, the lead researcher on the study, or Dr. Selma Chipenda-Dansokho, PhD, the research professional running the study.

Rabbit's Arrival: Part Two.

(Part One can be found by clicking here.)

It's a little surreal to be wheeled into an operating room for the first time. What I remember thinking as the nurses glided me and my wheely bed down the hall: "I'm about to have surgery. She's about to be born. I hope she's okay. Do I still have legs?"

The doors flew open, and Justin Timberlake greeted me in song.

"Are you kidding me? I really get to listen to JT during this? BEST OPERATION EVER."

The nurses laughed. "We're happy to leave the radio on for you, or turn it off - whatever you prefer." "No, no, this is great - it will help relax me a bit." I hadn't realized until that moment that I couldn't stop myself from shaking. I couldn't tell if it was the drugs, the nerves, or all of it.

My bed and I were glided to the middle of the room. One, two, three, LIFT! All of a sudden I was on the operating table/bed in the middle of the brightly lit, all-white room. A blue cloth was draped from my shoulders up to a height that obviously I wouldn't be able to see over (I remember thinking, is this really necessary? It's not like I'm going to try and sit up to see what you're doing...), and an anesthesiologist/nice man in glasses greeted me.

"Hi Kim, do you know what we're here to do?" (I imagine this is a litmus test of some sort to see how "with it" I was; that or someone didn't get the day's agenda ahead of time.) The drugs were definitely doing their work on my body, but my mind was still lucid. "I'm having a c-section so we can get this baby born!"

The doctor grinned at me. "Good, good, good." He spoke with a kind voice and told me what we were doing, what I should expect, and who was in the room. He tested how high up in my body the anesthesia was working and electrodes were placed on my chest.  Aaron joined us, and took a seat by my head. I couldn't exactly tell at what point the procedure started, which I guess is a very good thing, but soon I could feel some light pressure on my stomach, moving from left to right. I felt more pressure. Bruno Mars took his turn at the microphone. A few minutes passed.

"There you are! It won't be long now!", my OB enthusiastically called out. Aaron and I looked at each other, or rather I tried to twist my head in a way that would allow me to make eye contact with him. He rubbed my hair through the surgical cap.

A few moments later: "She's here!"

I looked to Aaron, whose attention focused past the drape. "Go; go see her; take pictures", I told him. The room was a flurry - me being sewn up; the baby being attended to.

All I wanted then was to hear the sound of her being "okay"; the sound that would let me know her lungs were more than just intermediate. I needed to hear her cry. Ten seconds, twenty, thirty... I'm not sure I breathed while waiting to know if she could.

It was only a few more moments (though they seemed so much longer), and then I heard her. It was the most beautiful whimper I've ever heard, and the crescendoing sound seemed to be directly connected to my tear ducts. I teared up immediately, thankful to have gotten to that place in time where I knew that she and I had made it.

She was here, and she was okay.

* * * * *

A few other here-and-theres:

The anesthesia had me feeling quite fuzzy by the time Rabbit arrived, so much so that I had to struggle to keep my eyes open while they cleaned her off and got her stabilized, and I also threw up in the recovery room. Like you do.

Rabbit experienced some low blood sugars in her first 24 hours in the world - immediately after birth being one of those times. Soon after I had ralphed, they alerted Aaron and I to this and asked if we'd prefer to feed her a bottle of formula or to have her hooked up to an IV; we opted for the bottle route. (I'm still surprised they let me hold her right after getting sick, but I really did feel much better afterwards. Maybe that's normal "I Just Had Surgery" stuff.) By the next day she was pancreasin' just fine.

As for me, I'm still amazed at how well things went diabetically during my hospital stay:

How I thought to take a picture of my CGM graph right in the middle of labor is beyond me.

My Dexcom graph, the day after Rabbit's arrival.

