Too much or too little? Checking bg's through the night, plz answer.?!

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

I got diagnosed with diabetes when I was 12. I checked by blood sugar before I went to bed, at around 10pm. Then, at 2am, my mom would come in and check my blood sugar. At 7am, when I woke up, I would check it again. We did this for a few weeks, but my blood sugars were pretty stable throughout the night.
Of course, I do know some diabetic kids who's parents check their blood sugars once or twice a night because of blood sugars going too low or too high.
How high is his blood sugars going? Does he have ketones? I know that my blood sugars do go high in the night sometimes, but I never do seem to get ketones. But, if you do give him correction shots, check every two hours. It might not be necessary to do corrections. Check with his pediatric endocrinology team to see if corrections need to be made. His long acting insulin dosage might need to go up some.

I hope this helps, and feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions, or anything like that. You can e-mail me at mryburne@att.net

EDIT: Neither one of you must be getting much sleep. I've notice that when I get too tired, my blood sugars sky-rocket upwards.

A majority of parents do NOT check blood glucose levels during the night - it is too disruptive to everyone's sleep pattern. You then deal with whatever blood glucose level that you have with the morning check. You should be talking with your son's physician about this and whether it is even needed during the night.

Health care provider

You are a mum so of course you are scared. I suggest that you talk to your child's diabetic adviser and ask them about the best glucose monitoring for your son is. That way attention will be paid to the trend shown by your readings and how well controlled your son is. I like others who have commented on here feel you are testing to much and it could be to much but I know this is because you are scared. ask for advise from the team caring for him

Retired nurse/diabetic

clinically, 3-4 times a day is safe. its ok if hes a bit hyperglycemia, just make sure he doesnt go hypo because that is more dangerous.

pharmacy school

One test during the night is the absolute maximum you should be doing. Running a bit high (around 150) at night is fine as it protects you from going low and can be promptly corrected in the morning, so if he's not having overnight hypos, there is NO need to test that frequently. During the day, you should at minimum test him at breakfast, before every meal/snack, 2 hours after every meal/snack, before bed, and whenever he feels high or low. More intensive testing should also be done when he's participating in sports. At his age, he should be able to test himself during the day time and if he doesn't know how to yet, start teaching him- I've seen three year olds who know how to operate their own insulin pumps with a parent watching over them!

Talk to your child's endocrinologist about getting a cgms. A cgms can alarm if your child's glucose is going too low or too high, so that way you won't have to disrupt your schedules by testing him when he's not too high or low.

Edit: I would definitely not recommend taking that "diabetic nurse"'s advice to only check twice a day, or to only inject twice a day! Stable control can ONLY be achieved with a basal/bolus schedule, and frequent testing is key to good control, avoiding highs and hypos, and avoiding complications. I'm all for aggressive daytime testing, but think that cgms is a muuuch better solution for night-time prevention of severe hypos.