Our Christmas Miracle

Written on December 26, 2015

Our Christmas Miracle

The past week I’ve had this feeling that I might be pregnant.

I really didn’t have a lot of evidence, other than I’ve been heading to the bathroom way too often!

Oh the joys….it’s all coming back to me, ha ha.

Then a few days ago my blood sugar numbers started being weird, when they have been pretty solid for the past couple months. I took that as a pretty significant sign.

I was supposed to start my period yesterday and when I didn’t, I knew I wanted to take an at home test this morning.

I took it and as I waited for the results I looked away and said in my head “It’s going to be negative. It’s negative. I’m not pregnant. It’s okay, I’m not pregnant.”

I looked down at it and there were two lines!

Positive!

I got pretty emotional and went and told Jeff!

WE WERE SO HAPPY!

We ARE so happy!

I just kept telling Jeff, I hope it’s true. I really hope it’s true!

Life is a miracle. Being able to conceive and have babies is such a miracle!

I feel like this baby is even more of a miracle for us though.

I have so many medical factors working against me!

It’s heartbreaking most of the time.

When I got diagnosed with PCOS before having Grace, it then took us a year to get pregnant with her.

This time around I had that fear in the back of my head, but then there is the big monster called Type 1 Diabetes that had me worried too.

When I was diagnosed in May they told me I would have to have two amazing A1Cs before I could even THINK about getting pregnant.

A1Cs are tested every 3 months. So from May I had to wait till September and from September I had to wait till December.

I was feeling pretty defeated, cause we couldn’t even start thinking about trying till December! That was months after I had wanted.

But there are so many scary things with diabetes and pregnancy, that I knew we had to listen to the doctors. I knew that Heavenly Father had the timing worked out, but my heart was still bursting.

Although diabetes is unpredictable, I fought it hard for those six months and I accomplished those amazing A1Cs.

I was so happy! It was December, I was in the clear!

And then there was the thought of “well, what if it takes a whole year again cause of my PCOS!”

Dang you chronic diseases!

Well, the miracle of all miracles happened for us, and we got pregnant immediately!

Can you even believe that?

I kind of can’t.

With all of the medical things and my body waging war against itself, it didn’t and still doesn’t seem possible.

I really believe it’s a miracle in my life.

God is so aware of us.

He knows what is best for us. He knows how to give us things when we need them. Through months of patience, I know that faith works.

God’s timing always ends up being what we need. Even if it’s not what we want at the time, it ends up exactly how it should have.

I can’t believe I’m pregnant!

I’m so incredibly blessed! 

CGM

Today is a happy day!

Especially if you blog stalk me and read my post two times ago.

Well,  after much ado, I officially have my CGM!

WOOOOOHOOOOO!!!

A continuous glucose monitor,  for those of you who don't regularly think about this blog,  is a device that tells me what my blood sugar is all the time.

This is an incredible thing for a person with type 1 diabetes,  because so much of ... all my life runs around my blood sugar.

Every time I eat,  every time I want to exercise,  every time I drive,  pretty much doing most things requires me to know where my blood sugar is.

So many variables I have to think of, that most people take for granted.

Having this device allows me to just look at a screen and see where I am,  rather than having to endlessly prick my finger and get a blood sample.

Needless to say.....I'm so happy!!!

Diabetes burnout is such a real thing.

My goodness,  being on alert 24/7 gets tiring.

So this has made me so happy and relieved!  It alarms if my blood sugar is too low or high,  and it also has arrows to let me know if it's going up or down rapidly.

How it works,  is I have a sensor inserted into me and that transmits to the little screen and shows me a chart.

Technology is amazing,  huh?

 The gray area where the dotted line is,  is the range I'm supposed to stay in.

 Pink! If you're going to be physically dependent on something it might as well be cute, right?

 The sensor inserted in me.
 It inserts with a needle,  but the needle doesn't stay.  I'm not very good at explaining medical things, so just know there is a little piece of something under my skin checking out my blood.  That's about the best explanation I have,  haha!

My snapchat awesomeness,  cause I'm just really excited!

Commonly asked questions-

Q: Does it hurt or bug you at all?  (The sensor)
A: No,  I can't feel it at all actually.

Q: Is it an insulin pump?
A: No. This is totally different from a pump.  No insulin involved with this device! I still have to inject insulin with several shots a day.

