Nursing & Diabetes

Photo by Erin Girard Photography 

I remember when we were registering for our baby shower, the sales associate asked us, "What's your feeding plan?"  I felt like a complete fish out of water because the only plan I had was to feed my baby the best way that I could whether that was breastfeeding or by bottle.  What she meant, was if I needed to look into bottles, breast pumps, nursing pillows etc.   While I did get all those things, that was really nothing in comparison to really figuring out my feeding plan once baby was here.

When we prepared the nursery, I thought about what my future self would need.  Low supplies - everywhere.  I put low supplies in the nearest drawer to the nursing chair, as I imagined I'd be spending lots of time stuck on that chair without the energy or ability to get downstairs for a juice box. I burned through those low supplies in no time.

Things I didn't think about before hand was the mental and physical exhaustion that breastfeeding takes. Like, I would say it caused the most doubt in myself, literally every day I questioned if I could continue breastfeeding.   Not only did it cause my blood sugars to do whatever they wanted to do, I also physically felt sick each time. (I looked into this and it seems that a small amount of moms experience this sort of nausea in the early weeks of breastfeeding.) To add to my self doubt, baby was not gaining. However, every day I told myself tomorrow is a new day and now we are at 3 months! We are still nursing without the nausea or doubt - yay!

I still seem to be figuring out how nursing and diabetes can co-exist in a way that I am not going into deeper lows or having random highs (probably because nursing makes me SO hungry in the night sometimes!) Taking care of myself both physically and mentally is important and has been a learning curve in this new phase of life.  Diabetes adapts to these life changes, but not always in a helpful way.

Kayla