IVF and diabetes

[AliceMoonpie]

So I don't know if this will help anyone here, but having been through a few IVF rounds with a few different clinics I thought I'd share what I learned.

1. IVF doctors know pretty much NOTHING about diabetes. Your GP can tell you that your blood sugar levels are perfect but unless they're in normal (as in non diabetic range) the baby and IVF doctors will tell you they're sky high. If you get them to the levels required by the baby/IVF doctors then your GP will be in touch to tell you that your blood sugar levels are dangerously low. One hand doesn't know what the other is doing. It will make you want to scream.

2. Steroids make your blood sugar go high. High blood sugar will prevent implantation. Some IVF doctors seem to be unaware of this. If they are certain that inspite of this steroids are the right thing for you, then my advice would be to see if you can start them a few days before transfer so you can stabilise your blood sugar.

3. Progesterone will make your blood sugar go high (that's fine, just be aware of it and adjust your insulin accordingly)

4. Estrogen makes you more sensitive to insulin so will make your blood sugar go low.

5. Buserelin made my blood sugar go high - the documentation I found on the internet though just says it can have an affect on blood sugar.

6. Norethisterone didn't seem to have an impact on blood sugar for me, but documentation on the internet says it can have an affect of blood sugar.

It's possible that all these hormones have different effects on different women, but the key point is the doctors don't tell you about it. These are baby doctors, not diabetes doctors and they don't really know much about diabetes.

I hope this can help someone. It sounds insanely complicated, but just take detailed notes of what insulin you took when and what you ate (I found the dafne "blood glucose monitoring diaries" by far the best dafne.uk.com/) and it's not too bad.