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Episode 34- Parenting T1D and Marriage
314 Plays1 year ago
Amanda and her husband, @t1d.dad, sit down for a chat all about parenting their T1D and how it affects their marriage. They will problem solve real time and talk through different parenting decisions made daily. Tune in to hear what two parents (with very different personalities) do for their type 1 diabetic child and how they talk to each other about their decisions.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Type 1 Together'
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the 108 podcast. I'm Amanda. And I'm Danny. And we are husband and wife team on Type 1 Together. Okay. We are stripping down life with Type 1 diabetes from two people who live different versions of it every single day.
Stepping into New Roles
00:00:18
Speaker
Please remember that Type 1 Together does not give medical advice. We are only sharing from personal experience. And today I am taking on the role of Raquel and Amanda.
00:00:31
Speaker
or I guess T1D dad is taking on Raquel's role. I'm taking on your role. You're taking on Raquel's role. Okay, there we go. I've got my husband with me today. Raquel and I got busy last week and we were unable to find a time
Parenting Challenges with Diabetes
00:00:49
Speaker
to record. So here we are over the weekend recording with my husband and today is going to be a topic or a discussion on the topic of
00:01:01
Speaker
parenting and like parenting challenges and how type 1 diabetes affects those parenting challenges. Mainly like when you want to follow the guidelines for correctly, quote unquote, parenting a toddler, but then like diabetes messes it up so like you can't use consistent parenting techniques, right? Yeah.
00:01:29
Speaker
Well put. I mean, we have two kids, one with type one and one without. So I don't know. We, we try to parent them similarly, but like you said, there's a lot of things that we can't do with our type one toddler. Like, you know, take, to get right into it in the mealtime stuff is really difficult where she'll request a specific meal, we'll make it for her and she'll decide that she doesn't want it right away. And so,
00:01:56
Speaker
you know, we're kind of put in a tough position where we don't get to say, you know, this is your dinner for the night. If you get hungry, this is what you can have because she's kind of starting to figure out that if she doesn't eat her rice and salmon and asparagus that she had asked for, then she gets something sweet. And it's not really fair to her little sister to use that same parenting technique on her of, hey, you know, this is your dinner. This is what you get tonight.
00:02:25
Speaker
I don't know. It's tough because one is a medical necessity and the other one is in the spirit of fairness with how we kind of have to treat her sister. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I don't.
Impact of Diabetes on Parenting Goals
00:02:37
Speaker
I mean, I don't know. I think that if I let myself get too into it, I get really, really frustrated at just our situation in general because type 1 diabetes throws such a wrench into
00:02:51
Speaker
everything, you know? And so there's a lot of stuff that I, in order to maintain my sanity, have to just like let go and not think about. And it is very triggering already having this discussion because we are very intentional about how we parent our children. Like we do our research, we come together, we have discussions daily on how we want to handle
00:03:21
Speaker
toddler outbursts and, you know, just standard parenting situations. And then we get put in those positions to, okay, parent and, um, implement what's the word I'm thinking of discipline. And then we can't, and then the whole, okay. The thing that, the thing that drives me the most nuts is when I really want to be able to discipline,
00:03:51
Speaker
in a way that's kind and fair and gentle, but in a way that tells her, I mean business. You're not going to be able to run to show
00:04:04
Speaker
run the show here and then diabetes steps in and guess what? The four-year-old does run the fucking show and it's just a really difficult push-pull in parenting when parenting is already a challenging push-pull. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head and we were talking about this the other day where we were saying that she has taught us so much just
Managing Meltdowns and Stress
00:04:27
Speaker
her existence and who she is as a person and I think the biggest thing is sometimes the harder you try and
00:04:34
Speaker
grip onto something and control and dig in in a power struggle, the worse it's going to get and the more resistance you're going to get. And so it feels like, personally, when I get into a really bad, difficult headspace is when I'm trying to really dig in and all these power trips and, you know, maintain that, I don't know, hierarchy is not the wrong word.
