The First Year With Type 1: A Parent's Survival Guide to Diagnosis, Devices, School, and Everything In Between by Dana Whitfield

The First Year With Type 1 is a comprehensive, heartfelt, and practical survival guide written specifically for parents navigating the disorienting months following a child's Type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Written by a registered nurse and certified diabetes care and education specialist who is also a Type 1 parent herself, this book combines genuine clinical authority with the warmth and specificity that only lived experience can provide. Unlike existing resources that skew either toward dense clinical reference material or toward memoir without practical structure, this book is organized chronologically around exactly what a newly diagnosed family actually needs to learn and do, week by week and month by month: understanding the science in plain language, mastering carb counting without anxiety, choosing between pumps, CGMs, and injections, navigating sick-day rules and emergencies with confidence, securing a genuinely protective school 504 Plan, extending trust to sleepovers, babysitters, and camp, protecting sibling relationships and family wellbeing, recognizing and recovering from parental burnout, managing the real-world logistics of insurance and supplies, and gradually building a child's own independence and confidence over time. Composite stories drawn from real family patterns appear throughout, grounding every chapter in genuine, recognizable experience. This is the book parents wish someone had handed them in the hospital, organized clearly enough to actually use during the most overwhelming year of their parenting life. Read more