Basal Rate testing in 4 year old

My 4 year old has been pumping for 7 months and has had diabetes for 10 months. I think all our basal rates are pretty much correct, but sometimes I think a little tweaking here and there would help a few things, even tweaking by 0.005 or so throughout the day.

For adults it seems simple to skip a meal to test basal rates. How did other parents of Type I kids out there test basal rates?

We have only ever done what I would consider ‘partial basal testing.’ We would delay a meal to see how the basal was performing, but never skip them outright. It is extremely hard with young children, in my opinion, since their BGs are so volatile and they can drop so quickly.

I will pass on the same warning to you that our Dr. said to me (sadly, I constantly fight the urge to be a total perfectionist, analytical, graphing and charting kind of Mom)…be really careful of trying to get ‘too perfect’ with your little one. It is MUCH more dangerous to them to be too low then to run slightly higher at this age.

Once you feel comfortable with the pump and you feel that a change needs to be made. Then make it. My daughter is 6 and was diagnosed at 4. For the first i would say six months I was worried and called her doctor every time I thought there was something wrong and then I learned to look at her numbers for a few days and change her numbers. Look at her trends and call the endo. if you don’t feel comfortable making changes on your own just to check and make sure that the changes you feel you want to make are right.

Also remember that even a diabetic child is still a child and sometimes those “demon” times are just growing up and not due to their sugar. But you are the parent and you know your kid. Just like the other parent said try not to be too perfect with it. I remember the nurse at my endo’s office telling me that sometimes with this disease there is no explanation and you have to roll with it or go crazy!

I hope your endo. appt goes well. We had one a month ago and my daughters A1C went from 8.2 to 6.5!!! HOT DOG!!! Sometimes you have to celebrate the little things.

For us, growth spurts are some of the hardest times to manage. My son tends to run high at night during those windows. Of course, we never know why the crazy numbers in the moment, it is only after I notice that his pants are suddenly short, that I know :slight_smile:

My dtr is 5 and actually very accepting of basal testing. The overnight is obviously the easy one. For the other times I promise her a favorite meal/restaurant if we complete the test for that time frame and it works out great.

The type of basal testing we usually do seems to work out better than when we do fasting basals. Fasting basals are lower than the basals needed when she is eating food during the day. What works for us is to do a fasting basal starting four hours after dinner, continuing overnight and sleeping as late as possible. That’s an easy basal to get. For the rest, I give scrambled eggs, decaf tea, string cheese. Then a late lunch. This basal will cover the morning period until about 2pm. When testing basals during the lunch and dinner period, I give sliced chicken, salad, string cheese, make a large pot of home made chicken veggie soup, no noodles. For us, basals gotten in this method are more reliable than fasting basals. During a growth spurt, which happened frequently during puberty, we would double and even end up tripling basals for evening/early a.m. hours and basal testing did not help.