Family Dinner, Part 1

I have a lot to say on this topic, but not a lot of time to write, so I'm breaking it down into more than one post. This one is about what we had been doing, dinnerwise, until very recently, and how we schedule our evenings.

When LL started solid foods, he ate his dinner of pureed whatnot at 5:00 or so, then went to bed at 6:30. I usually fed him dinner, S arrived home just in time for bedtime, and only after LL was asleep in bed did I start making dinner for me and S. We normally ate our dinner around 8:00 or 9:00. We kept saying that when LL was older (for some vaguely defined notion of "older") we would start eating dinner as a family. Tons of research points to the importance of eating a family dinner for providing all sorts of positive stuff for kids (healthier eating habits; healthier attitudes toward food; more varied diet; better child-parent communication; fewer discipline problems in school; etc.). S and I both ate dinner with our parents every single night as kids, and we both always assumed that we would do the same with our kids.

And yet ... LL reached two years old, and we still weren't doing it. He was still eating his dinner around 5:00 or 5:30, and S and I took turns being home to feed it to him, with the other parent tending to work a bit later, arriving home just in time for bedtime at 6:30 or 7:00. And the foods that LL ate were getting to be a smaller and smaller collection of the foods available to him. He ate a ton of yogurt and cottage cheese and other dairy items, but no other protein. He ate a ton of fruit, but hardly any vegetables. He ate some starches, but nothing too interesting. Whenever we did eat around him (like lunches on the weekends) he was much more adventurous, asking to try whatever we were eating. We knew that something had to change, that we had to find a way to rearrange our schedules to start doing a family dinner, but couldn't quite figure out how to make it work.

We got our chance to try it out when my mom came to stay with us just before Kermit was born. She came in mid-December and she immediately took over cooking dinner for us. I wasn't working anymore, and S's work was very slow, as it always is around the December holidays, so it was easier for us all to eat an earlier dinner. We started eating dinner at 6:00, pushing LL's bedtime back to 7:30 and adding a bigger snack for him at around 4:00.

And you know what happened? LL started eating a ton of new foods. He discovered that he loved lamb. From there, he tried beef. He consented to eat plain chicken on occasion. He tried some soups. He was more adventurous with sauces on pasta. He was still mostly eating the same stuff as before (this kid can put away a lot of cottage cheese in one sitting) but it was progress. It also helped when we moved him out of his high chair and into a booster seat at the table, so that he was really sitting with us to eat. When my mom left in mid-February, I still tried to get a family dinner on the table by 6:00. At first, I was mostly heating up frozen meals that my mom and I had stashed away, but I gradually found the energy to start cooking again. And when S went back to work, he made it a goal to be home by 6:00 every single night, even if it meant that he needed to do a little more work from home after the kids were in bed.

As Kermit got bigger, he stopped sleeping through dinner, so S and I would take turns holding him while we ate. By 5 months or so, he was big enough to sit in the high chair, so he started joining us at the table during dinner (but not eating anything). I start cooking dinner each night around 5:15 or so, depending on what I'm making. It's ready by 6:00 or 6:15, depending on how "helpful" the kids are while I'm cooking. We all sit at the table together, then S and I take turns playing with the kids or cleaning up the kitchen a bit. Kermit goes to bed at 7:00, LL starts his bedtime routine at 7:30, with me and S taking turns with each of the kids. (LL wants me to put him to bed every single night, which isn't fair to anybody other than LL, so we had to start alternating. But on the nights when I have Kermit, LL always listens for me to leave Kermit's room, then calls for me / sends S to get me, and I have to spend time with him as well, so S is always done with bedtime long before I am.) S and I then finish cleaning up the kitchen and straightening up the rest of the house, and we're done with all household work by 9:00 or so, which is when we used to be just sitting down to eat dinner. It's awesome! Not only are we eating together as a family, but as a bonus, S and I get an hour or two to relax together every evening.

I started to stress out, though, about whether I'd be able to keep this up once I returned to work. Also, I was making dinner every night, but they weren't all exactly the healthiest dinners. LL was mostly eating his own food, not very much of the stuff I was cooking, but I still stressed about setting a good example for him by cooking and eating healthy, well-balanced meals. And I wanted to figure out how to get him to eat a bigger variety of stuff. And with Kermit starting solids soon, I saw an opportunity to get him off on the right foot from the very start. Time to consult the experts!

Next post: I read a ton of books about cooking fast healthy meals and feeding young children, and totally change my approach to both cooking and serving meals.

Trial by Feverish Fire

My mom has been staying with us and helping out since before Kermit was born. She's planning to stay until Kermit is 6 weeks old, since that is when I'll be able to lift LL again. She's been doing a lot of cooking and shopping for us, as well as helping a lot with LL. But she also promised to attend my nephew's birthday party this weekend, so she left on Thursday to go there, with plans to return to our house Sunday night. Thus, S and I would be on our own with both kids for four days, our first time ever.

The idea was for this to be a very light practice run of life with two kids. My mom prepared several meals before she left, another friend was planning to bring us dinner on Friday, and we had a small Super Bowl party planned for Sunday (Go Pack Go!) which would provide some extra hands and entertainment for LL. Still, we were a little nervous about being on our own, since we've gotten used to having my mom around to help.

Mom left Thursday morning, and the rest of Thursday went just fine. We got dinner on the table on time, and got both kids to bed with relative ease. S and I were actually feeling pretty good about ourselves! Until 1am or so, when LL woke up crying. S went to check on him to discover that he was burning up with fever. Great.......

All of Friday and Saturday have been spent trying to soothe a sick sick sick toddler while also trying desperately to keep him and his germs away from not-yet-one-month-old Kermit. For me, this has meant sitting on the couch holding LL and watching movies, then handing him off to S while I scrub myself raw to try to decontaminate myself before feeding Kermit, hoping that my breast milk has enough antibodies in it to help him to fight off the cold, then handing Kermit back to S so that I can go back to snuggling LL until Kermit's next feeding.

Before this illness, LL had seen exactly one movie in his entire life (I was heavily pregnant and exhausted and home alone with him, and it was the only way he would let me lie on the couch for 90 minutes). In the last two days, he has seen eight movies. Er, three movies, repeated several times. (Four viewings of Finding Nemo ("fish movie"), three Kiki's Delivery Service ("train movie"), and one Beauty and the Beast.) He insists on being in physical contact with me the entire time, alternating being in my lap, over my shoulder, and lying with his head on my legs. When I need to get up to feed Kermit, LL lies pathetically on the couch asking me when I'll be coming back to him. I swear I saw heat plumes rising from his feverish little body. (103.5 midday today, and that was after being dosed with Tylenol.) The only food I've gotten him to eat has been a yogurt shake that he sipped throughout the day, along with as much juice and water as I could force into him, because he's getting awfully dehydrated.

Luckily, Kermit seems happy being held all day by S. (If he were old enough to have a parent preference, I don't know what I'd do, because LL has been refusing all comfort from S and insisting on being held by me.) Unsurprisingly, I am now developing a cough and sore throat, which we're hoping will skip both Kermit and S. I'm a little fuzzy on the science, but my being sick means that there will be additional antibodies in my breast milk, which should provide additional protection for Kermit, right?

One particularly sad side effect of all of this is that we've had to cancel our Super Bowl party. The last time my Packers were in the Super Bowl, I watched the game in my dorm room and made all my friends chip in a few bucks for the meager snacks that I bought for the occasion (most of the food had been stolen from the dorm dining hall). In other words, I've been waiting a long, long time to host a real Super Bowl party featuring my Green Bay Packers. Instead, the four of us will be watching it quietly at home. If I can keep the coughing, sneezing, and feverish delirium to a minimum, it will hopefully still be a good time for all. In the mean time, we're all counting down the minutes until my mom gets back to make us a giant pot of matzo ball soup.

