Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about growth.
Not just the kind you can measure on a chart or celebrate with a neatly labeled milestone. Not just how much clearer Kay’s speech has become, or how her language has exploded with new words—and how she now repeats everything (for better or worse).
Yes, that growth is there. It’s beautiful. It’s exciting. It’s something I’m endlessly proud of.
But there’s another kind of growth happening too. A quieter kind. A heavier kind.
Kay may not fully understand what it means to “have diabetes.” She doesn’t understand insulin, or blood sugar numbers, or why her body does what it does. But what she does understand is how she feels.
She knows when something is off.
When she feels low, she says “phone.”
She asks me to check her blood sugar.
She says “gummies.”
If you ask her, “What do you have?” she knows the answer.
She knows her phone has to be with her. Always.
And that knowledge—while incredible—comes with a weight no child her age should have to carry.
Every night when I put her to bed, she says, “phone.”
Every morning when I wake her up, the first word out of her mouth is “phone.”
Sometimes she asks for it before it even alarms. Sometimes an alarm goes off and she immediately says “phone,” and I find myself reassuring her over and over again:
Mommy will always make sure your phone is near you.
I say it because she needs to hear it.
And maybe because I do too.
In its own way, diabetes has taught Kay responsibility far beyond her years. It has also, very understandably, created anxiety around something she depends on to stay safe. She’s not even in kindergarten yet, and she already knows she can’t just exist without monitoring her body.
I want to say she’s too young to worry about something this big.
Too young to carry something this expensive.
Too young to have something strapped to her body at all times.
But the truth is… this is Kay’s reality.
This is our reality.
Kay has a cellphone—not because she wants one, not because it’s a toy, and not because it connects her to games or videos. She has a phone because it is her life-saving medical device. It keeps her safe. It tells us when her body needs help. It’s not a luxury—it’s a necessity.
And this is where my feelings live in a complicated space.
It feels like both a blessing and a curse that Kay won’t know any life other than one with diabetes. There won’t be a “before” for her. No clear moment where everything changed. No memories of a body that worked differently, no grieving the loss of a life without alarms, numbers, or constant awareness.
That’s the curse.
But the blessing is this: she won’t have to mourn a life she once had. Diabetes isn’t something that was taken from her—it’s simply part of the life she’s always known. It’s woven into her normal, her routines, her understanding of herself.
Life will still have its challenges. Diabetes is only one part of Kay’s story. She also moves through the world with Down syndrome and autism, each shaping how she learns, communicates, processes, and experiences life.
But because all of this has been part of her story from the beginning, there’s a kind of acceptance built into her world. Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s fair. But because it’s familiar.
Kay is growing in awareness.
In communication.
In self-advocacy.
In trust.
And while I wish with everything in me that she didn’t have to carry so much so young, I am endlessly proud of the way she carries it—bravely, instinctively, and in her own Kay way.
This is not the childhood I imagined for her.
But it is her life.
A life shaped by diabetes, Down syndrome, and autism—not as limits on who she can be, but as threads in the story of how she experiences the world.
And every single day, Kay shows me that growth doesn’t always look like what we expect—but it can still be strong, meaningful, and incredibly powerful.