Type 1 Pregnancy: First Trimester
“Seeing those beautiful two pink lines. ”
Pure bliss and excitement.
The best feeling in the entire world. Butterflies were rushing through my stomach. While so many thoughts were also rushing through my mind, asking myself— Is this even possible? Am I actually pregnant? Will it really stick this time? How should I tell Zach? When should I call the doctor? I can’t wait to tell family! All these crazy and happy thoughts going through my head in a matter of minutes. One thing I couldn’t get away from, was that big ol’ smile on my face.
After experiencing two miscarriages, pregnancy became a little bit of a scary thing for us. My miscarriages each happened early in pregnancy, both prior to 8 weeks. Despite being early on in pregnancy, each one brought us so much pain physically and emotionally. It was something we both feared so much to happen again. The very first miscarriage happened pre diagnosis of my type 1 diabetes, so my blood sugars were very high without me even knowing it! The second loss was just a month before this positive test. So of course I had some doubt and anxiety after seeing these two pink lines. Was is true? Could I actually be pregnant without getting a a real period after a miscarriage? It was definitely a shock, but I just tried to remain calm, positive and let the happiness and excitement take over. After some research I found out that getting pregnant immediately after a miscarriage is actually quite common. A woman is apparently extremely fertile within a couple weeks to a month of having a miscarriage. Who knew?! You can ovulate and become pregnant as soon as two weeks after a miscarriage. When you get pregnant immediately after a miscarriage, this is considered a “rainbow baby.” Read more about rainbow babies here! This was so crazy and awesome to us. We were nervous, yet ecstatic.
This was our rainbow baby.
**If you or someone has experienced a miscarriage and would like someone to talk to please reach out, I am here for you!
P.S. Life Hack
A side note about trying to get pregnant and tracking your ovulation.
We were trying to get pregnant for a couple months before this, so testing every month on top of tracking my ovulation was something I was doing each cycle.
Quick pro tip: If you are trying to get pregnant and are constantly testing, the digital and drug store bought pregnancy and ovulation tests can get very PRICEY. One thing I learned that I recommend is buying HCG and ovulation test stripes if want to save some moolah. They are just as reliable and SO much cheaper! They look like these little guys in the picture above. Find the HCG tests here and find the ovulation tests here.
Telling Z
What was the first thing I did when I found out? Tell the hubby of course! This time I decided to share the news with Zach in a quick and simple text with this photo above. His reaction was priceless. He was absolutely thrilled! It felt so nice to share the news with my favorite person. It was such an epic day.
First Trimester Symptoms
Fatigue + Exhaustion –
Around week 5-6, the exhaustion hit me like a train! I would wake up tired, like I hadn’t slept a minute even after getting a good 9+ hours of sleep. Thank goodness I wasn’t working over the summer, thank you summer break #teacherlife because NAPS WERE EVERYTHING.
Nausea –
Nausea hit me around week 6 until week 11. I would start to feel sick daily around 2-3 pm and it would last until going to bed. Some things that seemed to help me with this annoying symptom were laying down and drinking lots of water, snacking often throughout the day, ginger gum, Preggy Pops, frozen popsicles, and Morning Sickness Ginger and Peach Tea, and of course not cooking dinner and relaxing when I needed to (shoutout to my angel of a husband!)
Food aversions –
Due to the nausea, all foods sounded nasty to me. There wasn’t anything I was really “craving.” I just didn’t want to eat. I definitely stayed away from our weekly salmon dish (goodbye fish!), salads were the last thing I wanted, and I could never decide what I wanted to eat. This was the only time in my life where I didn’t want to eat everything. But most days I would force myself to eat something with protein and veggies for dinner. I am so thankful that this symptom stopped after the first trimester because, FOOD IS LIFE and I want it all. Luckily, it was usually in the afternoons only that this would take place. So during my days, life stayed pretty normal and productive.
Low Blood Sugar + Glucose –
When you have type 1 diabetes, your body’s immune system oh so nicely attacks your pancreas, which in time destroys the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas. The pancreas does the amazing job of creating insulin to regulate your blood sugars anytime you eat, exercise, stress out, etc. It’s a magical organ.
But with type 1 diabetes, you produce little to no insulin. What about when you’re pregnant? In the type 1 diabetic world, some lucky T1D ladies get a little help from their pancreas at the very beginning of their pregnancy. How? As your body is creating a little tiny human, your immune system and body reacts to this by almost ‘backing off’ to help protect and take care of this fetus. In turn, if ANY cells are remaining that can produce insulin- they get workin! SO COOL! Your pancreas can magically start producing little bits of insulin…without your permission, which leads me to unexpected LOW BLOOD SUGARS! Giving yourself your normal amounts of insulin, on top of the insulin that your body is now sneakily making can cause lots of those low blood sugars. I got down to blood sugars in the low forties, which is scary! Very low blood sugars can cause you to pass out, go into a coma, or even worse can cause death. Learning to deal with a slightly working pancreas isn’t too much work, you just need to adjust your insulin intake and check your glucose very often! Oh and a plus side is you can splurge a bit on the carbs you usually would try to avoid- big fan about that note.
