I know this is a bit old but I love sharing my story, so here goes.
I’ve been type 1 since age 14, married at 27, and we started ttc when I was 33. At the time my husband and I decided to TTC, I had a dexcom and used an Omnipod, which honestly made it tons easier to adjust my insulin ratios throughout the whole pregnancy.
I’d also found an endo who I liked, who worked well with me, and who knew we were ttc. I can’t remember offhand what my a1c was when I got pregnant but it was in their “approved” range, whatever that was at the time and dropped to 5.4 at it’s lowest during my pregnancy. They were perfectly ok with letting me be in charge of my blood sugars & insulin during labor if I felt like I could, but I also had been prepping my husband to be able to take over that task if necessary.
We’d been trying different timings and things from March to November of 2017 with no luck. And yeah yeah, docs all say to try for a year before they’ll start looking into infertility issues, but that’s bunk for us type 1’s (I also have Hashimoto’s and MTHFR). And luckily that November I met an ob-gyn who thought so too! She said, there’s no reason to wait a year! And so we started just running basic tests, and I had an hsg, which was no big deal for me, no blockages or anything, but it must have shook something loose because that same month (December 2017) we got pregnant! We found out Jan 2nd, the day we both went back to work after the holidays. I came home on my lunch break to test and texted the results to my husband who couldn’t see them until he got off work that night. Lol, that was a LONG day for me!
So anyways, first trimester was GREAT! Minimal nausea, blood sugars were low and steady, and I felt great! Some food aversions but I mostly ate what I wanted and barely had to bolus because of how low my blood sugars were running. Second trimester was ok, my blood sugars went back up to normal, which was fine and my blood pressure was always perfect. But we had a super stressful event happen (a tree fell on the roof above our bedroom at 2 am) and honestly this trimester was such a blur because of that. I remember going to my mfm appointments and they were always confused because I was type 1 and my endo was monitoring my blood sugars, not them. I never let them touch my pump settings or anything, just reported my latest a1c and they were fine. They were honestly a bit pointless up until the end there. I did get extra sonograms though, and we found out we were having a boy. Which I’d pretty much already known, mother’s intuition. I also had to go into downtown Atlanta to a children’s hospital to get a better sonogram to check little dude’s heart because he was super stubborn (hindsight) and wouldn’t move right so the local office could see. But everything was fine there.
Third trimester was fun. The swelling started. And I’d told my family & friends that if they wanted to throw us a shower they needed to do it sooner rather than later. I just had a feeling. I was due Sept 11th and they originally wanted to schedule my shower for mid-august but I got them to plan it sooner for mid-july. My swelling got progressively worse (started at my toes and just gradually crept up my legs) but my blood pressure was still always perfect and I had no (extra) protein in my urine. So they kept telling me it was normal. Well it was until it wasn’t.
Finally the morning of August 6th, which was a Monday, I had a MFM appointment at 8 am before work. I remember trying to get into the shower and just being so frustrated at how swollen I was that I just cried and cried. I was only 34w6d but I was done. D. O. N. E. Done. My swelling was past my knees and reaching the point where I could hardly bend my legs to walk. I was mad and frustrated and felt so guilty that I then hated being pregnant. And I felt terrible about it all because I had all these plans! opens window tosses plans
I got to my appointment that day and my BP was finally elevated a bit. Then the sonographer couldn’t get little man to move around in there at all. His heart rate was steady, but wasn’t having the accels and decels they look for. So the doctor came in and said “go straight to the hospital.” I didn’t understand that it was so serious and was really tempted to go home and get some clothes and stuff but I didn’t. I called my mom to meet me up there, then texted my husband what was happening since he’d recently gotten permission to have his phone on him at work because of me. I told him he didn’t need to show up yet, that I was pretty sure I was just going to be monitored for a bit and sent home. Texted my boss too.
Got to the hospital and they checked me in and put me in a room. That was new. Usually when they monitor you, they sit you in the triage room for a while. So then I understood things were serious. I called hubs and told him yeah, he needed to head over, but he wanted to stop home & shower first (his job was very dirty). Then the doc called me there in my room and said “I know you were looking forward to labor & delivery and having things a set way, but this boy needs to come out today.” And she was a friend by then so I cried with her on the phone a little bit before she had to go get ready for my surgery. People were in and out of my room, I met nurses and the doc who would be checking over our son, and the anesthesiologist came in & introduced himself. He was rushing everyone but we were waiting for my husband to show up. After he left the room, one of the nurses told me “don’t worry about him, we won’t let you have a baby without your husband here.” So that put my mind at ease.