00:04:57
Speaker
When I take a deep breath and take myself out of it, it does feel like that is kind of a futile, a futile effort with her sometimes because the way to get, I guess, the outcome we want, which is for her to learn right and wrong and for her to become a well-rounded, functioning member of society,
00:05:18
Speaker
you know, because of the way she's wired, she's always felt like she thinks she's older than she is. It requires time away from the immediate meltdown. And then it requires a follow up conversation treating her like she's a mature person capable of making her own decisions. And it's not as gratifying as
00:05:38
Speaker
you know, the immediate example that jumps into my head was we were getting out of the car, we were 20 feet away from the front door, and I asked her to bring her shoes inside that she had taken off in the car. And that resulted in a 25 minute, her laying down in the driveway, just laying there. And she was going low. And so I couldn't, I couldn't just play the waiting game with her and wait out there for however long it took for her to get up and walk inside. I kind of had to just bring her inside and get her a low snack. And so
00:06:08
Speaker
That's the kind of thing where, yeah, maybe you lose the battle, if that's even the right way to put it, but you can win the war of it's all about the rebuilding and the recontextualizing after the fact, you know, when you're out of the emotional moment and talk about, here's what happened. From my perspective, here's what should have happened. What are your thoughts? You know, making sure that it's not too much of a, like,
00:06:34
Speaker
We want to make sure that she knows that we are the ones in charge of the house, but giving her the space and leeway to be her own person, make her own decisions, it feels like with her specifically, that makes her more likely to make the right choices in the future versus making the wrong choices just for some sense of independence because of maybe diabetes is taking that away for her and she feels like she has to exercise it elsewhere. Yeah.
00:06:59
Speaker
That situation also though, she was going low and having a meltdown. I wonder if she was already low. We know that her behavior is more challenging when she's low or chronically high. She just doesn't feel good and she can't always express that. So then that's another added challenge of parenting.
Marital Dynamics and Communication
00:07:19
Speaker
Where parenting is already this game of
00:07:22
Speaker
forcing yourself to constantly take a deep breath and not react and share your calm to their crazy. And it's like, type of diabetes puts you in a state of fight, flight or freeze a hundred percent of the time that you're alive and like in charge of it. And so
00:07:44
Speaker
So does a toddler's meltdown. It's like, it's literally science that a toddler's meltdown puts a parent in a place of fight, fight, or fleas. Oh my God. It's so itchy. Fight, right? Wait, oh wait, fight, flight, or freeze. Holy. And so then it's like these two parts of your brain that are going at the same time of like, Oh my God, I need to stay calm.
00:08:15
Speaker
in the midst of this tantrum and shit, my kid is dying. Like I know that that's not how truly severe it is, but that's how truly severe it can become if you don't act in that moment. And then that just like sets each parent up for kind of just a baseline level of being exhausted and snippy and like short tempered and whatever. And then there's where the marital issues come in. So,
00:08:44
Speaker
I like to think that we do a decent job where like any other couple, of course, where we snip at each other sometimes or we need space or we get frustrated or sometimes very rarely we have our big fights, but like how do we keep those at bay? What's your take on how we manage that?
00:09:05
Speaker
I think one thing that is kind of a practice skill that we've had to get used to after the diabetes diagnosis that we just dealt with differently beforehand because it wasn't as necessary is when we can feel that things are just a little bit off or someone snippy. It's not necessarily the right call for us to dive into it and dissect it and figure out where it's coming from because we know where it's coming from.
