Middle of the Night

We check Lainey's sugar 6-8 times a day. One of those times is around midnight, while she's sleeping. Amazingly, she rarely wakes up when we prick her finger. Most of the time Lainey's sugar is high at night, so we give her insulin, but on occasion we have to wake her up to eat or drink something because her sugar is too low.

As a parent, it's scarier to have lows because sometimes it can result in unconsciousness. Thankfully we've never experienced that with Lainey, but in case it does happen, we have a special shot to give her called glucagon.

Ideally, we'd like Lainey's blood sugars to be anywhere from 70 to 140, and even up to 180 is acceptable.

With that said, last night when I checked Lainey's sugar she was at 41. The lowest she's ever been is 38, and that happened in the middle of the night too. So I grabbed some fruit snacks, usually 19-21 carbs, and tried to wake her. She was in a very deep sleep, but I managed to get some down her. She was chewing with her eyes closed, but at least she was swallowing, and I had to pop a fruit snack in her mouth one at a time.

We found out that for night time lows, fruit snacks work the best. Usually when diabetics are low they'll drink juice. Lainey has a hard time sitting up to drink when she's low and half asleep.

Again, taking this from Sydney's blog here are some symptoms of a low blood sugar:

--she's lethargic

--her eyes "see blurry"

--she's shaky

--she's tired

In some cases low blood sugars can cause unconsciousness, coma, seizures, fainting, and even death.

With Lainey, I've noticed she'll cry for no reason (typical of any 3 year old diabetic or not), she'll tell me she's sad, or she'll ask to eat something. And when she does eat, she'll eat very fast. Other times, I won't be able to tell if she's low at all.

Like I said, lows are scary.