Any tips on finding babysitters who are comfortable with diabetes management? Obviously anyone can be taught (I mean, they taught me, right?) but I’m assuming not everyone would be willing to learn how to give injections. Thanks for your help!
All I can say is what works for us; we’re 7mo. into T1. We are very picky and protective about who watches our children anyway. Thankfully, T1 hasn’t changed that much for us. We have always chosen adults, and typically arrange babysitting swaps with them. We don’t go out until after dinner, so no meals to bolus, and any highs will have to wait two hours anyway to re-treat. We’re usually back by then. So we don’t train them beyond, “text us her numbers.” If we need to leave our date to re-treat, we will, but it hasn’t happened yet. Thankfully our daughter is 9 and can say, “something’s off; I checked my BG and it’s…” Then they can text us that number, and we can tell them what to do… again, hasn’t happened yet. Plus, most highs can usually wait 'till we get back. Lows just involve measuring some juice. The only time we’ve had issues is when my MIL watched her overnight. We did teach her to give the injections; she was eager to learn, but very nervous about doing it. Still, no problems there, the issues came when my daughter had a donut and stayed above 400 all day. We wish we’d known how high she was sooner than my MIL told us. We just started pumping though and, there’s a lot more freedom. My daughter hardly needs any supervision to test OR treat now, but again, we work it so the sitter doesn’t have to. CGM also helps. Novices can recognize a severe high or low with that. I hope any of that was helpful. Good luck.
Our daughter is 2 1/2. She’s been T1 for 1 year. We have only used adults as babysitters so far. The only people we’ve left her with to do injections are our mothers. So far testing has been ok with our backup babysitters/daycare but she doesn’t get injections at daycare. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with someone who doesn’t spend time around my family and especially my daughter to know the routines and her personal changes that happen when she is low-high. when we do leave her with someone, we always have a copy of her meal plan and emergency procedures in her diabetes bag. I wish I could be more trusting, but until she’s old enough to tell if she’s off, I don’t feel safe.
We have a two-year-old with diabetes. She was diagnosed 16 months ago and we’ve only been able to be alone three times since then. Most of our friends are too scared to take care of her, and we live in too small of a town to find an adult sitter who knows about type one diabetes. Just last month we got a hold of a wonderful teenager who is a well controlled T1D, on the same pump and sensor as our daughter and had her babysit for us. The first experience was very successful, also thankful to the new ‘share’ technology for the Dexcom G4. The San Francisco Bay area Carb DM website has a spreadsheet on babysitters, and we are starting one for Monterey County!!!