Hi all
I’m 10 weeks pregnant and up until this past weeks things have been going pretty well. I’ve been experiencing first trimester lows and have been trying to get those under control in order to avoid those rebounds. I have also had nausea pretty bad up until this last week and now the symptoms are being to clear. I had a scan on Tuesday and baby looks really good. However, this past week for about 4 nights, around 12am to 2am I’ve been having terrible highs-all of them 200+ With my endo I’ve been working hard to element afternoon and evening lows to see if that will help, as well as increasing my basals gradually for that time. This has only has minimal effect on the result. Tonight was the lowest all week (yesterday evening I had no lows and my basal is at it’s highest so far) I woke up at 217. I’m not liking this at all-in fact I’m losing a lot of sleep with worry. However I’m beginning to suspect that although my insulin needs are low during the day, something funky is going on overnight.
Has anyone also experienced anything like this in their pregnancy? It would be reassuring to hear from you because I sometimes find that people here are constantly talking about their fantastic BG levels and it scares me when mine are less than fantastic despite how hard I’m working. And I’m just finding this latest phenomenon very strange-as is my doctor…
“I sometimes find that people here are constantly talking about their fantastic BG levels and it scares me when mine are less than fantastic despite how hard I’m working…” AMEN to that!! 
Just try to tell yourself that you are doing your absolute best, and that is all you can do. Stay positive, and think about all the great things you are doing for your baby! I know you are working really hard–this is a difficult, time-consuming thing. You are also probably your harshest critic–I know that for me, I will be upset about certain numbers, but when I see my OB, she looks at the big picture and is always telling me how great I’m doing. I suspect this is true for you too!
About your overnight highs–I have had more issues with overnight lows in general (I’m 16 weeks), but I have had some seemingly random highs, usually around midnight as well. What has helped for me (and you may already be doing this) is to eat a consistent amount of carbs at dinner, and then to eat a consistent bedtime snack. I had to play around with how much I bolused for that snack in order to prevent lows, but now I’m doing a 50% bolus, and my nighttime numbers are looking better. That 50% is enough to prevent a high but not too much that I go low.
You’re using a CGM, right? Can you identify whether your bg goes up gradually from the time you go to bed, or whether it just spikes around midnight?
I think they begin to up around 10pm-this is what I observed last night-I do think that I need some basal changes because I was initially dealing with lows overnight and I have upped my carb intake especially before bed-so these horrible highs are a new phenomenon. I’ll see what my endo says today. I think I have most of my evening lows and overnight lows under control now, although there are a few morning lows that need to be addressed, I think I just need to attack this 12-2am high with a basal spike. Having diabetes sucks. Just when I’m getting over my morning sickness, my diabetes starts giving me trouble! I’m looking forward to that illusive time when I won’t be feeling horrible and my blood glucose levels are semi normal all at the same time
You’ll get there!
My blood sugars have been great during pregnancy, EXCEPT when things were changing more rapidly than I could keep up with! These changes happen at many stages of pregnancy and we just have to do our best to adjust.
While I haven’t experienced the increased basal needs at night, my basal rates have surprised me. Sometimes I need 3-4 times more basal than at other times of the day. The important thing is to adjust according to your numbers EVEN if it seems strange.
You are doing everything right. I’m sorry that you have to struggle with these night time adjustments, which means less sleep! Hope that the increased basals will do the trick soon and let you have more restful nights!!
I’m almost 14 weeks and have also been having some weird highs starting at around 9-10pm. I think my snack may be metabolizing slower than usual so my basal rate for that time period has had to be increased a few time while the rest of my basal rates decrease. I also have been extending my bolus by 2 to 3 hrs to covers my bigger snacks. You could try basal testing, eat a low fat dinner at 6pm and then start testing every hour starting at 10pm and seeing where you start spiking. I find it helps get a snapshot as to what all our hormones are doing to our blood sugars.
Don’t stress, this is my second pregnancy and it’s the second time it happens to me. Somewhere around 16 weeks it’ll balance and everything increases until the last trimester where your BG will be the best you’ll ever see. Just test frequently, eat well and take care of yourself.
Thanks Nancy
It’s always reassuring to hear from someone who’s been through it before
I’ve been waking up with highs some mornings, scares ke tho.they say highs are better then lows. I get scared fir development reason. But she is looking great.
Isn’t it frustrating!? For about the past week (I am now almost 12 weeks) I too have random highs at about 9pm of about 180-200 that I cannot explain. 2 hours after dinner I will be 90-110 and without eating another bite of food be around 200 about 2 hours later! The most frustrating part is we are told not to correct before bed but what are we supposed to do stay high all night while we have developing fetuses in our bellies!? What did your dr suggest you do? I am at a loss…anyone correct before bed?
I haven’t been told to not correct before bed but at one point my dr. asked me to not correct overnight. I was having some BG levels well into the 200s so I made a deal. I told him that I couldn’t rest when my BG levels are that high so I agreed to not correct only if they were under 180-he was fine with that-and it worked for me too
I definitely correct before bed, but I also set an alarm to get up and check 1.5-2 hours after the correction to make sure that I didn’t go low.
What basal insulin are you using? Perhaps you should see if there is a way to increase the basal after dinner.
I had a couple of those too. That happend when my needs were increasing. 2h after dinner my bg was 110 and 1 h later was going up to 200. I was freaking out, i wrote here a couple of times, but it didn’t happen so often, only 2-3 days when my needs were increasing and when the first day came around, i knew what to do the next day, so i didn’t wait for the high to arrive.
I always correct before bed!!! I never had a severe low because of that. Sometimes i had to correct 2-3 times because it wouldn’t drop at all!
I take levemir basal once daily at bedtime only 2 units, my fastings have crept up to 120s so I’m going to increase to 3 units.
What did you do increase your dinnertime insulin or your basal??
When my needs increased i saw that during the day and night too, but the evenings were the worst. Whereas in the morning it would rise to 150 (i knew then that my needs started to increase), in the evening it would go even higher. So i changed all my boluses and my basal too, but my basal only when i saw higher numbers (like 120-130) in the night and morning.
I should also say that i had a period when i had to increase only my basal, day by day, from 21u to 30.
I never changed my basal if my numbers were good (60-100) during the night and in the morning, but bad during the day. I treated the daytime highs only by bolusing extra.
It could be that the Levemir is not covering you for 24 hours then (which is true for many people). Even though you are on such a small dose, you might be better off to inject twice a day (maybe try adding the extra unit at lunch time instead). If you are seeing highs in the hours before you take your Levemir, then it is likely that you need better basal coverage then.
Thats what I was thinking…I just increased my levemir to 3 units at night but I’m thinkin I should prob stick to 2 units and then 1 extra unit in the morning. I am just so new to insulin that the thought of splitting up my basal just worries me in reguards to lows.
Thanks! Thats what I did last night, I was only 175 so I decided not to correct but whenever I’ve been over 180 I correct with one unit. So frustrating!
When you don’t correct, does it drop untill the morning or it stays like that throughout the night?
Although i thought the last trimester would be the hardest to control, i found it more difficult in the first and second trimester. Now i have numbers like 80-90 at 1 and 2 h post-meal. I can’t believe how great they are. And i just recieved my last A1C which is 4,9!
My guess is that the baby has gotten smarter and helps a lot too.
WOW!!! Congrats on the AWESOME A1c I found the same thing – first and second trimester were much harder. I have much better numbers now in the third trimester.