u/bushy_brow__

We’re planning to do the 4th of July parade this year with our toddler. We’ve never been before, but I keep reading it can be really challenging to find a spot since people leave chairs out to claim spots weeks in advance.

Any suggestions for success? We won’t be putting chairs out ahead of time to be respectful, and won’t be devastated if our spot isn’t “perfect”. We’re just going to give our toddler a good time!

I’m posting this hoping for some positive stories. My last labor and delivery were.. difficult and I’m so excited to have another baby, but I am having such a challenging time looking forward to their birth.

For context, I was grossly overlooked and neglected during my first pregnancy. I was not type 1 before pregnancy, and developed it unknowingly. My doctor postponed my glucose challenge for some reason, so I didn’t take it until 28 weeks. I took my test and my blood sugar was 365mg/dL. I didn’t know that at the time, and was just told at my next appointment two weeks later that I would have to do the 3 hour test. Obviously it went horribly, and my fasting blood sugar was above 200, and over the 3 hours a steady 450. I looked up my results this time and was horrified with what I saw. I also was looking at my blood pressure and started asking more questions at appointments, and it was consistently high, and I should have been diagnosed with hypertension or pre eclampsia. So the end of my pregnancy was a nightmare.

I went into spontaneous labor at 36.5 weeks. It was a very fast, very intense birth. From when my water broke to when my son was born, it took just under 6 hours. My son had lower blood sugar at birth, but didn’t have to be taken away yet. The hospital made me fast after birth to see what my blood sugar was in the morning (gave birth at 9pm). I finally begged a nurse at 4am for food, and so she tested my blood sugar. It was 48mg/dL. She got me some juice, peanut butter, and crackers. A few hours later I was eating breakfast and they came in to check my son’s blood sugar again. He was low, so they took him to NICU. I was pressured to give him formula over and over again. It was horrible. I was walking 10,000+ steps per day starting 12 hours after giving birth so I could breastfeed my son every 3 hours. One thing led to another, and my son was kept in NICU for 11 days and wouldn’t let him leave because he would cry hysterically during the car seat challenge and kept failing. So all I could do was helplessly watch my newborn cry and scream in his car seat and not even touch him.

I am so, so terrified of a similar experience this time. My diabetes is well controlled and I am in a much better place with it. But I truly cannot get myself to prepare for labor because of all of the anxiety I have around it. I don’t even know how I will take care of a NICU baby with a 3 year old at home. I am doing everything I can to prevent NICU time, but I know it’s not always avoidable. I live in a different state now and healthcare is so much better, but I still feel so unsettled.

Any positive stories or experiences would mean the world to me.

I’m still somewhat new to this disease. I’ve had it for about 3 years now, and I think I still struggle with accepting my life for what it is now. I lived the first 25 years of my life without diabetes, and was diagnosed officially when my first son was 3 months old.

A majority of the time I can carry on with my life and just be okay with it being the way that it is. But obviously it’s challenging. It’s so much mental load all the time on top of just everyday life as a person. I am fairly good at managing my diabetes. I am currently pregnant and am at 89% TIR at 65-140mg/dL. But sometimes it just all catches up to me.

I feel like I have a good cry about my diabetes and my life at least once a month. Just feeling extremely defeated. Diabetes is truly the worst thing for my personality and the things that I care about. I was extremely healthy and active pre diagnosis. You would NEVER catch me eating packaged food or candy, or just snacking between meals. It wasn’t something I enjoyed. I loved walks after eating, being active, and was extremely motivated to stay busy. I am very organized and driven to keep things that way. Diabetes strips all control of that. I have to eat when I am not hungry. Eat things I don’t want to eat. Take breaks when I don’t have the time or don’t want to. Evaluate whether or not I can even vacuum my house without a snack first. Wake up in the middle of the night to correct lows. Walk when I am exhausted because I am high. Work 5x harder than a normal person to eat a fun meal. Everything requires effort. Everything is nuanced. And I can’t get it right 100% of the time, and that is hard for me to wrap my brain around still.

It feels like we all get this path that we have to walk to get to the same destination. It feels like (based off of 25 years of experience) that everyone else gets this straight, flat path. They can show up ready to go and be a good version of themselves. While diabetics get this winding, hilly path. By the time I show up I am sweaty, panting, and exhausted. But I still have to show up like everyone else and carry on like everything is fine. It is just so heavy sometimes. I just want to be a mom. I feel like I would be an entirely different version of myself for my son and future kids if I wasn’t diabetic.

Again, I don’t always feel this way. But sometimes it all just catches up to me and it feels like I am drowning. It is such an exhausting disease that never has any breaks. It’s just not how I imagined my life to be. I can accept that most of the time. Be strong for everyone around me and myself most of the time. But it’s so hard to be strong all the time and nobody can truly understand it unless they’ve been through it.

Does this feeling ever go away? Does it lessen? Or is it always just there? I see people that seem to be happy/accepting of what this disease is, and I want to be in a place where I don’t feel so weighed down. I am in therapy, and it helps, but I feel like I’ll always wonder what life would be like without it .