Go Pack!

Change of Plans

Here is how this past weekend was supposed to be:

Saturday was Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, which includes fasting for 25 hours (though I'm exempt from fasting because of the pregnancy. Kids don't fast, either). My parents had arrived earlier in the week from out of town, and we were going to spend a quiet morning at home, followed by services at our synagogue. S's parents were due to arrive that afternoon, then we were all going out to dinner to break the fast. (S's parents aren't Jewish, so no fasting for them either.) After a nice dinner out, everyone would return to their respective homes (us) and hotels (everyone else) before returning to our house for LL's party on Sunday morning. Yes, Sunday was LL's second birthday! We were expecting nearly 30 people at a birthday party for him on Sunday morning. Lots of friends, lots of family, lots of cute antics from LL. After the party, we would all nap and then quietly open presents with just the grandparents (and eat leftover cake -- I baked a big one!). I was looking forward to the whole weekend.

Here is a brief list of what went wrong:

1. Saturday afternoon, shortly after S's parents arrived, LL started acting strange. Even though he had already napped and it wasn't yet bedtime, he was very sleepy and lethargic. We took his temperature and discovered that he had a fever of 104.4.

2. I frantically tried to bring down his fever while simultaneously canceling his birthday party.

3. I suddenly realized that it was after sundown, my family hadn't eaten anything since the previous night, we had no food in the house, and we could no longer go out for dinner. I quickly ordered the fastest take-out food I could think of, then sent someone to go pick it up for me.

4. As everyone else sat down to eat dinner and I comforted a feverish LL, S's mom suddenly turned pale and said that she didn't feel well. Five seconds later, she completely lost consciousness and collapsed. And we weren't able to wake her.

5. I dialed 911, then carried LL outside with me to wait for the paramedics, so that he wouldn't have to watch his grandmother lying on the couch mumbling incoherently. For the record, standing in the cool night air watching the flashing lights on four emergency vehicles parked outside your house does a fairly good job of both cooling down a feverish toddler and distracting him from his own mystery illness.

6. The paramedics managed to rouse S's mom, but when she tried to stand up, she nearly collapsed again, so into the ambulance and off to the hospital she went. S's dad went with her, in a complete panic. S and I promised to follow them there, a few minutes behind.

7. The combination of worrying about LL, worrying about his mother, and not eating for 26 hours and counting was too much for S. I made him sit down while I packed up some things to bring to the hospital (S's mom's purse and wallet; a container of food for S; some snacks and water for me and S's dad; my address book so that we could call S's sister). I also gave quick instructions to my parents on how to care for LL while he's sick (where we keep the medicine; how much he can have and when; how best to comfort him at bedtime; emergency pediatric numbers in case he gets worse; to call my cell phone if his condition changes at all). There's nothing quite like handing a scared, feverish, sobbing toddler over to someone else before rushing out the door to an even bigger emergency. (I called the house five minutes later to see how he was doing. He apparently cried for 10 seconds after the door closed, then asked my dad to play trains with him. When I called, he was jumping up and down on the couch, despite the 104 degree fever.)

8. By 11:00pm, the ER doctors were convinced that S's mom was fine (thank goodness!). We may never know what caused her to lose consciousness, though she's under orders not to drive a car until she has been cleared by a cardiologist back home. Discharge orders and paperwork kept her at the hospital until 1:00am.

9. After getting home, sending my parents back to their hotel, and crawling into bed, I got a rejuvenating three hours of sleep before LL woke up and wanted to be held by his mommy until morning. His temperature remained at 103. When he was finally comfortable enough to fall back asleep in our bed at 7:30am, I was too wired to go back to sleep myself.

10. All the grandparents, including S's mom, returned to our house late morning on Sunday, where we all tried our best to be festive for LL's birthday. I blew up a few balloons, LL opened presents, we all ate cake. Then everyone went home early to try to get some sleep.

Last night, LL slept normally, and he woke up this morning with his temperature back to normal. His mystery illness lasted exactly 36 hours, just long enough to spoil his birthday. And S's mom has been joking that she only passed out because she didn't like seeing LL get all the attention. The weekend is over, everyone is fine, all is well. And I'm still jittery as hell. Everything is fine, but I can't seem to get my heart to stop racing. Pregnant women really aren't meant to endure this much drama.

Banana

Today I am 20w1d pregnant with Kermit. (Now that we know it's a boy, we've given the Frog an official pre-birth name. Not enough kids named Kermit these days, don't ya think?) (No, we're not really going to name him Kermit.) (Though we haven't yet found any names that we like, so you never know.) (And Kermi is a cute nickname.) (S and I have a bet going to see how many of our friends we can convince that we're really naming the baby Kermit.) (We apparently have very gullible friends.) (But I digress.)

I am now officially more than halfway done. And I've resorted to the produce comparisons that I loved during my last pregnancy, to let everyone know that Kermit is already the size of a banana. Yikes. Way too much stuff that I still want to do before Kermit is born. Little things, like finish my dissertation and get a job and "fix" LL's bedtime routine and buy a new house. Complicating things a bit is the fact that pregnancy brain has officially set in, and I am a mess. I remember being a bit scatterbrained while pregnant with LL, but Kermit has brought me to a whole new level. Quick story from this weekend:

We were invited to a birthday party at a friend's house on Saturday. I asked her if there was anything that we should bring, and she said YES, bring a booster seat for LL to sit in during dinner. It was the only thing that she asked us to bring, and she actually reminded me about it several times. Fine. Saturday afternoon, I packed up LL's diaper bag for the evening, got everyone ready to go, locked up the house, got in the car... and halfway there, I realized that I forgot the booster seat. We turned around and drove all the way back home. S stayed in the car with LL while I ran in for the booster seat, locked up again, and we were on our way (again). We got to the friend's house, and I reached down to pick up LL's diaper bag, only to realize that when I walked out the house, I grabbed my work bag instead of LL's diaper bag. So, instead of diapers and pajamas and food for LL, I had research papers and computer cords. Great. S told me to just go to the party with LL, he would drive home (again) and swap bags. Fifteen minutes later, my cell phone rang. It was S. When I locked up the house the second time, I used S's house keys... and never gave them back. He was locked out of the house. He had to turn around, come back to our friend's house (again), get the keys from me, drive home (again) to switch bags, then drive back to our friend's house (again). All because I'm a blathering idiot.

In other news, I am constantly hungry these days. After not gaining any pregnancy weight at all for so long, even though Kermit was growing normally, my body finally realized that it was sort of cannibalizing itself to make it all happen, so consuming extra external calories would be a good thing. Here at the halfway point, I am now up 2 pounds. Which is perfect, since it allows me to gain the recommended one-pound-a-week for the rest of the pregnancy without making my overall gain too out-of-whack. My weight gain goal with LL was 25 pounds, but I kind of assumed that I'd go way over that. (All of my friends, every single one of them, gained more than 45 pounds with their pregnancies, and I figured I was doomed to follow in their footsteps.) Instead, I gained 28 pounds, which I considered an unqualified success. Thus, my goal this time around was a repeat of last time, which looks doable.

