It’s been a hell of a Spring Break and I, for one, am glad it’s OVER! 

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here in the dark with my vodka and 7, while Ian suffers in the other room: On top of cold symptoms that he’s worked through all week, he appears now to have eaten some bad sushi.

Asher is still sick. He alternates between feeling reasonably chipper and totally lame. His nose is sometimes so congested it’s hard for him to breastfeed. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. It’s pathetic. He’s now whining a lot of the time, not crying, just complaining. I don’t blame him, but there is so little I can do to make him comfortable: menthol rub on his chest, hot showers to clear out the boogers, milk when he wants it, a sleeping companion, being held a lot. That’s about it.

Lucas is doing better. The antibiotics do the trick. I hate the idea that we’re wiping out all the beneficial flora in his system by giving him this medicine, but lung infections suck worse. Maybe. He’s got 6 more days of meds to take, but he’ll be back to school on Monday. (Otherwise, I may just end up in prison.) Fortunately, my son is mature enough to take his medicine without argument or fuss.

In 12 days, I have left the house only a few times and then only for a brief while. My nerves are completely frayed. Today I yelled at Asher because he wouldn’t sleep. Yeah, that’s stupid. I know. He would go to sleep, rest for 10 minutes and pop awake again. He did that three times. He only really took a proper nap when I calmed down and resolved myself to staying with him instead of working. 

I have work to do and can’t manage to do it. I have my first project to edit in a whole new software program. At the moment, I’m not sure how to do it, only that I’ve committed to doing it. 

Yesterday evening I split, engaged in some retail therapy, and (Thank God) dropped in on some friends who were kind enough to convince me that 9 p.m. was not too late. It was a dark moment when I was sitting in my car in front of Barnes & Noble thinking I had no friends and nothing to do and nowhere to go. Thanks, darlings. I really needed to sit in your kitchen and bitch for a while. 

In a (perhaps belated) effort to stay positive and be Zen about all this, here are some highlights from the last two weeks. There were some fun and/or funny moments, in between the SERENITY NOW! moments.

El Torrito Cilantro Pepita Caesar salad dressing. Lucas has been practicing pouring.

We took a walk at Negro Bar along the American River on March 26. Here are a few pics from that brief outing. It took Lucas only .5 seconds to get covered in wet mud.

It was a beautiful afternoon.

This was before we got sick. I like knowing how to take time-delayed shots! The camera is balanced on the stroller.

This is a cupboard in Lucas’s bedroom. Asher has taken to hiding his pacifiers in this cupboard. Now every time Asher enters Lucas’s room, he makes a beeline for this cupboard to check his stash.

My tulips are blooming and they’re fabulous.

I planted a multipack of pansies in the flowerbed by my front door a few weeks ago. They’re looking great now.

Some bath time fun. Asher kept sticking his tongue out.


And Lucas thought that was cool, so …

We have a book from the library called Hurry and the Monarch and another book all about the life-cycle of the monarch butterfly. Lucas spent two entire days being a monarch butterfly. I had to sneak this photo because he didn’t want one taken. He also had a monarch butterfly painted on his face—and it was damned good, if I do say so myself.

Lucas has also spent a lot of time pretending to be a mouse and a rabbit, which is more palatable to me than, say, pretending to be a Hells Angel or WWF wrestler. Even though small woodland creatures talk in unbearably high, squeaky voices and titter loudly enough to make your head explode.

To keep ourselves busy, we have also: 
* painted pictures
* painted faces
* made mobiles from tissue paper and sticks
* played board games
* played with dominoes
* drawn and colored
* cooked
* gardened and planted 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 cantaloupe melon, 2 lavender bushes
* read dozens and dozens of books
* shopped online
* done many, many chores
* cleaned out closets
* and blogged.

I was wondering if anyone can point me to good info about homeopathy? Does it work? Is it safe? (The FDA recently said not to give cold meds to children under 6 years old, so I’m trying to find something to relieve symptoms.) I don’t have much experience with this, but we are trying Hyland’s ear ache and cold tablets for children. I see homeopathy kits on the internet, but have some skepticism and sticker shock at their prices.

Ian called. He’s got it now too. That makes all four of us. We’re all sick with the cold that knocked Lucas out a week ago. 

We are tired. We are miserable. Lucas is alternately very exhausted and pathetic and annoying as hell. He’s on meds. He is now complaining of an earache. 

The rest of us are just suffering, hoping we’ll feel better soon. 

Asher keeps looking at me like, “What the hell kind of crap mom are you, anyway?! Why don’t you DO something?” I get the stink-eye from him when his nose explodes snotty slime all over his face. I get it when I take his temp rectally. I get it when he coughs. And also when I put any type of food in front of him—any morsel at all. He won’t eat anything. (Thank goodness he’s still nursing. I know he’s getting some fluids at least.) 