I experienced these unexpected lows from about 5 weeks to about 13 weeks. Not every woman get’s these magical pancreas powers. Now a days, I am experiencing the opposite, called insulin resistance. Where your body needs more and more insulin daily to keep up with your body’s needs. It’s a roller coaster here in the pregnant type one club. Stay tuned for the next blog, all about my second trimester update— the insulin resistance, new symptoms, doctors appointments and more!
Constant Urination –
It’s so much fun having to pee all the time. This began right at 6 weeks for me. Blame it on the pregnancy hormone hCG, which increases the blood flow to your pelvic area. What else caused this? Well, the gallon+ of water I try to drink daily probably doesn’t help much either. Your growing uterus also bears some responsibility for your bathroom runs, since it puts pressure on your bladder, giving it less room to store urine. And it will and has continued until baby comes, FUN STUFF!
Strange Pregnancy Dreams
Something I learned very quickly from pregnancy is you can get some pretty crazy and vivid dreams! The changes in hormone levels bring on a feast of dreams in pregnant women. Another reason for the dreams? Dreams are believed to be the subconscious reflections of your emotions, and whether you’re experiencing excitement, anticipation, joy, or anxiety during pregnancy, rampant hormones, particularly progesterone, intensify each and every feeling you have. Not gonna lie, sex dreams have become a regular thing! Ha! I recommend keeping a journal by your bed and tracking these dreams. You can even look up some of your reoccurring dreams to see if they ‘mean’ something on certain websites. These vivid dreams are like going to bed and inside of your head is an amazing movie. This has definitely been one of my most interesting symptoms.
Keeping The BEST Kept Secret
We decided together to wait to tell anyone until our first ultrasound + appointment, which happened at 7 weeks for us. The LONGEST 7 weeks of our lives. Once we had this life changing appointment, where we got to see our little babes heartbeat fluttering away- we then decided it was time to tell just our family. This was the first time ever that we made it to an appointment and was able to see a heartbeat for any of my pregnancies. We waited to tell our friends closer to the end of the first trimester, and told the rest of the world (aka social media) once we began our second trimester.
The hardest part about keeping this secret was honestly hiding drinking alcohol in social events. If you know Zach and I, we like to party. I never pass up vino, i’ll always have a tasty beer and i’m always down for some fancy cocktails. So every time we would go to hang with friends or go to a family party, we would secretly get there early and make or ask for a mocktail or my classic club soda with lime…and boom, mama’s still “partying.” There were a few times where I would just say I wasn’t drinking or ‘couldn’t’ drink due to a diabetes appointment the next day (haha) and those skeptical eyes of our friends began to veer our way. But no one ever questioned! It was so nice to eventually tell people, so we could stop trying to hide all of this.
Although it felt like an eternity, the first trimester flew by, eventually telling all of our favorite humans the wonderful news. It was such a relief and felt so nice to openly talk about our little babe we were expecting.
Here are some pictures of some ways we told our friends and family.
What’s different with pregnancy when you have Type 1 Diabetes?
Being pregnant is one thing, trying to do your best with keeping a little human alive inside of you. Eating right, not eating the foods you can’t, getting your body moving and staying active, cutting out the good stuff like vino, being careful with everything you do— add in having extreme control with your blood sugars and that adds a lot more stress and pressure to your life. But that’s what it’s all about being preggo with type 1, VERY tight blood sugar control. Which also means more doctor’s appointments than the typical pregnancy. I’ll touch on doctors appointment deets later.
When regularly (not pregnant) your blood glucose range should be between 70-180. With pregnancy it’s much a tighter range. Pregnancy blood sugar ranges should be between 60-140, and an A1C below 7 if possible. Your fasting blood sugar (when you wake up in morning) should be between 60-90, and one hour after each meal, blood sugars less than 140. You should try to never go past 140, and if you do, you better work to get that number down quickly! Staying at high levels can put baby and you at risk. The further along with your pregnancy, high numbers can also create a cubby baby with lots of extra fat, causing you to have to medically induce and deliver early, usually via c-section. This is definitely something you want to avoid if you can! With a demanding little human inside of you, a boatload of crazy hormones, and LIFE itself— it can very tough keeping your glucose within these levels and ranges.
Lucky for me, I have some awesome tools that help me keep my numbers in control. My Freestyle Libre continuous glucose monitor allows me to check my blood sugar at any point without having to print my finger. My Omnipod insulin pump, a wireless pod pump that allows me to give myself insulin (which helps bring down my blood sugar) at the click of a button! No needles, no poking— it’s just lovely. I am very thankful to have these awesome tools, the medical devices available now a days is unreal and amazes me on the regular. All of these tools have helped me to bring my A1C down to 5.2 at the beginning of my pregnancy, and to 5.5 currently, which is lower that what is considered having diabetes (above 7). !!!
