Our beautiful girl turns twelve years old today. It’s both a lifetime and a minute in time and I sometimes look at her and still cannot believe that she is here.

When I was pregnant, I kept an online diary for a diabetes website. That site is no longer there, but I still have the diary and have been waiting for the right moment to publish it here on my blog.

Today is that day. It’s a long read – a short entry for each week of the pregnancy – but it takes me back to exactly how I was feeling and coping throughout the pregnancy. My favourite part is the last part – our baby’s arrival – which I wrote when she had been home for only days and my head was in a new-parent fog and I was desperate to try to put in words what had happened and how I felt on the day. It’s funny, because it was starting to get murky then, but today, I can remember everything about it.

We tell our daughter her birth story occasionally – often around her birthday. And in there amongst the way we felt when we first heard her cry and saw her face for the first time, is the story of how much she is wanted and the path we took to actually make that happen.

It’s all here, so please have a read if you’d like. Yesterday, when giving my talk to some healthcare professionals one of them asked if I would mind sharing how I felt when pregnant and what a diabetes pregnancy is like.

And I said: It was the most difficult thing I have ever done emotionally. It was the most intensive time of diabetes care I have ever experienced. I saw my healthcare professionals more frequently than I saw my friends and family. I was checking my BGL over 20 times a day – there was no CGM here then. I had never felt such anxiety or fear as I did at that time. But equally, it was the most magical time because in amongst all the diabetes stuff, was my daughter and now – now all I think about is how it was the best thing I could ever have done. 

Twelve years old and growing up into such an amazing young woman. I could only have hoped on the day she was born that she would be as wonderful as she is today. Happy birthday to our magical girl. I never thought I would be able to love her more than I did the day she was born and yet, somehow, that love just keeps growing. We’re so excited to see what you do next darling. And we’ll be right there alongside you, continuing to cheer you on.

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