Wearing an insulin pump with a tube

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sofia1111

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Type 1
Hi everyone,

I am a Type 1 Diabetic and today I just moved from using a wireless pump (an Omnipod) to a pump with a tube (Tandem). This is the first time I've used a pump with a tube, and I'm still trying to get used to it! I was just wondering how you usually wear your pump, both daily and whilst sleeping, and whether you'd be able to attach it to a dress?

Thank you!
 
I don’t use a pump but many people who do use pumps will sew a pocket into the dress to hold the pump
 
When I had a tubey pump, I rarely wore dresses. When I did, I used a pump belt wrapped twice around my thigh to keep it in place. This was fine as long as I didn’t need to get the pump out to bolus.
Other women manage to hide their pump in their bra but again you have a problem gettin* it out in polite company.
The other option, as Lily mentioned, is a pocket in the dress. This depends upon the style of the dress and your personal “bulges”. I found it dragged down a lose dress and was obvious with a fitted dress
I wore the same pump belt (a HidIn one) when sleeping. I was told the pump was fine to roam freely in bed but without a belt in would a,ways roam under my hip bone.
 
I remember (years ago now) there was a story in Balance about a woman who wanted to produce clothing with specific adaptations for such things. (Also just making sure MDI women can get at their stomach easily.)

I guess that idea fizzled out? (Presumably such clothing would be expensive so it would be more for special occasions and it's obviously a pretty tiny market.)

I'd guess if you found someone who made custom clothing they might find the challenge interesting.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
I remember (years ago now) there was a story in Balance about a woman who wanted to produce clothing with specific adaptations for such things. (Also just making sure MDI women can get at their stomach easily.)

I guess that idea fizzled out? (Presumably such clothing would be expensive so it would be more for special occasions and it's obviously a pretty tiny market.)

I'd guess if you found someone who made custom clothing they might find the challenge interesting.
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As a dress maker, the problem I found was not the difficulty of the tailoring to hold the pump but the challenge to hide the pump. If the pump has no remote control (often called a PDM), you also have to place it somewhere easily accessidle.
When I got my pump, I was told a story of a bride who wore her pump on her big day. When I looked into it more, the bride gown was a meringue affair with a huge bow specially positioned to hide the pump.

I pretty much gave up with dresses (not a major problem for a tomboy like me) and either clipped the pump to my trouser waist and or, for baggier trousers, made a joke in the pocket to feed the tube through and carried it there.
 
helli said:
When I looked into it more, the bride gown was a meringue affair with a huge bow specially positioned to hide the pump.
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Not the kind of thing you'd want all of the time. Now that pumps tend to be smaller I'd have thought they'd be easier to hide. (Then again I'm a man and I'm fine with pockets with sometimes quite bulky things in them.)
 
My daughter wears her pump in a pretty pouch around her waist and threads the tubing under her clothes. She doesn’t really wear dresses at the moment, but when she did we used to cut a small hole in the seam to thread the tube through. You can buy specially made pouches online which are just the right size and have a hole for the tube, e.g. funkypumpers.com or similar sites.

@Bruce Stephens - you are a man, you are lucky, many women bemoan the fact that the pockets in women’s clothing are pitifully small! Man trouser pockets are enormous, you’d be lucky to get a pump (even a small slim one) into a woman’s trouser pockets :(
 
sofia1111 said:
Hi everyone,

I am a Type 1 Diabetic and today I just moved from using a wireless pump (an Omnipod) to a pump with a tube (Tandem). This is the first time I've used a pump with a tube, and I'm still trying to get used to it! I was just wondering how you usually wear your pump, both daily and whilst sleeping, and whether you'd be able to attach it to a dress?

Thank you!
Click to expand...

The great thing about tubey pumps is that they’re not fixed in one place. You can move them round as you choose and according to your clothes.

I use a Hid-in belt a lot. I wear it in bed as it’s very soft and unnoticeable. I also often wear it during the day too. When I wear a skirt or trousers, I use my pump clip to clip my pump to the waistband or my belt. When I wear a dress, I either use my Hid-in, my bra bag (hangs under my arm from the side of my bra very close to the body, or I use a section of Tubigrip on my thigh and slip my pump in their.

So many options 🙂 If you Google, you’ll find more. I know people who let their pump ‘roam free’ at night, and slip it in their pocket during the day.
 
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