everything for little miss

Since my last post about little miss a few weeks ago, we’ve been riding a veritable roller coaster.  The downs: the four-day course of oral steroids over Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I on tenterhooks wondering if she would get better, and two trips to the cape--canceled. The ups: her actually getting better and even thriving after the course of meds, and the big weigh-in two weeks later at the pediatrician’s office—up 2 pounds, or 10% of her body weight—imagine gaining that back yourself after being ill. Yeah!

After a wonderful week of simple, ordinary pleasures, little Miss got sick with a cold again over the weekend.  With every small cough, I had flashbacks to her illness just weeks before— the coughing so hard she would vomit, the intractable coughing all night long, the pain of seeing her so uncomfortable.  I called the pediatrician’s office this past Monday to confirm the game plan: put her back on albuterol, but if the cough gets worse, call back tomorrow.  Monday night: a sleepless night as my husband and I listened to little Miss cough again all night. Here we go again.

She and I went back to see our pediatrician yesterday (btw, little miss is no fan of the doctor's office, no surprise), and we came away with a real diagnosis of mild, persistent asthma, more oral steroids, and a nebulizer machine.  How I am going to get an active one-year old to sit for 10 minutes twice a day with a mask of aerosolized medicine is still beyond me.  And this will have to be our daily routine for the time being.  Well, at least our pediatrician was pragmatic enough to suggest using a video or iPad to help us out, AAP TV recommendations be damned.

But weighing on me more is what this means for little Miss, and for our family overall.  We’ve made some changes already—air purifier in her room, new allergen-resistant mattress cover, new vacuum cleaner, better air conditioner filters.  Still, we’ve been cautioned by our pediatrician to wash our hands religiously, to avoid animal dander (read: no dogs or cats), and to avoid daycare (ie, to decrease the risk of colds, which have triggered her asthma exacerbations). We hope she’ll “grow out of it,” but we can’t predict when. Will this mean we won’t be able to visit relatives with pets, or to have a family dog ourselves? Will this mean no preschool for fall 2013?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Instead of being the more relaxed second-time mama, here I am, needing to be more hyper-vigilant than I was with my son.  But hey, if it prevents little miss from getting sick, we will do it. Rigorous hand washing post-outings has been instituted.  Preschool will be postponed. And as for animal dander, the family dog can become the family fish if needed.  And visitors who are their pet’s lint brush will be asked to change their clothes prior to entering our house.  'Nuff said.

I'll have zero-tolerance for anything but. Call me crazy, but as her mama…I tell you it is true: we will do everything for little miss.

Anything for little miss

Have you ever had a sick family member?  I mean, not cold or flu sick, but like really sick, complete with ER visits, hospitalizations, hard-to-pronounce medications, agony-inducing tests or treatments, difficult discussions with doctors about prognosis.  I have experienced it already with both my parents.  It’s been hard, sad, difficult—but thankfully, despite their illnesses, they are managing. They are adults, they've lived their lives, they understand what is going on.  But when it happens to your baby, it’s a completely different story.

The last few weeks have been pure torture.  The dude was sick with a cold, gave it to little miss, and then he promptly fell ill again with a fever, twice.  I think she got both his first and now second cold (and I am just waiting for the next round).  Now I have complained and complained before.  But this time has been much, much worse.

Flashback: A year ago, I was in the hospital with little miss for a week.  The dude had a terrible cold when we came home from the hospital after little miss was born. She promptly got it too.  We were in that unfortunate late Friday afternoon two-week infant “well-visit” with our pediatrician, trying to decide if little miss needed to go to the ER.  When her oxygen level wouldn’t stay up, I hauled ass and got her to the MGH ER.  She was admitted that night.

Her first cold at a tender one-week of age turned into bronchiolitis, a viral infection of the lungs, very common in infants. And so I stayed with little miss in the hospital for the longest week of my life. She was so little, they couldn’t keep the oxygen tubing placed on her nose—so the nurses had to tape them on her tiny baby cheeks.  There was an oxygen monitor taped to her tiny big toe, and they monitored vital signs every four hours, at the most inconvenient times. When she had just fallen asleep, the nurse would rouse her from her slumber to take her temperature—and totally piss her off.   I spent my days and nights holding her, reassuring her, rocking her.

The worst was just being there.  We shared a hospital bed; the RNs fashioned a little nest for her to sleep in. I curled up next to the little bean as she slept, between feedings. Since I was her food source, I got my fill of hospital food.  Sad when picking today’s menu was a highlight: let’s see, will it be MGH’s famous chili or turkey melt? Or when after a few days, I started cycling through the same three menus again. Chili or turkey melt?

