Customer Reviews

When You're a Parent With Diabetes: A Real Life Guide to Staying Healthy While Raising a Family

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a mom with T1 diabetes and this book covers just about all of the concerns when one is a parent with diabetes. The great thing about the book is that its filled with tips and advice from other parents with diabetes.

The book is a nice easy read too. Not too medical and Kathryn Gregorio Palmer's "voice" is like that of an old friend.

As a mom with Type 1 diabetes, Kathryn Gregorio Palmer addresses so many of the concerns that I have as a mom of two small children and a person with Type 1. There are tons of practical hints and "been there" stories in the book that made sense to me and have helped me to be better to myself so that I can be better for my family.

An honestly helpful self-help book!

Kathryn Gregorio Palmer knows diabetes. She has lived with it since age 18. Her husband also has type 1 diabetes and they have two healthy young boys. So, when you read so much about the risks of parenting among diabetics, you can't help but think they may be on to something that all of us diabetics can learn from.

In writing "When You're a Parent With Diabetes: A Real Life Guide to Staying Healthy While Raising a Family" Palmer made her dream of helping other parents struggling with diabetes come true. Using a tone that never sounds condescending while still delivering very valuable pearls of wisdom from her own experience, Palmer takes the reader through the different stages of parenting in a very well structured and enjoyable way.

She doesn't stop at sharing her own experience. The book's 144 pages are also packed with anecdotes from female and male parents as they live through the struggles of parenting with diabetes.

Starting with the considerations leading up to parenthood, including thoughts about gestational diabetes, things to monitor throughout pregnancy and during labor and delivery, the book also even devotes space to adoption as an option for diabetics.

The first year of parenthood, the preschool years, while you still are your children's hero and the time when you can be a cause of serious embarrassment for them (think how teenage children may feel about having their diabetic parent shoot insulin or test blood glucose in public), all have a space in the book.

A whole chapter is devoted to some of the challenges diabetics want to forget about, such as how to talk with kids about diabetes complications, dealing with diabetes and depression, and a cause of much concern: the worries of one's own children developing diabetes.

The last pages are spent reminding us diabetics of the things we can and should do to stay healthy and avoid complications as much as possible, so we can live long to enjoy the lives of our children and grandchildren.

All in all, "When You're a Parent With Diabetes: A Real Life Guide to Staying Healthy While Raising a Family" is an excellent resource for diabetics, whether they are planning to raise a family or they already have kids and can use a little extra help. If you are diabetic or your partner is diabetic, whether you are male or female, you should definitely get yourself a copy.

This is an excellent book-- a must read for anyone with diabetes contemplating a family. It gives the kind of encouragement necessary for staying focused. Thanks for writing!

I have been a type 1 diabetic for the last twenty years. Now approaching my late twenties, I'm thinking about starting a family and preparing my body for that adventure. Doctors tell me about what my A1c should be and how my numbers should ring in, but no one could tell me about what it would be like once the kid actually arrived. How was I going to manage my diabetes daily duties and the daily doodies of a baby? Was it possible? I was unsure and overwhelmed and no one could give me an honest answer.

Finding Kassie Palmer's book, "When You're a Parent with Diabetes," was exactly what I needed. She didn't gloss over her answers and offer platitudes and cliches about dealing with parenting - she gave Real Life situations and actually eased some of my anxieties about parenting.

I feel that I'm at least semi-ready to think about a family now. And that's saying an awful lot.

I would urge any diabetics who are thinking about starting a family to pick up this book. It's a must-read for anyone who wants both insulin bottles and formula bottles in their homes. :)

This book is a must read for anyone who has diabetes or knows someone with it. I am Type 1, and I can't tell you how difficult it was to constantly explain that yes, I can have children, yes, they will be fine, etc...and this book goes into detail about issues like that.
Kathryn did a great with this book, and I encourage everyone to read it!!!!

I know people are criticizing this book as appropriate only for mothers, but there are nuggets in here worth multiples of the purchase price to fathers, as well. Specifically, the section on the impact of mood swings on the quality of your parenting. As a psychotherapist and the adopted daughter of a type I diabetic, I can tell you that regardless of your gender, nothing will be as central to the quality of the relationship with your child or to your child's lifelong mental health as YOUR management YOUR bloodsugar-related mood instability. It's difficult enough for adults to cope with the changes in temperament that diabetes brings to a relationship. Imagine trying to make sense of that as a child ... it becomes an excercise in confusion, self-criticism and toxic shame. Don't let that happen to your child. This book can help.

Thanks for writing a book that is geared towards diabetic parents! This much needed book is full of 'real world' experience geared towards helping diabetic Moms and Dads teach their children about diabetes, handle strains diabetes can sometimes place on a marriage, and educating non-diabetic spouses and children about diabetes.

This book is needed for those with diabetes raising families! Thank-you!

I just have to say that I am very impressed with this book! I wish it had been around for my first T1 pregnancy! Reading it really validated all of my frustrations about the sudden and drastic change in care once the baby was born. It also has realistic suggestions about how to deal with the frustrations of diabetes and explaining it to your kids. I can not begin to tell you how many times my child has snuck into my supply of juice boxes for low blood sugar! This book is wonderful and a must read for any mom with diabetes planning for a family. I can't stress how much I wish I had it the first time around! I'll be leaving it in my CDE for another 1st time mommy to read!

My husband is a type 1 diabetic. We are in the planning stages for thinking about possibly having children, and I obviously have my aprehensions for how his diabetes will affect him/us with very small children. A few (maybe 3) times during the time that I have known him, he has fallen into a severe low that he does not feel coming on, and it renders him basically comatose until someone else brings him out of it. I knew this book would deal with a woman with diabetes being pregnant and caring for a child, but other reviews I had heard also said it did a great job of detailing out the best way for the father with diabetes to respond as well, and I was hoping for a book to show me different things to do for my husband to make sure that he is okay when I leave him alone with the child.

I think the book probably does a great job of detailing how to deal with a pregnancy, but I have been terribly dissapointed with the amount of time spent on the fathers, and generally when she is speaking to the fathers, she is addressing them as to how to care for their diabetic pregnant wives. I really want to give it like half a star, but I guess the material is good, the title is just bad. It should not be "When you are a PARENT with Diabetes", it should be "When you are a MOTHER with Diabetes." If that was the title, I would not have wasted my money.

On a separate note, if anyone knows of a good book dealing mostly with a baby/child being raied by a diabetic father, I would love to know the title.