Friday, June 10, 2011

the start of (hopefully) my last non-bio-mom summer



summer can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and one key thing it means to me is BBQ (and beer). I love to bbq and eat bbq'd foods, particularly sausage (insert lesbian joke here). so of course memorial day comes around to signal the start of summer, and I have to go and eat 3 pieces of sausage in one day. probably didn't do me any favors in the cholesterol dept when I had my blood drawn at my prepregnancy consultation last week. but even with that said, my cholesterol wasn't high enough for concern. the director of the program at the center for diabetes in pregnancy gave me the green light to go ahead and contact the fertility specialist we used to get my wife pregnant with Sofia. so I was pretty thrilled. My A1C that they just did came back with a reading of 6.7. I'll take it. It's not where I want to be, but I've only had the Dexcom CGM for 2 months now, and if i can see that much of a decrease in such a short period of time, I should be able to see some more significant decline by Sept. I'm shooting for at least 6.5, and I would love to be at like 6.1 or 6.2. We'll see. I'm sure that besides being mostly vigilant in my diet, when it comes to the many bbqs ill be attending this summer, I'll be letting myself splurge here and there.

And then there's beer. I always have a hard time keeping myself in range when I drink beer. I also tend to drink more than the average diabetic, which makes it a very cat and mouse game. How am I sure that I drink more than the average diabetic? I just am. You can take my word for it. My diabetes has been a blessing in the alcohol department. It has helped me curb behavior that had the potential to ruin many things in my life. But when I'm drinking beer, I tend to spike pretty quickly and it becomes a very cat-and-mouse-like game. check my sugar, see that I'm high, do some insulin, have a few more beers, same thing, so that im always doing more insulin to bring my bg down, but then I have to be careful before bed so that I dont swing too low. its not a fun game to play, and im glad to say that i play it pretty rarely these days, which is a good change for me. it hasnt been easy, i considered myself a pretty big partier, but im glad that i drink a lot less than i used to.

alcohol consumption brings me right back to the baby making process. i mean i know alcohol does that to a lot of people, but its different for me lol. as ive mentioned i want to be really really secretive about when we start "trying", but one of the things im most worried about is people noticing that I'm not drinking at a social function or something. it would be highly unlikely for me to go to a function that has alcohol, and not consume any. im hoping that they'll all buy my "im just trying to get really good control of my diabetes" story, and i think most of them will. i consider myself a pretty good liar. not the best quality to have, but i lie really rarely. and i think in this case, the ends justifies the means.

so our first appointment with the fertility specialists is on my wife's birthday next month. i hope she's not feeling like im trying to steal her birthday thunder. i'll have to really get working on trying to plan something for her.

on a "daily ramblings" note, we got a bit of somewhat devastating news this week. our almost 6 year old pit mix Disa, had a small surgery to remove some growths a few weeks ago. We got the biopsy results on Wednesday, and one of the growths was a stage 2 mast cell tumor = cancer. the good things, its already out of her body, and it was only stage 2. i of course could see no good in this when i heard the news, and cried for most of the rest of the day, with the exception of the hours that i was at work seeing 5 clients in a row. they were kind and no one told me how shitty i looked. thank you lovely clients. so the next step with the pup is to get her back to the vet soon to get some xrays taken and have some ultrasounds done to see if there are any other tumors in her body that we cant see from the outside. i have lots of hope that she'll still live a long-ish and healthy-ish life, as she's not even fully healed from her big 5 inch incision yet and she's already taking Sofia's toys again and running around the house. she's a big goof ball, and our true "first baby" and we love her so dearly. im trying not to freak out any more until we have a better idea of what we're dealing with. ::sigh::
theres our first baby guarding our second. thats a bed full of love.

so thats about all thats going on for now. oh, one last thing. i went for a decent walk with Sofia and another friend and her little girl today, and my sugar has been fabulous. of course, just more evidence that i need to work more exercise into my daily life. im a little lazy, but i need to start making more decisions for my future and not just for my right now. im working on it, and on that note, im off to softball!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Oy. Nerves.

So tomorrow morning is my first Pre-Pregnancy consultation at the North Shore Diabetes in Pregnancy Center. I am nervous to the point that I'm barely tired at all, and I need to actually get up early tomorrow to get to my appointment scheduled for 10am. Getting out of the house with a dressed, clean-diapered, safely strapped into her car seat child is not an easy task for me when I have a distinct time to be somewhere. I have always said that I like to be punctual because I hate waiting, but honestly I'm usually 5-10 minutes behind schedule, and that usual, has become slightly longer since Sofia arrived. So tomorrow will be a challenge no matter what.

My anxiety is "slightly" multiplied by the fact that my wife is unable to take the day off to accompany me to the appointment. Its really ok because in the long run, I'm going to need her to take any number of days off depending on how long it takes us to get pregnant this time around. I much rather have her miss my first consultation than one of my inseminations. Its just hard because we were literally together through every step of the process while we were planning baby #1, and I mean every step. I was at every single appointment. It helped that I was unemployed for the last half of her pregnancy which made me uber available, so I am just trying to adjust to the fact that I will most likely be attending a significant percentage of my appointments alone. Not that I'll really be alone, Sofia will be with me, and really I know that I have at least one close friend who would take a day off to accompany me if I needed someone's support. I think I've mentioned how I am excluding 98% of my family and friends from this process as I don't want everyone to know that we're trying, just in case we're not successful with the first few attempts. We plan to try 3 times, this september, october, and november, as we would like to time the baby's birth for the summer so that my wife will be off from work and can have tons of time to bond with the baby one s/he is born. Yea, we are really big planners.

Also, I've not yet printed out all of my blood sugar logs for the last month. And, my friggin eye doctor who I called Friday, was unable to complete the simple task of providing me with a general ophthalmology report by today. I was told on Friday that they would call me when the report was ready. Needless to say I hadn't heard back from them, and when I finally remembered this afternoon at work, it was too late for me to have any time to pick up the report prior to tomorrow's early appointment. Not my fault, trying to let it go. I can just get the record to the doctor next week when I go back to meet the director of the program.

I'm pretty anxious right now I'm not going to lie. My biggest fears about tomorrow include them telling me:
1- my A1C is too high and they won't work with me(at this time)/make a referral to the IVF doctor I plan on using
2- that they are going to set these crazy goals for me that I'll despise them for wanting me to stick to
3- any other possible bad news/reviews of my health.

I am well aware of the steps I'll need to take and I'm sure I'll be as crazy and strict as I need to be. I'm kind of not looking forward to having people look over my shoulder and judge me.

Well I feel a little better having gotten that all out. I'm going to try to fall asleep. I need to be up earlier than I prefer. Wishing myself good luck!