On the gestational diabetes front: I'm still meeting with the nurse once a month or so, despite everyone's belief that I don't actually have gestational diabetes. (As I suspected, my blood sugar goes up only in response to stress, regardless of what I eat. If I'm relaxed and I eat a big 'ole slice of cake, my blood sugar stays nice and low. If I have a "bad dissertation day" and eat half a bagel, my blood sugar goes up. It's weird, but wonderfully predictable.) I'm following a few GD guidelines for food, but I bend the rules a whole lot. I'm not drinking any beverages with carbs in them, so no soda or juice or sweetened tea in the past 2+ months. And I've definitely decreased portion sizes for rice and pasta and bread. But I'm not doing anything even approximating counting carbs. I just make choices, usually, for foods with more protein and vegetables and fewer standalone starches. But then I just follow my hunger in determining when and how much to eat. And I'm still eating desserts fairly regularly. Every once in a while, when nutrition information is available, I look up how many carbs are in my meal (yeah, I tend to look it up after the fact). Leading to a lot of conversations with S where I say things like, "You know how I'm supposed to eat 45g of carbs at dinner? I just ate 95g instead. Think it will matter?" And then I test my blood sugar and nope, it didn't matter, I'm still normal. I've been warned that insulin resistance can change dramatically after 20 weeks, so I'm still testing myself multiple times a day so that I'll know if I need to start being more diligent, but for now, I'm rather enjoying getting a pat on the back from a professional every month who looks at my food charts and validates my level of nutrition. So, yay.

One other piece of random information. At last week's ultrasound, we discovered that Kermit's placenta is at the front (so, towards my stomach instead of my spine). Front placental placement is a bit rare, but apparently has zero medical significance. It does, however, provide me with a bunch of practical information that I had been wondering about. It explains why I felt Kermit kicking so much later than I felt LL, since the placenta cushions those early movements. It explains why Dr. M kept having a harder time than normal finding Kermit's heartbeat, since the placenta muffles sound a bit. And it explains why I kept complaining that the ultrasound pictures we were getting of Kermit looked so much "fuzzier" than LL's had, since we were seeing the images through an extra layer of tissue. Mystery solved!

Sex

When LL was just a few months old, we had a big playdate with several friends in the area who all have children around the same age (give or take 18 months or so), most of whom are girls. On the way home, S said, "Let's have a girl next." And I laughed, for many many reasons. LL was still so little, it seemed ridiculous to even be talking about the "next" one. Also, it's hard to ignore that we would be lucky to get pregnant again with any child, much less being picky about the sex. And even if we wanted to be picky, it's not like we had any control over it. But, S had made his point: he loves LL, but he also wanted the experience of raising a little girl.

In the months since then, S has mentioned several times that he thinks it would be fun to have a little girl. And while I agreed with him a bit, mostly just for the variety of it, it has never been as important to me as it obviously was to him.

When I got pregnant with the Frog, S admitted that he really wanted it to be a girl. And I started getting worried about dealing with his disappointment if it wasn't. I've spent the last two months playing up the advantages of having another boy. Brothers close in age are more likely to play together! Both me and S grew up in older-brother-younger-sister families and we didn't get along with our siblings at all; wouldn't brothers be fun?! If we had a girly-girl, neither one of us would have any idea how to relate to her! Boys are so much easier during the teen years! And we can reuse all of LL's infant clothes! If we were royalty, you'd be thrilled with having boys!

Meanwhile, I started to chat with friends who have multiple boys. (Statistically, half of our friends with 2+ kids should have boy-girl combos, but in reality, less than a third of them do. Almost every single one of our friends has either girl-girl or boy-boy children, leaning heavily towards boy-boy.) Most of them admitted that they had a mild preference for a girl the second time around, but their husbands were much more invested in the outcome. One of my friends put it this way: "When we found out our second was a boy, my husband was visibly disappointed. He came around by the time our son was born, but it took a month or two."

Today was our big fetal ultrasound. While we waited for the exam, I reminded S that the most important thing was that the baby be healthy. And he acted a little defensive and told me that of course that's most important, and he wasn't going to be upset no matter what the sex turned out to be. And besides, we'd always said that we might maybe possibly consider trying to have a third child, so it's not like this is our definitive last chance for a girl.

So, the results of our ultrasound: the Frog is healthy. Strong heartbeat, measuring one day ahead of the estimated due date. Scarily for me, this baby is measuring smaller than LL did in all measurements (length, weight, abdominal circumference, femur length) with the glaring exception of head circumference, which is noticeably bigger. (I ended up with a c-section with LL after 23 hours of labor because of a rare condition called CPD, in which his gigantic head was demonstrably too big to fit through my pelvic bone. We still have several months of growth ahead of us, and a lot can change, but an even larger head doesn't exactly support my odds of a successful VBAC.) I'm doing the ostrich head-in-the-sand thing about the head size, so ignoring that little tidbit, we can see that everything looks great.

And then S, who had been standing at the foot of the bed, stumbled a bit and had to sit down. Because he had seen the same thing that the ultrasound tech had seen: an unmistakable little penis. We're having a boy!

S was quiet for the rest of the exam. (Actually, first he held up three fingers and whispered, "Ready for number three?" with a small wry smile, but after that he stayed quiet.) He says that he just needs a few days to get used to the idea, which is fair. And I pulled out every gender stereotype I could think of in an attempt to get him excited. You know you would much rather go to football games than dance recitals -- we might have just dodged a bullet! But I should probably just give him time to get used to the fact that we're not going to have the boy-girl family that he grew up with, that I grew up with, that his cousins all grew up with, and that he had always pictured for us.

In the mean time, I have to go plan another bris!

This Week, In No Particular Order, I ...

... officially moved from passive nausea to all-out bent-over-the-toilet morning sickness. Isn't this stuff supposed to go away in the second trimester?

... spent several of the last 24 hours before my defense helping AdvisorB with a talk that he's not giving until October. Every time I asked him if maybe we could talk about it after my defense, so that I could go back to my office to practice my own much-more-urgent talk, he told me to quit worrying.

... continued my battle against the summer cold that LL gave me the week before. So far, the cold is still winning. Being sick while pregnant really sucks, since there are no decent drugs that will take away the symptoms.

... felt The Frog kick for the first time. Yippee!

... told AdvisorB about my pregnancy. (Haven't gotten up the nerve to tell AdvisorA yet.)

... spiked my blood sugar for a day, all day, even though I was barely eating, based purely on stress. Then, since the stress wasn't going away for a few days and there was nothing I could do about it anyway, and seeing the actual numbers was just adding to my stress, I stopped testing for 24 hours.

... lost two pounds. Which brings my total pregnancy weight "gain" to negative three pounds.

... saw Inception. Excellent movie. Very trippy.

... successfully defended my PhD dissertation.

Defense

I'm told that this is how most students spend the two weeks or so before their PhD dissertation defense: They have lots of long discussions with their advisor about what to present, and what to expect, and what they should do to prepare. They go through multiple versions of their slide presentation, in consultation with their advisor. They give a practice talk or two, then redo their slides again based on the feedback. They talk some more with their advisor. Then they lock themselves in their office and practice practice practice giving the talk, until they know it backwards and forwards. Then they talk to their advisor some more, and tweak their slides some more, and practice some more. Two weeks of total focus and preparation.

My dissertation defense is this week (!). Here is how I have spent the last two weeks or so:
I emailed an early version of my slides to AdvisorA for feedback, along with a long list of questions. AdvisorA has been completely out of touch with me since then, except for two short emails telling me that she hasn't had time to look at my slides. She did, however, inform me that she bought airline tickets to fly into town for my defense, but she bought refundable tickets, because she's still not sure if she's going to be able to make it. As of today, she is 90% or so sure that she will actually not be present in person.

At her request, since she knew that she probably would bail out, she insisted that I schedule my defense in a room equipped with video conferencing. I spent several days trying to find a room on my campus that can do video conferencing, since my department doesn't have one, and most of the departments that do have one won't let people from other departments use them. AdvisorA then told me that I also had to help find her a video conferencing room on her campus, since she didn't have time to schedule it herself. I spent another several days emailing people on that campus to try to book a room for AdvisorA, most of which wanted me to give them my credit card number (yes, my personal credit card number) so that they could charge me several hundred dollars in "use fees" since I'm not affiliated with the campus. My argument that this was for AdvisorA, who is a full professor at the campus, were ignored because I didn't have her department account information, and she never replied to my request for her to send it to me.