00:09:29
Speaker
at you know, we've been redlining for years now in terms of the mental capacity of dealing with diabetes along with all the other stuff in our busy lives. And I think what we do, at least from my perspective is when you can tell the other person's just kind of had it, we just
00:09:47
Speaker
allow ourselves the space to go to sleep that night, talk about it tomorrow, if we even need to talk about it. You know, it feels like there's this kind of an implicit understanding that if someone's in a grumpy mood, it's probably just because they're pushed way past their breaking point that day and they just need some rest.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, we do give each other a lot of grace, I would say. Because I used to have a hard time, you know, you hear the saying of, don't go to bed angry. And it's not that we're necessarily angry at each other. But I used to always feel like we had to wait until we were in a really good spot before we went to sleep. And now it feels like going to sleep sometimes is the best thing for us because it allows us to just reset and wake up in the morning and kind of start fresh.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah. Also sorry if you guys can hear noises in the background. Our four year old or type of diabetic child who, who is definitely our spunky child. She is our wild, independent, um, more tantrums than average. Yeah. Uh, she decided it'd be really funny to come into the bedroom, even though she knows she's not supposed to be coming in right now.
00:10:53
Speaker
I would say the other thing though is I don't want anyone to hear that and think to themselves, okay, so now I'm just not going to say anything if I'm in a bad mood or if I notice my spouse is in a bad mood. And then if you still are feeling off the next day or two days later or whatever, forcing yourself to ignore it, that's not what we do. When we're off long-term or honestly when we're off more than just a night, then
00:11:22
Speaker
we have that discussion that day. We don't let anything fester and we're really open, I think, to hearing what the other person's feeling and I'm distracted because sorry, the four-year-old is literally just screaming in the hallway. Shut up. I think
00:11:52
Speaker
that when we have our talks, we have gotten to this point of being able to say, I'm feeling this way. Here are a few examples. And then there's other things that I can't think of at the moment that are contributing to this overall negative feeling I have. And then the other person can say, OK, I hear that. I feel that. I acknowledge it.
00:12:19
Speaker
And also there are these other things happening that you might need to reflect on that you might need to work on. And our egos are checked at the door. And it's like a very, I think back and forth. I agree. I mean, diabetes is such a daily trial and error, and you're going to have a lot of bad results that separating emotion from the actions is so important. You know, if
00:12:48
Speaker
You just mentioned things that we can each work on just in general, but then I think it's also really important that when you get feedback about, hey, what happened with this low? Or, you know, how much did you dose her here? Or would you give her to eat here? Like viewing it from almost a scientific perspective of,
00:13:08
Speaker
What were the inputs? What did that produce? What should we do next time versus you did something bad or you did something good? Because like we say, we want to talk to our kids about diabetes being in range, out of range. Here are the things to correct either of those. Dealing with diabetes as the person who doesn't have it, you have to approach it the same way. You have to approach it as gave her a unit of insulin for 10 grams of carbs and she went out and played on the playground and
00:13:37
Speaker
drop down into
Perfectionism in Diabetes Management
00:13:38
Speaker
the 40s. Okay. Now we know she's really insulin sensitive and it affects her more when she exercises. So we won't do that next time instead of feeling like I failed or feeling like the other person's mad at you or something like that. You know, it just has to be, you have to make it an objective analysis instead of an emotional analysis. Yeah, but that has to start with each individual turning in and processing, I think,
00:14:04
Speaker
first step processing the trauma of the diagnosis and the trauma of the complete and utter life shift. Because if you as the individual have not processed that yet, then there could be a coping mechanism of perfection, like an attempt at grasping at perfection when it comes to
00:14:32
Speaker
blood sugar numbers and when that's not achieved or when your spouse doesn't do that or your partner doesn't do that the same way you do, then you lash out because at the end of the day, you're just seeking desperately any control in this disease that you have literally no control over and the change in your life that you had no control over and no say in. And so starting there I think is really important if anyone listening is actually struggling with that stuff.
Children's Eating Habits and Diabetes
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, I, I tend to be on the perfectionist side for a lot of things and I get caught in my own head a lot when something's not going
00:15:10
Speaker
as well as I think it should in my head. And you've mentioned this on a couple previous podcasts where when you go out of town, I set my goal mentally of I want to do 100% in range with no alerts. So Amanda doesn't get anything on her phone so she can just focus on what she's doing and hang out with her friends or like whatever the situation is.
