Hypos & how to treat with a 4 year old

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Hawk22

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Hi all, my daughter has been diagnosed with T1D 2 weeks now. She is only 4. We’re struggling with night time, she tends to get the majority of her hypos in the night (they’ve now changed her levimer to 1, hopefully it helps). But when she has a low we tend to treat with apple juice. This is something which my daughter never usually drank pre diagnosis. She doesn’t particularly like it, we have to force her to drink it. When she’s asleep and we have to wake her up, it’s borderline impossible to get her to drink it. Which means it takes ages for her glucose levels to go up.
She’s also been complaining of belly ache a lot, and had diarrhoea. Could this be the apple juice? Does anyone have any advice on what else I could give her to help her sugars go up? Losing the will to live here! Thanks
 
Satan’s little helper said:
Glucose tabs would do the trick. Jelly babies or harribos?
Are these hypos detected with a sensor?
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She has sweets for hypos during the day. It’s just a lot harder to get her to eat when she’s of asleep in the middle of the night. She’s not old enough to understand the importance of waking up in the night when she’s having a hypo.
She has the libre 2 sensor which bleeps to let me know she’s having a hypo. We also finger prick to make sure
 
Hawk22 said:
She has sweets for hypos during the day. It’s just a lot harder to get her to eat when she’s of asleep in the middle of the night. She’s not old enough to understand the importance of waking up in the night when she’s having a hypo.
She has the libre 2 sensor which bleeps to let me know she’s having a hypo. We also finger prick to make sure
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Brilliant. You do double check. I can be a bit sluggish waking for a low. Hypos addle the cognitive at the best of times. Drinking something at night is more preferable for me.
Is there a favourite drink she likes that you could measure sugar into? (Like a quick no nonsense “shot.”)
 
We used to use undiluted squash, although most of those contain much less sugar these days. There are some cordials called Rocks (orange or blackcurrant) which are about 44% sugar and will go mouldy if you don’t keep them in the fridge once opened; they work when you’re having a hypo though! You’d only need a few sips. Can your daughter suck through a straw? When mine was little and low at night we used to just shove the straw in her mouth and tell her that she needed to drink and she’d obligingly suck without needing to be fully awake. Harder to measure the correct amount that way, but it gets you out of the danger period without having to wait ages to wake her up (and we always find that being hypo makes my daughter more sleepy and less likely to wake up anyway)
Full sugar coke or appletise are good if she can cope with the fizz, the small mixer cans 150ml are the perfect size
 
Satan’s little helper said:
Brilliant. You do double check. I can be a bit sluggish waking for a low. Hypos addle the cognitive at the best of times. Drinking something at night is more preferable for me.
Is there a favourite drink she likes that you could measure sugar into? (Like a quick no nonsense “shot.”)
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I didn’t think about adding sugar to her squash tbh! She loves apple and blackcurrant squash, although theyre all no added sugar these days. Is there a specific amount to add that would boost sugars?
 
Even though your little poppet is all grown up at 4 🙂 Could you try some jam or apple sauce for her? or perhaps have a look at the babby foods the sweet stuff in the squeezy pouches are very carby and might be more tolerable for her. Not sure about Ribena as to carb content.
 
Hawk22 said:
I didn’t think about adding sugar to her squash tbh! She loves apple and blackcurrant squash, although theyre all no added sugar these days. Is there a specific amount to add that would boost sugars?
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When I was that age in 1066 the hypo treatment was 10gms of carbs and went up to 15 in teenage years. So yes a good idea to buy some glucose powder and add it to her squash.
 
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Hawk22 said:
I didn’t think about adding sugar to her squash tbh! She loves apple and blackcurrant squash, although theyre all no added sugar these days. Is there a specific amount to add that would boost sugars?
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I add sugar to milk sometimes. That works but is a bit grainy. I don’t like Coke in the night but you can get special glucose shots. They’re small and ideal for bad hypos or hypos you want to get the grams of glucose in quickly.

Dextro tablets are quick and easy to measure. If you look on Amazon, you can buy multiple packs and they have some nice flavours eg blueberry, tropical, etc
 
A 2-3 teaspoons of honey or golden syrup might be more acceptable and absorb quickly and easily.
 
A friend said they treated their kid's nighttime hypos with chocolate milk.

They'd make chocolate milk up in a bottle (with a set amount of powder and milk so they knew the carb count), warming the milk a bit, and feed it to him. He often didn't even wake up, he just sucked from the bottle in his sleep.

They did this even when kid was well past the typical bottle age. I think he was about 7 years old when they told me this.
 
Finn said:
A friend said they treated their kid's nighttime hypos with chocolate milk.

They'd make chocolate milk up in a bottle (with a set amount of powder and milk so they knew the carb count), warming the milk a bit, and feed it to him. He often didn't even wake up, he just sucked from the bottle in his sleep.

They did this even when kid was well past the typical bottle age. I think he was about 7 years old when they told me this.
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That sounds like a bit of a faff.
We need to treat hypos fast not wait to weigh and heat before feeding a child.
I would also be concerned because chocolate contains fat which slows down the carb absorption - the main reason why milk is no longer recommended as a hypo treatment.
 
helli said:
That sounds like a bit of a faff.
We need to treat hypos fast not wait to weigh and heat before feeding a child.
I would also be concerned because chocolate contains fat which slows down the carb absorption - the main reason why milk is no longer recommended as a hypo treatment.
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I think they weighed out the milk and chocolate before they needed it and they probably gave it to him before it was an actual low to keep him stable. I don't know for sure (this was well before I was diagnosed so I didn't note the details), this is just what they said they did and that it worked for them.

It was 15-20 years ago, so they didn't have benefit of CGMs and alarms.

Something similar could work with juice or a sugary drink (bottle or straw with no need for the kid to wake up).
 
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