Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Marps on July 23, 2012 at 4:12pm

Yes, our cutoff was 40 for the newborns too. My daughter hit 36, so they gave her her first feeding while I watched because I was so drugged up that I couldn't move.

Permalink Reply by Lila on July 29, 2012 at 3:05pm

My daughter took 8 days to arrive. Three hospital stays, two false alarms (which included one epidural and one C-section that never materialized), some truly terrible hospital food, and she finally arrived with the help of nothing much more than gas, air and paracetamol. During the first false alarm (at 33 weeks), I was injected with steroids to help mature her lungs. The steroids send blood sugar into the stratosphere so the hospital insisted on putting me on a sliding scale, as the nurses said they knew better than me how to manage blood sugar. After watching my blood sugar rise to 18.8 mm/ol (340), I was determined that I was going to handle my own BG during labour. Also, having the sliding scale is not a nice feeling at all as you are tethered to this big scary thing.

The hospital was not very happy about me managing my own BG but I stood my ground. Only thing they made me do in return was to provide a BG reading every hour on the hour, which was perfectly reasonable. My waters broke at 6pm and my BG was perfect (between 5 and 7) until the last two hours of labour when me and the midwives were too busy to check blood sugar.

If I remember correctly, the first thing I did after the baby arrived was to test my BG, while the baby was being cleaned up. I guess the fun and games of the last stage of labour was slightly stressful, as my BG was 10 point something (180-ish mg/dl). The baby's BG was almost exactly the same as mine at that point. Her BG then went a little low but stabilized fairly quickly.

Like Marps, my insulin needs were lunatic during pregnancy. Mornings, I needed a few units of Apidra just for oxygen. Even hot water for breakfast raised my blood sugar. The rest of the day was not so bad, 'only' 1 unit of Apidra for 1 gram of carb. After delivery, I monitored my blood sugar very closely as I had been primed for a change in insulin needs. My insulin needs did go down but quite slowly. It probably took about a week to go back to my pre-pregnancy insulin-carb ratio.

I don't recommend going on a drip during labour. I had one for the sliding scale and one for the epidural during my two false alarms and neither was pleasant. It was nice not to be tethered and to be able to flail about.

As you can see from the stories that others have shared, we are all different. Hope you find something that works for you. Good luck and wishing you all the best!

Permalink Reply by bethgturner on August 7, 2012 at 10:42am

I hope everything went well with your labor and delivery! I blog about pregnancy, birth, and postpartum diabetes stuff at diabeticbirth.blogspot.com. In my experience, postpartum blood sugar management can be even more difficult than pregnancy management, because the needs change more frequently, especially as you lose the weight. Breastfeeding changes things, too.

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