Asher woke up many times last night with coughing or crying. But then he did something I’ve never seen him or anyone else do in my whole life: He started screaming and thrashing about. I’m talking about eyes-open-mouth-blaring-rageful screaming. And thrashing his entire body about in the bed, hitting his head on the headboard, on me, on Ian, with complete disregard. It was like a full-on temper tantrum out of a dead sleep at 3 a.m. If he had been hot to the touch, I would have concluded, “Oh, so this is what a febrile seizure looks like.” Only he didn’t have a fever. He was, as far as I can guess, simply MAD AS HELL. He screamed that way for 20 minutes. Ian just held him … tightly, until Asher stopped screaming and went back to sleep. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

It’s another gorgeous spring day and we are trapped inside the Wilson Sanatorium. God help me. I’m just about off my rocker.

Lucas has been sick all week and still is sick. Today we took him to the urgent-care doctor, who determined he has a lung infection and asthma because of it. We now have medicines to treat both. And now Asher has a fever, too.

On Thursday night, after the fourth solid day of fever, I got creative. More about that in a minute. 

There is a whole school of Athroposophical medicine, of which I am largely ignorant. I know a couple of key points, however, and have an uneasy relationship to them. One key point is the idea that fever is one of the body’s main ways of purging itself of unwanted substances, i.e. viruses and bacteria. People who subscribe to this theory recommend not suppressing a fever with drugs, but say we should instead simply provide supportive care and allow the fever to run its course. The supportive care stuff is somewhat familiar (and seems natural/reasonable to me), and somewhat alien. Lemon leg compresses are not the stuff I was raised on.

Over the course of the past week, Ian and I have waffled a bit. Sometimes we gave Lucas ibuprofen to suppress his fever so he could feel better. When his eyes get glassy and he stops moving and talking, I begin to worry. Whenever we dosed him, he felt much better and was able to play and be more himself (still sick, but more himself). When he wasn’t that hot, we let him be in the hopes that he’d rest and get rid of the bug. Now I kind of wonder if dosing him may have prolonged the sickness, given that he was far more active with the ibuprofen in his system. Perhaps he overtaxed his impaired body during those times.

I am so not a doctor, and often have a hard time separating the health info/advice I have stored in my noggin into appropriate True, False, or Complete Bullshit categories.

Anyway … In an effort to distract him and keep him still, I made him a needle-felted Fever Fairy. (Yes, I made her. With. My. Hands. You may rightly gasp with amazement now.) So. A Fever Fairy. She is adorned in fiery colors and is made entirely of wool roving (with a single pipe-cleaner inside for structure). I named her Scarlett (OK, that part wasn’t very creative) and gave her to Lucas, telling him that Fever Fairies are special friends who visit children who are sick and feverish. 

The job of a Fever Fairy is to keep sick children company and to whisper soothing things to them. Fever Fairies stay by their side as long as the children are sick, then disappear. But whenever a child needs a rest and some quiet time, he may call to his Fever Fairy and she will come to him and whisper soothing words and cuddle him.  



I told Lucas a story about a sick little boy and Scarlett, the Fever Fairy. Every time the boy became sick while he was growing up, Scarlett came to him and kept him company. She reminded him of all the cooling things in the world, like the sweet taste of ice-cold water, the many flavors of ice-cream, swimming in summertime, the feeling of snowflakes falling on his cheek and raindrops on his skin. She told him he would get well and feel better soon and that she loved him very much. Scarlett came to him when he was a boy, and a teenager, and a grown-up man, and even an old man—whenever he was sick. And each time she visited, the boy always felt better. Her sweet words helped his fever come down. They were forever friends.

Lucas has slept with Scarlett since then and held her while resting on the couch. I don’t know if this is an original idea or not, but I’ve never heard about anyone else doing it. Either way, his Fever Fairy has distracted him a little. And for that, I’m grateful. 

 

And now, we’re off to do some face-painting. He wants a teddy bear on his cheek.

I got sick on Wednesday night with a freaky intestinal virusy thing. I’ll spare you the details. Yesterday I was still sick—shaky, weak, and so sleepy from having been up half of the previous night. I pawned my baby off on gracious friends Parnasus and T for a couple of hours in the morning. (Thank you wonderful ladies!) I slept while he was gone, and worked for an hour. After I picked him up at aroung 1:30 p.m., I put the both of us to bed. We slept for three hours straight. In a way, it’s not surprising that I needed that much sleep to recover, but it’s a bloddy MIRACLE that Asher cooperated so that I could. (He sleeps better with me than alone, a habit I’ve ingrained in him and one that eventually I will regret, but for now it’s the right thing.)

In two days my weight decreased 4.6 pounds. That’s what dehydration will do for ya! Quick, call Hollywood! 

