Travelling with a type 1 toddler

When is comes to travelling with children, there really is no such thing as travelling light. Add travelling with a type 1 toddler into the equation and its enough to change your plans to a staycation for the foreseeable future.

Having ventured out on our first family holiday since diagnosis, we found some really useful products that made life a little more organised and normal. Here’s our tried and tested top tips…

Read more: No such thing as travelling light

1) Online repeat prescriptions

Before you venture off, you need to make sure you are fully stocked with all the essentials. Pack extras of everything, here’s a quick tick list to help

• Insulin
• Insluin pens
• Box of needles
• Spare sensors
• Sharps bin
• Sensor adhensive patches
• Blood glucose moniotr and strips
• Blood testing kit and spare lancets
• Ketone monitor and strips
• Hypotreatements such as Lift shots and Glucogel
• Essential hypokit
• Adhesive remover spray
• Barrier cream

We use pharmacy2U but there are a number of online pharmacies that can link with your GP and deliver repeat prescriptions to your door. If you haven’t set this up yet, I would highly recommend this service, it saves very regular trips to the pharmacy.

2) Travel kit bags

A type 1 toddler is a whirlwind and keeping kit organised can be difficult. There are a huge number of medical travel bags and cases on the market to help organise kit, but we found a large makeup travel bag was a really affordable choice. With moveable compartments and various slots to hold lift shots and various other hypo treatments was ideal.

3) Insulin cool bags and wallets

When the weather is hot is can be a challenge to keep your insulin at the right temperature. Putting it in the fridge makes it sting when it’s injected so it needs to be at room temperature. High temperatures will stop it working. Frio bags are a great solution. The inner pouch is left in cold water for a few minutes then left to dry. The bag stays at a cool temperature for up to 35 hours, protecting the insulin when you’re on the go and out in hot weather. We found ours so useful we now use it constantly.

4) Sensor overpatches

Holidays with kids means seaside and swimming, but lots of water can mean losing sensors early when the adhesive patches give up! There are a range of products aimed at stopping this happening, from arm bands to overpatches. Our type 1 toddler is having a dinosaur stage (actually it’s me having a dinosaur stage) and we found these lovely overpatches that worked a treat to keep his sensor on, we didn’t lose one over the holiday.

5) Hypokit cool bags

Wherever you go, you need to take a hypokit that is easy to get to and big enough to contain essentials. For us, essential means a carton of apple juice, a fruit puree pouch, a small tupperwear box of chocolate buttons and Oreo biscuits and a banana. You can spend a lot of money on medical cooler bags that are essentially really expensive lunch boxes! We found these sweet (and cheap) little mini lunch bags that are small and light and type 1 toddler friendly, we even managed to persuade him to carry it for a while.

We found the prospect of travelling for the first time with a type 1 toddler intimidating and stress inducing, but having the right kit and being organised really helped. I’d love to hear your top tips for travelling with Type 1.