And probably your next question....

Q: Why don't you have a pump?  Taking shots sounds awful!
A: I'm still coming out of the honeymoon period of type 1, so I don't take very much insulin right now.  I think I'll eventually get a pump,  but where I'm not taking tons of insulin I don't need one.  And yes,  shots aren't fun,  small amounts of medicine or not,  but staying alive IS fun,  so there's that!

I'm so grateful I live in a time when things like this are available to me.  Modern medicine and technology are so important! It's a great time to be alive!

Temple

I had a neat experience the other night!  I was able to clean the temple,  because it was our stakes turn to do so.

I had never done that before,  and I was excited and nervous to be given the chance to do it.

Excited,  because I knew it'd be a peaceful,  fun thing to do.....

Nervous,  because it was late at night and that's usually when my diabetes roars it's stupid head.

I usually have to snack, snack,  and snack some more before I go to bed every night to get to a good number.

When I tell people THAT side of diabetes they are always like "sweet!  That must be nice you can have treats!"

Trust me,  it gets real old.

Hahaha. .

Snacking for pleasure VS. Snacking for medical necessity.....

The feelings are night and day.

So cleaning the temple from 9:30-1:00 AM, when I usually go to bed at 10:00 had me nervous.

I checked my number before I left for the temple...

...74....a little low for comfort.....

Chug juice,  eat protein bar.

K, I got this!

Confidence!

Go into temple,  feeling good,  go change into the scrubs they give you to clean in....

Check my number just in case....

70.

What in the!? I went DOWN after eating and drinking?

Scarf down another protein bar in the locker room and hope for the best.

And then Heavenly Father showed me how much He loves me.

There were about 40 of us and we got divided up to clean all different parts of the temple.

Some people went up several floors,  others stayed close to where we started.

I ended up being assigned to vacuum the bapistry and other parts of the basement,  including the women's locker room!

I was going to be able to stay about as close as possible to my locker where all of my things were,  just in case I started feeling weird.

Do you know how big of a tender mercy that was for me?

Out of all the places they could have had me go,  I was able to stay where I felt the most comfortable.

That reaffirmed to me that God knows my circumstances and wants me to succeed.

A lot of times I feel really isolated with this disease I have. I don't have anyone immediately around me who knows how I feel.

Living with it on a daily basis and how it's a never ending concern can be lonely.

But I know God knows my heart.

I know He feels my pain and sorrows.

He never leaves me to feel like I'm completely alone.

I know He was especially mindful of me that night in His house.

He knew I didn't want to make a big deal of my situation and tell anyone about it.  He knew where I'd be comfortable while still being able to serve.

"I know He lives, I will follow faithfully...my heart I give to Him,  I know that my Savior loves me."

Advocate

I'm not gonna lie,  this is possibly my 15th or so post about diabetes that I've started in the past couple months.

They never make it to the publish button.

I wanted to attempt to write this post, because it's been my entire life the past couple of weeks.

Being an advocate for myself......

....is hard.

I've NEVER been outspoken about my needs.

I've never gone out of my way to make sure I'm put first.

That's just not comfortable for me.

Being a Type 1 Diabetic is basically the definition of needing to advocate for yourself though.

Needing to tell people you're around.....oh hey,  I need to eat some candy real quick before I pass out or die.  

Or....

Excuse me while I go give myself much more medicine that you'll ever consider taking on a daily basis,  because I have a dead organ that doesn't allow my body to function normal.

It goes both ways,  because I also need to advocate that diabetes isn't my fault.

That I don't need to eat only vegetables,  because guess what?  Even if I did,  I'd STILL have to take insulin.

Yes,  I can eat ice cream.

Yes,  I will live how I want.

Just because someone has lung cancer doesn't mean they stop breathing.

Just because my pancreas, which is a major organ that handles how food is digested, is completely nonresponsive doesn't mean I'm going to stop eating.

Being a advocate for myself towards people who self appoint themselves as my food police is hard.

Over the past 2 months I've been in the process of trying to acquire a device called a "continuous glucose monitor".

Basically what a CGM does is its a sensor that you insert into yourself (a fatty part of your body,  like the stomach,  leg, upper arm etc.) and it reads your blood sugar levels continuously.

This is a MAJOR thing for Type 1's cause blood sugar (aka our whole lives) determines so many things for us all day everyday.