Not being able to eat anything once we started the medications Monday night helped my Dexcom graph stay steady, as well as the insulin IV drip we had me hooked up to. It also became apparent to me that nursing has a huge impact on blood sugars, as I didn't have to bolus for food the entire time I was in the hospital. (What?!) I've been adjusting my basal rates now that we're home so things are a little more back to what I'm used to, but man, was that nice.

I had planned ahead for the "just in case" option, knowing from Kerri's posts about her daughter's birth story that a Dexcom sensor on my lower body would likely be removed in the case of a c-section. When I checked into the hospital, I had both my Dexcom sensor and my insulin pump site in my left arm. It worked beautifully.

And as for Billy, he seems to have found his calling as a baby alert dog:

He goes where she goes, comes running when she cries, and sometimes whimpers when her diaper need changing. They share tummy time, and though we are careful to keep him at a bit of a distance (he is a dog, after all), he would love to snuggle up to her if we'd only let him:

In short: things are pretty great around here.

Rabbit's Arrival: Part One.

Every time I have sat down to write a post about the baby bunny's birth story ("I should really get this written down before I start forgetting stuff"), I get distracted by the thought: "....oooor, I could just cuddle with my daughter some more", and guess which option usually wins?

My daughter. Wow.

She arrived two weeks ago (about halfway through week 37 of pregnancy) at 9 lbs. 2 oz., 20 inches long, with a full mop of hair and the most kissable cheeks I've ever seen. There were many surprises for me throughout the delivery process, but I like to think that she and I handled it pretty well. After all, she's sleeping in her bassinet right next to me as I type this (and I'm listening to my favorite sounds in the world, which are the contented sighs/hums she often makes while sleeping or eating), and getting her here safely and in good health was the only thing that really mattered. Mission accomplished.

Or "touchdown", if you're so inclined.

Be warned that there will be a great deal of TMI in these posts, so read at your own risk. I don't feel the need to censor much of the story, as it involves me personally - childbirth really does erase a lot of one's modesty.

Aaron and I visited my doctor's office one last time before delivery in order to have an amniocentesis performed; a procedure recommended by the high-risk OB to determine how developed her lung function was. I laid on the familiar ultrasound bed and with the wand we searched around for a "good pocket" to poke into. Upon finding one, that part of my stomach was injected with a numbing agent and then was stuck with a giant needle that I tried really hard to not look at too closely - all the while watching the little bunny baby on the ultrasound monitor. She did a very good job of staying put during the procedure (too much movement could have resulted in her getting jabbed by the needle, thereby necessitating an immediate delivery - and yes, we had our bags packed and in the car before this appointment, just in case), and we got the amount of amniotic fluid needed to get the testing done. 

We were relocated to a monitoring room where I sat in a surprisingly comfortable medical-grade recliner while hooked up to a machine that took note of my contractions and her heartbeat, in addition to recording the baby kicks I was tracking with a button press (indicated on the chart by a musical note) for each movement. We were there for about an hour to make sure that the Rabbit was going to be okay post-procedure, and when we were all confident that she would be, Aaron and I headed home for our last few hours as Free People Who Do Not Have Kids. 

The test results took a few hours to come back, and they showed that her lung development was in the "intermediate" zone. My doctor and I talked through the options, and mutually decided that keeping our plan to begin induction that night made the most sense for our particular circumstances.

And so, at 7:00 pm that Monday night, we checked into the hospital. The only other time I'd been admitted to the hospital was for my diabetes diagnosis 27 years ago, so that was a little weird.

We were shown to our room, and after changing into some glamorous (no) hospital gowns, the labor-inducing circus got underway. Blood was drawn, and two IV lines were put in place for later - one in my left forearm, and one on top of my right hand. The left would be in charge of labor-related medications, while the right would be reserved for my insulin drip once labor began. (I was given the option of keeping my insulin pump on and being in charge of my own diabetes management during labor, and I'm very glad I went the route of the IV insulin drip. Not only did I not have to think or do much about diabetes for several hours, but it also worked beautifully. Proof coming in a future post.)

The medication I was given that night and into the morning was to help get my cervix in a baby-expelling state of mind, and other than the very uncomfortable manner in which it was delivered every few hours, that part of the process was pretty uneventful.

