Dude

Arrggghhh!  This is much more of a Twitter or Facebook sort of post, but I just have to write it:

WHYYYY do these poor bitches on A Baby Story go to the hospital when they're 2 cm dilated and then do nothing but lay in a bed and expect to progress miraculously? 
Walk around!  Do some squats!  Sit on an exercise ball!
DON'T EVEN BOTHER GOING TO THE HOSPITAL UNTIL YOUR CONTRACTIONS ARE CLOSER TOGETHER!
Jeeze Louise.  

I realize TV doesn't realistically portray the passage of time, but if someone told me to lay in a bed for 4, 6, or 8+ hours (under any circumstances!) I would not be game. 

You can be put on bedrest in an effort to completely STOP labor and preserve a pregnancy.  Why would the same technique help you to HAVE a baby?

Instead of just laying there you should read up on how fun the recovery from a c-section is. 

May is Celiac Awareness Month!

Hey folks!
May is Celiac Awareness Month!  Which is really, really, ironic... because I suddenly seem to be gluten-intolerant.

What the what?  Yeah, I asked the same thing.

In early April I began noticing that I'd have brutal cramping and bloating around midday and then again in the evenings.  It was gross!  It felt like my prior gall bladder issues... an entirely pointless, radiating crunchy, burning pain under and around my ribs that nearly nothing but time would subdue.  Since my gall bladder has been biowaste for nearly two and a half years, I knew it couldn't be that anymore.  So what's the deal?

It took a bit of sleuthing (and a few nights of going to bed at 7pm to lay there moaning until 9) to figure out that this pain most certainly was eating related;  then came the fun of narrowing it down to either dairy or bread.  After a particularly brutal run in with some delicious Donato's pizza followed by a very pleasant experience with frozen custard, the offender was confirmed:  BREAD.  And bread means... *shudder*  GLUTEN.

*unless it's yeast.  something in my brain still hopes it's just yeast.  is that even a thing?*

Cheerios make me burp.  Bread makes me die.  Pizza... well, we won't even talk about that.  Even just eating the delicious crispy crusts from a homemade PBJ left abandoned by Elena sent me into a food coma not unlike coming out of full anesthesia. I've gotten no official testing done, and my self-diagnoses is backed up simply by agreement from a friend who has serious Celiac disease and seems to know her stuff. 

What is Celiac Disease?
Excerpted with permission from author Jules E. Dowler Shepard, from The First Year: Celiac Disease and Living Gluten Free (DaCapo Press 2008).  [and yanked from http://www.1in133.org/info/]

One in 133 Americans has Celiac disease (also known as celiac sprue, coeliac disease, non-tropical sprue or gluten sensitive enteropathy), a chronic and permanent sensitivity to the food protein gluten, found in the grains wheat, barley and rye.  Developing the disease requires three things: a genetic predisposition; exposure to gluten through digestion; and a trigger to start this atypical immune system response.  It can occur in people of all ages once exposed to gluten, and is the most common genetic disorder in North America and Europe, although it is found in populations all over the world.

….[C]eliac disease (CD) is classified as an auto-immune disease, which simply means that the body attacks itself in an inappropriate immune system reaction. In CD, the reaction is caused specifically by exposure to gliadin, a protein of the food molecule gluten found in wheat, barley and rye …

Gluten intolerance is another condition that requires adherence to a gluten-free diet but does not rise to the level of an autoimmune disease. Food intolerances occur when the body is incapable of metabolizing certain foods, typically because it lacks certain enzymes necessary to break down particular food components. Those with gluten intolerance often have the same overt symptoms as those with CD, but they test negative for celiac disease by bloodwork and endoscopy. They learn through trial and error that gluten is the culprit for their uncomfortable symptoms, and once they adopt a gluten-free diet, live an otherwise normal healthy life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Per my celiac friend, symptoms can range from "owwie tummy" to headaches and brain fog.  I've also read diarrhea, bloating, and gas... and then in severe cases of actual celiac disease, anemia and signs of malnourishment like brittle bones and infertility. 