Anyway, I’m much better today. I can think and move around. My appetite is back. But damned if Asher doesn’t feel heavier than usual!

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/02/plastic_toys2.html 

I’ve been doing a lot of crawling around on the Interwebs lately. I’ve been learning about some icky stuff that they put in … well … everything, but in particular in children’s toys. Like teething toys. That babies. Put in. Their. Mouths.

Ian, who is smarter than me—or at least better at adding 2 and 2 together—just asked me, “What about pacifiers?”

Oh crap. 

Dear God, 
Please, PLEASE do not let me find out that creepy dangerous chemicals are in the pluggies that I lovingly place in my baby’s eager, sucking mouth multiple times every day. I really cannot live without pluggies. They are the life raft I leap to regularly to save my sinking sanity. They are the balm to my weary, hounded soul. I cannot make it without pacifiers. My nipples won’t survive. My jangled nerves will jangle their last.Please. Please.

Synchronicity is a bitch. Ya know? Just last Friday I bought a book called Toxic Sandbox (http://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Sandbox-Environmental-Toxins-Childrens/dp/039953363X/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203382169&sr=1-8). So far, I’ve read the lead chapter and I’m halfway through the mercury chapter. Guess what the next chapter is! Yep. Plastics, including phthalates. 

It seems phthalates are implicated in smaller scrotums, smaller penises, undescended testicles, reduced sperm count, reduced testosterone, testicular caner, liver cancer, and damaged kidneys IN RODENTS. It seems that these chemicals “feminize” babies and small children. The EU has banned products containing phthalates.

So, my gut reaction right now is to go buy a lead testing kit and to throw away every single plastic item in my home. Not sure how much will be left in my home if I do this. Dammit. 

See? There IS a reason (beyond aesthetics) I’ve been asking for and buying wooden toys for my boys for years.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20081102-16879.html

Breast milk contains stem cells

Monday, 11 February 2008

By Catherine Madden Mammary stem cells (red/blue) and differentiated adult mammary cells (green) isolated from human breast milk.  The Perth scientist who made the world-first discovery that human breast milk contains stem cells is confident that within five years scientists will be harvesting them to research treatment for conditions as far-reaching as spinal injuries, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. But what Dr Mark Cregan is excited about right now is the promise that his discovery could be the start of many more exciting revelations about the potency of breast milk. He believes that it not only meets all the nutritional needs of a growing infant but contains key markers that guide his or her development into adulthood. “We already know how breast milk provides for the baby’s nutritional needs, but we are only just beginning to understand that it probably performs many other functions,” says Dr Cregan, a molecular biologist at The University of Western Australia. He says that, in essence, a new mother’s mammary glands take over from the placenta to provide the development guidance to ensure a baby’s genetic destiny is fulfilled. “It is setting the baby up for the perfect development,” he says. “We already know that babies who are breast fed have an IQ advantage and that there’s a raft of other health benefits. Researchers also believe that the protective effects of being breast fed continue well into adult life. “The point is that many mothers see milks as identical – formula milk and breast milk look the same so they must be the same. But we know now that they are quite different and a lot of the effects of breast milk versus formula don’t become apparent for decades. Formula companies have focussed on matching breast milk’s nutritional qualities but formula can never provide the developmental guidance.” It was Dr Cregan’s interest in infant health that led him to investigate the complex cellular components of human milk. “I was looking at this vast complexity of cells and I thought, ‘No one knows anything about them’.” His hunch was that if breast milk contains all these cells, surely it has their precursors, too? His team cultured cells from human breast milk and found a population that tested positive for the stem cell marker, nestin. Further analysis showed that a side population of the stem cells were of multiple lineages with the potential to differentiate into multiple cell types. This means the cells could potentially be “reprogrammed” to form many types of human tissue. He presented his research at the end of January to 200 of the world’s leading experts in the field at the International Conference of the Society for Research on Human Milk and Lactation in Perth. “We have shown these cells have all the physical characteristics of stem cells. What we will do next is to see if they behave like stem cells,” he says. If so, they promise to provide researchers with an entirely ethical means of harvesting stem cells for research without the debate that has dogged the harvesting of cells from embryos. Further research on immune cells, which have also been found in breast milk and have already been shown to survive the baby’s digestive process, could provide a pathway to developing targets to beat certain viruses or bacteria.

My baby is SICK! He developed a barky cough on Sunday during the night. Monday he was clearly sick and had a slight fever. Monday night and in the wee hours of this morning he was miserable, struggling to breathe, unable to sleep and crying without making much noise—just a hoarse, pathetic, croaking sound. The doctor’s office couldn’t see him until 3:30 today. His pulse-ox was pretty good—96. I hate the diagnoses where “supportive care” is about all anyone can do. They did give him a single-dose oral steroid, which I don’t much like but I know how awful not breathing feels and I want him to get whatever relief they can give. Otherwise, humid air is about all we can do for him. Poor baby is sad and clearly miserable. They said, “Keep him comfortable and happy.” Crying and agitation will make him feel and breathe worse. He is a far cry from happy.

http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/croup.html
Signs and Symptoms

Croup is characterized by a loud cough that may sound like the barking of a seal and may be accompanied by fast or difficult breathing and sometimes a grunting noise or wheezing while breathing.