That is, until 6:15 am the next morning, when surprise! My water broke. (We hadn't begun the actual labor meds yet, so this was taken as a good sign that my body was ready to do this.) You know how in movies it's this huge gush of water, and then everyone tells you that in real life, it's not like that at all?

It was exactly like that. Perhaps the most embarrassing part was that I couldn't tell if I was peeing or bleeding or what the hell was going on, so my reaction was something like, "Oh. OH. Aaron! Something is happening! Something is definitely happening...", while I simultaneously pounded the "someone please come help me right effing now" button on the side of my bed.

Stuff began to get real pretty quickly. A catheter was inserted (yay, no more wheeling IV bags with me to the toilet!), and doses of pitocin began coming my way via IV. Labor contractions began as small, intermittent discomforts, eventually snowballing into horrific pain on a 90-second continuous loop. I remember thinking, wow, people are not exaggerating one bit when they talk about how painful labor is. I would have gladly signed over my house for even a small dose of something to quell the pain.

Somewhere around 11:00 am, the anesthesiologist/angel appeared and after a few minutes, we had an epidural set up in my back. I can tell you that I have never felt such grateful relief in all my life. Holy hell, what a difference. The epidural allowed me to tolerate (read: mostly not feel) the increasingly intense contractions, and for the next few hours I was even able to take some short naps (!). Everything was progressing as my medical team hoped it would.

It was, that is, until around 3:00 pm. Progress in terms of dilation began to stall, and baby Rabbit wasn't giving any indications that she was ready to budge (meaning, she hadn't "dropped" any lower). In addition, the fetal monitors were indicating that with each growing contraction, her heart rate was dropping.

That's not good.

And so, at 3:17 pm, my OB came into our room to tell us what the new plan was. "She was tolerating labor just fine up until now, but we don't want to take any chances so we'll be doing a c-section. Aaron, here are some scrubs for you to put over your clothes. Kim, we're going to wheel you into the operating room now and Aaron will join you in about ten minutes."

Aaron started sending the "get here now!" texts to family, and I was given the numb-the-bottom-half-of-your-body drugs, while my hair was shoved into one of those meshy shower caps. I began to feel tingles, then the strange feeling of dead weight throughout my legs, hips, stomach, and eventually even out to my arms and hands. I also began to accept that, once again, I really had no control in how this all would play out.

My doctor looked from me to Aaron, then back again. She smiled.

"You're going to have a baby within the hour."

And all I could think was:

(To continue to Part Two, click here.)

Wordless Wednesday: Ta Da!

Week Thirty Seven.

After some testing this afternoon, the plan is confirmed: we're checking into the hospital tonight. The little Rabbit should be joining us tomorrow sometime! I can't guarantee when I'll get a post up here again, so keep an eye on the Twitters if you're looking for the first "she's here!" announcement.

Let's do this!!!!

Week Thirty Six: The Upsides.

Last week's post was sort of a bummer so this is my attempt at cosmically realigning my pregnancy mojo, or something of that nature.

Good Things:

• I made it through 36 weeks of pregnancy before the inability to get a wedding ring on struck
• Not being able to easily reach my feet has meant more pedicures, and I am very okay with this
• Every so often I catch Aaron holding back a laugh (typically during a time where my belly is in my way to some degree), and when I ask, "Are you laughing at me?", and he responds, "Yes, but it's because you're cute", it then makes me smile so everyone wins
• The hospital we'll be at has some delivery rooms with jacuzzis in them, which when it comes down to it I may not even use or care about, but for now it helps me think of this "getting baby out" process as a wonderful spa-like vacation
• I can really fool myself into believing things like "infant care is a vacation"
• They have a margarita machine at the hospital right
• Okay back to topic
• I have a straight A student in there - six BPP tests, all passed with flying colors
• Speaking of colors, there's some debate over what color her enormous mop of hair will be - I vote brown (the ultrasound tech did a measurement on her hair last week [does insurance cover that?] and claims it is over an inch long)
• People smile at very pregnant ladies more than I expected
• While I may have momentarily given up on proper nutrition last week (three Oatmeal Creme Pies in one day - go ahead and judge because I don't care because pregnancy - and the second and third ones tasted like delicious, delicious guilt anyway), I'm pretty sure all the previous weeks of almonds, blueberries, and soy milk negates most of the grossness
• The Oatmeal Creme Pies are no longer in our house, so I'm once again safe
• It sounds as though ours and the royal baby will be sharing a birth month, so obvsly they will be BFF penpals
• ONE WEEK LEFT!

