The newest chapter: a future not lived in fear

Just a few years ago I sat down with my then fiancé, Jamie, and told him there was a good chance I might not be able to have children. It wasn't that I was unable. I was, and still am, completely sure that diabetes doesn't affect fertility per se, although complications undoubtedly play a role in decision-making. My inability was something quite different: it was fear. I was mentally and emotionally infertile through fear, and the idea of having a baby with diabetes was crippling. I had no reason to think I had any physical reason I might not start a family, but the many horror stories I'd heard about people with diabetes having babies left me unable to dare think about starting a family. It was a fear of the guilt if I wasn't able to manage my blood sugars during pregnancy. It was fear that once we'd started down the journey of parenthood, there was no going back and I allowed that fear to dictate my future. 

I sit here tonight writing this post in a place light-years from where I was then. Tonight, I sit here with a smile etched permanently into the curves of my face, ecstatic in the knowledge that my 13 week-old baby is growing - no, thriving - in my belly. 

How did I get here? From a place so convinced it was not an option for me? 

My new, wonderful normal, one not frozen by fear of diabetes, but in fact thriving with it,was because I found a community of people with diabetes, more fierce and powerful than any force I've come across, and that's what got me to this place. That, and the support of a husband who never once made becoming a parent a condition of our love.

I found a community of people who changed my fear, self-doubt and total lack of diabetes confidence, into a fierce desire to say 'eff you' to the journey that diabetes would bring. I found a community of people who said, "You can, and you will". They shared with me their stories of hope and made me realise that the fears I'd been holding on to by reading one too many horror stories were not just misguided, they were just plain wrong! 

Piece by piece the last 5 years of blogging have shown me, and my husband and father-to-be Jamie, that when it comes to having a baby we can, and we are. 

IThe next chapter - one with undertones of excitement, hope and still a healthy touch of ohgodhowthehelldoyouraiseakid? - is well and truly under way. 

It gives me such enormous pleasure to introduce you to, Baby Presswell.