Without this device you have to go solely off of pricking your fingers and getting blood samples that way.

With it, you have a device that at any given time you can look down at a screen and see where you're at.  High,  low,  in range.  The peace of mind that comes with a CGM is phenomenal.

So of course I want this,  right?

And of course it just can't be that easy, right?

Right.

I've been the middle man between my insurance,  doctors office (who is one day away from me firing them), and the company who sells these devices for the past 2 months.

It shouldn't be this hard!  I'm the perfect candidate for this thing.

Sometimes I just want to yell,  'please,  come live a day as me and tell me I don't need this device ASAP.'

Being an advocate for myself in this respect is so difficult.

These people are all supposed to be helping me get this thing,  and yet it's not working.

I've been on the phone with all of these people for probably about 3 hours today. I went and got documents from my pharmacy,  I went and got things from my doctor's office.

Ahhhh...

Being so physically dependent on things like this is life altering.

And having to advocate for that dependency is heart breaking sometimes.

Sometimes I wish my biggest problems were that my daughter is obsessed with Elsa and HAS to watch Frozen everyday,  which drives me crazy cause I don't like her watching so much TV.

Or that my landlord is crazy and promised us new carpet so we boxed up half our house only to find out we aren't getting the carpet,  haha.

Or that I hate going to the grocery store,  so we kind of borderline starve or Jeff has to get us take out more often than not.

Why can't I have normal people problems?

I mean,  I guess I do.

But they all seem really insignificant compared to my broken body.

I guess I'll keep practicing speaking up for myself and being that advocate I need to be.  No matter how hard or weird it is.

And I'll hope I'm done jumping through hoops and all of these medical people who should be my advocates get it together and get me what I need.

Growing Up

I'm constantly amazed at how Grace's vocabulary is exploding! She's such a smart girl.

I think her word count is over 50 now.  Honestly, I can't remember which words I've written down and which I haven't,  so I'm not even going to try to update my list.

I'll share some of my favorite things she says though.

I don't know why,  but she calls Zach, "Zachzach". Hahaha, I don't know why she repeats it.

Every morning I take her out of her crib and she'll lay her head on my shoulder to hug me and then say "Zachzach?"

Grace LOVES her cousins!  Sorry to the older ones,  but she definitely loves the ones around her age the most.

Obviously Zach,  because he is here so much.  But she has recently become obsessed with Eliza who is her same age as well.

She'll just randomly ask me for Liza at weird times.  And at times when we haven't seen her for a couple days or we haven't been talking about her or her family at all.

Her memory astounds me sometimes! She's totally out of the blue with things she remembers.

Grace: "Mama?"
Me: "Yes?"
G: "Liza!?"
Me: "You want to play with Liza?"
G: "YEEEAHAHA!"

When she gets excited she laughs at the end of her yeah. Haha :)

We don't really let her play on our phones,  and TV is usually just baby signing time, but along the way we have happened upon a show called Astroblast!  Hahaha, oh my goodness,  you'd think we'd hit the jackpot or something.

Grace asks for Zazz-zass (Astroblast) all the time time,  it's both cute and annoying,  haha.

I guess it's okay if she has a favorite show.  We just won't be binge watching it like her daddy and I do with The Office!

One of the most hilarious things to date that Grace has done is her attempts at jumping!  Hahahahahahahahaha

She hasn't ever made it off the ground, but that doesn't stop her from trying.

She'll usually try to get a running start and then she flings her body back,  but to no avail.

Hahahaha....

Jeff and I encourage her to do it over and over,  cause it's so cute.  And even though she hasn't made it off the ground yet,  she smiles from ear to ear cause she knows she's trying,  ha.

She's also really funny with animal sounds.

I think her best one is a rooster. She'll say: "Kaw-ll-doo!"

Honestly I can't remember teaching her that one. I know I must have demonstrated it enough for her to catch on,  but one day she just said it and I was like where did that come from?!

She does that with words a ton. I guess she listens and observes me A LOT more than I thought!  And believe me, I already thought she did that a lot.

Her second favorite animal sound of mine is her cat noise. She hisses instead of meows, hahaha. I'll even try to correct her with a meow, but she'll just smile and hiss. I guess she's heard that from my mom's cats too much,  she knows that's their true sound!