Pure evil, in every possible way

The Plan (Week Thirty Five).

I'm beginning to believe there must have been some under-the-radar meeting involving secret handshakes and passwords wherein every pregnancy symptom that I've experienced thusfar has decided to band together for one last "let's make this really miserable" hurrah. Instead of confetti, there are sporatic stabs of back pain. Instead of an inflatable bouncy house, I have inflated feet and ankles. Instead of cake, there's my inability to avoid low blood sugars every mid-afternoon, and sometimes after dinner, and often in the middle of the night (essentially overdosing myself for meals as that's all I can seem to do to negate food spikes, with the expectation of a low later on that can be avoided - assuming I remember to expect it - with a snack). (See also: not medical advice in any way please don't do this I am not a doctor.)

Wait, so maybe there can be cake.

Last week had me seeing both the high-risk OB (also known as a maternal-fetal medicine specialist) and my regular OB. This was our last visit with the high-risk dude, and we once again got to see our little Rabbit on a 4D ultrasound scan. The good news is that she seems raring to go - all major organs look good, she's "breathing" like a boss, and the amniotic fluid levels look great. The BPP scan we did at my regular OB's office also produced another perfect score; 8 out of 8.

This is all very good news. But unfortunately, not all of the news was ideal.

Remember how I mentioned that while her size was creeping up, no one was freaking out about it yet? She now is being estimated above the 90th percentile in weight, and both my hope and my bladder are feeling a little crushed. And "crushed' compounds when I realize that I shouldn't feel badly about feeling badly, but yet I do. (What?) Let me explain.

If I'm being completely honest with myself, my disappointment stems from now being an example of the incorrect assumption that "oh, you have diabetes, so of course your baby was big". I have worked so, so hard to keep this body a healthy environment for her (on top of all the normal pregnancy requirements); poked my fingers more than I ever have in my life; lost sleep so that I could check BGs during the night and eat a little something to keep the morning fasting ketones at bay; injected and waited, waited, waited until it seemed safe to consume some carbohydrates; participated in the frequent monitoring, doctor visits, blood draws and urine collections recommended; kept my A1Cs in "baby range" as soon as I was able to do so.

I've done everything I'm able to do to keep her healthy. So why do I still feel defeated? (And if she comes out otherwise-healthy, who cares?)

It's possible that, even if I didn't have type 1 diabetes (or even if somehow I could have been hooked up to an artificial pancreas that could keep my BGs in those impossible ranges at all times), I still would have grown a baby her size. It's possible that she was going to be larger no matter what I did. But we'll never know, and I fear that the biggest thing that will stand out to some about this journey is that, judging by her size, I must have been "uncontrolled". That I didn't work hard enough. That it's my fault. Once again I have to release myself to the conclusion that I ultimately can't control what happens here - I can try hard, and I can enlist the most competent medical team, and I can count every freaking carb and unit of insulin until it all starts blurring together, but at this point the whole thing's on a version of auto-pilot where what I do doesn't directly affect the outcome. And while delivering at 37 vs. 39 weeks would relieve me of the misery party I mentioned earlier, it wasn't what I was genuinely hoping would happen.

And then I feel bad about feeling this way, because I sincerely hope that it doesn't come off as thinking that delivering early, for anyone, is a failure. I know that it's not. Everyone's situation is different, and 37 weeks is considered "full term" anyway. I only assign this feeling to my own personal situation, because that's the only situation I know all of the details and inside information into. My own journey with pregnancy is the only one I can judge, because it's the only one I truly know.

