This was yesterday:
And this is today, with a low-carb yogurt breakfast of approximately 19 grams of carbs (actually less as he didn’t finish it).
Can’t wait for Passover to end so that we can go back to our standby breakfast options.
Ugh! You’re doing a tremendous job!
I gave up on yogurt a long time ago… for this exact reason
You know it’s usually fine for him…if it’s part of a larger meal with a ton of other carbs from other sources. Somehow it really is just at breakfast – scrambled eggs do the exact same thing, by the way, only there he usually winds up in the 300s for hours on end. I think his body just really doesn’t like to start the day with saturated fat.
Really? That’s very different for me… I eat eggs every day, don’t even bolus for them unless I’m having carbs with them, and they don’t effect my blood sugar at all
I think because he’s a little kid maybe his biology is somehow different? But low carb breakfasts are always a disaster for us – it’s like his body doesn’t get carbs and it’s like “starvation alert! starvation alert!”. And his liver must just dump out sugar like crazy. It affects the rest of the day too because he becomes more insulin resistant. Unfortunately with Passover I have no idea what to cook when wheat and most grains are not allowed for breakfast. Probably should have started him out with some apple slices. Sigh.
That is really intriguing to me. It took us months to find something my son could eat at breakfast. What we ended up settling for is a LC mid fat breakfast that works really well for him.
Until I read your post, I really thought this was a bit of a universal solution…
For me low carb breakfast would be eggs and sausage… maybe some cottage cheese…
If I throw in fast carbs like a yogurt I’d spike like crazy, occasionally I get away with 20 carbs of actual fruit if I bolus carefully and watch it carefully…
At least for my older son, two eggs, cheese, chicken sausage and 1/2 - 1 slice of whole grain bread seems to be the perfect 12 - 22 carb breakfast for us. Yogurt messed him up like no ones business.
Same with our son, Tia. Breakfast is always the nightmare meal of the day and sets us up for either a decent day, or a miserable day. You’re doing an amazing job, you’re an amazing mom and my wife and I respect you SO much for how well you’re managing your sons T1.
What kind of yogurt are you guys talking about? Unflavored? Sugar free? Fruit added?
Even Yoplait light has 10 grams of sugar.
AMOUNT PER SERVING
Calories 90
Cholesterol <5mg / 1%
Protein 5g / 10%
Sodium 80mg / 3%
Sugars 10g
Total Carbohydrate 16g / 5%
Pardon the medical talk here, but breakfast sucks because you don’t feel safe with the pre-bolus when you or him are sleeping. So you wake up, the liver wakes up and dumps out the morning liver glycogen to help get your body started, and then you throw food in the mix too. And you have to do all that without getting a good downward trend of BG.
For kids leaving to go to school there aren’t a whole lot of easy options, but if they are at home it might be helpful to delay breakfast a bit and give the insulin a good head-start. I know that is not always possible. I sympathize with you.
It is Fage Yogurt 2%, so totally unsweetened. A cup has 9 grams. He ate a little less than that; the remaining carbs were from blueberries and some from walnuts, and a half-teaspoon of honey. He likes it sour!
I don’t think this is related to dawn phenomenon in any way, which he actually doesn’t have (and apparently many young toddlers don’t have.) The thing is the rise only occurs after he starts eating. In this instance I even inadvertently pre-bolused because I bolused, he fell out of his chair and bumped his neck and was hysterically crying for like 10 minutes, then he wanted 10 minutes of “mommy lie down” time before he decided he was in good enough spirits to eat. This is way more of a prebolus than we did yesterday, for instance, when I bolused for a meal with matzo (which I imagine must be a very fast-acting carb) in quarters over the course of him eating.
Some other factors: If he waits till 9am to eat (on the weekends) he won’t drop low or high; he’ll be totally fine. It’s not like his liver pumps out the glycogen the moment he wakes up. It really is totally dependent on the food he eats. Also, what’s not totally clear here because his phone signal dropped out for a while is that he was rising very steadily over the course of more than an hour, but there is no pronounced “spike”–he probably didn’t rise by more than +5/5 minutes for most of the morning. It’s just that the insulin we kept pumping in was having much less effect than it usually does, which i see as a sign of classic insulin resistance.
And if we were to give him, say, an English muffin with some avocado on top or a bowl of oatmeal with a glass of milk or a bagel or french toast, he’d be fine with almost the same amount of insulin for more carbs, not prebolused by more than a minute. It really does seem to be an issue solely with the low-carb breakfast.
There may be some way to keep him from spiking when he eats a low carb breakfast, but I suspect that no matter how low the carb count is, I’d wind up having to bolus at least 1.5 units…which sort of defeats the purpose as he’s growing and needs (and likes) carbs.
I’ve heard rumors that there are some well behaved manageable yogurts out there… I haven’t found them
if you don’t mind sour, Greek style yogurts there’s a middle-eastern dairy product called Labne that tastes a lot like yogurt to me but has like 1 gram of carbs per serving. It’s mostly fat. Not sure it would be available up in Alaska in most places though. We sometimes mix that up with granola to make more of a Swiss-style meusli thing.
which reminds me that muesli made with yogurt and raw oats does not spike him. So it’s definitely not the yogurt on its own…
Are you keeping track of pump days? I know for some people, the longer the infusion is in place, the less effective the insulin becomes.
I’ve heard rumors that there is a well behaved manageable Sam out there…I haven’t found him yet.
yes we have a ‘pill’ on NightScout that tracks the pump site age. Which is a good potential culprit as I suspect about 1 our every 10 sites, it starts to do worse on day 3 in a noticeable way. However todayI bolused him for lunch (which is more usual) and he had an absolutely normal response. So I really do think it has to do with the lack of carbs.
@TiaG
Sorry for the late reply. I missed this first time around, glad I’m reviewing some threads.
Anyway, I always look forward to Passover because of breakfasts of matzo brie. A piece of matzo is almost equivalent to a slice of bread. I used to eat that every day as a kid during Passover.
If you’ve never made one, it’s really easy. Roughly break up a piece of matzo and soak it in water for 30 seconds. Drain the water and add two beaten eggs to the matzo and mix well. Grease a frying pan with butter and pour the matzo-egg mixture into the pan and cook on both sides, flipping the brie midway, until they are golden brown.
Serve with powdered sweeter or low carb jam.
You’ll just need to bolus for the piece of matzo.
This recipe is from my dear mother, who was the Captain of the SS Mein Kin. 
i love Fage 2% Plain Greek yogurt. i have tried endless ways to bolus for it and so far NOTHING has worked; i am almost ready to give up, but i think if i do a dual bolus of 50/50 over 2 hours, i might just find the sweet spot.
but as my CDE has asked of me " is it really worth it? i mean, how much do you really love yogurt?"