The days of “sit at that table until you’ve cleaned your plate” are fading fast. We’re learning that the way many of our parents treated food was… problematic, to say the least. Now, many parents lean more towards encouraging children to listen to their bodies. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full. No force-feeding, no using food as a punishment. It’s much more natural and causes fewer power struggles. But then, T1D throws a wrench in the whole process. All of a sudden, you go from having an empowered child who listens to their body to a picky eater who isn’t eating the food that they’ve gotten insulin for.

So you want to go on a date night. Ever since your child’s diagnosis, you’ve been stressed, exhausted, and you feel your relationship with your partner being taken over by finger pokes, carb counting, and insulin injections. You deserve a night out. You need a night out. But it was difficult enough leaving your child with a babysitter before diabetes. How can you have a care-free experience with your partner if you’re constantly worried about how the babysitter is handling your child’s complex medical condition?
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Parenting isn’t an easy job. There’s no “right” way to parent, no pamphlet or manual with all the answers, and yet, everyone has opinions about what you’re doing wrong. Similarly, doing the job of an organ isn’t an easy job. There’s no manual teaching you how to be a pancreas. Doctors don’t have all the answers. Other people with T1D don’t have all the answers. And yet, everyone has opinions about what you should be doing differently with your T1D child.

When he came home from school, I was waiting to look at his meter. I had received a text from the school saying that he had a very high blood sugar level around lunchtime. I couldn’t think off the top of my head why that would have happened. The pump site was fine, his insulin was good, he didn’t have anything out of the ordinary in his lunch. His blood sugar was in range at 10:00 for recess, up to 21.4 by lunchtime (about 385mg/dL), and back down to normal range at 2:00 after his insulin and lunch. So, what had happened? [Read more…]

This is for you

Your child has been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and Halloween is fast approaching. You have been concerned about what to do with all the candy. Should you skip trick or treating entirely? Should you go anyway to allow your child to feel more “normal”?

When you ask more experienced T1 parents how to approach trick or treating with T1D, you are met with an overwhelming, “do what you did before diagnosis. Go trick or treating. Let them be a kid.” But to a parent of a newly diagnosed T1 kiddo, that can be a scary concept. How exactly do you do what you did before while managing T1D?

Here are some tips and tricks that will allow you and your child to enjoy Halloween, even with T1D tagging along.

When my son’s blood sugar goes low, we treat it. It comes back into normal range with one or two “doses” of sugar. But this time, it didn’t. It wasn’t because of his diabetes, it was because of something he did. He caused a low that could have given him a seizure. He caused a low that could have put him in a coma. And he did it for one simple reason. [Read more…]

My son was two months shy of his third birthday when he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. In an instant, we went from everyday normal playing and enjoying life with our family and friends to being completely overwhelmed and bombarded with new and scary information. It’s hard to stay positive when something so shocking happens.

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