Though I know this is the plan that is probably best for her, I can't shake the feeling that I didn't do the best for her along this journey somewhere, somehow. (But again, what could I have done differently?) I know that so many others with T1D have delivered very healthy babies during week 37, and I hope that our story is no different, no matter how I may feel about it in this moment. (And if you're one of those who did deliver early and shared your story with me, thank you- it is helping me in ways I can't now articulate to accept what's coming.) Much in the same way that removing most of my pre-pregnancy clothing from my closet helped me feel better about how I was growing, I've packed up the newborn-sized clothing the little Rabbit will probably never get to wear as a way to help me accept what will be. I keep telling myself that if she is healthy when she's born, it shouldn't matter how (or when) we get there. I keep telling myself that, but I can't say I believe it with my whole heart just yet.

I hope that can change in the next two weeks.

Due to her estimated chunkiness, we won't be giving her the 39 weeks I had hoped for. We're scheduled for an amniocentesis in a couple of weeks (which is during week 37 of pregnancy for me), where I'll hang around my OB's office for monitoring a couple of hours after the test as we wait for results. If the test results indicate that her lungs are fully developed, we'll be checking into the hospital that night to start induction.

Until then, I'm working on packing the rest of our hospital bags, while unpacking the disappointment and guilt I'm feeling.

It's the kind of baggage that's best left on the curb.

The Nerve.

I like to think I have a pretty high threshold for pain.

When I was in high school I belonged to a Tae Kwon Do studio, working my way up to black belt over the course of about a year and a half. I had never had a big interest in martial arts before, but their huge sign in the window of the studio that offered "SELF DEFENSE CLASSES" reeled me in - and the more I learned, the more I loved it. My decade of dance classes combined with cheerleading experience proved a formidable foundation of strength and flexibility that allowed me to excel at this new (to me) sport. It felt totally empowering, and I miss practicing it.

But onto the pain stuff.

I can recall one class where a younger instructor was teaching us a sort of submission move that involved grabbing the fist of your attacker and bending their thumb (utilizing a pressure point, I'm sure) inward in a way that was supposed to prove them incapacitated. I volunteered to be the proverbial "attacker" in this situation; the instructor taking my hand and showing, step by step, how to position his. He then looked to me, a slight grin on his face, and said, "This only hurt little bit. Okay?" Um, sure. Okay. His chubby fingers began to exert pressure on my thumb. I didn't even flinch.

He pressed harder, and harder again. Still nothing. (I vaguely remember smiling at him at this point.)

The look on his face was priceless - this was supposed to cause me to double over in pain, yet there I stood smiling at him. Did he realize all of the injections, finger sticks, and blood draws I'd had up until that point? This was nothing!

The point of this recollection is that I've, up to now, been under an assumption that I can tolerate quite a bit of pain with some amount of grace.

I've known that late pregnancy sometimes causes back pain; it's one of the multitude of symptoms that gets rattled off when you're learning "what to expect". What I hadn't anticipated was that it would be the sort of debilitating back pain that leaves you involuntarily whimpering every time it shoots down your back. Maybe I thought it was going to be some mild soreness that hangs around, or at least the kind that while uncomfortable, could be manageable.

I certainly didn't expect it to strike during my drive home from work on Friday, leaving me wondering if the facial expressions I was making would cause my fellow drivers to believe I had gone into labor, and more importantly wondering if I could make it home without veering off into a ditch somewhere.

