Cooking up a baby hiker

As many of you know, Big Ring is convinced we’re having a cyclist, not just a thumb-sucking alien baby, but a world-class cyclist, like a baby Mark Cavendish, or Andy Schleck, or Jeannie Longo kind of cyclist. But me, I’m pretty sure we got a hiker on our hands.

Here me out on this.

I had to stop running early in the pregnancy, because the activity, no matter how tempered or short it was drastically dropped my blood sugars to near comatose state. I took up the walking, much to my chagrin, but still, no matter how boring that snail’s pace activity was, my blood sugars almost always bottomed out with that one as well. (Maybe the kid was so bored, it had to add some low BG excitement into the mix.) So I pulled out Mr. Foldy, figuring not only would I be sprucing up my athletic pursuits, but surely he couldn’t do much damage to my BG. Oh how wrong I was. One huff-and-puff up a hill, and I was having to guzzle back OJ and sugar cubes.

Hiking, though, it seems, thumb-sucking alien baby and I have no problems with that activity! It doesn’t matter how laid back, how steep, or how long a hike, my blood sugars have stayed intact every single time … during the hike that is 😉

After my first hike (since pregnancy) a couple weeks ago, I’ve been hiking up a storm. I’ve done small hikes around my parents acreage and a few up Westwood with my favourite hiking chicks. And today, on my first day of holidays, Big Ring and I trekked around Buntzen Lake:


Here I thought I had bears to be scared of, you see that fallen tree behind me, the one with the eyes, legs and antennae, it was actually the largest tree bug I’ve EVER seen!

It’s funny, last night when I suggested to Big Ring we hike Buntzen Lake, apparently he thought it would be a half hour stroll – not 9 km! He didn’t say anything, and I had no idea he had no clue, especially given that he had dressed in his hiking clothes. But about 30 minutes into the trek, he started making these shocked comments: ‘You actually ran around here;’ ‘Wow, this is a good workout;’ ‘So, uhm, when does it end?’

Two hours and 10 minutes, that’s when 😀

We went about an hour after lunch, which meant I halfed my lunch-time bolus to account for the exercise. I started the hike with an 8.7 BG, which is higher than I like them to be, but I knew they would come down. I didn’t give myself a temporary reduced basal, because that seems to be giving me more trouble than it’s worth during this pregnancy. And so, a little over an hour into the hike, my BG was at 4.4. I ate a chocolate chip Z bar without giving myself a bolus, and continued on. I was getting worried near the end of the hike that they were starting to bottom out as my legs were feeling rather jelloish, but I think that had more to do with three hikes in three days, because when we got back to the car, I was sitting at a comfortable 5.0.

Too bad they didn’t stay that way. An hour after the hike they were clinging to an unsettling 2.3 🙁 But hey, they didn’t go low on the hike, which is great! Now I’ve just got to figure out post-exercise BG stability, and we’ll be golden. Oh happy day!


A happy hiker makes for a happy pregnant chick!

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