Swimming

It gets us every summer, this swimming thing.  The afternoon goes like this:

Arrive at pool (or if on vacation - beach) around 2.  Immediately disconnect and run into water.

Become hungry around 3:30.  Test, reconnect, snack on crackers and/or fruit.

Disconnect to swim again by 4.

Reconnect between 5 and 6.

What I have learned is that, for my child trying to give the missing basal insulin before-hand can and usually does backfire.  Two thirds of the time, she'll come out low by 3:30.  Deciding this is dangerous anytime, but particularly when waves or water slides are in the picture, we've abandoned that tactic.

We do bolus snack, tacking on any needed correction and just a smidge more to that bolus.

That combination yields an acceptable number by the time she reconnects. 

It's after that when  the whole thing begins to catch up with her.  Unless there's a brisk after-dinner walk or some other unusual evening activity, there's an inevitable high by 9:00.

Yes, a tubeless pump or the 'untethered regimen' could help with this problem, but neither option is on our table at the moment, so we continue our quest for the next best answer.

If only I were a more 'scientific-method' type of thinker.  I'd make some charts and create a well-planned experiment.

In reality, though, using the scientific method requires accounting for all possible variables before you can claim you've proven a hypothesis. I can see us at the pool with a stopwatch, timing the connecting and disconnecting windows. She'd also have to engage in the same types of pool activities each day. Practicing her swimming strokes for an hour is different from repeatedly jumping off the edge. Eating the same dinner every night would get old too. That impromptu after dinner walk could skew a whole day's results.

Instead I hapahazardly try a variety of tactics, figuratively closing my eyes and hoping one of them will work (and that I remember what I did so I can do it again tomorrow).  If I figure it out, I'll be sure to blog about it here so I can refer back to it next summer.