Doctor Confirms 16-Month-Old Baby's Extreme Thirst Is Sign of Unexpected Medical Condition
With the summer heat comes a renewed interest in a variety of drinks and frozen treats as people feel the need for hydration and cold. But one mom has a warning for other moms who might assume, as she did at first, that an increased level of thirst is normal in their young children.
Courtney Moore has a 16-month-old who’s like many other kiddos his age: The toddler stage has well and truly hit, and he’s walking and getting taller and drinking lots of water.
Moore also encountered another tricky issue that many parents have dealt with. Maddox, her toddler, was blowing through overnight diapers like nobody’s business.
In fact, he was going through a lot more diapers than usual during the day, too.
“For the last two weeks, Maddox has been leaking through his overnight diapers and filling up his daily diapers within an hour,” Moore shared on Facebook on July 8. “He’s been extremely thirsty, wanting to chug water the moment he woke up in the morning. But it’s been warm out, so it could’ve just been that it’s summer.”
Moore asked for mom advice online, and many suggested she double up on diapers or switch brands, but nothing stemmed the tide.
As he continued that pattern, she noticed he was also slimming down a bit. Under most circumstances, these factors could be totally normal signs of healthy toddler development — but Moore’s “mother’s intuition” kicked in and nagged at her to get Maddox checked out just in case.
Within an hour of taking him in, her gut feeling had been vindicated.
“I called his pediatrician who ordered bloodwork,” she continued in her post. “An hour after that bloodwork, we received 4 emergency calls from Kaiser telling us his glucose level was 684 (normal range is low 100s) and we needed to rush him to the ER right away.
“The doctor said on the phone, ‘His blood glucose read 684,'” Moore reiterated to Today.
“The doctor said, ‘Well, he should be like 150.’ And I was like, ‘Oh yeah that’s high!'”
The Moore family was told Maddox had DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis) and type 1 diabetes. He will now need insulin for the rest of his life — but thanks to Moore’s vigilance, he has a real shot at that life.
“It’s been a long couple of days but we are forever grateful to the incredible PICU and Pediatric staff at Kaiser for saving his life,” Moore posted. “We’re happy to be home and are adjusting to our new lives with our little warrior!”
Having avoided tragedy and realizing the signs of his life-threatening condition seemed harmless, Moore wants to encourage parents to act when they feel like something is off.
“If you feel like something’s wrong talk to a pediatrician,” she told Today. “Talk to their doctor and just eliminate it. If it would have been nothing, I would have been given peace of mind.”
“I’m sharing this because what we could’ve written off as being due to warmer weather and being an active toddler literally could’ve killed our son,” she wrote in her post.
“Moral of the story parents, pay attention to your kids and trust your gut. We got very lucky.”
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