My sister was diagnosed at a very young age with a wheat allergy.  In 1967, my poor parents (poor in the sense of struggling economically AND young and clueless- not a good combination) had few options beyond rice cereal and bananas.  She's (TMI alert) always been prone to yeast infections.  She's slightly anemic, and often in a bit of a fog.  Her allergy to wheat seemed to go away once she grew older, but smacks of the "genetic disposition" mentioned above.  Flash back two generations to my great grandmother, who suffered horribly throughout the last years of her life due to gall bladder and other stomach issues that sound awfully gluten-related nowadays.  Now flash forward (what is this, an Old Spice commercial?!?) to her daughter, my grandmother, who alternates between being lactose intolerant and... who knows... but her gall bladder was also removed, yet she still has digestion issues.  Then her daughter, my aunt, was told her IBS would be with her for life and she should simply watch what she eats.

One in one-hundred and thirty-three Americans has Celiac disease, and 18 million are gluten-intolerant.  That's 7% of the population.  (thanks, Sasha Cagen for that info) 

I wonder how many still don't know it?

Today the "Gluten-Free" market is exploding with options for replacement foods that otherwise might be just a fond memory for celiacs and folks with allergies.  Waffles, bread, cookies, gluten-free oatmeal... even sauces and such that have hidden wheat can now be found in gluten-free versions.  I've gorged myself every morning for a week now on the delightful gluten-free-ness of Van's Waffles (topped with two eggs! - a girl's got to eat!) and discovered via trial and error that chocolate milk is bad, but strawberry milk is good.  We went to a Thai restaurant last Friday, which was awesome on so many different levels, but mainly because I ate three courses and had nary an issue thanks to the rice- and coconut-based goodness of the cuisine.  The shift towards eating gluten-free has not been difficult thanks to the availability of substitutions and our own non-traditional dietary preferences;  south Indian, Thai and Mexican can get you very far with the prominence of rice, corn and alternate flours like chickpea and rice.  Yay! 

Being a natural skeptic and cynic (read: judgmental bitch), I'm typically not a fan of "Awareness" months that range too far from things like "bacon" or "the usefulness of smoke detectors."  But considering that 7% of the population is, in the best case, not feeling their best, and in the worst case, being slowly poisoned to death by what they're eating, this is a month I can actually get behind.  I don't know for sure if I'm going to become an official member of the 7% yet, but the exposure, genetic disposition, and stressor (sudden, vigorous exercise?) all seem to align perfectly for a Mayan Armageddon in my tummy.

But it certainly beats lactose intolerance!

I Take It Back

Alright, I take it back:  f*ck you, TLC.
Now I'm watching one certain A Baby Story where a well-meaning first time mother wants a natural birth after a loss at about three months.
She starts out laboring fine.  She doesn't progress terribly well - from 6 cm to 6.5cm over a decent spell of time.  Midwife breaks her water - finds it has meconium in it, so warns the nice momma about how the baby needs to be checked right away after it comes out to make sure it hasn't breathed it's own poo into it's lungs.  She checks her progress 4 more times in the span of a 30 minute show, with the momma wincing horribly each time.  Midwife notes that momma is tired and should probably have an epidural at this point, to which the momma agrees, and then the midwife is featured going off to the nurse saying, "She got it.  She's feeling much more comfortable... as always."  (Hey moms-to-be!  Your efforts towards an unmedicated birth are noble, but stupid!  Look how comfortable this woman is now that she's had the needle stuck in her spine!)  Midwife checks the momma's progress again as she remains stuck in the bed, unable to move because of all the monitors, and says that the baby is "molding" - meaning it's trying to come down with each contraction, but it's starting to smush the cervix in a way that suggests it's head is just too big to get out.  (Wow, I molded too... my cervix had a little lip that was in the baby's way.  Did they send me for a caesarian?  No, they had me stand up and rock back and forth so the baby's head rubbed that obstruction down to nothing.) The midwife tells her it's time to really consider having the baby surgically removed, and the mother breaks down.  She doesn't want to be cut, she doesn't want a scar, she doesn't want more anesthesia, she doesn't want both herself and her baby to have to recover during the first few days of their relationship.

