Guilt for two.
It’s 4am, and I can’t sleep. No, it’s not the expanding belly I’m sporting or the crazy workday I have tomorrow that’s keeping me awake. It’s the fact that my blood sugar is still over 200mg/dL despite the fact that I’ve been bolusing every two hours since I went to bed at 10pm the night before. A complicated meal of Thai food was the source of the elevated numbers. Any night with highs is bound to create a poor nights sleep, but this one was worse. It’s worse because all I can think when my blood sugar is high these days is: I’m hurting my baby.
If that sentence reads like a gut a punch, then you’ve got an idea of what the actual feeling is when it’s happening. Pregnancy with diabetes isn’t just complicated because of all the added doctor’s appointments and instructions. It’s complicated because of the added emotions on top of what can only be described as the emotional Mt. Everest that is wrapping you brain around baby/parenting/OMG my future.
My A1c is stupid good right now - normal person numbers. I am exercising regularly. I have cut my coffee, added my vitamins, and never once been late to one of the 14,000 doctor’s appointments I’ve already had. But when my BGs climb, it literally feels like alarm bells going off in my head with a drill sergeant in the background yelling “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO - FIX IT! NOW!”
Yes, yes, I am only human. Yes, I am trying to manually control a totally unpredictable beast. But when it’s not just you on the receiving end of your decisions, the guilt burden turns colossal. At 4am, all I could think was what the hell was I doing eating Thai food? I know curry sauces have tons of sugar and fat in them! That was the worst idea! Chicken and salad for dinner for the rest of this pregnancy. Don’t mess up again! You KNOW better.” The issue is that anytime I don’t end up with the numbers I hoped for, the hindsight reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure book that I totally effed up. I could have ordered the veggie dish, not the curry. I could have eaten less. I could have bolused further in advance or used a better temp basal or extended the bolus. But I didn’t, and now I feel like I’ve done my child wrong.
I don’t have a fix for managing this guilt. I am buoyed by the fact that my overall A1c is great, and that my baby is developing normal and healthy. I have a husband who tells me all the time that he is proud of me, that I am doing a great job and that everything is ok. But there is the noise in my own head that I could always be doing more - making better choices or trying harder. I can’t sugar-coat (every pun intended) this issue and I cannot tie up this blog post with a pretty platitude about being grateful for the experience or learning to do better with this issue. It’s just hard and I can’t talk myself down from those feelings. I seek solace in the opportunity the next time to do better but it’s tough to focus on that at 4am lying awake with the click…click of my pump in the background delivering another bolus.
Motherhood will be full of all sorts of feelings I’ve never dealt with before, I know this is just one of them. Some of those feelings will be the best a person can experience. Some of them will just suck. This is one of them.
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Comments
I had nights exactly like this during my pregnancy. I would stay up, testing and blousing every freaking hour trying to bring my blood sugar down, consumed with anger that I was awake babysitting my bloodsugar and second guessing whatever I had eaten at dinner. Those were really intense nights.
You are not alone. I felt the exact same was the whole time I was pregnant. I think it’s pretty normal for us with the betes to blame ourselves whenever the numbers aren’t what we want. I had a rough go with the whole pregnancy thing, my numbers weren’t perfect for sure, but I did the very best I could and nine months later I had a perfect, beautiful baby girl and she is the joy of my life! 18 years and she is still healthy and amazing!
It will all be ok, you are on the right track and doing great!