00:15:31
Speaker
And A, I realize I'm starting to recognize that that's not healthy. And it's because I've never gotten it. And I think about it afterwards. And I think to myself, okay, well, what would happen if it was 100% range? You know, maybe there's a fleeting five second sense of, oh, great job. But you know, the next time she goes out of range, it's going to be gone. And it's just never going to be repeatable, lifelong thing ever. And so
00:15:58
Speaker
when I'm thinking about, you know, who does that actually benefit? It probably doesn't benefit her health all that much to be, you know, 100% in range for two days. That's such a short period of time, one time versus the, you know, kind of the daily life ups and downs. And then also, she's probably gonna feel how neurotic I'm being with
00:16:21
Speaker
You know, watching her like a hawk, watching what she eats like a hawk, and for her holistic health, her mental health, her physical health, picking up on stress within the household is...
00:16:33
Speaker
you know, I think a big part of that. And so if she can tell that I'm putting this perfectionist goal on myself, it's probably going to run off on her in some way. And so that's not worth whatever the marginal health benefit is of those extra couple of time and range points. And so that ties into the whole, it's a marathon, not a sprint. It's, you know, you want to win the war, not the battle.
00:16:58
Speaker
It's so hard to get on board with if you have roots of being a perfectionist because it is an impossible fight. And even if you win, it goes away immediately, you know, probably. Yeah. And the other thing with all of this that I'm thinking is like, great. You meet a 24 hour or 48 hour, 100% range. That for sure would feel really good. But when it comes down to it, technology is imperfect. So,
00:17:27
Speaker
you are relying on imperfect technology to tell you, you got a hundred percent. But really what if that one time the blood sugar went up to 178 on the Dexcom was actually 184. Guess what? You suck. You didn't actually get a hundred percent range. It's like so not worth it to me. And I got to that point a while ago. I feel like we're,
00:17:53
Speaker
You know, I don't know if it's if it's like a drastically different day where obviously we're really battling very tough highs and and or like really low lows and it's like truly negatively affecting her health. That's a different story. I totally beat myself up. I'm not perfect. I don't have it all figured out all that. But yeah, also, I don't think about it at all when I have them during the week and you're at work and I'm like, oh, no, he's getting an alarm while he's in a meeting like, well,
00:18:23
Speaker
It's hard. Yeah, it is hard. It's super hard. Okay. I have a question. Let's do like a real time problem solving, parenting discussion right now. So last night you guys, we, first of all, our kids are two and a half and four and a half. So they are the classic like, I want snacks all day long. And then you,
00:18:47
Speaker
or they say I'm hungry all day long and you just feel like you're constantly feeding them but they're eating nothing at the same time and they're always saying I'm hungry and then you want to literally scream at the top of your lungs because it's so frustrating. And so that was the day that we had yesterday and I had made Hattie a snack plate that she had eaten, I don't know, like three or something and then it's 5.30 or six and we're making dinner and we have
00:19:16
Speaker
dinner ready that she likes buttered noodles. Really painted us into a corner with buttered noodles. Really painted us into a corner but we did use the bonsa noodles so there's like a bunch of protein in that and they're plant based and stuff so that's good. And then steamed carrots because that's what she asked for. Carrots warmed up is what she calls them. Carrots warmed up. Carrots warmed up. And so we get
00:19:41
Speaker
this for her. And I know that she had a snack plate like two and a half hours ago. And I know that when she has a snack plate in the late afternoon, sometimes she does not always eat her dinner. Other times she does. So she sits down. I'm like, are you hungry? And she's like, yup. And I think to myself, okay, I'm going to hold off on this. Like it's a slow delaying or slow digesting carb.
00:20:07
Speaker
So I'm going to dose for 10 grams right now instead of the 40 that's on her plate. 10 grams. How many bites of pasta do you think she took? Three bites. Literally three bites and ate one baby carrot warmed up and
00:20:22
Speaker
We were, I, at first was like, you know, she takes one bite and then she's like, let's play. And we're like, oh my God, sit down. It's dinner time. It is not time to play. This is one of our parenting like struggles is, I think it's hard because very often during the week you come home right as they're eating dinner.