There were some high points: my parents and sister came to visit, as did friend A with some fashion magazines.  We had a beautiful view of the Charles River: strikingly blue spring sky and sailboats in the water to remind me that there was still life out there. My husband would come from work every day to visit and eat lunch with us.  I even made it out one afternoon for a few hours to see my sister graduate from medical school. But mostly it was dreary: I sat worrying that she would spike a fever (which would have added the drama of a lumbar puncture and blood cultures); I was numbed to the monotony of the daily routine; I waited for the team to file in and talk about the plan for the day (more of the same, until she got better); I missed my two-year old son and my husband. I just wanted go home and get back to normalcy again. 

And we finally did go home.  But home still wasn't normal.  My son was sick again when we got home, and then everyone got sick with another miserable cold, even little miss, again.  So another month of torture—the sleeplessness of newbornhood combined with a sick one-month old who just wasn’t getting better, a sick toddler and husband, and myself sick.  Someone asked me at the time, emotionally tone-deaf: “Are you having fun yet?” I had to restrain myself from punching them and snapped back, my anger thinly-veiled, “Maybe if we all weren’t so sick. Maybe if I weren’t so tired. Maybe.”

Fast forward: Somehow we all got better later that summer. Since then, there have been plenty of ups and downs of the usual colds. With each one, we have had the discussion with our pediatrician about what her history of bronchiolitis might mean: an increased risk of asthma in the context of a cold. Last Friday little Miss was coughing incessantly all night.  I called around and scrambled together last-minute babysitting for our son (my husband was on call last weekend) and brought her to the urgent care clinic, with the words of my pediatrician in my head (“If she starts coughing, she probably has asthma. We may need to consider albuterol.”). We waited for the longest hour. The covering doctor didn’t get it right: sent us home with the wrong diagnosis, the wrong treatment. Shit. I persisted and went back Monday to talk with our pediatrician. Started albuterol. She also suggested reducing allergens that might also be exacerbating her cough: buying an air purifier, vacuuming the rugs, changing the air conditioner filters, buying a mattress cover.  Did them all.

But still, she was only getting a little better but not great.  No appetite, still coughing, tired. We've been up all night for the last few weeks, tending to her and to her brother.  So my husband and I went back, a little déjà vu: the same late Friday afternoon appointment, same worries—is she going to be ok?  This time, our pediatrician was both reassuring (“she’s not sick,”) but also cautionary (“we’ve got to stop this cough and stop her losing weight.”).  We left with a prescription for the big guns of anti-anflammatory medications for asthma: three-day course of oral steroids.  And started last night.  She’s doing better this morning…now it’s watchful waiting.

The worst?  I can’t explain to her why she doesn’t feel well: why she is coughing through the night, why when she coughs sometimes she throws up, why she has to go to the doctor’s office repeatedly to get poked and prodded. I can’t explain to her why she has to take these icky medicines three times a day.  I am sure they taste horrible. As a parent, you just want to shield your child from this kind of discomfort. I would and will do anything—read: ANYTHING--for little miss not to have to experience any of this.

I am thankful for one thing: when I was at MGH last year, I caught glimpses of what really sick looks like.  I remember seeing that when I was a medical student, and I was reminded of it on my stay in the hospital ward. And though this is bad, I know children and their families who have it much, much worse. Other than this, little miss is a pretty normal, otherwise healthy toddler—and per our pediatrician, she’ll likely grow out of this by the time she gets to school.

Still, it’s times like these when I want to say:  I’ll take ordinary. Not extraordinary. Just give me ordinary.  For a few weeks, maybe even for a few months.  Maybe then we can talk about having fun.

The family cold strikes again...redux

I mentioned in my last post that, being a newbie at this, I had accidentally deleted my first full-length post.  So now I am trying to recreate it in the light of day, two cups of coffee strong…and without cough medicine on board. 

I had wanted to contribute to this blog with the best of intentions: to join a great group of Boston mamas in chronicling life with the young kiddos.  We had our second child this past May, and it has been a year of transition—I thought, hey I’d love to write about my experiences as a WAHM, my thoughts about raising biracial children in an urban setting, my take on the latest parenting controversies (WSJ articles about the tiger mom and raising kids a la francaise), share a delicious-nutritious-fast-easy recipe.   The idea of being part of a progressive, thoughtful parenting community appealed to me. The suggested half-hour to one-hour commitment to writing a week didn’t seem daunting.

That is of course, until my son curled up like a ball in my lap two weeks ago, sick as a dog with fever.  That fever morphed into the worst cold ever.  For everybody.  Our nine-month old daughter had these cute but sad crustaches when she woke up every morning.  Our nanny caught it.  My husband got it. Even our nanny’s husband got it. And then I caught it.