Bring in the doctor.  Doctor comes in and checks her progress - AGAIN, agk! - and says that the baby is actually further down than that (c-u-next-tuesday of a) midwife had described, and "why don't you try a few trial pushes?"  She does once, or twice... then the doctor says since momma is so tired, why don't they use forceps to pull the baby out?  Momma barely whispers, desperate, "please... please don't do that unless it's absolutely necessary," and the doctor says, "we'll see."  Baby begins to crown and you see some blood down at momma's business end.  Momma looks down through a push and says, in a panicked whisper, "are you going to cut me?!?"  Doctor looks up.  She continues, "please, just let me tear.  Don't. Cut. Me."  Again, the doctor replies, vaguely, almost smugly, "...we'll see." 

 She pushes one last time and the baby is born - a beautiful pink little girl, 7 lbs 2 oz.  Her head is a little long and Mayan-looking from being in the birth canal so long, but otherwise she is a beautiful perfect little thing, with fluffy, gorgeous brown hair.

I don't know if this was supposed to be a sort of "buyer beware" episode, or just one of those "look at alllll the things that can go wrong", but they've taken that nice vibe I wrote about yesterday and just murdered it.

Every intervention puts you further downhill from your goal of a natural birth. 

Bravo, TLC!

When I was pregnant with the E-unit, I watched a lot of "A Baby Story" and would record bits of the show mostly, after reading some Ina May Gaskin, to show my dear husband exactly how I did NOT want to deliver our baby.  I didn't want the legs-up-in-the-air, brutal nurse yelling at me to push, squirt-poop-pow-baby sort of delivery that was most often shown.  Occasionally I'd see a lady sitting in her bathtub in a sports bra concentrate, give a moan, and then scoop a little wrinkly raisin baby out of the water; that's what I wanted. 

(fast forward to July 22nd, 2008 and I did enjoy the bathtub and sports bra situation for a good 90 minutes, but finally did end up with a less-ideal birth, albeit naturally and overall happily because I did not blow out my bottom.)

Now we're no longer babysitting the E-mac in the mornings but I enjoy my up-at-6:30am routine way too much to give it up.  After BBC World News is over there's not much to watch if you're not a fan of Grahame Norton (I am not), so I usually flip over to TLC for some Bringing Home Baby and Baby Story fun.  (And it IS good fun, especially with nearly three years separating yourself from the whole experience of either bringing home a baby or your baby story!) 

Lo and behold, in two weeks I've noticed a slight change in the births and mothers shown on these shows. 

Yesterday I saw a overweight black woman refuse an epidural and then not only desire to, but be ALLOWED to, deliver her high-risk twins vaginally.  VAGINALLY.      TWINS.  In a HOSPITAL.  Hell, in an operating room, to be precise.  (They weren't taking any chances.  A hospital not taking any chances usually results in the mom being induced and the twins coming via C-section.)  It was pretty brutal - her legs were strapped up to stadium-style uprights at the end of her gurney, meaning she was flat on her back, but she delivered almost 11 pounds of baby girl with barely any complaint.  She was a GODDESSS.  What's more, the hospital was pretty fab for allowing her to do that.  Then?  She went home and breast fed them.  Refused (but not irrationally - they were doing fine on breast only) to supplement.  I don't know exactly how to portray how amazing this seemed to me. 

Then today a lady delivered twins via c-section and breast fed them exclusively on Bringing Home Baby.  They were supplementing occasionally but she was uncomfortable with the idea, and what did they do?  BROUGHT IN A LACTATION CONSULTANT.  Did she tell them to give up, she was too exhausted to have a good supply and might be starving her babies?  Nope, she told her to pump at least 20 minutes a day, especially whenever the babies are taking bottles... and then the consultant zoomed into her own bubble and addressed the viewers directly, giving three tips for increasing breast milk production and to make feeding easier. 

