Celebrating Easter With a Diabetic Bunny

My little Easter bunny is diabetic, but she luckily has just begun to be able to participate in the usual Easter festivities. I remember last year being so excited to do the egg hunt in the morning with her, but due to her age it was mostly me giving her colourful egg shaped balls filled with her favourite snacks. She had no idea what was happening, she was just happy to be there and snacking. Just three months later she would be diagnosed with type one diabetes.

Fast forward to present day and she is becoming more aware and present with these types of things. I placed her farm animal themed eggs around the house right after putting her to bed last night, so unsure if I was making the right decision to have chocolate in them. I know it seems like too much stress over nothing, but that is the reality of this disease for me. I stress about everything, from day-to-day care, to how diabetes will affect her ability to get pregnant one day. There is no limit to the stress that I feel. I tried to think of different things to do for her egg hunt this morning, but at the end of the day (literally last night) I decided that I wanted it to be as close to 'normal' as I could make it for her. She deserves to be a kid and enjoy things the same as any other kid. Sure, she may get less candy than other kids, but not having any is ridiculous. So I decided that she could have one single chocolate in each egg and that would be our happy medium.

I planned it out that when she woke up I would bring her out to the couch and make her some breakfast while she watches a movie, as we normally do on weekends, and pre-bolus her for the chocolate with her breakfast. This was the insulin would have time in her system and she could eat the chocolate as soon as she wanted. I hoped that if I didn't point them out to her she wouldn't notice them. Well I was wrong. We walked out of her room and I saw her instantly finding them with her eyes. She did a double take at the first egg, but continued. She walked up to the second egg, looked at it, then me and scrunched up her face to say "poo!"

I really have no idea where poo came from or why she associated it with poo but it made me laugh. What a kid... I could have let her continue with this bizarre theory that someone had shit out egg shaped farm animals all over our house, but I thought that may ruin her wanting to eat out of them later so I went and grabbed her basket and showed her we were going to collect them. My curious little bunny wanted to know what was in it though, so the chocolate eating began within minutes of waking up. I told her to collect as many eggs as she could find and went to get her insulin prepped for just the chocolate. I think the ability to remain flexible and let her be a kid will be so important in this journey. I could have told her she wasn't allowed to eat any of the candy that I had made a game of her finding, being the biggest buzz kill possible, or I could let her have fun and have her BG spike temporarily. I chose fun.

She spiked for less than an hour and then her levels were in range again. We had the best morning together, and I got to watch the difference a year can make in my baby, or should I say little girl. She is getting older and more personality day by day. I won't let her disease get in the way of her personality development. I will show her that we can live a good life, while still caring for her diabetes. I will show her that it doesn't need to ruin the fun, it is just a little extra step in having fun. Then one day when it is her turn to care for herself, I will teach her be the same. Leading her by example one day at a time.

xoxo T1D Mommy