Sleepovers

Maybe it's the over-protective mom in me that feel this way but sleepovers at friends' house is a stressful issue. Currently I cannot think of any one person that can host a sleepover and have my daughter included without having to get a long list of instructions from us, her parents. Grandparents are out of the question since they live thousands of miles away from us and have no experience with diabetes treatment, and friends, well, I don't feel comfortable enough to generate such a long list and give it to a friends' parent and even if I did, it wouldn't take away the feeling that we are doing something that might risk our daughter's health. So the question is; does it worth it? Well, depends on who answers. My daughter would definitely say 'sure' while I would say not really, for now, until she is old enough to be completely independent, because, as funny as it may sound, when it comes to her diabetes, I trust my 8 year old daughter much more than I trust anyone else, my girl that by the age of 5 and a half already knew how to check her blood sugar, operate her insulin pump and tell the huge difference between 0.5 and 5.0 units of insulin or any other number with a decimal point, she does a better job than us. That's why I feel pretty confident sending her for play dates on her own. However, this is not really the case for night times, when the story gets a little twist. Once she falls asleep everything becomes solely our responsibility. We need to make sure her blood sugar doesn't turn up to a nighttime nightmare. Late night lows are one of my worst fears and in order to avoid it I make sure we don't over estimate her dinner's carb count and that she has a snack at bedtime, just before she brushes her teeth. I never give her insulin for this snack, Something that creates disagreements with her endocrinologist but raising your sleeping child's blood sugar level is much harder than just adding a little more insulin to correct a high blood sugar, especially when they are using an insulin pump and even more when this pump has a remote control, thank god for that! So I check her blood sugar before I go to sleep, correct it (too high means more insulin but too low means I would need to wake her up, get her to drink or eat something with fast acting sugars and wait 15-30 minutes, recheck and make sure her blood sugar raises to safe enough levels). Then I can go to sleep calm, knowing we are in control. Now, it's not always so predictable, many factors can have an effect on blood sugar at night; physical activity during the day, stress, hormones, site change, hot bath, new foods...you name it. So in addition to preparing a long list of instruction I would need to make a full investigation to that poor friend's parent to make sure the blood sugar at bedtime reflects the actual blood sugar for the rest of the night. Isn't it just easier to host the sleepovers in our house for now?