My daughter was diagnosed 4 months ago and we are ready for a pump now. I was hoping some of you can please tell us about your choice/experience in pumps for your little one. Thank you very much!
The pump is the way to go. 1- for control 2 - flexibility - 3- less pokes by needles. My daughter still cringes when we have to change the pump but she would never consider going back. She can resume a closer to normal lifestyle. Still have to count carbs and dose with insulin but if she wants a snack she doesnt have to take a shot. My 8 year old lost a bunch of weight after her diagnosis as she just didnt want to eat -because it meant getting a shot. Now she has gained all her weight back and has a snack when she feels like it without the worry of having to take another shot.
God Bless and good luck
what pump do you use?
Yes to the pump! It was a game-changer for us and my 3 year-old son Jake who was diagnosed at age 2 & went on the pump 8 months later (2 months before his 3rd bday). He’s now almost 3 1/2. He has the Animas Ping with the contact detach infusion sets. We use his bottom for sites, and rotate left butt cheek to right every 3 days. He then wears the pump in a spibelt on his back (at the waistline) & doesn’t even notice it.
While we really wanted the Omnipod for the no-tubing factor, even the new model was just too bulky for his 33-lb body and there wasn’t enough real estate for sites.
We even just started Jake on the Dexcom g4 CGM which we place on his arm. It offers real-time BGs, and has been game-changer #2 for us!
Please ask Qs & check out the “Bitching’ Diabetes” section on my blog for pump videos :). Happy pumping! -Jen
My son has been pumping for three years since age 8 with the animas ping and we really like it. I believe it has the smallest dosing increments available in a pump which would be a plus for little ones, the meter remote is also great. I feel the omnipod or any patch pump would require too much area for a small child so I would recomend animas or medtronic.
My Daughter has the omniPod aswe did not want to deal with tubing.
Hi, my son Cody (age 5) has been on the pump for almost a year now. WE LOVE IT!!!!! He has the Animas Ping, and the remote is a must-have! It's so nice to be able to give him his insulin while he's in the same room, and not have to take the pump out of his spi-belt to do it. I can't imagine managing Cody's diabetes without it, it gives him so much for freedom to eat whenever he wants. We also use numbing cream when putting on his new insets every 3 days. He can't even tell when we're inserting it. Good luck, I would definitely recommend the ping. Oh, and it's waterproof too!
My daughter was diagnosed 2/13/12 when she was 3 and she started on the Omnipod 6 months later, about 6 weeks before she turned 4. At the time she weighed about 37 pounds and we have never had a problem with it being too big. We love the pump being tubeless and she can swim with it on, as it's totally waterproof. We should be getting the newer, smaller pods in a month, which will be even better for her since she's only 4. The smallest increment the pod doses is .05 units (Animas Ping and Medtronic Minimed dose .025) but that small of a dose was not necessary at her age. We still haven't gotten good control of her BGs, so it's not a magic bullet, but we do love the flexibility and freedom.
Wow, so Jake is only 3 1/2 and already has the Dexcom? How is he with having another device stuck to him? I REALLLLLLLY want to get that for my daughter, I'm just worried it's too much too soon for her (she's 4 1/2 y/o and on the pod). I definitely feel like it's the missing piece of the puzzle and would also give us peace of mind at night. Do you have a monitor in Jake's room so you can hear the CGM alerting at night?
Jake is a stubborn, and incredibly active 3 year-old, and so far so good with the CGM AND the pump. We joke that he's like the 3 year-old bionic man. I look forward to when we have the Omnipod and the CGM--no tubing and maybe only a fanny pack for the CGM receiver (although we really love the Animas Ping and he has come to love his pump pouch). The only tough part is pump changes and sensor applications (the g4 CGM applicator is frightening!).
After the first flop with the application of the CGM, we did it at night while he was sleeping, and we inserted it to the back of his arm. The first morning he woke up with it, it took a few hours for him to ask "what's on my arm?", but he can't really see it, and he hasn't said anything since. I think I bribed him with talk of a new lego set, but never actually had to go get one :)
The transmitter/ receiver range is way more than 25 feet. Jake's room is on the 2nd floor of our house, and ours is on the other side of the house on the 1st floor. I put the receiver on my nightstand, and it reads fine. Over the course of the night, it might go out of range for 5 minutes, but finds Jake's arm again soon after.
The reason we really wanted the CGM was b/c Jake sometimes wouldn't show signs of lows until he was in the 30's--so we would often overworry and overtest his BGs--and even after 5 months on the pump, we were still working to perfect his basal rates. After only a few nights on the CGM, we got them down and he generally has a steady BG in the 150-180 range all night. No more (or very few) 2am alarm clock or finger pricks with a headlamp! We may not *always* have it on him, but we're fairly new to it and loving it now. It's been especially cool to see BGs rise and fall with carbs and insulin, and given us more confidence to pre-bolus a meal by 30 minutes with at least 20 carbs. Otherwise BGs spike to 400, and although they come down eventually, a pre-bolus generally keeps Jake's spikes below 250.
I will warn you that the first 24 hours on a new sensor for the Dexcom G4 CGM isn't as reliable w/ regard to BGs. I learned that the hard way when the CGM said 120 & steady, and Jake was acting low, so I tested his finger at 56. But after the first day on the new sensor, it has read w/in 5-10 mg/dl compared to his fingerprick. New sensors last as long as the sticky stays stuck to their body (not just the 7 days). Many kids wear them up to 21 days or more.