00:20:41
Speaker
Because of traffic and stuff, like it's not always feasible for us to eat dinner. The four of us as a family because the girls are hungry before he can get home from work. And it's if we wanted to all eat dinner together, we'd have to make two separate dinners or we'd have to eat chicken nuggets and butter pasta. And so that's another thing that's tough is I always hear the advice of eat dinner together. It's going to be so much easier to get them to eat, but they just don't eat any food. And we've tried everything, literally everything. We've tried HelloFresh. We have tried
00:21:10
Speaker
like make your own meals. We've tried the frozen. I've tried doing like gourmet homemade freaking shepherd's pie and like meals like that that take an hour and a half. If this tells you anything about how picky they are, I took our two year old to Costco today and she turned down every single sample. Didn't want a single sample. I mean, that's the pickiest human being on the planet. That's so frustrating. Yeah. And so,
00:21:35
Speaker
Basically, it's like, okay, a lot of experts, including our own physician who we love, our pediatrician is the best. She goes, well, you know, just make dinner and offer the healthy options and then just say, this is what's for dinner. Like eat, eat what you want and listen to your body. And I'm like, listen, that sounds great. That sounds awesome. I would love to be able to do that. She will go low and die or she'll go high.
00:22:06
Speaker
And then we're battling highs all night. But if she didn't actually eat anything, and she's going to bed hungry, and we give her even a little bit of insulin at just the wrong time, then we're battling lows for the rest of the night because her belly is completely empty for hours on end. So and then they wake us up at 530 and say, I'm hungry. Yes. Yeah. And so we have
00:22:26
Speaker
The way Dani and I have figured this out, we both come to the conclusion and understanding that we make dinner for the kids. And then once the kids go to bed, we figure out what we're doing for ourselves. And that is what's working for our family right now. But what's not working is when Hattie is sitting there and we have already dosed her and she says, I'm not hungry anymore because we
00:22:55
Speaker
are in charge of creating a healthy relationship with food for our daughters. And we're in charge of keeping her alive, healthy, and safe in relation to type 1 diabetes. And we're in charge of just parenting them in general and being like, this is dinnertime. Sit and eat dinner. We are not a on-demand meal service here. So what do we do in those situations?
00:23:25
Speaker
I think we handled it well last night where we kind of, you almost just have to give in a little bit. And we just said, thanks for listening to your body. You ate till you were full. Want to make sure you understand there's not going to be any other food tonight other than what's right in front of you. So that is your dinner. If we go to the bath,
00:23:47
Speaker
that means you're done with your dinner. And the reason we do that is because eating food too close when you go to sleep isn't good for you because your body can't digest it as well, you don't sleep as well. And so we try and explain it all to her in a non-diabetes fashion so that it's widely applicable and it doesn't feel like we're just treating her differently because she has diabetes. We're saying these are all things we do no matter what. So we don't wanna force you to eat because we don't want you to
00:24:16
Speaker
grow up and feel like you have to finish your whole plate every time. We are applauding you for listening to your body, but then later we have a conversation about, hey, if you tell us you're gonna eat a lot of food and we dose you with insulin, that makes it difficult because then you're gonna go low later. And this is where we just have to have a lot of faith and trust and open communication with her because she is starting to and will definitely figure out the fact of
00:24:43
Speaker
If I don't eat this, I get an ice cream sandwich or something like that. And so those are the things that are going to be unavoidable. And we're going to have to, I don't know how yet, but find a way to nip that in the bud and have her operate in good faith and not try and con us into giving her sweets. And I think that comes from a non
00:25:05
Speaker
restrictive relationship with food life.