Something that I think is really cute that she does is how she greets Jeff when he gets home from work.

She LOVES when he gets home.  She'll run to the door and wait patiently with her arms up for him to put his stuff down. Then he'll pick her up and she gives him the biggest hug followed by a kiss on the lips every time.

He gets so many kisses from her!  Without fail she'll always kiss him no matter what.  I'll ask her for kisses randomly and it's about 50/50. Sometimes she will,  sometimes she'll say no and turn away. With Daddy its a kiss whenever he wants and many times whether he wants one or not!

She's getting so big and learning new things all the time.  Most of the time I have to remind myself that she's not a baby anymore.  She's so grown up!

Christmas 2015

I already posted a little bit about Christmas with my quiet book post,  but I figured I'd add a little more about some other things we did during the holidays! 

We spent lots of time with family,  and got  EXTREMELY spoiled, by all three of our families! Grace got so many fun,  new toys, I think we officially need a toy/playroom!  

(Jeff,  buy me a house)

It was so much fun seeing Grace love Christmas! 

She loved the decorations (partly because we had so many nativity sets out that she could use her favorite word all the time: "Jesus!"). She loved the lights and Santa too!  

You would never know she loves Santa from the pictures we got, but she did! Any book or song about him she'd freak out in excitement! She got really good at saying "Anta!" And would point him out in pictures or when we saw him in public places.  She LOVED him from afar.  

And then we tried to make her sit on his lap......

Oh well. Hahaha

After Jeff graduated we went on a little stay cation to Salt Lake to do a bunch of fun traditions.  

Most of those things included seeing all the Christmas lights in downtown,  but we also went to zoo lights for the first time too! 

It was fun being together as a family and just hanging out with no responsibilities or places we had to be.  

City Creek! 

Temple Square!  

Jeff got Grace a Minnie Mouse at City Creek and she still loves it and plays with it everyday.  She's so cute with dolls and stuffed animals.  :)

Zoo lights! 

This face cracks me up,  cause it's a total Grace face. If you knew her you'd know what I mean.  She always is thinking of something mischievous or silly! I took this during our break when Jeff got to be home with us for 2 whole weeks!

Christmas morning this year was the best!  Grace loved opening presents!  There is something so magical about seeing Christmas through a child's eyes.

Jeff's Graduation!

Jeff graduated with his Masters degree in Accounting a couple weeks ago!  It feels soooooooo nice to be done with school.  We've been in school our whole marriage,  so to be completely done is awesome. 

Jeff is amazing how he was able to finish his degree while working full time.  I never would have been able to do that. I wouldn't have been able to handle the stress and amount of work he went through.  

His graduation day meant so much to us,  cause he sacrificed pretty much everything to do what he did.  Sleep,  a regular schedule, meals with family (and lots of times food period!), hobbies, and free time to do things he enjoys. 

And he did that for several years!  

He's my hero. 

Gracie Goo decided to wear purple with mommy to show our Weber pride! 

We went to two different graduations that day.  The first was only for the Masters students in the business school.  That includes Masters of Accounting,  Taxation,  and Business Administration.  They had a cool hooding ceremony for them,  which was nice,  because there were only about 30 students,  so it was a lot more personal.  

I really liked what one of the professors said to them at that ceremony,  that with a Masters degree their opportunities are endless.  And that because they put in the hard work,  they are going to have really bright futures. 

I really appreciated that,  because it's true!  Having a Masters degree is a tremendous accomplishment.  And having one in Accounting makes Jeff extremely marketable and creditable.  

The second graduation ceremony was at the Dee Events Center and was with the entire university.  

Oh my goodness,  so many names!  Jeff ended up wishing we hadn't gone to that one,  cause it was long and boring,  haha. But,  hey, you only graduate once, right?  

Another thing we are extremely grateful for is that Grace is only a year and a half old.  

She obviously knows that Daddy comes and goes to work and what not,  but she's really not old enough to be asking for him and be sad that he's never home.  

We are so glad that he could graduate before she got any older.  

She loves having Jeff around,  and I know it's a huge blessing that she was so little while he finished school. 

Now today,  Jeff has started his new job and is officially starting his career!  That makes me feel kind of grown up. 

I feel like we have real world responsibilities now. 

(Jk we always have)

I'm so grateful that I can call Jeff my husband.  He is remarkable in so many ways! I love him!