I am all for going with the flow. I’m happy to try out something new, and one of my least favourite things is when I hear people say ‘…but we’ve always done it this way‘. I like visiting new places and being challenged by new adventures.

But equally, I love a bit of routine in my day – especially on weekday mornings and at bedtime.

We have a morning routine that ensures everyone is out of the house dressed, organised, fed and watered and where they need to be. Our daughter heads to school with her lunch packed, notes signed, homework done and packed away, and her hat ready for playtime.

We do this every single Monday to Friday during the school term. Weekends and holidays are all over the place because we rarely need to be somewhere in a clean uniform by 9am.

Bedtime is the same. This is also all about routine. PJs on, teeth cleaned, hair brushed and plaited, and lots and lots of cuddles with last chats about the day. Then into bed for a spot of reading. This is followed by the added-extras. The kidlet tries to bargain another five minutes of reading time, sneaks her light back on when she’s told to sleep, and gets up for a drink of water. She says good night to her puppy about fifteen times and tries to find the cat, coaxing Cherry to sleep on her bed.

It’s the bedtime routine that we do pretty much every night. It works – even with the bargaining and distracting.

Last night’s cuddles were given over the phone because I am away for work overnight in Sydney. It’s the first time in two years that I’ve not done the bedtime routine (apart from the overseas travel and her occasional sleepover with friends) and when I hung up from her, I realised I’d forgotten to ask if there was any last thing she wanted to say to me. I told her I loved her, but I didn’t say ‘I love you mostest.‘ At which point we would both say ‘Not a word!‘ I’m out of practice with the one-night-away-from-each-other routine.

Actually, as it turns out, I’m out of practice with the one whole night away from home thing! I arrived in Sydney without any toothpaste and three strips for my BGL meter. This was remedied with a quick visit to an NDSS pharmacy (for both strips and toothpaste). There were three jelly beans languishing around the bottom of my bag which weren’t going to be particularly helpful if I went low, so I popped into the convenience store across from the hotel to replenish hypo supplies.

I also forgot to pack spare diabetes consumables. Of course, I have my contingency bag that has one spare line and reservoir. But none of these spares helped when I ripped (and I mean ripped – blood everywhere!) my two day old sensor from my skin as I got changed.

Now, this wouldn’t have been a problem if I was not travelling alone. But being on my own without my CGM makes me nervous. A phone call to a friend living in Sydney who made a mercy dash into the city with a spare sensor has made me feel so much more relaxed.

I don’t wear a sensor all the time, but I do make a point to if I am travelling – especially if travelling on my own which I’ve really not done for some time. Ordinarily (at home), if I ripped a sensor out, I wouldn’t bother putting one straight back in. But I knew that I’d have a really restless night (of no sleep) without the security blanket that is an alarming-if-low CGM.

I used to do a lot of overnight travel and I had it just right. I had the packing perfect, I timed line changes just right and I had a mental checklist that I would work through with great skill and precision. I rarely – if ever – forgot anything.

Routine gets a bad wrap because it’s considered boring and unadventurous. And that may be the case. But the stress that comes from being without the necessary diabetes stuff – or having a really lousy hypo that could have been prevented with a CGM – is far more boring. And quite frankly, these are adventures I can do without!