Glucose Management Challenges
00:25:09
Speaker
But it is such a tightrope. But it is also so frustrating last night. I was just so irritated because like we said, she had three bites of pasta and one carrot, nowhere near 10 grams of carbs, nowhere near. And we started the meal at like 120 ish. And
00:25:29
Speaker
In the bath, of course, we didn't have her readings because she was underwater. Her Dex home was underwater and like, whatever. And we could have her get out and suddenly she's jumping by like 20 to 30 points every five minutes. No sense. No sense. And then she was up to what, like 250? Yeah. And then she just sat there and this is where
00:25:55
Speaker
Like for me at least, I really have to check myself because I get really like irritable. It's one of my triggers. It's one of my sensitive spots of giving her too much insulin at night and then having to wake her up for a low that we caused. If it's a low that just happens randomly, it is what it is. I hate that still for her or whatever.
00:26:17
Speaker
but there is something so wrong to me about giving dose after dose after dose, trying to get a high down while she's sleeping. And then it just plummets her. And that of course happened last night. But again, hindsight's 2020, but we dosed her what, three separate times? Four times? Nothing more than a unit at a time. I think we got her up to two and a quarter, two and a half total on board maximum.
00:26:45
Speaker
And she didn't start coming down until maybe 45 minutes or an hour after the last dose. And so the flip side of that was yesterday or two days ago where I was doing the exact same thing we did last night, but she never stopped going up. And she kind of sat the same way she did last night. And then she started going up again and I ended up having to change her pump. And so those I think are the most, almost gaslighting moments for me and grating on my nerves where
00:27:15
Speaker
There is something happening. There is a method you're trying to use to fix it. And two completely opposite outcomes can happen on different days. And both outcomes are equally dangerous and frustrating and impactful to your kid. And so we've had it both times where she gets up into the 300s after the exact same thing we did last night. But we've also had it where she gets down into the 40s.
00:27:39
Speaker
And so not knowing which one is going to happen and not having a lens into the thousands of different factors that are going on under the surface in her body that are making either of those happen on a given day is the most difficult part of diabetes for me because you can never feel confident in exactly getting the right outcome for what you're doing just because there's so much uncertainty. Yeah.
00:28:03
Speaker
I feel like right now I'm in a space of like her needs have kind of been all over the place. And so it's been like a week plus of pretty, pretty up and down. Like her time and range is still where we like it, but her standard deviation is way off. And for some reason that really bugs me too.
00:28:27
Speaker
Just I think because it's like constantly chasing the roller coaster kind of feeling and I don't I don't mind having a day like that every now and again, but I personally right now I'm really tired and it makes me like so anxious being multiple days in a row on that roller coaster.
00:28:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there are some days where you have a general idea that she's not going to drop more than a couple points at a time, maybe 10 at the most. But there are some days where you can just feel that if you look away from your phone for 20 minutes, she could be 70 points lower than the last time you looked after being flat. And that's happened to us a lot in the last month where
00:29:07
Speaker
I think you mentioned the vitamin D. I don't know if she's more insulin sensitive, but she'll be flat, flat, flat, flat, flat at 140 and then 120, 100, 70, 50. And you were, you know, I was doing dishes or something and I looked at my phone 15 minutes later and she's all of a sudden really needing a low snack. And that kind of stuff is, that's what feels like it keeps you in fight or flight all the time because you can, you can never fully relax.
00:29:34
Speaker
So how do we get to the point of relaxing right now? I don't think you can with a young kid. I think I think not being able to feel what's going on in her body firsthand is the toughest part of being a parent of a kid with diabetes because you and Raquel have talked about it on podcasts where Raquel says, I don't know how you guys do it when you can't feel the sensation of being low or high. You know, we're relying on these devices that have no other context clues for us anywhere other than maybe how she's acting.
00:30:03
Speaker
But even then, if she's just chilling or doing whatever, we don't really know until we get the alert or we see the trend change. But I think it'll change when she gets a little older and can understand what these different sensations she's feeling mean. It makes me... I just feel crazy. I feel crazy. I feel like we need to get out of the house right now.
