"You check me at night?"

I have been checking William at night for four years now. I get up at 11:00PM and 2:00AM and have every night. I do these checks for a few reasons. If you are the parent of a child with diabetes then you already know the feeling of walking into your child's room every morning and hoping that he is still breathing. I had hoped that feeling would eventually go away then I read about "Dead in bed syndrome". That just made me want to double my efforts to make sure that did not happen to William on my watch. Here are a few articles on this:

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-complications/dead-in-bed-syndrome.html
http://www.diapedia.org/acute-and-chronic-complications/dead-in-bed-syndrome
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/d_0n_g00.htm

One of the other big reasons that I do these late night checks is that it helps his A1C number greatly. When I first started doing these checks his A1C dropped from around 8 to under 7. That is a huge drop and very good for Williams long term health. New guidelines from the America Diabetes Association suggest that all children need to be under 7.5 as a goal. Williams old range used to be 7.5 to 8.5. He has always been below 7.5 for every appointment except one where he was at 7.7. I want to give my son the best chance to have his fingers and toes and eyes for his whole life.

It is funny though that I go in every night to check him with my head light attached to my head. His kit in my hand and quietly enter his room. I sit on his bed and find a finger that I have not poked lately and do a blood glucose check. There have been many times in the morning that I mention something about his number being high or low last night and he asks "You checked me last night?". I am so glad that I can go in and check him and he doesn't feel a thing. After he was first diagnosed, night time was the only time that I could check him when he wasn't fighting me. Now he doesn't even feel it any more. I am glad for that.

Trying to stay healthy,

His Loving Dad