We don't dose insulin based on the CGM, so we still fingerprick 5-6 times a day, including one time at night before we go to bed. Before the CGM, we were fingerpricking 10-13 times a day.
Good luck with your decision and let me know if you have any other Qs!
- Jen
Where do you put the Omnipod on your daughter? For Jake, we use his bum exclusively for the Animas Ping. When we started pumping, he wasn't on enough insulin to qualify for the Omnipod, but now he is, although our endo isn't sure he's got enough site options for the new Omnipod.
Hi Jen, thanks so much for your detailed reply WRT the CGM. It's nice to hear the perspective from someone else with a small child. My daughter, Liz, wears the pod exclusively on the back of her arms (like Jake wears the CGM) and side of her thighs. You can place them cannula up or down, so you essentially get 8 sites, and hopefully I don't place them in exactly the same spot each time. But since we rotate arm-arm-leg-leg, she gets 9 days between sites.
Her BGs are still all over the place and I really want to get them down. We always bolus right when she eats, which of course is not at all optimal. I wish there was an instant-acting insulin, not just fast-acting! I've always been a night owl, which serves me well with her nighttime BG checks. I usually check her before I go to bed, between 12 and 1 am. If I have an intuition that she might go low, I set my alarm and wake up to check her between 3 and 4 am as well, but it would be so nice to not have to worry about that and have the CGM receiver wake me if she's trending low. Every morning when I wake up, if Liz hasn't come in to wake us up, my heart skips a few beats as I'm wondering if she's OK. I think that's the worst part of diabetes for me - waking up and wondering if my daughter is still alive. It's so freaking scary.
Oh, you speak my language! I used to start sweating once I put Jake to bed (how long has it been? could he be low now? maybe i'll just check to be sure... let me check again in 2 hours. oh gosh! 51! aaaaaah!) I, too, breathe a sigh of relief every morning I hear "Mommy, I'm up!" (Jake is still in a crib) -- I would highly recommend the CGM for you guys, even for just a short time. For me, the $270 it cost after insurance was nothing for me to be able to see trends and perfect rates for 2 weeks.
If Liz would be up for it, the belly is supposedly the best place for the CGM. It actually stands up kind of tall on the littler bodies, but if she doesn't tug on it, you should be fine. We're finding with Jake that there is sometimes a slight lag (probably b/c we have it on his arm), but the trending arrows are key. We have the "low" alarm set to go off at 75, and I may actually change it to 100, b/c with a 100 and double arrows down, you can be in trouble fast. (Not that I don't check it every few minutes when I'm around anyway!! :)
You have to calibrate it every 12 hours, so you basically enter the fingerprick # from before breakfast, and before dinner, which helps keep it in sync with your glucometer.
Once your endo writes the Rx and Dexcom talks to your insurance, it will arrive at your door in 3 days. It literally was in our hands 10 days after the Rx was written. If you decide to do it, start watching the tutorial videos on the Dexcom site now :) Hugs to you guys!
When you say the applicator is frightening, do you mean the physical appearance of it or the actual insertion? Liz is fine now with the pod cannula insertion - we don't even have to use EMLA cream anymore, but I wonder about the CGM sensor insertion, esp on her stomach. She has no fat there. The one time we put the pod on her tummy the site got infected.
The applicator is physically huge -- there's a needle that you manually push down and then retract leaving the sensor in (the sensor is the size of a horse hair). It's not as fast as the Omnipod quick insertion, so may be more painful for Liz. Check out this video:
http://dexcom.com/faq/inserting-your-sensor-dexcom-g4-platinum-tutorial
Once the needle is retracted, you feel nothing (Jake reports). If Liz has fat in the love handle area, that might be another site option for the CGM.
I chose the animas ping. We go to the beach alot and wanted something water proof not water "resistant." I realy wanted the omnipod, but when we started pumping omnipod was not approved through insurance. We were not willing to wait an additional three months for insurance approval. Cameron has been so unstable lately that we have gone back to shots, but are praying that we find out what is going on so we can pump again. He is 11 now, and was 8 when we were diagnosed.
Our DD was diagnosed at 8 years. She's 16 now. We have had the Animas pumps, still have a Ping which we use if near the water at beach or pool, water parks. Animas pump is most waterproof. However the Minimed Revel now allows you to adjust basals in .025 increments and in addition you can lower the bolus insulin, the ICR, by smaller degrees than the Animas. Even at 16, she uses it and we lower bolus insulin by .5 instead of 1. This would be incredibly useful when dosing such a small child. Because you can lower ICR by .1, as in 10.1,10.2, 10.3. etc.
Our daughter just turned 5. Next week will be her 2 year anniversary. We have decided to buy the new Omnipod. She weighs 39 pounds. We bought the Dexcom G4 2 months ago and love it. We could not be happier with it. I am not sure her school loves it but that it why we bought it so there would be alerts when she is in the care of others. I will let you know how our transition to the Omnipod goes. We turned in the paperwork yesterday to our doctor so it needs to get processed, etc.
Thank you all VERY much for your replies...I love reading them. We've decided on the Animas Ping and should have it sometime with in the next three weeks. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. I'm sure I'll be back asking a lot of questions. : )