Friday, May 22, 2009

An actual post about Diabetes--

All my posts since having James have been more about just having a baby, especially a baby with some health issues. Most of that is no different if you have diabetes or not, but I had no idea how hard it is to take care of my diabetes while dealing with all the issues of James. Now, just having a fairly textbook child makes you tired and you find yourself eating Saltine crackers for breakfast and lunch if you eat at all. But waking up 3 times a night (at least) for the past 11 months and spending every waking moment planning the daily feeding schedule around 'happy times' and medicines that require all sorts of timing and dealing with the crying surrounding administering oral meds and the horrible crying of having to try to convince James to eat when he doesn't want to, cleaning up vomit when he gags on medicine or peas, sigh, and the past 1/2 hour's work comes flying back at me and I have to try to do it all over again. Now, I know lots of people's kids gag and vomit on medicine or foods they don't like, and they have times they don't want to eat, but the stress of each bite and ounce being so critical with this child is very wearing and, at times, disheartening. So---bad enough for a regular person, but on top of all this (and believe me, I can't even explain what it's REALLY like), I actually really have to take care of myself. For any mom who has (and you all have!) forgotten breakfast and lunch or microwaves coffee 3 times and STILL forgets it in the microwave til the evening, it is remarkably hard to make sure I not only check my blood sugars, but can actually process in my mind what those numbers mean and what to do with them. And when my doctor wants me to take a 3am blood sugar...well, I'd honestly rather poke myself in the eye than get up at 3am when I just went back to bed at 1am and will be up again at 5. Pregnancy made me so much healthier as a diabetic, and probably saved my life, but raising this kid may just be the death of me! ;)