Oh, dear...

We visited the in-laws for dinner the other night, and MIL mentioned that someone dh knows had "come down with" type 1 diabetes in his twenties. And that his child has also developed it.

Full stop.

Where do I go from there, then?

Honestly...and this is totally a personal choice, but had I developed type 1 before I had a child, I would have pushed dh to adopt. I have always wanted to adopt anyway, and that would have been the final straw. While it's nifty to see our genes expressed in a child, I am more interested in being a parent than I am in being a biological parent.

Now I know that women with type 1 who have a child in their late twenties have a fairly low statistical likelihood of having a child who develops type 1. It seems to be more strongly inherited from the male line (it is in my case). But nonetheless, knowing that I have some rocking genes and some awful ones...the awful ones would nix the idea of biological reproduction for me.

I'm rarely a worrier, but I'm sure that one of the worst fears of any parent with diabetes is to have a child with the same disorder, to pass your junk on to the next generation. The guilt. Yes, life with diabetes is certainly worth living, but life without diabetes has a lot more pizza and worry-free nights.

So why the comment by MIL? An out of the blue fact? A fear? I don't know. But I can't stand being reminded that I have a crappy disease and that I could have passed it on to my kid.

There's a lot of fear that goes with diabetes, and although I tend to piddle through life trying to ignore it, sometimes I think that people think that means that there is no fear. That a cure is just around the corner, and that I can do whatever I'd like without thinking and without worry. I certainly don't want to milk my diabetes, but sometimes living well with it can make it seem like something minimal, something that would be easy for a child to have.

And it's not easy. It's real life for a lot of people, but that doesn't make it easy.

Hey, at least dd didn't get my flat feet with pre-made bunions. Sigh.