Finally my husband shows up! He’s given some scrubs that he throws on, and then they’re helping me walk out the door and about 15 feet down the hall to an O.R. which I was surprised about. The nurses helped me onto a table and got me to lean forward for my spinal, which thankfully I didn’t feel at all and it happened so quick that I forgot to get freaked out about it, then they swung my legs around and tossed the drape in front of me and I was already numb. They let my husband in the room, and it really didn’t take long before the doc was pulling our son out! 12:32 I think it was. They held him up for me to see then had to take him away. I was getting shivery and nauseated from the anesthesia and it felt like they took forever to finish up. The doc kept going “there’s so much fluid! That’s a LOT of fluid! There’s just so much fluid!” And I kept saying “I told you so!” Even though they were the ones who told me I had polyhydramos (or however it’s spelled, which just means lots of fluid) but no one ever really explained what it meant.
FINALLY I was sent to recovery for a while. But I was dying to get in and see my boy! I literally felt SO GOOD after all the pressure from the fluid was gone. Like REALLY good. Aaaaand plus you know, pain meds! They finally wheeled me to a room and EVERYONE in my immediate family and my husband’s immediate family was there and I was like…ok, hi? I mean I had a giant incision in me, giant pads under me, and a giant pee bag hanging off the side of the bed so I wasn’t really much in the mood for a party! Thankfully no one stayed long and I got to rest. Ok and this is going to sound weird, but that catheter was amazing. If you ever need one, enjoy it while you can because getting up and down to go to the bathroom while you have a giant incision in your stomach is NOT fun.
I did keep my dexcom on but I THINK I took my pump off. I want to say it was about to expire and I didn’t want to have to deal with it during surgery. My husband could have done it I guess but it was probably also in the way. Hospital food sucked and their “diabetic” meals sucked worse. I had the option to call down and order other stuff but I just never did. The nurses were great the entire time, I was lucky that I had a really good hospital, even though it was a smaller one.
So that was a Monday and I was released on Friday, but that was a hard thing. That was day 4 after “birth” and so the hormones were insane and I kept getting worked up and crying and my BP would go up and they threatened not to release me. But my son couldn’t go home yet, he’d been in the NICU the entire time and had a slight infection, which cleared up well, then was jaundiced, which took forever to clear up it felt like. His blood sugar was also low for a while, which, duh, and we couldn’t do skin to skin or try to breastfeed for longer than I appreciated so the little punk got addicted to eating out of formula bottles and I was never good enough after that. Eye roll I ended up pumping for 7 months but was a low supplier and it stressed me out a lot so I gave it up. He did just fine in the long term on an organic formula we used. But he was finally released the Sunday after we’d arrived, so not too terribly long in the NICU but still made for a long week for us! Having to leave our son at the hospital in the care of others while we went home to sleep and shower was really hard! But we could sit with him in the NICU all day if we wanted and we pretty much did.
And he’s pretty much thrived ever since! He was a big dude at over 7lbs when he was born (everyone kept warning me that my baby would be big if I didn’t stop eating junk eye roll but my endo knew my 5.4 a1c was perfectly fine and kept laughing and saying “we know diabetics just make big babies!” I didn’t eat junk anyways, and my husband and I are both big people. Kiddo’s head circumference is consistently in the 95-99 percentile). He shows no signs of diabetes and has only ever had a few colds. He’s 27 months old and we just started potty training. Toddlers, man. Toddlers.
As for me, my sugars were fairly back to normal after a couple days but I let myself run a bit high in the hospital. I think we cut my basal down by 40-50% right after surgery just to see how the anesthesia treated things and how my body bounced back. My swelling in my legs took several weeks to get back to normal and I had to go back into the hospital for an overnight stay because I needed a debridement on a part of my original incision that just wouldn’t heal. That was fun. I’m still trying to lose the baby weight despite having an a1c in the low 6’s and chasing a toddler around. That is NOT fun and currently despite increasing my basal, increasing my boluses by 40-50%, eating under 30 grams of carbs a day, using new pens of insulin, using a different insulin, and getting some exercise, my blood sugar refuses to budge below 200. So it seems I have a lot of insulin resistance and not sure why right now, but that’s kinda also why I jumped on these threads tonight - to see if it’s common to have high blood sugar before you find out you’re pregnant. 
And to see if anyone had any stories about how their second pregnancy was different from their first regarding diabetes.
So anyways. That’s my story! I probably posted it elsewhere in this forum but I like sharing and felt like there was a lot that I, as a first time mom and despite my hours upon hours upon HOURS of research, wasn’t prepared for. I hope this helps!
If you’ve already shared with me, feel free to share again, I won’t mind!