HOLY SHIT!  Breast feeding is cool again?!? 

I am just so impressed.  It's not much.  There could be a lot less "drama" before commercials, less stress on "how wrong things can go," and much much more featuring of births with midwives, but still... it's a start.  Any baby steps towards helping remove the subconscious culture of fear and danger that surrounds birth in the US would be highly welcome.   I'm very very impressed, TLC.  

[Her Own] Language Development

I can't imagine being my daughter's age and suddenly being able to put things together, from brain to mouth, getting thoughts out into the world. 

Or maybe I can.  I remember the first time I said something in Spanish, correctly, in the actual context of a situation.  It's one thing to sit in a classroom and learn "guantes de lana" and "donde está la biblioteca," but suddenly all made sense when my friend's dad opened the door in Mexico City and I thought for a second and stammered, "Dónde está Daniela?"

Perhaps even more relevant was when the Japanese exchange student my senior year would make up inane little sayings that had more to do with how something sounded than it's actual English meaning.  (and we already know what sort of mayhem can result from that!)   Our authentic appreciation, in the form of hilarious laughter and endless repetition, probably encouraged her.  Like when she tried to convince my friend Chip to run for class president with the slogan, "Eat Eat Vote Vote Chip Chip." 

My daughter is the Japanese exchange student.

She is making connections which are logical yet hysterical. 
A good example:  boobs = milk. 
Well, sure.  She nursed to some extent until about 16 months or so, and knew the sign for milk and would tug at my shirt or poke me in the boobie and sign furiously, "milk milk milk!"  Now all boobs are milk.  Mama has "milk."  Marble statues have "milk."  Even just nipples are milk - cuz Dada and other babies have "milk" too.
Lately she'll pull the end of her shirt down over her knees so that they show through the material, and proudly say, "Nanoo's big milk, mama, look!  Nanoo have milk like mama"  Oh God.

Big = Dada
I will always remember my dear niece Molly.  She'd been seeing this "Saby" fellow around with her Aunt Lina for almost two whole summers, and couldn't figure out why.  We walked out onto the dock where she and her siblings were fishing, and I heard her exclaim, "Saby is Aunt Lina's DADDY!"  Ahhhhh.  Any boy that completes the set with another girl must obviously be a Daddy, because of the precedent set by her own Mommy and Daddy.  Ta da! 
Similarly, all things "big" and in anyway superlative in E's life are "dada."  Dada bite, dada loud.  Dada spider.  Dada sound.  Occasionally they are Dada Big, which must be just freakin' MASSIVE.  Have you met my husband?  He's Dada Dada.

Mama Mia references:
Anyone with pigtails or two braids is "honey honey" (notice the friends hairstyles during that song), and anyone with their belly showing is "jimmie jimmie jimmie" (like most of the outfits in that number).  Note that "jimmie" is said with a Hispanic J, so it's really "himmy" - and where this evolved from I know not.  She has tried to tie a bandana around her "milk" and go outside to sing "jimmie jimmie jimmie" but we're working on discouraging it...









 

Language Development

Bizarre how long ago it seems that I was transcribing the list of E's signs-and-then-words from the dry erase board in the kitchen to Spampylandia.  Oh, how quickly things have changed.

First came the two syllable words.  Then two words paired.  "More cheese" may have been the first of E's that didn't include "Mama"  (as in, "no mama" or "more, mama").  Then on July Fourth (or perhaps actually Saturday July 3rd, as it fell by the calendar) she spouted her first three word sentence of sorts, thanks to her buddy the big talker Pie, who is a quarter of a year older and more often than not, way ahead of her in the chitter-chatter.
Playing together on the slides at Shoup Park, E happily proclaimed "I do it!"  Notice the nifty pronoun as well.  That was a first.