The day that all the scheduling finally got squared away, LL woke up in the middle of the night with a fever of 103. Other than the fever and a slight cough, LL was in excellent spirits and simply could not understand why I wouldn't let him go to Natasha's to play with his friends. Predictably, I got sick two days later. (The combination of sick toddler coughing in my face, lack of sleep from holding the sick toddler all night, stress over the defense, and lowered immunity because of the pregnancy, turned out to be waaaaay too many points against me in my hope of avoiding a cold just now.) I spent three days with my own 100 degree fever, completely unable to think straight. I did manage to do one practice talk just before succumbing entirely to the cold, and S took care of LL for much of the weekend so that I could finally get around to revising my slides a bit.

The way things stand right now, I have barely practiced at all, I have had zero feedback from my advisor, and I have an awful cough and sore throat that makes it difficult to get through a full reading of Good Night Moon, much less a three hour dissertation defense.

It's gonna be a fun week. See ya on the flip side.

Relieved. Just Relieved.

Things are still looking good. I had my NT exam today, and the preliminary results look very promising. (Based on the measurements, bloodwork, etc., it looks like the risk of chromosomal problems is one in a bajillion. Give or take.) After being so active at my last appointment, today the Frog was dancing around a lot less. My NT exam with LL took forever, because he absolutely refused to stay still and be measured, but the Frog was quite cooperative. Everything went very quickly.

I also met with the endocrinologist this week, to discuss my GD diagnosis. She agrees that I probably don't have true gestational diabetes, but rather a mild sort of gestational insulin resistance, which only really appears when I'm stressed out. But given that "stressed out" is my normal state these days, it's best to keep an eye on it. She gave me the go-ahead to be more forgiving with my diet, which is nice. And I can ease up on the monitoring. (She suggested monitoring every other day, or skipping the monitoring after one meal each day. Enough to take some of the pressure off, and avoid having to quit my job, but not so much that I'm likely to miss any upward trends that might occur later in the pregnancy.) And she promised that if my blood sugar levels continued to look as excellent as they do right now, she would personally talk to Dr. M to make sure that I could still try for a VBAC, which is normally forbidden for women with GD. So honestly, good news all around.

Even my dissertation seems to finally be coming together. After several weeks of drama trying to find a final defense committee member, and trying to get everyone to pick a date, it looks like I've finally scheduled my dissertation defense. I'm still waiting for final confirmation from my committee, but odds are good that I'll be defending next month. Which is good, because I don't want to tell anybody at school about my pregnancy until after I defend. (Thank you once again to AdvisorA for making me totally paranoid about sexist retaliation.)

So yes, things are looking good. You'd think that my mood would turn around a bit. But so far... not so much.

I'm a little weirded out by how different this pregnancy feels for me than my pregnancy with LL. I expected there to be changes (every pregnancy is different; I'm in a different place; I've been through it before; etc.). But even given all of that, it still feels... different. I feel like I'm more detached somehow. The first several months of my pregnancy with LL, I was constantly worried that something would go wrong. Every time I was without morning sickness, I was sure that the pregnancy was over. Every time I had gone more than a week without an ultrasound, I began to doubt that things were still okay. Things evened out a bit once I started feeling kicks on a regular basis, because I stopped worrying quite so much, but I still felt a lot of emotional highs and lows.

This time around, I'm still worrying, but it doesn't feel like the same type of worry. I'm still worried, but not in an "I hope everything's still okay!" sense. More in a "I wonder if things have gone wrong yet?" sense. I keep feeling this weird sense of inevitable doom. And no, I have absolutely no reason to be feeling this way. Every single appointment has showed normal growth and normal development. Normal everything. With LL, every time I heard a heartbeat or saw LL on ultrasound during an appointment, I was filled with awe and relief and excitement and love. This time, there's a little bit of relief, but mostly it's just... surprise. Really? Things are still okay? Are you sure? How strange!

During my pregnancy with LL, especially during the first trimester, I was consumed with thinking about the baby. Was he okay? What would he look like? I can't wait to tell our parents! I can't wait to tell our friends! Gosh, I feel really sick. How big is the baby this week? Does he have eyelashes yet? What should we name him? This time around, I just feel angry at all the external stuff. Did the car accident affect the baby? Can I recover from the car accident while pregnant? Better warn the physical therapist that I'm pregnant! Gotta hire a lawyer to explain to the stupid auto insurance that I couldn't get an x-ray, because I'm pregnant! Do I really have GD? How can I possibly manage GD diet and blood sugar monitoring and extra medical visits and physical therapy and dissertation and still run my household? Gotta interview for a job before I start showing! Gotta defend my thesis before I start showing!

I was so excited to tell our family and friends when I was pregnant with LL. This time, we've started telling everybody, but I just feel relieved to have it out in the open. Not all that happy, just relieved. And it doesn't help that I'm not showing at all, I haven't gained a single pound, and I'm not really feeling all that much as far as pregnancy symptoms. (Occasional indigestion and leg cramps. That's it.) And while those things would probably make other women really happy, for me it's just adding to the feeling that this pregnancy isn't really happening. It's weird.

It makes me sad that I'm not getting as excited as I was before, that I don't feel as emotionally attached as I did last time. S is convinced that I just have too much on my mind, and things just keep piling on top of it all. Car accident. Gestational diabetes. Advisor drama. Committee drama. Dissertation defense scheduling. But if that's true, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the pregnancy, because most of those things aren't going away anytime soon.

Maybe once I start feeling regular kicks things will feel a bit better.

Sunny Days Are Here Again

Finally, some good news!

I had my 11 week prenatal appointment, and everything is looking good. Heartbeat, measurements, etc. All wonderful. Whew! The baby looked more active than I remember LL being at this stage. Isn't it a bit early for in-utero gymnastics? Also, the baby kind of looked like a frog, but it was probably the weird angle. Expect "Frog" to be the baby's blog nickname for a while. NT exam is in less than two weeks, when we'll get an even more detailed look, but I'm finally breathing easy for now.

Dr. M's assistant asked how the GD stuff was going, and I let everything out. The uncertainty over the diagnosis, the miserableness of the nurse appointment, the inability to get questions answered. If possible, she was even more angry about it than me, and insisted that I repeat everything for Dr. M. And then of course Dr. M reminded me why I love him so much. He's going to speak to the head of the department about an "anonymous patient," and file a complaint himself. And he agreed that the diagnosis was a little iffy, but said that he wasn't actually able to do anything about it, because once GD is diagnosed, all care related to the GD becomes the responsibility of the endocrinology department. Then he expressed outrage that they weren't actually doing their job, as far as answering my questions and treating me with respect. I repeated all of my unanswered questions to him, and he gave me a referral to have a consult with an actual endocrinologist, instead of one of the nurses, so that I can get some answers. And I really really appreciate that he admitted that he didn't know the answers to my questions instead of just blowing me off like the nurse did.

The number one question is going to be whether it makes sense for me to retake the three hour glucose test. I mentioned the GD diagnosis to my physical therapist, who had some interesting things to say on the matter. She asked if my back was bothering me on the day that I took the test. My back was fine initially, but I had to sit in uncomfortable waiting room chairs for three hours without moving, and at that point I couldn't sit for more than an hour without feeling pain. By the end of the test, my back was killing me. Here's some biochemistry that I never knew: when you're in pain, your body releases extra cortisol, which blocks insulin and artificially elevates blood sugar levels. Which goes pretty far in explaining my weird test results, in which my fasting sugar levels were normal, my one hour results were normal, my two hour results were normal, and my three hour results (the one for which my back was killing me) showed that my sugar levels had stopped dropping, causing me to fail this last test. Interesting.... Dr. M agreed that I should probably retake the test and see if the results are different, but unfortunately, he's not allowed to make that call -- I need the endocrinologist to do it. We'll see what she says.

