Man, I really wish I was able to write more on this topic, but as I’m sure any mom knows, there is not always a lot of time for side projects for myself. Even though it has now been well over a year for us with T1D, I still feel like we learn new things regularly. This disease is so frustrating!!
One thing in particular I had to learn was what things would be like on our first beach vacation. We have traveled to visit family since diagnosis but this past summer we went on our first beach trip with the family. Since we stayed in a condo with a kitchen, we planned to eat out 2 of the 5 nights we were staying and got foods we eat all the time for the other 3 dinners. Lunch and breakfasts were also things we eat all the time. This would make our trip relatively smooth, right? Wrong! Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the excitement. Maybe she was dehydrated. I don’t know what did it but she was high CONSTANTLY. And it was such a huge let down because on the long all-day car drive down to the beach, her blood sugar was perfect, leading me to believe I was in control with my plan. Never. The good news is she never got ketones so at least she wasn’t sick.
And now we are about 4 weeks in to a new school year. We have a new school nurse at our school this year and she is knowledgeable and communicative which is great! Of course we still deal with typically beginning of the year issues, most notably, a not-even-that-bad cough that wreaked havoc anyway. But as we’ve gotten back to normal there, I have found new hacks to make our days a little easier and that is mostly in foods we can always have on hand for meals or snacks. Two things I’ve started doing are making uncrustables and french toast for the freezer. Obviously I could buy these things but when I make them, I get to use the ingredients I prefer which is Sara Lee Healthy & Delightful Bread (18 carbs per 2 slices), Smuckers Sugar Free Jam (we’ve tried strawberry, blackberry, grape and raspberry), Jif peanut butter and eggs (for the french toast). It only takes about half an hour to whip up an entire loaf of bread into either of these things and having them in the freezer makes it super easy to pull out and either pop in the toaster (french toast for breakfast) or toss in the lunch box (uncrustable). I got my uncrustable cutter for a very reasonable price on Amazon and it has been well worth its cost.
Along with back to school, we also enter my favorite time of year – HALLOWEEN!! For the second year, I have created a Halloween candy carb content guide and posted it in the “Guides for Special Occasions” tab. This year I checked all the carb contents and made sure they hadn’t changed from last year and also color coordinated it so that you know which candies are gluten free and which are free of all of the 9 major allergens. I know candy is still not ideal, but in our family, we are committed to still getting to be a kid so that will mean candy gets to be eaten at Halloween occasions (with insulin of course). But it’s not just candy that I focus on, I love to make sure that we are full of Halloween spirit so I buy pretty much ALL the Halloween shaped snacks from the Target Halloween aisle (veggie chips, goldfish, cheezits, granola bars, cheese puffs, rice krispy treats, to name a few) and then I do silly things like draw pumpkin faces on clementines and ghost faces on bananas. I can’t help it, I just want to pass on my love of this holiday and holidays in general on to all I meet :). I will probably be doing some fun diabetes specific snacks as well, such as sugar free jell-o pumpkins and low carb sweets so stay tuned.
Speaking of candy, has anyone gotten to try the zero sugar Twizzlers, Hershey bars and/or Reese’s mini peanut butter cups? We did and I was really pleased to find that while we needed insulin to consume them, her blood sugar did not skyrocket after eating. I emailed the parent company to ask if they’d have Halloween candy that was zero sugar and at the time they did not know but I haven’t seen it in any of my (many) trips to buy Halloween things.
Have fun celebrating all things Fall!
T1D Type A Mom 