Fast forward through some memorable events and their corresponding memorable phrases:

• buddy Gabe visiting with us over Labor Day ("shhh Gabe, no cry");  
• Dance class begins in September, and we've lied to get Elena into the 2.5 year old class with Pie.   More notably, when signing up for the class, we walked over to the wall of glass separating the pool area and E shouted like Big Chief Kickapoo about water and frogs... while Pie sagely noted in her breathy, logical way, "I... haven't... got... my swim togs."   (at this point, we decided to let E watch more Kipper, as the easy alternative to Pie's parents taking her in for language training!)
• Halloween ("trickotreeeeeat!"); 
• Thanksgiving with friends from Michigan, Chicago and Indiana ("where's aunties gone, mama? where's uncles?); 
• Thanksgiving buffet at the American Cafe downtown, where I let E carry her own plate back and forth warning her to watch out for all the people.  She returns to the buffet for dessert warning everyone in her path, "Watch out peoples!" 
• pre-Christmas brings the beginnings of a pacifier-regression where she wants it more outside of her crib than ever before, but we remember her first "big" grammatically correct sentence coming from that - "Look mama, I have my orange paci!"
• the advent of football season and her more theatrical than speech-related football player impressions  ("Yook!  yook!  poopall.  I running!" [then run-run-run, fake a dramatic catch, and fall down] "I fall down poopall, mama!  Dada, yook!  Poopall!")  
• Somewhere between there and Christmas was the first time she earnestly looked me in the eyes and told me, "Listen, mama."  OH MY GOODNESS... the scary reality of kids absorbing your every move sinks in then.
• Christmastime (which, thanks to a trip to Big Lots and a prelighted Christmas tree, began on Election Day 2010 and continued through the first week of January) where our bedtime routine grew to include, "Merry CHRISTmas, Happy New YEAAAAR" (emphasis hers), the recognition of Santa and snowmen at every turn (in stores, tv, signs, even yards), and her shocking-at-the-time ability to recognize Charlie Brown on wrapping paper after watching the Christmas special once a few weeks prior.  She didn't cry on Santa's lap, but she didn't exactly love the experience... though her watching the video message from Santa made me cry, and cry, and cry...
• In December sometime, E rightfully dubbed E-mac "Baby Loud."  Tells her on and off that "thisees OURS" and then takes toys away.  I don't mind since the "mine" stage is supposed to be very annoying and this "ours" novelty sounds delightfully Quaker... or Communist.  
• One January day we wander out, blanket-wrapped, to the mailbox and find a returned and damaged package inside.  "Oh shit!" is my gasped reaction when I realize what it is (it was an autographed book and family photos originally destined for my father-in-law) and Elena thoughtfully shows her empathy.  "Its broken, mama?"  Yes baby, it appears to be very broken and damaged, Mama is very sad.            She turns her face angelically to face mine, and with great concern asks, "its... f*cking, mama?" OH. MY. GOODNESS.   Wrong language for a two-and-a-half year old, but absolutely an A+ for correct context.  Appropriate serious discussion about good and bad words follows.  Hilarious recounting to Dada and friends also once child is safely in bed away from my uncontrollable laughter.  This is promptly archived in the "omg they absorb everything file" for all eternity.

