Not long after I wrote about how I had started logging again early last month, my efforts were dashed. Frankly, I don't know why I have trouble keeping up with it.

I've tried using pretty pens, funky pens, different colored pens. I've tried taking different approaches to logging: uber detailed all the way to scarce information--just enough to have a vague idea of what I ate and what my post prandials were.

It wasn't always this way. When I was pregnant with No. 3 I kept very detailed logs and kept every last one of them, too. I faxed them to my diabetes educator once a week and she poured over them to make sure we had my insulin doses right, our carb counts right and that we were doing the best we could to ensure a healthy Michelle and a healthy baby. I was accountable to someone other than myself. That's what kept me doing those logs then. Not long after the baby came, the logging stopped.

Now that I'm actually on the pump, it's definitely more important to log, especially and at least for the first few weeks. Writing down every morsel of food I eat and knowing (or being able to download) how much insulin I took with each meal and snack will help me fine-tune my basals, my insulin sensitivity, my insulin to carb ratios and a host of other aspects of my diabetes management.

So today I decided to try yet another gimmick that I hope will make me more interested in logging: I bought a girly three-ring binder to put my paper logs into. Prior to this, I had a wad of papers that I folded in half and kept in my purse. Their ragged edges were deceiving. So the binder is something big (and pink!) and hopefully more user friendly.

Not only that, but it will be something Dr. C and I can investigate together, along with my pump and meter downloads, because those downloads only give so much information. It's just one of those routines I'll have to get used to.