Fast-forward two weeks, and I am still nursing that cold.  Just went to the pharmacy this morning to pick up more cough syrup.  I’ve gone through the distinct phases—the head cold to beat the band, the bone-crushing fatigue, and now the incessant cough. I’ve crawled into bed many a night at 830pm, exhausted from the day. I have reinvented the term polypharmacy—just look at our bathroom shelf! Ibuprophen, decongestant, nasal spray…if it is nursing-friendly, I have taken it.

Mostly though, I am one grumpy mama.  Nursing two sick kids (literally and figuratively) while you are sick yourself is no one’s idea of fun.  My poor husband has tried to help—soup and medicine runs included—but he’s had to work over last weekend and this week go on a business trip, all while nursing his own cold.  So we’ve limped along.

But I do not mean to whine.  I knew raising kids would be a lot of work, blah blah blah.  I knew there would be weeks like these. But when I signed up to be a mama, somehow no one told me in the instruction manual that:

1) I would wake up every morning at sunrise for the foreseeable future—well, at least until our children graduate to teenage years, and

2) Someone in our house would ALWAYS be sick.  And the corollary: that I would spend a lot of time for the rest of my life at the doctor’s office or at the pharmacy…or be the taker or pusher of a variety of medications, antibiotics etc.

Well, I have resigned myself to my fate.  This won’t be the first or last cold.  Or even the worst—for us, the worst so far was the first cold my daughter caught this summer at the tender age of two weeks, landing us in the hospital for a week with RSV bronchiolitis (just me, my daughter, and a room with a view of the Charles at MGH). So I count our blessings. We are on the mend.  Things could always be worse, I tell myself.  But now I am stocked up and ready for anything. And as I signed off on my first abbreviated post, bring it on!

The family cold strikes again

Earlier today I posted my first post on this blog. Then in my cough suppressant-induced haze I realized I had misspelled strikes as "stikes" (did I mean "spikes"?) and in my haste to correct the title wiped out the post all together. Figures. Well I was trying to convey the point (probably better than I will now) that I had all these great intentions joining this blog. I was going to wax poetic, contribute amazing recipes, debunk patenting myths...until two weeks ago my 2 1/2 year old son gave us all a cold, knocking family members down one by one. And now I am the only one left not standing, still hacking up a lung night after night, day #13 and counting. Ultimately this is not our first or last family cold...but now I am prepared...Tylenol, check. Ibuprofen, check. Decongestant, check. Humidifier, check. Bring it on!

Twenty Bucks an Hour for Ringworm

Boston's babies are very active. There are a variety of classes and activities available to keep those under age 2 very busy. However, these classes don't come cheap. It's approximately $20/hour for a class where toddlers play with trucks and moms discuss (read: gripe about) their child's sleep issues. I should open my own Baby School in my living room and charge half that price...it'd be a gold mine. Also, said classes are a breeding ground for germs. Ten children who all "play" with toys by licking them, in the heart of cold and flu season, is guaranteed to result in some shared illnesses. Baby has caught every single sickness introduced in these sessions: colds, tummy troubles, and the grossest one yet - ringworm (my baby has a fungus!). And Baby is still breastfed, I can't even imagine how many more illnesses we'd see if Baby wasn't getting an antibody boost. But what's the alternative? Staying inside our small, quiet apartment day after day? I love Baby (duh) but after a point, I need to talk to someone who doesn't respond in raspberries. There's still months of winter left. How do we strike a balance?

I Heart My NoseFrida

If only they made one of these for adults!!!

This is exactly how it works! Don't be scared!

What is the NoseFrida you ask? Well, it is literally a snot sucker. It is a plastic device with a pointed end that you place at the opening of baby's nostril, attached to a tube that you put in your mouth and suck on. And I wish I invented it.

I was skeptical when my sister-in-law gave me one of these and said it was the greatest invention for kids ever, but I was also pretty excited to use it. I am one of those people that gets a sick satisfaction at sitting in front of the mirror and picking at zits.  Don't judge...I know you do to!

Cut to Baby M having a cold these past few days and waking up with green snot running from her nose. I quickly got out the NoseFrida and started sucking. And I was amazed at what I was able to get out of her nose! She was fine for the next few hours after our initial sucking, and I only had to do it once again that day. The next morning it was harder to get things out, but I could tell that she was having trouble breathing out her nose. I squirted a puff of Saline up each nostril and waited a minute and then sucked out some fabulous green boogies again.

I am embarrassed to say I actually tried it on myself, as I am suffering from a cold along with Baby M. Of course, my husband walked in the room while I was doing it and was horrified. And no, it did not work.

I highly recommend everyone running out and getting one of these suckers. They are sold at most Whole Foods, and some Babies R Us. They are worth every penny, and not as intrusive as the nasal bulbs you get at the hospital.

Suck It NoseFrida!!