I am genuinely at my whits end. I am typically a very patient person, but I am 12 weeks pregnant and getting little to no sleep.

My toddler is 2.5 years old. We sleep trained at about 6 months, and he slept wonderfully for years. About 3 months ago we dropped the binkie. Sleep has been horrific since then. Naps became impossible. I had to rock him to sleep for 30 minutes- an hour for him to sleep for a nap, and getting him into his crib was a huge gamble. Then at night he wouldn’t fall asleep on his own anymore, at least 30 minutes crying until he fell asleep. Then all through the night waking up and crying until rocked back to sleep. Then, he started to climb out of the crib, so we had to transition him to a toddler bed.

He has since dropped naps (he refuses to take them and I cannot spend hours of my day fighting a screaming toddler to take a nap when he doesn’t want to go down for a nap anyways) and do bedtime between 7-8pm. The first night in the new room, I did the chair method. It seemed to work okay. He woke up 3 times and I sat in the chair again each time. Second night, he screamed for an hour and a half with me sitting in a chair trying to get him to relax. I ended up getting into the bed with him because my husband was not comfortable with the tears. He fell asleep almost immediately. Now he will only fall asleep if I am in the bed beside him. And has been taking hours in the middle of the night when he wakes up to go back down.

Tonight, he went to bed at 7:30, woke up at 10:00, 10:30, and it’s now 11:45 and he is still not asleep while I sit in his room with him. It is also VERY important to note that he is going through a very combative stage where he wants to make his own decisions. I do believe that is part of where this is coming from.

I do not want to let him just cry it out. I genuinely don’t. But I don’t know what my other options are at this point. I have to sleep. I am a horrible version of myself during the day because I am utterly exhausted from pregnancy and sleep deprived. I am maybe getting 3-4 hours of broken sleep every night. My toddler is certainly not getting what he needs because he’s extremely cranky after 3pm everyday.

Does this get better? Has anyone else experienced a sleep regression at this age? How did you handle it?

Just wanted to add in here to clarify any confusion. I have been sleeping with him, and it hasn’t led to more sleep, just less tears. When I get him to bed initially he falls asleep quickly, but he wakes through the night (sometimes every hour) and it takes a significant time of laying with him to get him back to sleep. So while I am willing to sleep in his bed or bring him into mine, we both do not get more sleep for it. He thinks it is “time to get up” and wants to chat, play, or just turn back and forth for up to 2 hours before finally falling back asleep.

I’m pretty on the fence about pruning my tomato plants. I have 3 varieties: Romas, sweeties, and money makers. The romas are determinate and the other two are indeterminate.

So far, I have only trimmed the bottom branches to keep them off of the ground. The rest I have just let them do their thing. I am using the Florida weave in raised beds and they seem to be doing fine with that.

So far, the sweetie plants have gotten MASSIVE and the others seem to be growing at a normal rate. All of the plants have flowers, especially the sweeties. I am just starting to see tomatoes on all of the plants. I have been using fertilizer higher in phosphorus the last few weeks (it’s actually a rose and flower fish emulsion fertilizer) and they seem like really happy plants.

This is my first year planting tomatoes, so I am not sure what is considered a “good” yield of tomatoes per plant. I know some people insist that pruning is necessary to get more tomatoes, while others insist that letting the plant do its thing is better. What do you personally do?

This may be a bit of a weird one. But I am trying to decide whether or not this is an absurd request for my Endo.

I am currently 11 weeks pregnant. I use omnipod 5 and Dexcom G7 10 day. I have had an ABSURD amount of issues with my CGM. I’ve had at least 20 replaced in the last 2 months. Nearly every time I change it, it’s 3-5 days of hell and at least 3 CGMS. I give them time to “soak” before hand, so they’re on my body for 24 hours before activating, and still the readings are all over the place. Calibrating has been completely useless and does not fix the issue. Normally by the third or fourth try I’ll get an accurate one.

Lately, I haven’t even bothered connecting my Dexcom to my OP5. I can barely handle all of the false low alerts, and to get double alerts on my pump just send me right over the edge. I’m on manual mode anyways, so it doesn’t make a huge difference for me. Only thing I have to do differently is just enter my blood glucose instead of just press the button on the app.

I have been heavily considering changing pumps for a while now, but because my A1c is 5.3 and I have confidence using omnipod, I don’t want to make a huge change during pregnancy. However, I am beyond over G7. I wanted to swap to eversense/TWIIST before I found out I was expecting.

I was going to ask my Endo if I can continue to use omnipod and get an eversense CGM since they are far more accurate, and just continue doing what I have been doing. Is this crazy? Again, it’s no different from what I am doing now so I don’t see a huge difference aside from likely having way more reliable/accurate readings.

My toddler used to be a great sleeper. We used the sleep wave method when he was about 8 months old and he took to it really well. Over the last 6-8 months he would nap from about 12:30-3:30pm, go to bed around 8pm, and wake up between 7-8am. We took his binkie about a month ago. While he hasn’t requested his binkie in weeks after a couple of tough nights, sleep has progressively gotten worse.

