Lowdown

"Mom."

It was just a whisper. I almost didn't hear it, but something dragged me up to the barest surface of consciousness. "Mm?"

"I feel low."

Woken from a dead sleep, it takes real effort to draw enough breath to speak instead of grunt. "Do a stick." I pried one eyelid open and looked at my clock: 3:35.

I was almost asleep again when she came back. "It says the number is thirty-eight."

Frack. I rolled upright with a sigh. "Be right there." She was back in bed by the time I shuffled to the hallway. Juicebox on the bannister. I wrestled with the stupid wrapper on the straw and got it in the box, miraculously without spilling any juice. Penny sucked half the box up with one long inhale, then spent a while wiggling the straw around trying to get the last precious droplets from the bottom.

I went back to bed, but couldn't sleep. What had caused the low? What if she'd slept through the warning signs?

At 3:55, I got up and went to check her again. Just to reassure myself that the juice had done its job. She was asleep, but not deeply -- she sat up when I started freeing her hand from the blankets she was wrapped in.

Sixty-seven. She's still sporting a blood sugar that's more believable as an age. Though at least it's come up to an age older than everyone living in our house.

No more juice boxes on the bannister, either. I opened a roll of Smarties and dumped them in her hands, and sat with her while she methodically munched through them. That was 23 grams of carbs, total -- usually, she bounces right back with only 8 or so.

I went back to bed. Worried and fretted for a while and finally managed to sink into a doze, and was woken when Penny got up to go to the bathroom. She went back to bed without trying to strike up a conversation (she even turned the bathroom light off before she opened the door), and I drifted back to my doze... Thump-BOUNCE! Penny was in the bed, climbing over me to get to the middle. "I had a bad dream." I looked at the clock: 5:00.

"Mm." Low blood sugars do sometimes manifest dreams that wake her up. I let her climb between me and Matt and put my arm over her for a few minutes. She was wiggly, though, which meant all that sugar from the juice and candy was finally in her system. I wondered if her morning blood sugar check was going to be over 200, then figured there was nothing to be done about it -- 67 isn't a number that we'd let stand even during the day. "Back to bed," I finally said.

I led her back to bed and tucked her in, and she went with only minor protesting ("I'm not sleepy!" "Too bad, 'cause I am.") and no apparent fear of more nightmares (which always makes me wonder whether they're actually all that bad or if they're just vivid enough to wake her up) and I think I finally got back to sleep around 5:15 or so.