Hey, I’m new on the forum and my son wasn’t diagnosed til age 11, but one tip I learned from a friend whose son was diagnosed as a toddler: Cake icing in the little decorator tubes for middle of the night lows. Can be rubbed on the gums or inside cheek so doesn’t require them to swallow or cooperate (but they might bite you!). Good for sleepy teenager too…
4 Likes
Although we don’t use this too much these days, we have used it and it is effective. Since he “chews” in his sleep, it’s easier for us to now just give him a tablet (or cheese crackers) in his sleep.
Welcome to the forums! If you get a chance, stop by and introduce yourself in the Introduce Yourself! thread.
Also, we’d love to read Your Son’s Story!
Great tip, @katiereeder, and welcome to the forum! We are really glad to see you join us!
How old is your son now? Mine is 12 going on 13. @Chris’s is 14. @rgcainmd has a 15-year-old daughter.
My son is 13 now, we’re about 2.5 years in…and surfing the wild waves of puberty. Nice to connect with others in the same boat.
2 Likes
Mine is 14 and the puberty waves are difficult to deal with to say the least. 3 nights of unrelenting highs, and just when you were about to increase the basal, 1-2 nights of flat-line, followed by 6 nights of unrelenting highs…
Can’t wait for this phase to pass, but it is nice to see the boy grow up.
1 Like
Ugh, no kidding, we are having a spell of NOT doing that right now but the puberty swings between high and not high nights are killer because you really can’t safely take the basal up, as you said. Don’t know if this is what your son is doing, but we go through periods where most (not all) nights, shortly after going to bed he would randomly spike a towering high and took multiple corrections thru the night to crush it. Other nights, flat. I got paranoid he was binging on candy bars under his pillow or something! (well ok there was that bagel I found in the bed once but usually he was falsely accused!) It finally occurred to me to look it up and I learned that growth hormone release is pulsatile and you get most of your daily hit in the middle of your first sleep cycle… ah-ha. Also the GH rush apparently comes BEFORE visible growth spurts. Everytime he has a run of those nights, I turn around a few weeks later and notice he’s freakishly taller. I ran this past our pediatric endo and she said indeed it is a real thing.
Anyone else noticed a spike/growth pattern connection?
3 Likes
This is really good information. So, my wife and I should just watch a movie after he goes to bed, check and pound it down. Yes, we have noticed these take a lot of insulin to bring down, we usually go 2x or 3x a normal correction.
1 Like
Ha! 
closest we had to a bagel.
2 Likes