00:30:28
Speaker
my mom is watching the girls. Yeah, we'll get out after we do the podcast. I know. But it's like, as we're talking about this, it's making me like, I feel like I'm short circuiting and that to me is, I think Raquel and I have talked about this separately too, where yes, we do diabetes for a living.
00:30:51
Speaker
And that's about all I can take of it. Like for the most part, you and I don't talk too, too much about all of the ins and outs of Hattie's diabetes management. Like it sort of just goes on in the background, like static noise and.
00:31:08
Speaker
it's rare that we'll sit down and be like, let's go through all of her settings and figure out all these things together. We just kind of like work in tandem with one another. And then when something is really off for a long time, then we'll sit and have a conversation. I think that is helpful for me at least because I am just, because I'm the primary parent during the week,
00:31:34
Speaker
during work hours during the week, I'm like extra just like fried and that yeah, I had to talk about it. I was thinking about this this week where I'm generally a more reactive person than you are. I think you're more proactive than me and throughout our relationship when we're together,
00:31:56
Speaker
I go into a little bit of a default mode where I don't do this consciously. I think it's very subconscious, but knowing that you're a proactive person and I'm generally reactive, I think my brain goes through different thought patterns than when I'm by myself. And so when you're out of the house or you're out of town or something, I have a different diabetes thought process than when you're
00:32:22
Speaker
home when you're like in the vicinity and we're all together. And so I think one thing that I want to work on a lot is not falling into that comfort zone. Because I think what that means is I'm not as proactive about checking blood sugars, you know, doing all the mental math of her exercise and her food and her, you know, activity and all that kind of stuff, just because I think there's something in my subconscious that knows you're there too, and you might also be looking at it. But
00:32:52
Speaker
You're doing that all week while I'm gone, and then work together at dinner, bath, bedtime when I get home. But if I'm not taking that proactive role on the weekend, then you never truly get a break from being the proactive one. You're at most being a joint caretaker when I get to be totally not thinking about it when I'm at work, unless I get an urgent loan and I'm looking at it.
Overnight Management and Mental Health
00:33:17
Speaker
But I think it's a really important thing that
00:33:21
Speaker
I've admittedly not done as much as I should have as when we wake up on a Saturday or Sunday being like, you should just try to not think about it at all. And I'll act like you're not here and I'll take the whole day. I don't know if that's super necessary because it feels like a big break for me having you here and like for the dinner times or
00:33:45
Speaker
the early mornings when you are able to stick around longer to help with like breakfast and stuff. And then the weekends that it doesn't feel the time I feel the most guilty, which is a personal thing I need to work on is the overnights. When I like, I would say you take like 90, 95% of overnight cares. And we've discussed that you do that because I have for the most part, all the other stuff, but I still can't shake the feeling of,
00:34:15
Speaker
feeling guilty for letting you do that, but I'm also like too tired to get up and do anything. Well, it makes you feel any better. I'm still getting full, full Garmin recharge. Yeah. I watch tracks my sleep and even when I wake up, it's only when I wake up once that I get full recharge still. If I wake up more than once, it doesn't get all the way up there. Yeah. Maybe that's also where I'm at because like last night she did the whole thing where we,
00:34:45
Speaker
saved the low after having to stack insulin to get her stubborn high blood sugar down, saved the low, got her back up, and then the basal increase from the pump brought her back down like four hours later. And it was reading low, but I just had a gut feeling that she wasn't actually low. So I did a finger prick before making her wake up and like drink something again. And she was like 73, which is where she
00:35:12
Speaker
is very often in the middle of the night. She's in like the 70s and 80s. I feel like the last four Dexcoms have been reading 10 to 20% lower than fingerpokes. Right? I feel like the... Even after we calibrate. Yeah. I don't know if it's like the Dexcom is...
00:35:31
Speaker
Like, I don't know if this is a real thing, but what it seems like is that now that Dexcom is finally getting FDA approved for all these other pumps that the G6 is kind of like phasing out its quality. And I don't know if that's real at all, but. Could be that. I also wonder if it's.