And in a final bit of good news, I have "graduated" from twice weekly physical therapy to just once a week. My back is definitely getting better, and I often go days without feeling any pain. My back definitely gets fatigued faster than it used to, and there are still some things that I can't do very well (like crouching over a tub to give LL a bath) but it's getting there.

Ah, the feeling that things are finally falling into place!

More GD Frustration

I had my follow-up appointment with the nutritionist today, to see how I'm doing with the GD. What an unbelievably frustrating experience!

The whole appointment started off bad. I have a written log on which I'm supposed to write down everything I eat, and what my four-times-a-day glucose levels are. I dutifully filled in the entire log. The first thing the nurse did was take the log from me, then ask for my glucose monitor. The monitor has a memory function, which stores a month's worth of values. She then proceeded to go through all the numbers in the monitor to verify that I didn't lie on my written log. She did this for the entire week's worth of values. Then she eyed me suspiciously and asked if I was sure that all of my numbers were from my blood and not from somebody else in my household. Nothing quite like the feeling of knowing, without a doubt, that the person sitting across from you is convinced that you're a liar.

Then we had this conversation:

Nurse: Wow, your numbers look great!
Me: Thank you. Given my weird initial test results, and my low monitoring numbers, do you think it's possible that I don't have GD, maybe ease up on some of the restrictions a bit?
Nurse: No, you definitely have GD. Otherwise you wouldn't have failed the test.
Me: But, by the ADA criteria, I didn't fail the test. And my monitoring numbers kind of back that up.
Nurse: Now you're just arguing semantics.

Note to the world: I don't think that she knows what the word "semantics" means.

Next, we talked about exercise. At the GD class, we were told that if our blood glucose levels after eating were too high, they can usually be lowered by exercising a bit during the hour immediately after eating but before testing.

Nurse: Are you exercising after meals?
Me: I do exercise every day, but it is very hard with my schedule to exercise within an hour of starting a meal, because I'm commuting after breakfast, and I'm in meetings after lunch.
Nurse: Oh, okay. Then we should probably put you on insulin.
Me: Pardon me? I thought that my numbers all look great?
Nurse: Yes, they do. But if you're not willing to exercise, we'll need to put you on insulin. Your choice.
Me: You would put me on insulin even if my levels are completely under control without it? What would you possibly accomplish by doing that?
Nurse: We just want to help you to protect your baby.

As an aside: does implying that a pregnant woman doesn't care about her baby really motivate her to change behavior? Because it honestly just pisses me off. So does threatening me with completely unnecessary medical interventions.

The exercise discussion also included this bit:

Nurse: There's lots of ways to exercise. Don't you play with your toddler?
Me: Yes I do, but not after meals.
Nurse: Why not?
Me: An hour after breakfast, I'm at work. Same with lunch. And an hour after dinner, my toddler is in bed. I play with my toddler a whole lot during the day, but it tends to be before breakfast and before dinner, and there isn't much I can do about that.
Nurse: (with a disapproving look) Okay....

And finally, there's this gem:

Nurse: Is there anything that you had trouble with this week?
Me: I found it difficult to test after breakfast, because I'm commuting to work one hour after breakfast.
Nurse: Maybe you shouldn't go to work for a while.
Me: Um, I don't see how that is possibly an option.
Nurse: We just want to help you to protect your baby.
Me: My baby seems pretty well protected without me dropping out of school and quitting my job.
Nurse: Well, I guess that's your choice.

Yeah, not the best medical experience I've had in my life. At a minimum, I was looking for a little support and advice about how to fit all this monitoring into my life. I was not looking for threats, or implications that I'm a bad mother, or being treated like a liar. And yet, after all the disapproving comments during the appointment, she concluded by telling me that I seem to have things so well under control that I can go several weeks between appointments.

And yes, I made sure to make my next appointment with a different nurse.

GD

I have to admit: as much as I was dreading sitting through the gestational diabetes education class, it was actually rather interesting. Very well done. I was afraid that it was going to be two and a half hours of "Don't eat cake. No, seriously, don't eat cake." Instead, they actually taught us the biological mechanism that causes gestational diabetes, how it differs from normal Type 2 diabetes, and walked us through some very practical GD diet advice. Not bad.

I mentioned in my last post that I didn't fully understand why I had even been diagnosed with GD, since I only failed one of the four tests, in a rather odd way, and even the American Diabetes Association says that you need to fail two of the tests to be diagnosed. When the nurse teaching the class put up info about the test, confirming that it takes two fails to be diagnosed, I had to ask, so I went to chat with her during the break. Here are the somewhat frustrating things I learned in that conversation:

First, she told me that the OBs in my clinic are "more conservative than most" and made their own policy to diagnose GD with only one failed test. So at any other clinic, I'd be considered healthy. Second, she admitted to me that she had noticed my test results in particular, because they were so borderline. After looking at my full history and test results, she is fairly convinced that I don't have GD. (She even said, "The one factor that I've seen produce results like yours is stress. Have you been under any stress lately?" And I burst out laughing.) But then she gave me the "better safe than sorry" speech, and said that as long as I was already there, it would be best to continue to monitor me for the rest of the pregnancy. Which, yeah, I assumed would be the conclusion, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.

I've only been following this GD diet for two days so far, so I'm not ready to draw any far-reaching conclusions, but I've found my initial reaction to be somewhat surprising. I thought that I would really really hate following the diet. A lot. I've barely eaten any desserts since getting pregnant, but I have been surviving on fruit. And during my pregnancy with LL, I had horrible food aversions to chicken and beef, so I pretty much survived on carbs. Also, I've been craving milk lately. But, with the GD restrictions, a big glass of milk fills just about my entire carb quota for a meal, and I'm not allowed to have fruit with breakfast or before bedtime. Really annoying. Still, other than the milk and fruit, I've found the limits to be not too bad so far.

The part that's annoying the hell out of me is that I have to time everything. Three meals and three snacks each day. At least two hours between each of those, but not more than four hours. And I have to test my blood sugar exactly one hour after each meal.

The problem with this schedule? Almost every single hour, I have to be sitting down somewhere, either to eat or to test. An hour after I start eating breakfast, I'm usually in the car commuting to work. But I can't test my blood sugar while I'm driving. So, I either need to sit around at home for an hour so that I can test before I get in the car (which makes me very late to work) or I have to eat really early in the morning, which makes me throw up. My afternoon snack almost always needs to happen while I'm driving home from work, but I can't find any "allowable" snacks that are easy to eat in the car. If I wait to have the snack until I get home, it pushes dinner into LL's bedtime. And even if I manage to be able to eat dinner when I want, testing an hour later is even more problematic, because that's when I'm putting LL to bed. I can't hold a toddler in my lap, read him a story, and test blood sugar all at the same time. And the testing that needs to happen while I'm at work is hard, because I need to sneak into abandoned conference rooms to get some privacy, often walking out of meetings to do so.

If I were convinced that all this work was for the good of the baby, then I'd happily do it. But you know what? I don't have GD! I was given guidelines for where they want my blood sugar to fall at various times, and they also mentioned what "normal, non-GD" results would look like. Admittedly, I only have two days worth of date on myself, but still: my results so far all look completely normal. Even though I've been pretty sloppy about counting carbs.

I have a follow-up appointment with the nutritionist next week, and I plan to grill her on whether I can ease up on the dietary restrictions a bit. Maybe monitor a little less often. We'll see.

Spiraling Further Downwards

I have family risk factors for gestational diabetes. (As in, most of my dad's side of the family seems to have type 2 diabetes.) I've never had any problems myself -- my brother was diagnosed with Type 2 when he was younger than I am now, so I make sure to get myself screened, and all of my readings have always come back normal. Because of the risk factors, though, Dr. M likes to test me earlier in my pregnancy, instead of waiting for the second trimester like is normally done for other pregnant women.

