Waiting for Daylight

As a parent of a child with Type 1 Diabetes you spend countless nights up battling diabetes and waiting for daylight to come. During the day blood sugars are just as unstable as during the night however, you have one advantage.......you can see the symptoms!

During the night this is a much more difficult thing to detect as a parent. The symptoms are often the same things a non diabetic does in their sleep: Restlessness, Sweating etc. Since J's diagnosis my husband and I have been alternating nights sleeping with him. Before life with a CGM and a Diabetic Alert Dog we just had to go off of intuition and his sleep behaviors to tell us when we should check his BG. However, since getting a CGM and Hope we have a new layer of protection for J and a more solid ground for us to monitor him and keep him safe. While, we still alternate nights "on duty" watching the CGM and training Hope to come to our room and alert us when J's numbers are out of range, I am still scared that those two tools just won't be enough and the "what if's" start to creep in. What if we didn't hear the CGM alarm from our room? What if Hope doesn't come to alert us? What if he isn't alive the next morning? You might be thinking to yourself, "What do you mean, alive the next morning?" Well unfortunately for a person living with T1D nighttime is the most dangerous, and there's a little thing called Dead In Bed Syndrome lurking in the dark. Here is a brief description of DIB Syndrome http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/d_0n_g00.htm

While we know as parents we are doing everything in our power to prevent DIB and major complications, there is always the "What If". So until Hope is fully trained in night alerting and until I can get past this fear which I know will never go away....One of us will always be right next to him staring at the CGM screen, fighting diabetes, training Hope and WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT!!!