To check or not to check?

I know there are so many different viewpoints on many things when it comes to raising your t1 child;

• real sugar vs. sugar free
• pumps vs. MDI
• Giving your child the choice when it comes to pumps, CGMs, etc.
• weighing/measuring vs. SWAG-ing

No two parents do things the same, and I think that's great.  Diabetes, after all, is not a one-size-fits-all disease.

One of the biggies that can sometimes cause a lot of tension between us D-Parents is overnight checks.  Fred and I were never taught to check Elise overnight by the CDEs, except when we made any changes to her bedtime insulin.  About two months in, I read about Dead in Bed Syndrome and discovered that a lot of parents do check overnight.  Every night.

And so have we.  Every night since she was about 14 months old.  That's a lot of lost sleep, my friends.  But those nights when you catch a 40 with two hours to go before the NPH peaks, or a 95 with .20 IOB (which would drop Elise by 50), makes all that lost sleep so worthwhile.

For the longest time we were mostly worried about catching lows.  When Elise was on MDI, we seldom corrected at night because even if she was 300 at midnight, she would almost always come down by morning.  Once we started pumping, we would just correct a high and move on. Consequent checks that night were usually done to make sure we weren't over-correcting.  Again, she would almost always come down.

Until this past Wednesday night.  I had checked Elise at 11:00 pm before I went to bed.  She was 123, which I felt comfortable with because I knew she had been running a little high during the overnight.  I set my alarm for 2:00am.

My alarm went off and I stumbled into Elise's room.  As I grabbed one of her feet to poke her toe, she rolled over and I saw the pod that we had just put on 12 hours earlier was hanging by a thread.  I took a closer look, hoping the cannula was still inserted so I could MacGuyver it up until morning.  No such luck.

At this point I might have muttered something that sounded a little like "seal" in French. 

A quick check showed her at 298.  I woke her up and with the help of my Mom (mostly to keep her calm), Elise had to endure a shot and pod change.  Sucktastic.

Afterwards, all I could think about was, "what if we didn't do overnight checks?  How high would she have been by morning?"  Thursday was a school day for Elise, and her class was participating in "Suessical the Musical" along with the rest of her school.  Most likely she would have had to stay home so I could get her safely back into range.  And she would have been so disapointed and mad at diabetes.

So to check or not to check?  I believe it is YOUR question. My viewpoint is, "your kid, your choice."  But for this family, night checks will always be a part of the diabetic life we lead.

This photo has nothing to do with the post... just a fun shot celebrating Fred's and my Mom's birthday.  The 104 is for the total number of years we were celebrating.  They didn't think it was so funny.