At first, a child may have cold symptoms like a stuffy or runny nose for a few days and may also have fever. As the upper airway (the lining of the windpipe and the voice box) becomes progressively inflamed and swollen, the child may become hoarse, with a harsh, barking cough.

If the upper airway becomes swollen to the point where it is partially blocked off, it becomes even more difficult for a child to breathe. This happens with severe croup. With severe croup, there may be a high-pitched or squeaking noise when breathing in (this is called stridor). A child will tend to breathe very fast, and the stomach or the skin between the child's ribs may seem to pull in during breathing. The child may also appear pale or bluish around the mouth because he is not getting enough oxygen.

Symptoms of croup often worsen at night and when the child is upset or crying. In addition to the effects on the upper airway, the infections that cause croup can result in inflammation further down the airway, including the bronchi (breathing tubes) and the lungs.

Contagiousness

Croup tends to occur in outbreaks in the winter and early spring when the viruses that usually cause it peak. Many children who come in contact with the viruses that cause croup will not get croup, but will instead have symptoms of a head cold.

Diagnosis

Doctors can usually diagnose croup by looking for the telltale barking cough and stridor, the squeaking sound on inhaling. They will also check the child for fever, cold symptoms (like a runny nose), or a recent viral illness, and ask questions to find out if the child has a prior history of croup or upper airway problems.

If the child's croup is severe and slow to respond to treatment, a neck X-ray may also be taken to rule out any other reasons for the breathing difficulty, such as a foreign object lodged in the throat or epiglottitis (an inflammation of the epiglottis, the flap of tissue that covers the windpipe). Typical findings on an X-ray if a child has croup includes the top of the airway narrowing to a point, which doctors call a steeple sign.

Treatment

Most, though not all, cases of viral croup are mild. Breathing in moist air seems to relieve many of the symptoms. Doctors will also sometimes treat with steroids, which helps with the airway swelling.

One way to humidify the air is with a cool-mist humidifier. Having your child breathe in the moist air through the mouth will sometimes break a croup attack. Or try running a hot shower to create a steam-filled bathroom where you can sit with your child for 10 minutes. Try cuddling and reading a bedtime story while doing this to help calm your child.

Sometimes, during cooler months, taking your child outside for a few minutes can help break the attack because the cool air can shrink the swollen tissues lining the airway. Parents can also try driving the child in the car with the windows down to bring in cool air.

If your child has croup, consider sleeping overnight in the same room to provide close observation. If you are not able to break your child's fast breathing and croupy cough, call your child's doctor or seek medical attention as soon as possible.

Medical professionals will need to evaluate your child if the croup appears serious or if there's any suspicion of airway blockage or bacterial infection. Medications such as epinephrine or corticosteroids may be given to reduce swelling in the upper airways. Oxygen may also be given, and sometimes a child with croup will remain in the hospital overnight for observation. As with most illnesses, rest and plenty of fluids are recommended.

Duration

The symptoms of croup generally peak 2 to 3 days after the symptoms of infection start. Croup resulting from viral infection usually lasts less than a week.

Complications

The vast majority of children recover from croup with no complications. Rarely, some children will develop complications such as ear infection or pneumonia.

Frostee, Asher, and I were having lunch last Thursday (1/24) at a sushi restaurant. Asher somehow leaned over in his high chair just wrong and bonked his mouth on the marble tabletop. He cried pretty hard and I could tell he was hurt, but I didn’t see it happen, so I wasn’t sure what he hit, exactly. After a few minutes he stopped crying. We finished our lunch and went on our way. About 20 to 30 minutes later, I noticed that his front left incisor was chipped. He knocked a small chip out of his tooth when he hit the table. 

Later, I could feel the jagged edge of the tooth when nursing him. I called our dentist/uncle and made an appointment.

This morning we went in to see the dentist. He agreed it would be best to smooth out the poky part. I held poor Asher’s body and head still while the assistant held down his arms and my uncle smoothed out the tooth with what looked and sounded like a tiny power grinder. Poor baby cried and struggled and turned bright red with frustration. Fortunately, it was over very quickly. He got a plastic bath toy out of the deal, but he seemed pretty pissed off about the experience. He’s currently sleeping it off. 

Before and After photos on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37914323@N00/2226261841/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37914323@N00/2227052454/

I still have to take a picture showing the smoothed tooth. 

This morning I put on my favorite pair of jeans in the whole world. They fit.