Sleep and night time blood sugar checks

She stalks her prey through the overgrown jungle...hair sticking to her sweaty forehead in matted clumps. She spots it up ahead and makes a run for it....only to be eluded once again....echoes of it's laughter pounding in her ears. Sleep....the always desired and forever unattainable prized win for a type 1 diabetic Mom.
I would have to say that hands down without a doubt sleep is one of the things I miss most about our life before diabetes. Sure I can sugar coat it, laugh about it, makes jokes about my diabetes induced narcolepsy....but it's still the same. I think i would give my left arm for a solid week of decent sleep. I say left arm of course because I am right-handed and need that hand to do site changes for Emma's insulin pump. Losing the right hand would just be silliness and awkward...couple that with exhaustion and we are looking at a whole mixed bag of disaster.
Anyhoo, one thing that has been talked about quite a few times over the years is the "middle of the night" BG checks that parents do for their kiddos. Some of us set our alarms and check throughout the night to make sure blood sugar numbers are behaving and staying where they should. Others of us do not check at night unless there has been some special activity that day or an illness is brewing. Some of us stay up as late as possible and check our kids to give us piece of mind before we head off to bed ourselves. There is no right or wrong method. We all do what works for us. We all follow our own set of rules and standards for night time blood sugar checks. Like I've said many times before, diabetes is in my opinion one of the most individualized diseases out there. What works for one, may not work for another. In fact what works for one....may not work with that same one even the following day!
In any case, there is one thing about this whole night time check that really bothers me to no end. It really grinds my gears. It is like the bee in my bonnet...if I were a bonnet wearing kind of girl! I will never understand why doctors and other members of the diabetes education teams that we all deal with, will so freely and easily and nonchalantly tell you that there is no reason to check at night. They meet a newly diagnosed family and mislead them in my opinion. They will tell them that they shouldn't become obsessive about checking...so therefore they shouldn't check at night unless there has been a problem or some unusual activity during the day. WHY? Why do they give them this false sense of security and comfort? Why do they not treat it as seriously as it should be treated? Why do they choose not to inform these families that the possiblity of something happening to their child while they sleep is there? Why do they not inform them? I mean I know they don't want to frighten them right off the bat I guess...but STILL! I am a FIRM believer in having absolutely all the information available to me...good or bad...so I can make an informed and educated decision as to what would work best for our family. To me, not sharing that info with them is the equivalent of saying "Well, yea your kid has diabetes...but only during the day...at night she's all good!" UGH!
I guess my whole point of this blog is that I wish the medical team would share ALL of the information about this disease with families so they are able to make a decision for themselves. I wish I had been told. The way I look at it is that I wouldn't go more than 6 hours without checking Emma's blood sugar during the day...so why would I at night? Again, entirely my opinion though and entirely the decision I have come to based on our own family and our own kid.