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Posts tagged ‘diabetic mommy’

Apr 29

8 Comments

Mommy’s Little Pack Mule.

Running alone brings out the Spibelt, and I cram it full of my on-the-move necessities:  glucose tabs, Dexcom receiver, keys, and phone.  Even though it’s reasonably streamlined and doesn’t bother me too much to tote around all that stuff, it’s a bulkier system than, oh, I don’t know … making my own insulin.

But lo!  The child rides a bike!  And insisted on having a bicycle basket!  To which I said, “Yes!  Excellent idea and can you please carry all my shit, too?” only I did not cuss at the child!

The miles might be logged a little slower than when I’m by myself, but there’s nothing more convenient than making use of her bike basket to carry all my diabetes stuff, and I love sharing some outside play moments with my daughter.

And she likes being in charge of such important things, since she is a “big girl” and can “carry the glucose tabs because then if I want a very, very, very small bite of a glucose tabs, I can just reach in and have one, right, Mawm?”

“Sure.  But only if you make sure you slow down if I need a glucose tab, okay?”

Bartering with my happy little helper of a diabetes pack mule.

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Jan 28

13 Comments

How It Might Look.

Birdy tore by on a scooter and another little kid followed closely with a plastic shopping cart crammed with toy food.

“We’re superheroes!!!”  she yelled, out of breath as she zipped by.

“I can tell!” I answered, looking up from my papers.

I am the mom at playgroups who spends some of the time staring at an open Word document on my laptop, tapping away on the keys until the letters Centipede themselves around the screen and eventually come to form coherent thoughts.  I’m the mom who gets on the trampoline with her kid (and immediately wishes that she didn’t, mostly because I spend the whole time panicking about one of us falling off the edge).  And I’m the mom who occasionally fumbles through her purse and pulls out a piece of technology and stares at the graph on the screen, or grabs another piece of tech and bleeds with precision on it, or ferrets out a blue jar and eats several of those … giant smarties?

I am a mom with type 1 diabetes.

I sometimes wonder how it might look, through the eyes of the other parents and caregivers.  Do they think it’s gross that I deal with blood at playgroup?  Do they notice that I use hand wipes and carefully wipe down anything I’ve touched after testing my blood sugar, not because I’ve bled on everything but more because I want to demonstrate my respect for anyone’s potential concerns?  Do they think I’m a sugar-addict, sometimes popping glucose tabs into my mouth and simultaneously wiping beads of hypoglycemia sweat off my forehead?  Do they notice that my outfits always have a small pump bulge and usually some trailing tubing?  Do they think it’s unfashionable to have glucose tab dust smeared on the front of my shirt?

Diabetes parenting ... and a tutu. Who doesn't love a good tutu?

Old school Bird

What’s most likely is that they don’t notice at all.  What feels like a big deal to me at times seems like an unremarkable blip on their overall parenting radar.  They probably see another parent, just doing their parenting thing, and are unaware of the small, tangible differences.  (I bet they’d notice if I didn’t shower, though.  That’s a hard one to miss.)

“Mom, come make pretend pudding with me!  In this little, toy kitchen with these real other kids!”

“Pretend pudding?  How can I resist?”

I am a mom with diabetes, not a-bunch-of-diabetes with a side of motherhood.  The proof is in the (pretend) pudding.

 

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Batman Princess. Low Hangover. Take Good Care of Me.

Jun 6

19 Comments

Ironmom.

“I really like Ironman.  And Superman.  And Spiderman.”  She paused.  “But not the Hulk, because he smashes things.  Why he smashes things?”

“He gets angry and that anger makes him turn into the giant green guy, and he smashes.”

My daughter, thanks to her father’s affinity for all-things superhero, has developed a taste for the slate of superheros and supervillains.  She rocks her Superman t-shirt at school, and her Batman pajamas at home with both encouraging regularity and vigor.  But that’s the nature of her being three years old – she is learning so much every day, taking in her surroundings and chewing on them until they make sense for her.

Part of what she’s hyper-fixated on, in addition to superheroes, is the location of  my Dexcom and insulin pump.  At least once a day, she asks me to show her my devices.

“Where is your Dexcom, mawm?” she asks me, patting my leg knowingly.

“Right here, on my right leg.”

“And your pump is right here, right?”  she asks, pressing her finger against the screen.

“Exactly.”

The other day, Birdy was troubled because she couldn’t find my insulin pump in the dress I was wearing.  “Mom, where is your pump?”

“It’s in the front of my dress, here,” I said, pointing to where the pump was clipped to my bra (disco boob style).

She contemplated this for a minute, and I could see the laundry list of information she’s been collecting in the last few weeks rolling around in the dryer in her head.

“You’re like Ironman, mawm.”

“Ironmom?”

She laughed that wild, unfettered laugh of a toddler who just learned what “a joke” is.

“Yeah!  Ironmom!  You made a joke.”

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Take Good Care of Me. Spot Off. Raspberries.

May 29

11 Comments

Take Good Care of Me.

Hi, Sara(aaah)!

Early Bird art, circa April 2013. The Hello Kitty period.

“I’m going to draw a picture of Grandpa.”

“Okay, so where do you start?”

She put her finger to her lips, pondering.  “How about … a head!  With two eyes!  And a nose with nostrils.  And some cheeks.”

Birdy pressed her pen against the paper, painstakingly drawing a circle for the head, and then two eyes, and a nose.  Her attention to detail shows me how much of the world she draws in through her eyes.

“So then … a neck?”  She draws a nice, loooong neck.  (Her people sometimes look like the kin of giraffes.)  “And then some shoulders and a necklace?”

“Does Grandpa wear a necklace?”

“No …” She thinks again.  “He wears a watch.  And then … hmmm … what else he has on his body?”

“Well, people have lots of the same body parts.  Two eyes, two ears, nostrils, teeth, a neck.  Look at mommy’s body – what do I have that Grandpa also has?”

She surveyed my body closely.  “We already has the eyes.  And the nose.  Oh, knees!!”  Pressing the pen to her notebook with satisfaction, some knees were added to her drawing.  “But not a Dexcom.  You have a Dexcom.  You has one but I don’t have one. Or Grandpa doesn’t have one.  You have it.”

“True.  But what does it do?”

“It goes ‘BEEEEEP!’ when you need glupose tabs or if you need some insuwin.”

“Right.  It helps me do my job.  Because what’s my job?”

“To take good care of me,” she says, concentrating hard as she gave Grandpa a second nose.

 

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Spot Off. Memories.
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