OurSweet.TypeOne

October is a tough month for me.

Five years ago, October meant finishing up at work, excited to be going on maternity leave ahead of Violet’s arrival in November. We truly had no idea what was to come.

Then four years ago, this photo was taken. Again, we had no idea what was coming. We were just weeks away from Violet’s type 1 diagnosis.

I find photos from this time hard to look at now. I know I’m looking at them with everything I know now, but I can see in her eyes she’s not well and that’s really heartbreaking to think about.

I don’t like to dwell and I feel so grateful every day that we have her here with us, but after a particularly rough few weeks with Violet’s feelings about type 1, October feels a little heavier this year.

The familiar sounds, the trees starting to turn green again, the same spring events we went to before T1, and continue to go to now, take me straight back there. To that time and feeling. It’s hard to explain without sounding dramatic, but I think my body remembers this time of year before my brain even catches up.

I don’t think about diagnosis every day anymore, but October always seems to remember for me.

When your child is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, you learn a lot very quickly.

But learning how to manage diabetes and learning how to raise a child alongside diabetes are two very different things.

Nobody can really prepare you for the child part of it.

Four years in, I know so much more about managing type 1 diabetes. But with every new stage of childhood comes something new to navigate.

We’re still learning together 💜

So many of you reached out to me on Friday so I felt like this issue needed a permanent spot on the grid.

Many of us are already putting enormous pressure on ourselves to get T1D “right”. We analyse, adjust, troubleshoot, carb count, calculate, respond, lose sleep and try again.

And we spend so much time trying to create awareness of everything that happens behind the numbers. So when we reduce T1D management to “just be the pancreas” or “let the pump do its thing”, I think we do ourselves a disservice.

Technology helps enormously. But it doesn’t remove the work, and it doesn’t remove the variability.

Sometimes the exact same effort produces a completely different result.

So if today’s numbers aren’t what you hoped they’d be, please don’t let somebody else’s graph convince you that you didn’t try hard enough 💜

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Do you have a child in preschool or childcare who lives with type 1 diabetes? The The Australian Centre for Behavioural Research in Diabetes would love to hear from you.

Details below 👇🏽

To get involved, visit: https://ow.ly/look50ZF1UI

If your baby or toddler has just been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, this is for you.

Right now, you might feel like you need to learn everything, understand everything and somehow get every decision right.

You don’t.

You’ll learn as you go. You’ll ask the same questions more than once. The numbers that feel terrifying now will become familiar. You’ll find people who understand. And slowly, you’ll start to trust yourself.

There will still be birthday parties, swimming, childcare, holidays and all the ordinary little moments you imagined for them. Some of it will take more planning, but there is still so much childhood ahead.

I wish every parent at the beginning could know that 💜