The one hour glucose screen is annoying, but manageable. It is even more annoying during the first trimester, when you're already nauseous most of the time. Still, it's better than the three hour tolerance test, which seems like the ultimate way to piss off a pregnant woman.

I took the one hour screening test when I was 8 weeks pregnant with LL, and I passed with flying colors. (Yay!) I took it again when I was 20-something weeks pregnant with LL, and I passed again. (Yay!) But this weekend, once again eight weeks pregnant, I failed it. (Booooooo!) But just barely. I failed it by the itty-bittiest amount possible. Still, a fail is a fail, so I was given the honor of taking the horrid three hour tolerance test this week. Why is this test a form of mild torture for pregnant women, particularly pregnant women with injured backs? Admittedly, a few of these were just my bad luck, but still:

1. You have to fast for at least 12 hours before the test.
2. While the 12-hour fast is already making your nauseous, you have to drink a big bottle of sugar syrup, really fast.
3. You now have to sit in a waiting room for three hours while they draw your blood once an hour. Still can't eat anything.
4. You're not allowed to move around much, because it throws off the readings. So you're restricted to remain sitting in the awkward waiting room chairs for the entire three hours, even if your back is killing you. The nurse will yell at you if you try to stand instead of sit.
5. There's probably free wifi at the clinic where you're getting your blood drawn, but don't think that you'll actually be able to work for those three hours. The wifi is nearly guaranteed to be out of order for all but 15 minutes of your three hour wait. You didn't have anything important to work on anyway, right?
6. Every single cigarette smoker and perfume wearer will decide to sit down next to you while you wait. What's that? You're in your first trimester and you're really sensitive to smells? And as previously mentioned, you're not allowed to get up and walk to somewhere less smelly? Awwww.
7. After the test, you'll realize that you're about to be late for an important meeting, so you don't have time to grab something to eat. All in all, you'll end up fasting for 17 hours. At least you had that yummy nauseating sugar syrup for breakfast at the clinic, right?
8. You made it to your meeting, and you finally got some food. You desperately want to go home and lie down. Unfortunately, you now have a pounding headache and feel lightheaded every time you stand up. Can't drive home like that!

And the final insult? The cherry on the top of a freaking fantastic week? You fail the test. But again, just barely. The glucose tolerance test has a total of four blood draws. I had always read that failing two of them means that you have GD, but failing just one of them means that you're fine, but they'll want to test you again several weeks later. Well... I only failed one of them. And again, just by the itty-bittiest amount. My other three blood draws were comfortably in the normal range, not even borderline. But this morning Dr. M called to tell me that they recently changed the guidelines, and now failing even one of them is considered enough to diagnose with GD.

So... I have to take a GD nutrition class next week, and then I have to start monitoring my glucose levels. I don't actually believe that I have GD, but I'm no medical expert, so I guess it's better to be safe than sorry. We'll see how it looks after a week or two of monitoring.

Did I mention that I was on my way to meet with my lawyer (yep, as of this week, I have a lawyer) when Dr. M called, because the other guy's auto insurance are being jerks about paying for my medical bills, even though they've already admitted liability for the accident? Did I mention that my in-laws and my entire extended family are all arriving from out of town in less than a week? Did I mention that I'm walking through my university's graduation ceremony in ten days, on the blind faith that I'll be finishing my PhD this summer? Did I mention that AdvisorA has been sitting on a draft chapter of my thesis for more than five weeks without communicating with me at all? Did I mention that I need a full draft of the entire thesis in one month in order to have any prayer of anyone on my committee reading it, and thanks to AdvisorA's neglect, I have to put it all together with zero feedback on how I'm planning to structure it?

Did I mention that glucose levels can be artificially elevated by stress?

Focus

Things I'm trying really really hard to ignore right now: constant morning sickness; aversions to most food that S suggests for dinner each night; a horribly aching back; the pending arrival of both sets of parents in less than two weeks; and the dawning realization that I need to hire a lawyer to handle the medical claim against the other guy's auto insurance.

Things that I'm vainly attempting to focus on while ignoring those other things: my thesis. Which needs to be turned in to the university in approximately ten weeks.

So far, I have written 148 pages of my thesis. These 148 pages are very much a draft, and thus are in varying degrees of "doneness". Some of those pages are in excellent shape awaiting comments from my committee. Other sections are still in early draft form, and will probably be rewritten once or twice before going out for review.

I separate my thesis into ten major chunks, and seven of them are at the 90%-or-more done stage, with maybe one minor section in each that I'm still tweaking. (Chapter 2 needs a better conclusion; Chapter 5 needs a little more polishing in its transitions; that sort of thing.) I estimate that the thesis draft itself is approximately 75% done, with most of the remaining 25% needing to happen in the last three chunks, which are at much lower levels of doneness. (For example, my concluding chapter doesn't exist yet. At all. 0% done. I hate conclusions.) Also, the 75% number might be wildly optimistic if my committee hates what I have. Though my committee will only be able to hate what I have if they ever freakin' read the darn thing!

To date, I have sent exactly one chapter out for review. My committee unanimously agreed that they want to see my introduction, then they want to go through several rounds of revision with me on the introduction, and then they want to see the rest of the thesis all at once. So, I dutifully finished a draft of my introduction and sent it out for review. AdvisorB had many thoughtful comments and changes. I updated the chapter slowly while waiting for comments from other committee members. When it became apparent that nobody else was reading it, I sent out a new version and asked my committee members to review the new version. AdvisorB is meeting with me on Monday for another set of reviews. Everybody else: deafening silence. In particular, AdvisorA, my primary research advisor, has given me zero feedback. None. I keep sending her reminders, asking her if she's had a chance to look, and she's completely ignoring me. Last week, I got an email from her, out of the blue, asking me what I'm working on, and if there's anything that she should be aware of. I quickly responded with YES! I'm writing my thesis, and I need your feedback! Please read the chapter I sent you! Nothing.

Also, writing a 200 page document in 20-minute intervals does not work very well, but 20 minutes is about the limit of how long I can sit in front of my computer before my back gives out and I have to walk around and stretch a bit. Back injuries suck. I've been trying to think of a worse time for this car accident to have happened, and I can't think of anything. Pregnant, writing my thesis, planning my dissertation defense, looking for a job, and planning a move. Yeah, excellent timing.

Anyway, ten weeks. Yikes.

All Systems Go

Big sigh of relief. I finally had my first prenatal appointment, after holding my breath for the last week plus, and everything looks fine. Nice strong heartbeat, baby measuring more or less where it should. Based on my IUI, I had placed my due date at January 7; based on the ultrasound measurements, the due date is January 9. I'm actually amused by the two day difference, because the same thing happened at my first ultrasound with LL -- I insisted that the due date should be September 9, based on my IUI, but the measurements placed it at September 11. At the time, we went with my date, but then he was born 10 days late, on the 19th, so... maybe that early measurement was closer after all. This time around, we'll go with the measurements. January 9. Which means that I'm only 6w5d today (holy crap that's early!).

Mostly, I don't care what the date is, as long as the baby is growing well and the heartbeat is strong. Thank goodness. I know that I won't be truly relaxed about the pregnancy until after the first trimester, and even then I'm likely to be a bit jittery throughout, but at least this first hurdle has been passed.

I also had the first of what I'm sure will be many discussions with Dr. M about VBAC vs. scheduled cesarean. Dr. M's preference is to schedule a c-section at 39 weeks, but support me doing a VBAC if I go into labor naturally before that, if I want to. If I'm fully committed to try a VBAC, he'll support that, too. I have no idea what I want at this point, but it's good to know that I have options. Mostly, I asked him for reassurances that the recovery from a scheduled c-section is likely to be easier than it was last time. With LL, I had 23 hours of labor, including more than two hours of pushing, before diagnosing CPD and needing the c-section. My recovery took a long time (I wasn't feeling physically better for a full eight weeks) but I don't know how much of my recovery was slowed down by the long labor. I remember how uncomfortable and sore I was last time, unable to drive or lift things or bend down or even walk comfortably, and I can't imagine also taking care of LL in that condition.