But I did somehow make it home, and as I limped into our house strung together in one, high-pitched sentence "MYBACKISKILLINGMECANYOUPLEASEGETTHESTUFFOUTOFMYCARINEEDTOLAYDOWN" to Aaron. A call to my doctor confirmed: it's sciatic nerve pain, and it's the most painful thing I can remember feeling ever in my life. I spent Friday night and most of the day Saturday trying all of the things you can try to relieve the pain: lying on your opposite side, Tylenol (which, to my delight, didn't seem to interfere with my Dexcom G4 results in the way it would have with the 7+), Icy Hot patches, a maternity belt, and good old-fashioned cursing. Some of it helps, some of it doesn't. This morning I can feel the pain creeping back into my lower left side, and I'm willing the Tylenol I swallowed at breakfast to ward off the worst of it.

I think this is why Mother Nature designed human pregnancy to be so long - if all of these symptoms came on at once instead of the gradual manner in which I've experienced them, I'd be losing my damn mind.

Week Thirty Three.

I feel as though I've regressed to the state of a four-year-old on a road trip: "Are we there yet?"

(If you were looking for a "I love being pregnant!" post, keep your seatbelt fastened. This isn't your stop.)

One early morning, I noticed that my rings weren't quite sliding on like they used to, and I bristled. Glaring sternly at my ring finger, I used my mental telepathy to express that "no, there's been a mistake, surely. I haven't had any salt yet today. (I wasn't sleep-eating potato chips, right?)". I had hoped I could reason with myself, but shockingly, it didn't work. I'm just swelling up in all extremities now, at any given time apparently.

Things that used to be easy before, like oh, I don't know, walking or going up one flight of stairs or not running into things stomach-first have become significant challenges as of late. Did you know being super pregnant also makes you burp all the time? Yeah, me either. Awesome. Super.

I'm on my third iteration of Palmer's Slather This All Over Your Belly False Hope Cream®, but my stripes are still pretty bright. I'm told that stretchmarks fade after the baby's out... right? I hope that's true, otherwise my kid is going to grow up believing I'm half-tiger and I don't want to explain in a few years to some nice stranger at a grocery store why my adorable daughter is roaring at me.

Baby Girl is still moving around frequently, but not as much in the same enthusiastic, Thumper-esque ways of her youth. I'd imagine she's feeling pretty cramped in there by now, so her dance moves are now less Cupid Shuffle and more Mom Dancing. She'll sometimes stretch a foot out, leaving the angle of my stomach so off-kilter that I press back on her because tummies aren't supposed to look like this so stop it. You can do your stretches next month, after you move.

As for the medically-related whatnot, we're still doing well. My blood pressure actually measured lower than it has been last week, which is great, and the little rabbit has now passed three of the BPP tests with perfect scores. As for measurements/weight estimations, I'm starting to wonder if I really am growing a large Muppet in there, because the percentile her weight falls in has steadily crept up. Is she just having a long growth spurt? Is it because her dad was a large baby, too, or because I'm tall? Is it because of the spikes in blood sugar I wasn't able to tame? Maybe all of the above. She still has a few weeks to bake, so no one is freaking out yet in relation to her size, but it's enough to make me wonder if 39 weeks is still a realistic goal.

The diabetes part of the equation has been... well, it's actually given me a break for a couple weeks. I don't mean that it's gotten easier, or that I'm not taking the hugest amounts of insulin I've ever heard of, or that those food boluses don't happen several minutes or sometimes a full hour before eating, but the results of those efforts have been more visible. My endo was actually really pleased last week with how I'd handled the previous several days, and made adjustments based on the speculative temporary basal rates I'd tried.

(Sidebar for the newly-pregnant or planning-to-be ladies out there, because at some point I wanted to be sure to pass on these gems: there are a couple of websites/newsletters that have been super helpful for me. If you haven't yet, check out Lucie's List - the site and weekly newsletter based on your due date - for some real talk on what to expect throughout the whole ordeal, what you're actually going to need gear-wise for baby, and reassurance that whatever weirdness you might encounter is probably a normal pregnancy thing. Also for good advice and information, but also for some of the funniest writing you'll encounter, do the same with Pregnant Chicken. Her weekly emails make my... week. Seriously, she's wonderful.)

Four to six weeks left, and while I'm not sure Aaron or I will ever feel "ready", we're feeling pretty close to that. Which will have to do!