Like the deserts miss the rain

Thank God that week is over. I've been MIA and for good reason. Fred was out of town and my kids decided to try and kill me by not letting me sleep. Every. Single. Night.

Whether is was Elise up for 3 hours crying, the dexcom alerting to numbers that were off by sometimes as much as 200, stubborn lows, or Mattias waking up every 90 minutes, which happened every night while Fred was gone. Combine all that with the usual feeding problems and it was a nightmare.

But he's back, and I am so, so thankful. He is an awesome husband and does whatever it takes to support me. Even though his flight came in at 12:30 am, almost two hours late, he came home and talked me down from a very tall ledge (for reasons I'll get to in a moment). Mwah! Love ya, Freddie!

I am also thankful for my friend Liz, who came over twice, brought me lunch, and listened as I did the "ugly cry" for two hours. She also gave me some very wonderful advice, which I appreciate even more because I know it wasn't easy for her to do, because she was unsure of how I would take it. Thank you Liz, it's the REAL friend who will tell you the stuff you don't necessarily want to hear.

I started taking a prescription drug for my nursing issues. I was very leery about taking it because of the side effects, but after learning Mattias hadn't gained any weight in 3 weeks, I felt I had no choice. It has been wonderful and awful all at the same time.

Wonderful because my supply has almost doubled and I've only been taking it for a few days. Since I started, Mattias stopped waking up every 90 minutes at night, and only woke up once to feed. Ah-MA-zing! He also seems more content during the day.

Awful because the side effects really are terrible. During the day, the fatigue is so bad I feel like I'm going to fall over. I can't concentrate and can barely form a coherent sentence. And at night I lay in bed, suffering through panic attacks. The night Fred got home, it was really bad. I had gone to bed at 9:30, and was unable to fall asleep (read: pass out from sheer exhaustion) until almost 3:00 am. I cannot even begin to explain how horrible it felt. I was so tired, but couldn't sit still. At one point I remember thinking if removed my pjs and went walking out in the pouring rain, I would be okay (yeah... weird. I know). Thankfully, Fred came home and sat with me, attempting to calm me down.

After all that, you'd think I would stop taking it, right? Not so much. I did cut my dose (after consulting my doctor) in half, but I have my reasons for continuing.

The way I look at it is this; as parents of a diabetic, we don't have to wake up 2 - 3 (sometimes more) times a night to check our kids. In fact, some endos don't understand why we do it. But we do. For our kids. For their safety. For their health. Often at the detriment of our own. Because we would do anything to avoid the unimaginable.

Now Mattias will not starve, but to me his health is at risk. He started in the 50th percentile for weight and now he's in the 10th. He has feeding issues and I will do anything I can to help him.

The good news is the lower dose doesn't make me quite as crazy. I still get agitated, but I can deal with it. I'm also not going to take it at bedtime, because that I can't deal with.

If you've made it this far, congrats. I know there has been a lot going on in the DOC lately, but I haven't had time time or energy to blog, read other blogs or comment. Those of you who are going through the fire right now, please know that you are in my prayers.

Hopefully I'll get my crap together soon. Because I miss you guys.

March Madness

Nope. This is not a post about basketball. The title just seemed very apt for my life lately. A lot has been going on, hence the hush that has befallen my blog. Most of it falls in the not-so-good category. If this keeps up, I think I'm going to loose what is left of my mind.

The Not-So-Good:

-Mattias has gone on strike. Nursing strike. Eating strike. Pooping strike. I wonder if he thinks I'm trying to poison him... the problem is, he will not take a bottle. He hasn't figured out the sippy cup. My options are pretty much limited. Today, I used a syringe to feed him because he hadn't had any fluids in about 6 hours.

-He also won't take my pumped milk. I have high amounts of Lipase (an enzyme that breaks down fat) in my milk. About 20 minutes after my milk is pumped, it starts to taste soapy. He refuses to drink it. The only way to get rid of it is to scald the milk right after pumping it. To say it's a beating is a bit of an understatement.

-All this nursing stress (combined with the other stuff) is causing my milk to dry up. I'm doing everything I can to keep it up, but it's not easy. Plus, if my milk does dry up, how on earth will he eat, considering he won't take a bottle or sippy cup?

-Elise's numbers are going crazy. Trying to find a spare moment to sit down and look over her logs is hard.

-Fred is travelling a lot lately. It sucks doing this all by myself.

-No bites on the house yet. Not even a nibble. We've had three showings and it's been really rough getting the house in order and trying to get out of the house while it's being shown. The other day, it was booked for TWO FREAKING HOURS (over lunch time... great). Towards the end, Mattias was so tired and I needed to try and nurse him, that I just went home with 20 minutes to go. Thankfully they weren't there. To top it all off, their critique of the house was, "we don't want a two story". Then why the %*&! are you looking at my house WHICH HAPPENS TO BE A TWO STORY? STOP WASTING MY TIME!!!

-I'm am just one big ball of stress. My jaw is permanently clenched and my shoulders reside somewhere up near my ears. The littlest thing will set me off. Like the guy who ran a stop sign to cut me off and get in front of me in the drive-thru (then proceeded to give me the finger when I honked at him). If not for little eyes, I think I would have jumped from my car, pulled him out by his nasty white wife-beater, yanked said wife-beater up over his face (think hockey fight), and started pummeling him. Never cut in front of a red head.

