Well, I hit the six month mark this week, which puts me into the third trimester. Hurrah, the home straight! Stuff I probably haven’t told you since the last specific update:

• It’s a boy. Yeaaaah, break out the Transformers duvet sets and Thomas the Tank Engine t-shirts!
• He’s moving around a heck of a lot now and seems to have a fairly strong kicking and punching ability (a future kickboxer perhaps?)
• I’ve put on a number of kgs so far. I don’t want to accelerate the weight gain any more… no high blood pressure yet though which is good.
• At the last scan (20 weeks), he was normal size for his period of gestation, which is something every diabetic mother wants to hear (all this talk of monstrously sized babies gets tiring and a bit worrying)
• I found out the other day that babies of diabetic mums can be a bit less developed at birth than their peers. Not in terms of actual growth/limbs/organs etc (necessarily), but they can act like a baby which had 1-2 weeks less gestation. For example if you carry them right up to 38 weeks (the longest they will let you go), the baby can often display signs of maturity similar to one born at 36 or 37 weeks. This can mean they are slower to catch on to breastfeeding (joy!) and sleepier (actually that could be a good thing, right?)
• I also learnt that the reason they ensure you go no longer than 38 weeks is because it’s riskier in terms of complications for the baby. I thought it was just because of size, previously.
• All of the literature you can get your hands on and advice you get tells you that your insulin resistance will get higher and higher as the pregnancy goes on, and you will end up needing more and more insulin – sometimes by the end of the pregnancy you’ll need double what you were taking pre-pregnancy. I didn’t experience this hike until about 22 weeks, and it’s been steadily increasing ever since. For almost half of the day now I’m on 1 unit of insulin for every 5 grams of carbs – which means huge boluses! It also means I’m having to change the cartridge in my pump a lot more regularly. I’m having to be very vigilant with my testing so my midwife and I can keep up with the accelerated requirements.
• Changing basal rates and carb to insulin ratios frequently means more hypos. We are trying to keep up with the changes so I don’t have too many highs, but inevitably, tinkering with these ratios means there are going to be times I overdo it, and go low. Which doesn’t help in terms of keeping weight gain down.

Other than that, it’s the usual workload required of a pregnant diabetic: 10-15 tests a day, carb counting, adjustments for exercise and stress, yadda, yadda, yadda.

And – the usual stuff any woman goes through when pregnant – tiredness, reflux, lumbering around, lack of sleep, sometimes vague and grumpy, hungry etc etc!

Finally, there is the excitement (and expense) of preparing for the birth of your little one – name selection, nursery set-up, researching and buying all the paraphernalia to welcome him home, and saving to try to cope with just one income! 12 weeks to go – can’t wait to meet the little guy!

One last thing – I was speaking with a woman in the States via email this week and she is writing a book about diabetes and pregnancy – it sounds like a good one. To pre-order a copy, go here.

NOTE – if you want to see a list of all of the posts I did about my T1 pregnancy, go here.