Newcomer. Parent of boy with Type 1

Good morning all. It's now a week since my husband and I had the conversation of "do you think we should take A [our son who will be 10 in two weeks] to see a doctor about his needing to wee all the time?" He was diagnosed with diabetes at 10 pm last Sunday and gave himself his first insulin injection at 8am on Monday morning- which we now know was World Diabetes Day - what brilliant timing he has.

It's been quite a week! We've learnt to count carbs (he's currently eating exact numbers as they work out his doses), he's learnt to do blood tests, injections and to wait until meal times before eating. I've done more cooking from scratch than ever and I've learnt how to organise electronic prescriptions at the doctors and pharmacists. The school has been given supplies and training and the Afterschool club is working out how I can give him 15g carbs snacks that also aren't going to affect the boy with extreme nut allergies...

A went back to school for Friday afternoon, we hope we can be back to Afterschool club as well by Tuesday.

Thank you very much. You're right that the temptation is to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible! And that gives information overload and puts normal life on hold...

I'm feeling quite frustrated this evening. My son went back to school Friday afternoon and has been in as normal this week. But the after school club are making me jump through more and more hoops. I started discussing it with them last week. I organised all the supplies on Monday and prepared care plans - I even got them a spare pen and spare insulin even though I can't think at the moment of any reason why he'd inject insulin at that time of day. This morning I was late into work because I sat with one of the senior staff members for over an hour going through every little detail of his care plan. I'd done all their paperwork for them - risk assessments, medicine approval forms, wrote about hypos (which we have yet to experience) and even what to do if he collapses unconscious (not a pleasant thing to think through). It took a lot of research for me to do that - and I got it checked with his diabetes nurse.

I went to school cheerful because they seemed to have agreed to take him back. And he went there tonight. But when I collected him they asked me to keep him off again tomorrow(!) because when the person I'd been talking to had tried explaining it all to the other senior managers they panicked.

I'm frustrated and tired - I feel like I did far more than was necessary, and it's still not enough. My boss has been understanding (fortunately) - but after a full week off last week and early finishes and late starts this week, I'm well behind and the pressure is mounting at work. What with the normal stress of adapting to the rest of this (I used to have him on school dinners and making packed lunches is driving me crazy), that extra work stress is not helping.

And breathe ... no point getting too annoyed with it. But, has anyone got any advice on how to help the after school club learn what they need to learn? And does anyone have any school holiday club experience?

Thank you. Actually the school itself is fine. It's the separate company that collects him from school at 3:15 and looks after him until I finish work at 6pm that's the problem. And the DSN did come and talk to them and to the school at the same time. I'm sure it will sort out by the end of the week ... but it's frustrating.

The other problem will be school holidays - previously we've organised for him to go to clubs that look after him during the school holidays and most of them are sports-themed - so during school holidays he does a whole day of sports. It's just dawning on me that if the after school club is this worried, we may find it hard to get him holiday cover too ... Perhaps I'll ask on the parent forum part of this how others have solved this problem

Thank you. I did indeed ask the nurse to go in to speak to them and it really helped.

Thanks all. At the time I was writing that I was massively stressed. It seemed like every day I came closer to getting them to take him back there was just one more barrier.

I know in the long term we'll be able to match his insulin to what he chooses to eat, but in the short term while we and he and the school and after school club all learn to cope, the nurse recommends three meals and three snacks a day. The meals - breakfast, lunch and dinner with exactly 75g carbs and the snacks - mid morning, mid afternoon and bedtime with exactly 15g carbs - the level his levemir balances out so no extra injections needed.

As a very busy working mum who previously relied on school dinners, switching to preparing carb counted breakfasts and packed lunches as part of the already crazy morning routine has been a really tough transition. I'm exhausted from having to wake up earlier every day. I wanted the morning and afternoon snacks to be simple "grab and go" in this early phase - sufficiently healthy, but also something I could grab at 8:15am while yelling "where are your shoes?" And "can you remember how to spell subtle, it's your spelling test today?" And "here's your packed lunch where's your pe kit?"

The nurse recommends cereal bars. Which seemed the perfect solution. Until I found they were "produced in a factory which also handles nuts".

So that's the explanation- other parents may identify with this. My moaning post was because the afterschool club kept changing what I had to do to let him go back to there and my boss kept adding more to my work to do list, to make leaving work at 3pm rather than 6pm ever more complicated. The nuts in the cereal bars was a "last straw" rather than a big deal in and of itself.

A couple of weeks on and I wish I could say it's got easier. Maybe it has in some ways. But I do feel absolutely exhausted