Bjay's (Diabetic Mommy's)
Pregnancy and Birth Story

Part 1

We Decide to Have a Baby

Our Wedding August 23, 1999

In the summer of 2000, we decided to try for a baby. I was just turning 32 and we knew we couldn't put off having kids any longer. We always wanted kids, it just never seemed like the time was right - needed more money, more time, more wisdom, whatever. The biological clock was ticking and wasn't slowing down for us!

We were afraid of the challenge a child might bring and it caused a lot of indecision and debate on both parts. Around that time we watched Joe Versus the Volcano starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. It's a cute, weird, funky little movie. I think it's an acquired taste for sure. In the course of the movie, the main characters are faced with the prospect of jumping in a hot fiery volcano. They decide to do it. They'd just hold hands, have faith everything was going to be okay, and just jump in. They didn't know how. They just knew everything was going to be okay.

I loved it. So we decided to jump into the volcano together.

We had been to Las Vegas a little earlier and took our picture in a coin-operated machine. It claimed that it could take our images and combine them to tell us what our child might look like. Take a look at the results below. I thought it was pretty funny at the time. However, now that I'm seeing Bubba grow, there is an excellent chance he could look like this when he enters kindergarten. Except for the hair texture, I think it could pass for his brother. Who knew you could get this type of data for two bucks in Vegas?

At this point, I had type 2 diabetes for about 9 years. When I was first diagnosed (in 1991), I was about 23 and living on my own with limited resources. I was diagnosed at a low-income clinic where I did not have a regular doctor, just whomever was on call. They gave me some information sheets on diabetes, prescribed some medicine, and told me to lose weight and exercise. On my own, I contacted my nearest American Diabetes Association and got a Diabetes Exchanges diet book from them and a Diabetes A to Z book. The medicine helped and soon I was able to control my glucose with just diet and exercise for a few years.

In 1998, I went back to college at the University of Arizona and got a regular doctor through their student health plan. My glucose levels were not the greatest (some of my labs were as high as 9.6) and I was started on Glucophage.

This was the extent of my diabetes knowledge and experience. I knew it was a huge curse on my family. Everyone seemed to have it, my mom, dad, all my grandparents, some cousins, etc. Because I was around other diabetics so much I always thought I knew everything I should. However, none of us had been to see a diabetic educator, a nutritionist or any other specialist in the area of diabetes management. So, we really did not know very much, let alone how to take care of ourselves. In fact, I don't even know if I knew there was such a thing as a diabetic educator before I got pregnant.

So now I had been married to a wonderful man for two years and had the best two dogs in the world. I was attending college full-time, working towards a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology and was a little over halfway through the program. Chad had a great job at IBM as a programmer. Things were going great. We decided to ask my doctor about having a baby

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Index:

Part 1 - We Decide to Have a Baby
Part 2 - Meeting Dr. Wrong and Getting Pregnant
Part 3 - Finally Finding the Right Team Members
Part 4 - Going to the Hospital to Stabilize Glucose Levels
Part 5 - Let the Appointments Begin
Part 6 - Stomach Flu - Go Back 2 Spaces, Go Back to the Hospital
Part 7 - More Frequent Fetal Surveillance Begins
Part 8 - Go Back to the Hospital - To Have the Baby!
Part 9 - The Baby Comes!
Part 10 - Since the Birth

Diabetes and
Pregnancy:
What to
Expect
Recommended books

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