The Good:

-I finally won something! Heidi was giving away a Daily Devotional book and a Starbucks gift card in honour of Bekah's D anniversary... and I was the lucky winner! Thanks Heidi, I've been meaning to email you to let you know that I had received both items, but my email inbox is another source of stress these days. Now, if Starbucks would only deliver.

-Tomorrow is another day. I just need to keep holding onto the fact that it has to get better... right?

That's all I've got. Sorry for the downer post. Here's hoping that I'll be back to my shiny-happy self soon (or as shiny-happy as I get).

Saying bye bye to boo boo

During all the craziness of finding out I was pregnant and my thyroid going haywire. Elise and I passed one very important milestone.

I made the decision to stop nursing her. I think I had been ready for awhile, but just didn't know how to stop.

When Elise was diagnosed at 12 months old, I was still nursing her 4 times a day. When we met with the dietitians in the hospital, I was told I would have to either stop, or start pumping and feed her my milk that way. I had just put away all my pumping supplies, and there was no way I was going to do it. I hated that contraption.

But there was no way I was going to stop nursing my baby just because they said so. She was still MY baby and I knew what was best for her. I could not cure her diabetes, but I could offer her one thing that nourished and soothed her.

It was hard to know how much she was getting, but we soon figured that it only affected her BG by about 30 points. I don't know why, but it always seemed to work out.

Then, one by one, I dropped a session, until only the bedtime one remained. When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I couldn't continue to nurse her (for my own health reasons). It took her about a week to get used to it, and her tears just about broke my heart. But life goes on and so did she.

I'm glad I made the decision to nurse her as long as I did. It's not for everyone, but it worked for us. I've said it before in another post about nursing, but I think it has contributed to Elise's overall good health. To this day, she has never even had an ear infection. And when we all came down with the Swine Flu in September, she fared the best out of all three of us!

It was definitely a sad milestone for me, but hopefully if all goes as planned, I'll be back at it again in September!

Nursing and Diabetes

My daughter is two years and almost two months old.

I am still nursing her.

And I am not ashamed of that fact.

If you had asked me right before Elise was diagnosed at the age of 12 months when I was going to stop nursing her, my response would have been, "I don't know, maybe soon."

And here I am, over a year later, still nursing, and my response to that question is still the same.

You see, when Elise was diagnosed I felt so helpless. We had just received this devastating news about our daughter's health and future, and there was nothing I could do to change it.

And so I continued to nurse her. Because it was the one thing I could do for her. I knew it gave her great comfort. And in turn, it gave me great comfort.

I could tell the endo team was not really in favour of my continued nursing. They told me there was no way to know how many carbs she was getting. The dietitians said it made figuring out her diet plan difficult. I said, "tough... I'll make it work."

I now only nurse Elise two times a day; first thing in the morning, and last thing at night. It is such a sweet way to begin and end my day. I might be totally jinxing myself by saying this, but I think it has contributed to Elise's good health. We've only had a few minor illnesses, and to this day she has never had an ear infection. That is almost unheard of I've been told.

The reason I write this is because I saw a post on one of the message boards I frequent. A Mom of a newly diagnosed toddler was wondering if maybe she had been able to breastfeed, her child would not have gotten diabetes.

To that I say, look at me; I nursed Elise up until (and after) her dx. I made ALL of her baby food from scratch using mostly organic food. She never had a granule of refined sugar until her 1st birthday (two days before her dx). I used an alternate shot schedule. I did my very best to make sure my child was healthy.

And she got diabetes anyway.

Stop blaming yourself. It's not your fault, it's not your child's fault. You did nothing to cause this, and nothing you could have done would have stopped it.

I am making plans to stop soon, because I really don't want to be on national TV as one of "those" Moms (and by that, I mean a Mom who stops by their kid's 4th grade class to give them their "milk").

It will be a day of great sadness for me, but I'm also proud that I was able to make it this far.

Letting Go

This weekend was very sad for me. I dropped one of Elise's nursing sessions, the mid-afternoon one. And while I realize it's great that we've made it this far, I can't help but mourn the loss.

Nursing was very hard to figure into Elise's carb count, yet it just seemed to work. If you're wondering, breast milk has about 2g of carbs per ounce. But of course, there was no way to know how much she was getting. For what it's worth, we figured that each nursing would raise Elise's BG by about 30.

But on Saturday, I decided to drop from three down to two. Elise hasn't missed a beat, except for yesterday when we took her on a walk (where she was actually walking, not being pushed in a stroller) right before dinner. When we got home and tested her pre-dinner BG, she was at 53. We had forgotten to give her a mid-afternoon snack (usually the nursing took care of that). So there's still some trial and error for us to get through.

As for me, it's been hard. If Elise wasn't diagnosed with diabetes, I'm not sure that I'd still be nursing her. But it's the one thing I feel that I can do for her. I can't take away her D, but I can offer her this. I know I'll be stopping for good soon, but I can't bear to think about it. For right now, I really miss my afternoon cuddle time with her.

Sigh, as well as a cure for D, I'd really like someone to figure out how to freeze time.