7 started her pump yesterday.
And honestly… it was messy.
I had to drag myself out of bed. I’m still recovering from shingles and pushed too hard the day before, but this wasn’t something we could reschedule. I had to get up, get 7 up, make sure she ate, make sure she got insulin—normal diabetes stuff before we even got to the “big moment.”
We had to pick up my husband from work because he needed to be there too. He’s just as responsible for this as I am. There was no way one of us was doing this alone.
And then I realized…
We forgot the insulin.
So we turned around, rushed home, grabbed it from the fridge, and tried again.
His coworkers have been giving him a hard time about showing up to every appointment and classes.
But this is our kid.
So he showed up.
About 7
7 was… calm.
She took it in stride in a way I don’t think I could.
She hasn’t complained much through any of this—not the diagnosis, not the changes, not even now. And I don’t know if that’s because we’ve tried to keep things as normal as possible or if we haven’t really given her space to grieve it yet.
We gave her one day in the beginning to just be a kid and not make it a big deal. (I wrote more about that day here → The Quiet Day After My Daughter’s Diabetes Diagnosis)
And since then… she hasn’t made it a big deal either.
I do know she’s excited about one thing:
No more injections.
And honestly, that alone feels huge.
We try to keep as much of this off her as we can. She has the rest of her life to carry it.
The Part No One Warns You About
When they inserted the cannula, it hurt.
She wasn’t expecting that.
And that was one of those moments where you see it hit them for a second—even if they recover quickly after.
She handled it better than I did.
The Day Didn’t Slow Down for This
There wasn’t some big, calm, emotional moment where everything paused and we just soaked it in.
Because our life doesn’t look like that right now.
We were trying to get there on time, figuring out where to go, carrying everything we needed, already feeling behind and off.
And at the same time…
I had a whole other weight sitting on my shoulders.
I wasn’t just there to learn about the pump.
I also had to be ready to walk into the courthouse after and protect my other kids.
(This is part of what we’ve been dealing with lately → The Day Toxic Grandma Showed Up at Our Door)
We had paperwork.
A timeline.
A plan.
Or at least… determination.
I didn’t fully know what we were doing or where we were was going.
But I knew we had to show up.
What Changed Immediately
No more injections for meals.
No more injections before bed.
That part felt real right away.
At dinner, there wasn’t that pause where everything turns into math and second guessing.
It wasn’t:
“Are we rounding up?”
“Is this enough insulin or too much?”
We just entered it.
And it handled it.
At bedtime, we didn’t have to give her insulin.
We just… didn’t.
And that felt strange in a quiet kind of way.
What I Didn’t Expect
I didn’t expect to not feel much of anything when we left.
Not excitement.
Not relief.
Not even overwhelm in the way I thought.
Just… neutral.
And I think that has more to do with everything else going on in our lives than the pump itself.
Because this is big.
This changes her life.
It changes our life.
And I hate that we didn’t really get to feel that.
There wasn’t space to celebrate it.
There wasn’t time to slow down and take it in.
We learned it.
We did it.
And then we moved on to the next thing.
The Moment That Stayed With Me
Last night, Alexa gave the reminder to give her long-acting insulin.
The same reminder we’ve followed every single night since she was diagnosed.
I looked at my husband and said,
“We don’t need that anymore.”
And I smiled.
I told him we could delete it.
But that moment felt bigger than anything else that day.
Today was messy.
I was exhausted.
We were rushing.
There was too much on my mind outside of just being there for her.
I wanted this to feel more like a celebration.
I wanted there to be a moment where we could stop and say,
“This is a big step.”
But life didn’t give us that.
So we showed up anyway.
We learned what we needed to learn.
She got her pump.
And now everything is going to start changing from here.
Even if it didn’t feel big in the moment…
It is.
Photo by Connor Martin
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