A few other things that help to keep my number in check are biking, walking, and pre blousing for meals (giving myself insulin at least 15-20 minutes before I eat depending on what I am eating). Biking is definitely the quickest and most effective way to bring down my number. This is a huge reason I bought a stationary bike for our house, for those late night highs!
Doctors Appointments
What’s the deal with doctors appointments? As a type one diabetic, you are considered high risk pregnancy. Which for doctors appointments means… you get a lot of them! Being someone that is dependent on insulin and dependent on keeping their blood sugar ranges at such a tight level means you have to check in with doctor often. These check in’s are to make sure that sugars are good and everything is going strong with baby. Regularly, this means appointments once a week from the start of your pregnancy and keeping a log of your blood sugars to make sure things are staying on track. I luckily have very tight control with my blood sugar numbers, and I know what foods work best for my body and how to get my number where I want it for the most part. So, my appointments got pushed to coming in every two weeks instead of weekly— which was nice.
Every time we came to the doctors, the very first thing we would do is check the heart tones of baby. This means seeing our cutie on a quick ultrasound. This immediately turned into my favorite part of my week. Something I still look forward to every appointment, seeing that adorable fluttering tiny heart and how much growth baby has made. Besides the heart tones and making sure mama is doing great, my midwives and doctors look through my blood sugars and see if they need to make any adjustments on how much insulin I am getting. Coming in for appointments every 1-2 weeks will continue throughout my entire pregnancy. But, I ain’t mad about it. 😉
We chose and decided together to do certain genetic testing that allowed us to find out all kinds of information about the baby early. One plus to this testing was finding the sex of the baby out around 13 weeks. All the testing came back great, and baby is healthy as can be. We left out hearing about the gender of the baby until our gender reveal. We planned a small gender reveal party with our families. With the help of my older sister, it was an awesome surprise and success! We are SO excited to be having a baby BOY!
Stay tuned for another blog all about this party we put together.
So there you have it, an update on how my first trimester went.
At times, it was a bit rough with the nausea and exhaustion, but I have to say I feel pretty lucky to only experience a little bit of undesirable symptoms. If you are trying to conceive or are already pregnant, I hope your pregnancy is easy and enjoyable. The best of luck to you! If it hasn’t happened for you yet, please don’t give up or lose hope— your time will come! Keep working hard, stay healthy and happy, write out positive affirmations, don’t stress too much about it, and enjoy your life as you much as you can.
I’ll leave you with some tips to help you survive your first trimester. You got this mama!!
Drink plenty of water. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!
Take it easy. TAKE NAPS without the guilt. Lay on the couch and chill. Let Netflix be your best friend. Let your loved one cook for you.
Workout Twerkout. Workout when you can, even if it’s just walking. I loved using my Beachbody prenatal workouts at home. I would always try to workout first thing in the morning before I got tired for the day. Home videos, biking, swimming, simple light lifting and walking was how I kept busy and moving throughout the first trimester. Make sure not to over do it! Any sort of workout is great for you and baby and will be sure to make you feel better after doing it. Get yo sweat on.
Take your prenatal with food! This should help with any nausea a bit, and it helps you remember to take it every day. I usually take mine in the morning with breakfast. I’ve heard some people take it before bed to help with nausea too. Here is my favorite easy-to-take prenatal that I will take on occasion. I take my prescribed prenatal mostly, because it’s cheaper. But I love these because they are made with 9 whole food ingredients and contain folate not folic acid, which is super important in the first trimester. Buy them here!
Journal and reflect! I bought this journal that I love, and it’s nice to take the time to reflect on how things are going. Especially before you forget the little things, hello pregnancy brain! Find the journal I use here.
Take bump pictures! This is something I tried remembering every week. It’s fun to see the progress, especially once you really start to grow and see your body changing. The bump pictures are also perfect for your journal scrapbook! A great app for stickers to use is Baby Story.
7. Treat yo self. Relax, go to bed early, have a dessert since you can’t have the damn wine, get a subscription for a mama box like BumpBox or Ecocentric Moms. Soak in these moments!
8. Pregnancy Apps. Use some pregnancy and baby apps that give you updates week by week, or day by day. Learn about what’s going on with you and your baby. Here are some of my favorite’s that I use. What to Expect, HiMommy! (daily updates), OviaPregnancy, and The Bump.
9. Take it one day at a time! Try to enjoy the pregnancy as much as you can, because it will fly by. Even though you may not feel very pregnant in the first trimester, know that you’ve got a beautiful little babe inside of you that’s lucky to have you! Love that little human as much as you can, and take care of YOU because of that.