00:35:50
Speaker
another built-in way for it to be conservative by design, where if it's telling you you have to do something even when they're still in range, it's preventing a catastrophic low versus reading high when they're actually 10 points lower than they are. Yeah, it just pisses me off when it's four in the morning and my kid needs to sleep and I need to sleep. Those gel packs though, I gave her one of those. She didn't even wake up. She just kind of slurped it down and then
00:36:19
Speaker
Didn't even open her eyes and swatted me away like a fly. No, she only needed like a quarter of that, but she probably had half of it. The transcend gel packs. They're not official ad sponsors anymore, but we love them. All right. Do you have anything else to touch on or anything that you wanted to talk about specifically?
00:36:44
Speaker
I mean, touched on it a little bit, but not beating yourself up and not feeling guilty. I feel like the thing that I've always struggled with is you hear the advice just in the community of give yourself grace, give yourself the ability to have your kid have highs and lows. It always didn't necessarily sit right with me because it's one thing to give yourself grace when it's something that only affects you.
00:37:11
Speaker
But when it's something that affects somebody else and it's maybe from decisions you made, that was what I always had a problem with. And I think it tied into the perfectionist goals I had subconsciously, but the more and more, I guess the longer we are from diagnosis, the more I've understood it in a different sense where it's like, yeah, the highs and lows are still not great. It's okay to not feel great about that, but
00:37:41
Speaker
the cumulative effect of beating yourself up for those temporary things that happen, that's gonna be way worse for your kid long term than getting to a perfect line, which is unattainable anyway. And so grinding on yourself after every accidental low or every two hour long high is gonna just,
00:38:06
Speaker
wear down your your mental reserves and get you to a point where I don't know you almost just feel like you're just you're just kind of floating in day in and day out and then you know it's the put your own oxygen mask on before putting it on your kid like you're not going to have the the strength to keep going for him
00:38:27
Speaker
versus recognizing that, hey, maybe this is something that wasn't great, or maybe it's something that wasn't even a blip on the radar, but giving yourself the freedom and ability to take a deep breath and move past it, and recognize that that's not gonna matter in two
Acceptance and Future Hope
00:38:46
Speaker
months. You're not gonna remember every single low, you're not gonna remember every high, but you are gonna remember A, how you made your kid feel in stressful times, and B,
00:38:56
Speaker
you're going to recognize what your current level of energy is. And so I don't know, just roundabout way of saying like, it's okay to feel bad about certain blood sugars, but it's also more important to try and get over it for the longevity of the disease. Cause it's, you know,
00:39:13
Speaker
It's chronic. It's going to be there forever. Hopefully, hopefully not. It's definitely going to be there forever. Unfortunately, I think that if you frame if you tell yourself it's going to be there forever, then you don't have to be disappointed for the rest of your fucking life. Other than that, how's the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
00:39:37
Speaker
I'm in a mood. I need to get out of here in a Sunday. It's rainy. I'm over the rain. I want a beer. I'm ready for you to be done with whole 30. So I can have a beer with you. Sorry. Sorry for putting you through this. Okay. We're going to go have a date on that note. My lovely mother, shout out to you mom.
00:40:04
Speaker
Love you so much is gonna watch our girls. She's currently making strawberry cupcakes with them. And yeah, cheers to not beating yourself up and to strong marriages. Partnership. Teamwork makes the dream work.
00:40:24
Speaker
This disease sucks, but you guys can get through it with checking your ego at the door, open communication and a lot of grace. And just, yeah. And recognizing when the other person just doesn't have it, picking up the slack, knowing they'll do the same for you. That's been huge. Yeah. All right. Um, well we only have one roll call to do and how these blood sugar is one 21 right arrow.
Conclusion and Future Guests
00:40:47
Speaker
Uh, Grammy crushing it. All right.
00:40:51
Speaker
We will see you all next week. We have some exciting guests coming up in the next couple months. So tune in to hear more random stuff. Okay. Bye. Bye.