We’ve had to resort to rocking him to sleep at nap time, otherwise it simply doesn’t happen. We tried to drop the nap to see if he could handle it since he no longer wanted it, but suddenly started to wake up at 5:00-5:30am. So lost about a total of 4-5 hours of daily sleep. I have managed to get him down for naps rocking him again and he sleeps about two hours, but now will not fall asleep at 8:00 and needs to be soothed/rocked to sleep and often falls asleep around 9:30-10pm. Now, he wakes up multiple times through the night, and still wakes up at 5:00-5:30am. My initial assumption was he was over tired from not napping. Now we are in a loop where he and I both aren’t sleeping and he is becoming dependent on me holding him or rocking him to sleep all through the night. Again, he used to just be put in his crib and usually sleep through the night without being rocked to sleep and was a great sleeper. Typically we would read a book or two and then he would go right to bed.

Do I drop the nap? Do I continue rocking him so sleep to keep some routine? I’m genuinely at a loss and don’t want to make him suffer anymore. He’s pretty tired and cranky through the day due to the lack of sleep and we are doing what we can to get through it. I feel like everything I am doing is making the situation worse.

Also important to note he is very active/plays plenty/gets his energy out before and after nap time. Pretty low sugar diet/eats plenty before bedtime with his dinner.

My toddler used to be a great sleeper. We used the sleep wave method when he was about 8 months old and he took to it really well. Over the last 6-8 months he would nap from about 12:30-3:30pm, go to bed around 8pm, and wake up between 7-8am. We took his binkie about a month ago. While he hasn’t requested his binkie in weeks after a couple of tough nights, sleep has progressively gotten worse.

We’ve had to resort to rocking him to sleep at nap time, otherwise it simply doesn’t happen. We tried to drop the nap to see if he could handle it since he no longer wanted it, but suddenly started to wake up at 5:00-5:30am. So lost about a total of 4-5 hours of daily sleep. I have managed to get him down for naps rocking him again and he sleeps about two hours, but now will not fall asleep at 8:00 and needs to be soothed/rocked to sleep and often falls asleep around 9:30-10pm. Now, he wakes up multiple times through the night, and still wakes up at 5:00-5:30am. My initial assumption was he was over tired from not napping. Now we are in a loop where he and I both aren’t sleeping and he is becoming dependent on me holding him or rocking him to sleep all through the night. Again, he used to just be put in his crib and usually sleep through the night without being rocked to sleep and was a great sleeper.

Do I drop the nap? Do I continue rocking him so sleep to keep some routine? I’m genuinely at a loss and don’t want to make him suffer anymore. He’s pretty tired and cranky through the day due to the lack of sleep and we are doing what we can to get through it. I feel like everything I am doing is making the situation worse.

Also important to note he is very active/plays plenty/gets his energy out before and after nap time. Pretty low sugar diet/eats plenty before bedtime with his dinner.

I have a frozen pork roast currently in the oven. I decided to do the oven instead of a slow cooker because I understand that a slow cooker will not heat a frozen pork butt fast enough and it will be in the danger zone for too long.

My question is, I am baking my pork butt covered at 325°. My guess is that it will be done within 3 hours. I have a thermometer in it right now (it’s a meater so I can see it in real time), and will keep an eye on how long it’s between 40° and 135°.

Is this a safe method to make pulled pork from a frozen pork butt?

Feeling so beyond frustrated with Dexcom G7. I have had SO MANY issues with them since becoming pregnant.

I always have to insert my sensor at least 24 hours early to get accurate readings, otherwise I have 24 hours of absolute anxiety over my blood sugar and 30+ finger pricks a day because Dexcom has me second guessing myself.

I just want to go to bed and I have a Dexcom that is saying I am 158 trending up, and my blood sugar has been 120 for the last half hour. I do not want to deal with the alarms all night, nor do I want to deal with the anxiety/uncertainty that I am high and harming my baby all night long. Pre pregnancy I could just silence alarms and live with being 150 all night, now I am unable to sleep because I am riddled with guilt and anxiety.

Does anyone else have this issue? Genuinely considering a complete overhaul and getting an eversense CGM and swapping to TWIIST.

I feel so silly for being so concerned over this, but it’s genuinely been so hard to cope with.

I am still early in my first trimester and have already gained 5-10lbs. I feel like I am correcting so many lows (insulin sensitivity is really kicking in) and I have such little energy to exercise like I normally would.

I am genuinely terrified of dramatic weight gain. Everyone always has something to say about how much weight people gain during pregnancy and I have so much fear around judgement over this. What’s worse is I have little control over treating lows and can only do what I can to prevent them.

Has anyone else experienced this? I am trying to just accept my situation and embrace pregnancy but I am horrified of what is to come. My last pregnancy I didn’t gain much weight but I also wasn’t diabetic at that time, and actually developed it mid pregnancy. My blood sugar was so high (I had zero clue and had a horrible experience with my OB/GYN being extremely negligent) so I actually weighed less after pregnancy than I did before. I can’t imagine this pregnancy will be anywhere near the same experience because I wasn’t forced to eat sugar at any point like I am now.