A Great Leap Forward (that left me scrambling!)

Ah, a few moments' peace - to get to blog again! Sometimes life just gets in the way of doing what you want to do, doesn't it? My work and personal life have been so busy I haven't had much time to think about my diabetes - let alone to blog about it. Here's a brief recap of some of the "distractions":

DD made a sudden developmental Great Leap Forward (someone could have warned be about this!). We were expecting to send her to preschool only part time this Fall, but from one month to the next, suddenly her current daycare was no longer enough for her (all the kids there are younger than her), and we realized we had to switch to full-time preschool. Fortunately, we were able to make that change with the school we'd signed her up for. But it meant acknowledging that H is growing up! The part-time schedule was partly for her, but also for me to adjust gradually to that process. It seems nothing is gradual with my daughter - it's all sudden shifts. Her physical growth has been the same way (she's not yet three, but she's the size of an average four-year-old).

I've been frantically reading tons of parenting books, trying to catch up - reading far ahead of her age to try to get the right information. Her physical and mental growth are way ahead of the "norm" (but no kid is the "norm," are they?). Her emotional growth is just normal, though. It's hard for her, when people look at her and hear her speak, and think she must be much older than she is - i.e., they expect so much more from her than she can handle - asking her things like, "Do you want lots of boyfriends?" (Maybe they're just trying get me going!)

H's physical greatness (not just girth, but height, at this point; she's shot up!) still makes me both proud and nervous. Proud because, silly me, I still have some sense that her thriving has anything to do with me (very little, directly!). But nervous because I worry that my own diabetes contributed to her being big from the beginning, and because that seems to set kids on a riskier path, as I've written about before. It makes me the constant food police - oh, those cookies! We're trying to wean her from thinking of them as her just dessert for using the potty. But other folks still have no qualms about offering them to her. 'Nuf said.

I've enrolled H is swimming classes at the Y, and we went together for the first time last week for an open swim. We've swum together before at other pools and in the ocean. But I want this to be an option for her all year long - to help with her overall health, and also to use up some of her constant energy. She loved it - hooray! Of course, several of my friends had their kids in swimming lessons from age one or so; I feel so behind! That's a constant feeling of motherhood. But I was in no position to be in the water exercising with H at that point - I was still nursing, and the lows could come on pretty suddenly. I wonder how I'll do now. I'm planning to sign up for the class where she's gradually weaned from my side, and is swimming without me (with a floater) by the end of the class series. I need the exercise, too, but I still worry that I might have a low in the middle of a class. It's only half an hour, though, so I should make it. I do wonder whether I should tell the instructor that I have diabetes. I wouldn't think so, usually. I've still never passed out from a low (knock on wood!). But lately my sugars have been running low very suddenly (again). What would you do - would you tell the instructor, or not?