WEEK 12 - PREGNANT AND SICK....UGH!

Week 12 was an eventful week. Unfortunately not in a positive way.

On Monday night I came down with a terrible stomach flu. By Tuesday morning I realized I needed to go to the hospital to keep from getting dangerously dehydrated or running into a risky situation of diabetic ketoacidosis. My bloodsugar wasn’t horribly high, but I was running some pretty bad ketones already (which I’m prone to do when ill). Thankfully 7am is a good time to show up in the Victoria Hospital ER because we didn't have to wait in the waiting room at all!

Long story short - they rehydrated me, gave me an IV antinauseant, and enough of a sugar drip that I could take a bit of insulin. The doctor ran a bunch of tests and came to the conclusion that it was most likely just a virus. He said that the baby would be fine and that, since I came in to get rehydrated, there was no danger to Bud. Whew!! (Note: Never let yourself get dehydrated while pregnant! It’s a very unhealthy situation for both mother and baby!)

Certain unpleasant aspects of the flu lasted for another day and a half or so (I won't elaborate...), but I was able to keep moderately hydrated even though I was in a lot of discomfort. I was also able to keep my bloodsugar at a reasonable level (not “good”, but “reasonable”), and to keep the ketones mostly at bay. During this time I was SO thankful for my insulin pump (I’m on the Minimed Paradigm 522). It made managing my diabetes during illness SO much easier! I don’t know how I did it in the past on Levemir…nevermind Ultralente or NPH! In fact (as a little aside here) the pump and the CGMS have been GREAT during pregnancy. The pump made it so much easier to deal with the nausea in the first trimester, as well as the “I-want-to-eat-now” cravings throughout the pregnancy! The CGMS has been great for helping me keep a close eye on my levels without doing tons of fingersticks every day, and lets me feel much safer overnight as it warns me if I drop too low or shoot too high. Yay pump and CGMS! (Now if only my insurance would cover the sensors…but that’s another story.)

Almost exactly 48 hours after it started, the worst was over, but I still had some lasting effects - most notably, my digestion seemed to be extremely slow for about a week after the flu, which caused some problems with my bloodsugars. Since I wasn’t absorbing sugars/carbohydrates very quickly, my insulin needs were much lower and on a totally different timeline than usual (i.e. CRAZY different!). I had a very scary low bloodsugar on a couple of days after the flu as a result. After the flu, I weighed less than I did before I was pregnant, but I did have a definite "roundness" to my belly by that point, even though my stomach was virtually empty. :)

So I made it through one of the worst stomach flus of my life – while pregnant! Whew! Since then I have been a very diligent hand-washer! J It’s not something I want to go through again!