Psychologically it is another story. It's not that I know 'too much' or have ridiculous unrealistic fears about diabetes. It's not that I am focusing on the bad things that might happen to my baby, or to me. I've been learning for ages, before the baby was conceived, since the baby started to be, and specially now that the doctors are talking to me about it all. I know my chances - better than many people because I know what I need to do, and I'm getting what help I can. I also understand my risks for this pregnancy, and the risks to our son, and it saddens me, makes me feel reckless and depressed and desperate. Knowing I have 3 months to make as big a difference as possible under the circumstances is a blessing. Knowing I found out as soon as it was possible to diagnose it is also a blessing. However the prospect of living with it and trying to manage it for 3 months is daunting, and depressing, and to be honest I don't WANT to deal with it. I don't want to be strong. I want to be weak, and cry all day, and eat eclairs and dissolve into a messy blob of a woman with sugar coming out of every pore, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on the DVD player, ice cream by the bowlful, plenty of Frappuccinos (keep 'em coming) for the next 3 months and then somehow have the baby yanked out and presented to me with a 'there, there, see, it's all ok, you didn't have to do anything love'.
Of course I'm not stupid enough to think that fantasy is anything other than a twisted nightmare. Being a blob now will only mean I will actually turn into a blob, and hang on to the diabetes post-baby. So can't do that ... Pointless. How am I going to raise the baby if I am sicker and sicker for sure? Eclairs aren't really what they used to be (except, perhaps at Betty's, and we don't live in Yorkshire), Tescos eclairs don't really do it for me, nor do M&S eclairs ... so no point trying to eat any. Will accelerate towards the time when I'll need insulin that much sooner if I eat pig out on eclairs, and to be honest, at that price, they really would need to be very good. Don't want to add insult to injury. No reason to wholly abandon self-respect and style just yet ... plenty of time to let all that go when I am covered in baby poo and sick in a few months.... Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has been a pregnancy-long 'craving' - a non-food craving, but a persistent one. Easily remedied. Have ordered it on Play.com. Will be Blessing everyone's Beautiful Hide, Wherever they may be in stereo in no time. If that doesn't cheer me up, really, what will???? Ice cream is trickier ... can't say it's a good idea, even if I do make some myself. Have to give that a miss, even though it is generally reliably yummy. (Unlike eclairs). New dietician's advice allows me plenty of fruit and cereal though - obviously not Sugar Puffs, or Coco Pops, or even my new faves - Dove's Farm's Chocolate Stars ... what I am now allowed is more the Bran Flakes, Shreddies, Weetabix and of course the always-sanctioned Porridge .... HOWEVER that is still a far more extensive range of cereals than I have had access to in the past year, easy and yummy and most desert-like out of all my allowed foods. Can't complain if I can have fruit too. Of course I won't have just cereal in the morning ... will continue to base the meal on protein ... but since smaller means are now what I need to try, and because I need to cut back on the protein and increase the carbohydrate carefully, and spread it out (so I keep producing some insulin if I can, and only eat as much as my insulin levels can accomodate) ... a slice of bread or one Weetabix (no sugar) here and there seems a cheap, easy, stress free, and crucially MEASURABLE way to find out what I can do.
Of course I am sad, wouldn't you be? Of course I am desperately lonely in all this ... no one else is going through this, and everytime someone says 'it will be alright don't worry about it' I just shut down inside - what does that mean anyway? Go eat cake, you can't hurt your baby? Give up now, you've lost already? Bury your head in the sand and it won't happen? Well, obviously cake can hurt MY baby - he'll have to make loads of insulin to process it for me, bless his tiny heart. I can't give up, and ignoring it amounts to giving up. Burying my head in the sand is the worst thing I can do, and it's generations of people who just let it happen that has made it impossible to avoid getting GD ... despite all my hard work. I worked so hard on myself, on my food, my fitness. All for nothing. I couldn't outrun it, what I did was not enough and I couldn't do more. Maybe some mothers could. All I know is I tried, every single day, and I have failed so miserably, so completely. How can I be LESS vigilant now, having already failed? It's no longer a battle to avoid diabetes, I've lost. Now it's a battle to stay of insulin, and it doesn't look like I will win that battle either, so when/if I fail there, I will have to fight the next battle, and the next. I hate it I hate it I hate it, and I hate doing it on my own. Oh I know Iain is here, and I could not do what I have to do without him, but he is alone in his battle to help me. The mundane, desperately boring everyday drudgery of meal after meal, exercise session after exercise session, test after test, appointment after appointment miserable experience of trying to beat something more powerful and more devastating than anything we can do. It's a boring, boring process. The sheer drudgery of preparing yet another cheap, nutritious, perfectly balanced meal out of a short list of foods I can eat as well as afford .... oh my God. It was bad before, now its so much worse - more meals. Ever tried sustaining a food plan like mine ... keeping it palatable, bearable, interesting if possible? I couldn't say it is character building ... I'd say it is soul destroying, in a special way. Of course I am happy that I feel better when i am eating right for my illnesses ... of course I would rather be approximately 'well' on my diet rather than ill with a half-eaten plate of chocolate cake in my paws, washed down with pineapple juice..... But it's a sad, lonely way to live, and incredibly dull to eat ones own cooking so much, even if it IS my cooking, which I dare say could be so much worse.
Iain is confident we will be successful on some level. I don't really have any reason to believe we will win many of our GD battles, all I believe is that I have to try.
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