As for me... I saw the orthopedist this week, who confirmed that I injured a vertebrae in my lower back. He has no way of knowing whether it's fractured or just bruised, since he couldn't do an x-ray, but given my overall condition, he said that he wouldn't recommend surgery even if it is fractured, and that this type of injury usually heals fairly well on its own, given time. I also have a lot of soft tissue damage all through my lumbar, which isn't helping. The idea of a fractured vertebrae has me a bit freaked out, but I guess it just is what it is.

At the orthopedist's suggestion, I started physical therapy today, to hopefully relieve some of the pain and strengthen my back before it gets stressed even further by the pregnancy. And the physical therapist was very good, and even thinks that my soft tissue damage was less severe than it otherwise could have been, because the relaxin (pregnancy hormone affecting muscle tissue) floating through my body actually makes it easier, in most cases, to recover. She walked me through a lot of good stretches, massaged my back, and talked about things that should help my back at the various stages of the pregnancy. Apparently, when it comes to back pain and muscle injuries and pregnancy, you want/need to do different things at 7 weeks vs. 14 weeks vs. 21 weeks, because relaxin peaks at 14 weeks, and the weight of the pregnancy starts becoming a factor around 21 weeks. Good to know. So, twice a week physical therapy for as long as I feel like I need it. The time commitment is a little daunting, but if it means that I have an easier time caring for LL and playing with LL and working on my thesis and contributing to the household and growing a child... hard to argue with the results.

All I really remember from my first pregnancy is that I had back pain for just a few days at a time, every 1-2 months, until it settled in for good around week 37. I was worried that it would be worse this time around, because of the car accident. But the physical therapist said that I'll actually likely feel less back pain this time around, because I can start purposely strengthening my back now, ahead of the real problem points.

She actually told me that a car accident at 6 weeks can be an awesome thing, because it gets insurance to start covering physical therapy at exactly the time in the pregnancy when you want a professional helping to whip your back into shape. How's that for a glass-half-full approach to life?

18

Conversation with Dr. M at one of my appointments last week:

Dr. M, walking into the exam room: So, this is Cycle Day 18, right?
Me: Yes it is.
Dr. M: Hey, you've got to be impressed that I remembered that it is Cycle Day 18 without even looking at your chart!
Me: Actually, yeah, I am impressed!
Dr. M: See, I have a lot of patients, but I always remember you. With me, you're not just a number!
Me: Um, except that "18" is a number.

In other news, I am still sick. When I realized that LL was totally better, S was obviously on the mend, yet I was still getting worse day by day, I went to see my doctor. Sinus infection. Worst one I've ever had. Hard to describe how awful I feel, especially since I always feel nauseous for several days after trigger shots, so I've got that on top of the cold and sinus infection. Lovely. I have now missed 6 days of work because of this stupid illness, and tomorrow is looking iffy. In the last two weeks, I have made six pots of soup, and I'm still not better. (For the record, they were: broccoli cheese, cabbage borscht, matzo ball, beef barley, split pea, and broccoli cheese again.)

In other other news, I meant to record that LL spoke his first sentence last month, where "sentence" is loosely defined as "two or more words that LL doesn't normally say together, said in a single breath." I was holding him, and he said, "Down, Mama!" Yes, my little boy had to wait 18 months to finally reach the cognitive development point where he could string together the words to turn to me at last and say, "Oh, for goodness sake, Mother, quit smothering me already and put me down!"

Contagion!

Ugh. Between LL, S, and me, somebody in our house has been sick more or less continuously since mid-November. Last week was the stomach flu, which hit all three of us at the same time. LL was the only one of us who had gotten a flu shot this year, which is probably why his only lasted ~36 hours. S was intensely sick for four days. I was never quite as sick as S, but my symptoms lasted an entire week. (That's pretty typical for us -- S usually gets sick with amazing ferocity, and then recovers quickly, while I get a milder version of everything, but then I'm sick for twice as long.) The fact that all three of us were sick at the exact same time, though, was particularly bad. We finally declared the entire household "well" on Saturday, and we had a wonderful illness-free weekend.

LL started sniffling a bit Sunday night, but we stayed in denial about it until Monday afternoon, when we all finally had to admit that yes, LL has a head cold. Congestion, runny nose, sneezing, cough. Fairly typical stuff.

At least, it seemed typical until last night, when he started wheezing and having trouble catching his breath. We spent all last night at the urgent care clinic. The wheezing would get better only to get worse again. The doctor thought it was probably just a little upper respiratory irritation, except that LL's oxygen levels were low, so they ran some additional tests and waddya know: lower respiratory infection, coupled with croup. And we're actually lucky (yes, lucky) that he was wheezing from the infection, because then we were able to catch the croup fairly early, before it got too bad.

They were able to get him breathing normally last night, finally, and we now have medicine at home to help his lungs to calm down and heal. He's in a great mood, even though his breathing is still fairly labored, his congestion is keeping him from sleeping, and his fever is stubbornly sticking around. He's running and dancing all over the house, and doesn't quite understand why we won't let him go to daycare and play with the other kids. And between sick days for me and sick days for taking care of LL, my thesis is kinda at a standstill.

At some point we'll all be healthy again, right?!?

Touchdown!

Our entire household is getting over a cold. LL started it, with a cold right after Thanksgiving that has stuck around as a persistent cough ever since. He passed it to me, where it was only ever a cough, but I've had it for over three weeks now. And S developed a cough just this past week. Fun stuff. We've periodically checked in with Dr. K, LL's pediatrician, who assured us that coughs last forever, don't worry about it, but call if anything changes. So when LL was up all night on Thursday and posted a 102+ fever on Friday morning, we gave her a call. She told us that one of two things was probably going on: (a) most likely, LL had caught a new cold, and we'd see him quickly develop other symptoms, like a runny nose; or (b) LL's existing illness had taken a turn for the worse, likely resulting in pneumonia. She told us to watch him for 24 hours and hope (yes hope!) that he developed new symptoms. Otherwise, bring him in so that she could check his lungs.

When the fever went above 103 on Saturday, with no new symptoms other than an incredible lethargy that had me carrying him in a mei tai all day with his head resting on my chest while he clutched his beloved froggie blanket, we brought him to the urgent care clinic. No pneumonia, thank goodness, but he has a nasty virus in his lungs, which we got to see in all its glory on a chest x-ray. Dr. K prescribed lots of fluids and rest, and sent us home to wait it out. He's still a little lethargic, but his fever broke yesterday afternoon, and his appetite is starting to return, so we think that he's finally on the mend. This kid is going to have built up one heck of an immune system by the time he hits kindergarten.

Incidentally, LL loved getting the chest x-ray. He thought the equipment in the radiology room was really cool. The tech needed him to raise his arms over his head for one of the x-rays, and was explaining that we should ignore his protests and force him to do it, but when the tech was ready to take the picture, S and I just yelled "touchdown!", LL raised his hands over his head, the x-ray was taken, and then LL clapped. Easy peasy.

LL got lots more chances to celebrate touchdowns on Sunday, Packers v Cardinals wildcard game. Highest scoring playoff game in NFL history! Too bad it ended with such a heartbreaking loss. Not the game I was expecting, and certainly not the ending I was expecting. So sad.

Status Memo II

Busy busy busy don't have to time to stop must get through the next week... month... 6 weeks. But as busy as things are, they are getting better. Not so much better that I have time to write an essay, but enough better that I have time for another set of bullet-point-ish paragraphs.

