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Archives for March 2010

Reach Out

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I’ve been reaching out to folks in my copious spare time, asking for recommendations on great mommy blogs, so I don’t spend all day staring at the navels in my household. I’d like to share:

I could spend all day here.

  • The Sassy Curmudgeon

    • I am insanely jealous of this woman. She is funny and she is published.

  • Taming Insanity

    • A funny blogger who writes lovingly of her husband. And one of my earliest supporters!

  • NieNie Dialogues

    • I think she was on some little show called the “Oprah” show at one point. Do I have that right?

  • Ironic Mom

    • Mother of boy/girl twins and wicked funny.

Any more I should know about?

Fair Warning

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Parents don’t usually get much warning from their kids when something important is about to happen. Or maybe they’re too tired to notice warnings. This morning, Nora, who appeared to be on the mend, was sitting in my lap eating yogurt and suddenly vomited down the front of my shirt.

Things are getting busy around here. I’ll likely be taking a business trip in April. And in May, I’ll be taking over most of the duties of a co-worker who’s being deployed (don’t worry, he’s going to Spain). I’m thinking six posts a week on this blog may be expecting a bit too much of myself. So, I’m putting my five regular readers on notice: I’m going down to four posts a week. Probably something like, Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. And maybe a picture or great link on the off days, but no promises.

Speaking of great links, I caught part of a story on NPR the other day on rule making for kids. Turns out, in almost every culture, when parents make rules that encroach on a child’s privacy, the child rebels. Takes look, it’s food for thought.

Sick Bed Update

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If you’re not in the mood for sappy, skip this post…

I keep telling myself this is what sick kids are supposed to look like, sleepy, flushed.  Usually, Nora barely notices when she’s sick.  Colds don’t really bring her down, they just give her green snot and a cough.  This virus is different.  She’s down for the count.  She’s sleeping all the time and doesn’t want to eat much or talk.  Right now, she’s laying next to me in bed, just kinda staring off into space.  She appears hydrated.  Her fever is gone.  But she barely resembles my chattering little eating machine.  It’s depressing.

The plan for today was for Ben to stay home with her.  I took the bus to work and halfway there got a call from Nora, she was crying for me.  I knew I wasn’t going to make it through the day.  I got to work, went to a few meetings and asked Ben to come and pick me up.  I’ve always been the one to stay home with her and it feels wrong to change the game on her when she’s sicker than usual.  And I missed her.  We all just want to be together. 

 I cannot imagine the pain of parenting a seriously ill child.  We are so blessed to have a healthy, bright little girl.  I would do anything to keep her healthy and safe, forever.

Signing off, the little patient is asking for yogurt — a good sign.

My Modern Pregnancy, or A Nine Month Bout with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

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The title of this post is a bit misleading.  It was actually more like twelve months.  When we started trying to get pregnant, I began taking pre-natal vitamins and avoiding microwaves and deli meats.  I read every book on pregnancy and followed virtually every recommendation, from abstaining from over-the-counter medications to sleeping on my left side.  If I knowingly went against a recommendation, I not only felt guilty but also worried myself sick over the possible birth defects I could be causing.  In my first trimester, I took a Gas-X to prevent what felt like an alien trying to explode from my lower abdomen.  With the level of guilt I felt, it may as well have been high-ball.

I took gestation seriously.  I remember going out to lunch with a co-worker (and mother of two) and telling her we couldn’t go to a deli because I couldn’t eat cold cuts.  (Listeria, you know.)  She looked at me like I was wearing Kleenex boxes on my feet.  I remember walking with another co-worker downtown and scolding him for trying to cross against a light with a pregnant lady in tow.  I’m certain I was insufferable. 

I’m not sorry for being careful, but with all the hormones coursing through my body, an unfortunate side effect of being this diligent was that I blamed myself for any complication that arose.  At twenty-eight weeks, I took the obligatory glucose tolerance test.  I got a call that I’d need to take it again.  The second test came back with border-line results so I took it a third time.  I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes.  Ridiculously, I was devasted.  Clearly, I was to blame for endangering my baby with a high birth weight.  I cried in self-recrimination — even after reading that the cause is simply hormonal.  I followed the guidelines laid out by my nutrionist to the letter, but my blood glucose levels were still too high.  I flogged myself when I had to go on medication. 

Looking back, I can see how needlessly obsessive I was.  But could I have helped it?  Probably not.  Hormones will have their way with you and there’s no telling how they will manifest themselves.  My husband once took a course of steriods to reduce some inflammation in his back and became a raging lunatic for four days.  I took the opportunity of explaining that he was experiencing something akin to PMS.  A cartoon lightbulb appeared above his head.  And PMS has nothing on pregnancy.  I should just be thankful the hormones didn’t give me the urge to go play in cat poop.  (Toxoplasmosis, you know.)

What guidelines did you follow (or not) while pregnant?

Coxsackie Strikes

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Saturday Nora woke up with a runny nose.  By the afternoon, she had a fever of 102.7.  Early Sunday morning, around 1:00am, she started vomiting.  Suddenly, I remembered the memo that was posted on the door to the toddler classroom at daycare.  “We wanted to inform you that a child in this classroom has a confirmed case of Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease…”

I know, this disease sounds scary as hell.  As I learned in the emergency room on Sunday morning, it’s a virus like any other, only is gets a name because it can cause sores on the hands, foot and mouth, and a rash on the cheeks.  The official name of the virus is Cocksackie.  I took Nora in because she could not keep anything down.  We’d give her a tiny sip of Pedialite and five minutes later it would come right back up.  She had chapped lips, and I was freaked out about dehydration.  Last summer, my husband had to get an IV to stop severe dehydration due to food poisoning. 

I’m always wary of over-reacting, but I’m glad we took her in, she was beginning to dehydrate (but wasn’t bad yet).  They gave her a medication called Zofran, which stops nausea and vomiting (it was originally used for people undergoing chemotherapy).

The nurse in the ER told me that if she could make one change to the health care system, it would be to make Zofran available over the counter.  She said stopping vomiting and the accompanying dehydration could dramatically reduce the number of visits to emergency rooms.  She was planning to write a letter to Obama about it.  You go, Nurse Laura!

I am home with Nora today, she still has diarrhea, but no more vomiting.   My husband had the genius stroke of suggesting she wear pull-ups until the diarrhea gets better.  We were both shocked when she consented. She’s drinking Pedialite out of a wine glass and getting lots of rest. It’s tough seeing our little fireball reduced to an ember; we’re looking forward to her speedy recovery.

White Noise

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Saturday night the neighbors had a party. Lots of cars parked on the street, tiki torches, drunken wooting, the whole bit. This is not a frequent occurence, but still annoying to someone chronically sleep deprived. Since I saw it coming, I took a Trazodone and slept in Nora’s room, which is on the opposite side of the house and has a white noise machine.

My husband and I did lots of reading about babies before Nora was born, so we were tipped off as to the importance of white noise. At first, we used a fan (it was summer, two birds, one stone.) Turns out, recent studies have shown that fans reduce the risk of SIDS (three birds, one stone). When the weather got cold, we bought a white noise machine. It has different settings, babbling brook, rain storm, and our favorite, the ocean. (We even take this thing with us when we go to the beach, which feels a little perverse.)

The machine runs constantly in Nora’s bedroom. I’m sure she doesn’t even notice it at this point. I imagine her shock someday at visiting a friend’s house overnight only to find her friend’s room devoid of the familiar lull of lapping waves.

I can’t overestimate the value of this little device. It drowns out background noise for naptime, helps create a homelike atmosphere while traveling and, as I learned last night, is a great way to avoid calling the police on your neighbors.

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