Carbs. Oh carbs. I didn't know much about you and your crazy ways before Grace was diagnosed. Now I know way too much about you. How much you are in number, how long you take to make a blood sugar rise, how you convert to sugar, how you react in my daughter's body. It's really more than I ever wanted to know. I love you and I dislike you very much at times.
Grace is a typical 7 year old. She eats what she likes and if she don't like it, she won't eat it. Now don't get me wrong, the girl will practically eat anything, her diet is varied and wide. But she knows what she doesn't like and is very clear about it. Once she has tried it and decided it's not for her, that's it. End of discussion and no turning back. She dutifully tastes them, then makes the final call.
She eats what 7 year olds eat. We count the carbs and we bolus for them. I am lucky that she likes fruits and veggies. Carrots and peanut butter are a favorite snack of her. Apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, strawberries and assorted other fruits are her friends. She happens to like peas too, and corn.
I feel as if I make her world low-carb and deny her all the things that 'non-D' kiddos eat, then I am setting herself up for some serious eating problems later on. I don't want her to be the candy hiding pre-teen. You want the candy, well, bolus for it and know how it will effect your blood sugar. Go ahead, have at it. Let's get the most knowledge we can about all the foods in this world and then make good decisions. But candy is not inherently bad, it's just a food we make a choice about.
You know what? It's like a friend of mine who had a baby the same time I had my first. She swore her child would never watch TV. It was mind-numbing, waste of time, blah, blah, blah, etc. I remember distinctly her 18 month old and her coming for a visit and that child staring at the TV for more than an hour because he had never seen it before. Gorging on TV. Mine could have cared less, was playing with blocks in the other room. When we say 'never' to our kids, we make some hard lines in the sand. When we learn about everything in moderation, we learn about life and our choices.. For me and for Grace, living with D means that we learn about food and choices. All foods.
Everything in moderation. Every. Thing. And surprisingly, when I present Grace with an array of food to eat, because she has been exposed to it all, she choose wisely. She chooses the fruits, the veggies, the tuna. And she has the cookie too. And she boluses. And all is well in D-land. (And I knocked on wood as I typed that last statement, cause now I jinxed myself...)
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