Sleep: We're getting some. Not a ton, but hopefully enough. LL isn't completely reliably sleeping through the night, but he's doing it most of the time. He still seems to be sleeping more lightly than usual, so we've instituted some desperate "please oh please don't wake the baby!" measures that we normally try to avoid. He's mid-transition from two naps to one, which isn't helping. S and I are going to bed earlier and earlier ourselves to compensate, as much as that has been possible while also getting done all of the work and chores on our ever-present to-do list.

Health: I'm probably at about 85% right now. Definitely getting better, definitely still a bit weak. I'm still having some nerve pain, but it's at the Advil-can-help stage rather than the Vicodin-barely-works stage. And my fever is gone. Sleep is my friend.

School: A carefully worded email to AdvisorA has brought her back into my corner. "Hi! Remember me? Your student who is graduating very soon? You don't have very many former students out in the world, and it would really help your reputation if the ones that you DO have don't hate you. Also, it would help you if they had really good jobs that you could brag about. Can you perhaps think of some ways in which you could help me to get a good job and not hate you?" (I'm paraphrasing. She seems to have figured out the whole "helping me will help you" part mostly on her own.) She's suddenly super psyched about helping me to find an awesome job.

Jobs: Interview number one, at a mature mid-sized company doing some fairly cool work, went really well, despite the fact that I had a fever of 101. (In general, I don't recommend interviewing while delirious with fever. But my particular delirium convinced me that I wasn't impaired at all, so I didn't reschedule like I probably should have.) Luckily, the CEO loved me, and has all but promised me a job offer. He loved me so much, in fact, that when I told him that I didn't want to make any final decisions until March or April, so that I could see what happens with academic positions, he said, "No problem; we'll make the offer and you can hold it until you're ready." I'm not sure whether this job is something that I'd want to do, but it will be good to have something in hand while I look around. Most of my effort is going into applying for tenure track assistant professor jobs. Applications, for the most part, are due at the end of the year. I'm frantically working on application materials now. (CV: draft done, being reviewed. Research statement: 20% done. Teaching statement: 80% done. References: three confirmed, lining up two more. List of schools to apply to: currently at 9.) Hence the 6 weeks of busy busy hell.

Thanksgiving: Everything that could be made ahead has been made. Two 18-pound turkeys have been ordered (I'm roasting one on Wednesday, the other on Thursday). The house is clean, and the furniture has been rearranged to accommodate all the extra people. Other than a small list of fresh vegetables and fish that I'll need to buy on Wednesday, all of the shopping is done. By the way: yes, fish for Thanksgiving. S's family is from Hawaii, so poke and lomi-lomi salmon are required dishes at Thanksgiving. Also, seaweed salad and fried saimin and arare and spam musubi. When I host, I also add Jewish favorites like brisket and noodle kugel and mandelbrot (my grandmother's recipe, with chocolate jimmies). This is all in addition to the traditional turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and pie. Can you see why it's good that we only have to host once every six years or so?

The Thanksgiving guests all arrive tomorrow. Happy Turkey Day to all, and to all a good night.

Status Memo

Thank you for all of the encouraging comments on my last post. It's good to get kicked around sometimes and reminded that worrying about contingencies does very little good. Just take one step at a time and keep moving forward. I'm working on it. Here's my status:

Teeth: LL is up to 14 teeth. All 8 incisors, all 4 canines, both top molars. The bottom molars seem to have receded a bit for now, so we're hoping for some relief. It seems that, at just under 14 months, he is almost ready to rip apart steak. Gnaw the meat right from the bone. He is a toothy force to be reckoned with.

Sleep: We finally took LL to the doctor because his sleep was getting worse and worse. We were dosing him with every child-safe medication we could get our hands on (Motrin, Tylenol, Benadryl, teething tablets) and he was still waking up by midnight every night and refusing to go back to sleep unless held upright in the glider by a loving and perfectly still parent. After several weeks of sitting upright in the chair for 6+ hours at a time, averaging only 3 hours of sleep/night for myself, something had to give. The doctor noted a little fluid in his ears (but no infection) and gave us prescription ear drops to add to the nightly regimen. He is now finally breaking through. Two nights in a row now, he hasn't needed us at all. It could be that his ear pain is resolving. It could be that the troublesome teeth broke through. It could be that he's just ready to be sleeping again. Don't know, don't care. Sleep is good.

School: AdvisorA is officially ignoring me. I don't know if it's because she found out about the funding thing, or if she just doesn't care. I haven't spoken to her on the phone for months. When I send her an email, there's typically more than a week's wait for a reply. I've been trying to set up a phone conversation with her for the last two weeks, and it still hasn't happened. Her latest "effort" earlier this week was an email that said she was available at 4:30 this afternoon, was I free then? I saw her email within an hour of her sending it, and replied that 4:30 would be great. A day later, she replied that by the time she saw my email, she had scheduled that slot with someone else, sorry, but she might be available sometime on Friday. I should just wait by my phone between 9am and 1pm on Friday, because she might call me then. Or she might not. Um, thanks.

Jobs: I have two job interviews. Yippee! Here's to hoping that LL lets me have more than 3 hours of sleep the night before.

Health: I came down with a horrible virus this week. Quite possibly the worst I've ever had. Not flu, but really really ugly. Like, attacking my nerves ugly. When I finally saw my doctor today because good lord I feel awful, she was a little shocked by how bad I was, and asked me if I was under any stress or missing sleep lately. Heh. I summarized the above bullet points, and she prescribed meds. And urged me to sleep, as if that's something I have control over. And told me to expect to feel like crap for several more weeks. At least the prevailing medical opinion is that I am not contagious, so I can continue my ridiculous life while I convalesce.

Thanksgiving: So far, I have made two briskets, one noodle kugel, one sweet potato casserole, two cranberry nut breads, two pumpkin breads, and one poppy seed cake. They are all happily snuggled in the freezer, awaiting the upcoming holiday. Spinach bars and mandelbrot are next. Twenty out-of-town relatives arriving in twelve days, and staying for a week? Bring it on!

S asked me this afternoon how in the world I'm still on my feet. I'm not entirely sure. One step at a time, right?

Horses and Frogs

Here's a fun bit of trivia that makes total sense in an "oh, but of course!" kind of way, but had never occurred to me until this weekend. Did you know that infants can get laryngitis? They do have vocal cords just like the rest of us, even if they tend to use them in slightly less nuanced ways. So of course, it's possible for those vocal cords to get injured. And when they do, babies go hoarse just like bigger people.

It just never crossed my mind that a baby could lose his voice. But Saturday morning, my poor little LL woke up and tried to call for Mom and Dad to kindly come and get him out of his crib for breakfast, please, and instead... no sound came out. He's been fighting a cold for more than two weeks now, and his very first and most obvious symptom has been a cough, so it shouldn't be surprising that it eventually turned into laryngitis.

But it's not like the kid can whisper what he needs, or write messages down for us on a notepad. All weekend, he would look up at us and try to babble/whine/coo/cry, and all that would happen is a breathy little squeak. He tried over and over.

On the one hand, it was one of the saddest things I've ever seen. LL is a very vocal baby, and you could see him getting frustrated that he wasn't able to voice his opinions. He just kept emitting these sad little squeaks. On the other hand... it was also awfully funny. My little baby mime. He's a little young to understand the "frog in the throat" concept, but we couldn't help but ribbit at him all weekend.

His voice slowly started returning today, and we brought him to the pediatrician just to make sure that laryngitis isn't a sign of something horrible in infants, and to see what the heck is going on because seriously, it's been two weeks. But she nodded and said, "Yes, laryngitis. It can happen at any age. Isn't it sad to watch when they're this young?" And just then LL gave a very heartfelt squeak and we all laughed at him. We're such insensitive people. Oh, and he's fine -- it's just a really long-lasting cold, but there's nothing more serious going on, and we're hopeful that he is finally on the mend.

LL sends a pathetic little croak out to you all.