water, water everywhere

Thomas is wetting his bed. A lot. Not the regular soak through the Pull-Up wet, but a deluge-like wet. We put him down at 8 and his bed is soaked by 10. Change his sheets, he's in our room soaked again by midnight. I have been peed on in my own bed. It has made for some good story-telling at work, but truly I am losing it.

Needless to say, I thought I'd be over these kinds of parenting humps by the time my youngest was 5. Of course, in a never-ending string of "mother of the year" type parenting, what I am most concerned with lately is how much sleep I am losing. And how much laundry I am doing.

Who knows where the thought came from, but one day, after about 3 weeks of endless wetting, I thought "diabetes." My uncle is type-1, and my cousin was diagnosed just last year at 17, but somehow it never dawned on me that my children were at risk. And still, one day the thought popped into my head. "Frequent urination...diabetes." For years I have been secretly walking around feeling lucky to have dodged all sorts of bullets: my kids are healthy, seem well-adjusted, bright...we made it...or maybe not.

Tom and I start tossing around the idea that TJ is diabetic, but it's more like a joke, as in "that friggin' kid has diabetes" and of course, the implications are not real. This goes on for another week. Tom goes fishing with our good friend Mike and comes home declaring that there is NO WAY Thomas has diabetes. Apparently in a few short hours of fishing, Mike peed far more than TJ ever does in a day.

But, on a whim we use Grandma's boyfriend's meter (and Grandma's expert nursing skills) to test Thomas. 384. Well then. Diabetes it is. Except it's Sunday. And tomorrow is Marathon Monday. So I put it out of my mind until Tuesday, when the doctor will be in the office. I am sure they will have some other explanation. Right - Tuesday we will call to "be sure" that TJ is NOT diabetic.