• a water bottle cast off by buddy Gabe becomes officially known as "Rachel water" (and she teaches 16 month old twins the term "rachel water" later in March)
• Fearing the banishment and play restrictions that come with hurting herself, E officially becomes Baby BadAss by shouting "I feel better!" anytime any sort of actual or perceived injury occurs.  If you ask her if she's okay, she'll answer "No!" but that means yes.  Conversely, at the sound of any thump or "ow" or expletive, she'll come running and ask you if you're okay... and in the case of the expletive, tell you not to say that.
• Sometime in February we notice that E officially calls anyone who is Indian or Indian-looking "auntie" or "uncle", something she gathered on her own via all our friends.  The Spice Goddess becomes a bit of a regular in our house, and E comes running to the sound of her introduction, and narrates...  "There's cooking auntie!  Oh auntie... auntie is SO busy"  (although busy comes out more like "bizzzz-zie")  "Cooking hot ap-tay-toes, cutting onions.  Oooooooh, busy auntie!"
• The terrible twos never happened, though the terrible-two-and-a-halves pop up now and then.  I think it was late February the first time I was thoughtfully admonished by E:  "don't scream, mama... don't scream!"  This seems to bring us both back from the edge of whatever insanity we'd just experienced.
• Then we fly to California for a week of business for Dada, randomness for E and I.   Notably E impresses our Delta-flight neighbors with her renditions of Rihanna's "Umbrella", Lady Gaga's "Telephone", and unabashed overuse of  please and thank you.  She gifts three-dimensional bug stickers to the kind bioengineering professor next to us and wears sunglasses for the entire awake portion of both legs.  She eats her weight in cookies.  Maybe I'll remember more of what she actually SAID later.  She did tell an engaging man on the flight home that her cousins Leah and Lisa are her best friends in the whole world.
• Returning home from California, she's gathered in the use of "together", "everybody" and "upside down".  This may not sound like much, but a parent knows that strange feeling when you start hearing some all-together different and new words come out of your kid's mouth.  It's so novel.  So neat-o.  So much fun.  

Junior Doctor E

E found her little toy doctor's kit after an almost year-long absence.  She's been tending to us faithfully ever since. 

First she puts on the nametag, which says, "Junior Doctor" above her dutifully lettered-in name.  

With stethoscope in hand (and ears), "Is okay mama.  Shhh shhh shh." 


I'm laying on my back on the living room floor, pretending to moan in pain.

She pushes the listening end to my chest. 

"Doctor, is everything okay?  What do you hear?" I ask.

She takes the stethoscope off my chest; without missing a beat, she answers, "with my EARS, mama." 

How Insanely Skinny Was I?!?!?!

Or, as our allies in Britan would say, "Fit."



Dear Lord.  I will get this back.   Or at least toned-arm goodness of a comparable worthiness.


August 5th, 2006 isn't all that far gone.  Somewhere inside me, there's a 135lbs girl. 

The Aforementioned Project

The Journey Home | Make Your Own Book

See 50-some of it's 98 pages here, if you like. 

Jeesh

Wow.  A big project is on the verge of being 100% complete and forever off of my conscious and to-do list.

The memorial book that we had talked, rather flippantly, amongst family about making suddenly became a huge reality, with a very huge deadline.  I'm glad to say it is in that strange state between done-ness and actual tangibility.  I look forward to, probably after tonight, not having to pore over photographs of my husband's family again for a loooong time.  (Although they are definitely a good looking lot... lots of Middle Eastern features popping up here and there that make me wonder if they didn't have a relative on the boat with the Christians coming in from Syria in 400AD.  Plus so many six-foot-plus guys?  In SOUTHERN INDIA?!? But that's a whole different History Channel conspiratorial miniseries to pitch later...)

We've told my mother-in-law (Mummy) how I don't even know what all I'll do with my time now that this is finished.  But I do.  Here's the agenda for the rest of February.

1.  Begin losing 20 pounds.   (a buddy and I have joined the YMCA's Move2Lose program.  Dragging two kids each to the YMCA by 9:30am twice a week will be a workout in itself.  An exercise in patience you might say.  HA!  And each of us have a stranger-hater.  So let's just consider it a bonus that our workouts will be interrupted every 30 minutes as the kid-minding daycare workers come to fetch us to calm down our respective screaming girl kids.  (Note:  "my" beast is not actually mine, but is the daaahling E-mac.)

2.  Begin cleaning up the craft room.  I have a lovely sewing machine that is still in the box.  As I did a little photo shoot for the cover of this grandmother memory book (artsy shots of a rosary on a sari - of course, what else for your dearly departed Kerala Catholic grandma?) it came to my attention that these lovely cotton saris would make great, beautiful, and slightly exotic swaddling cloths.  And hip mommas are into that sort of thing.  So I shall mount that sewing machine's learning curve and make it my bitch, and hopefully our progeny will be delightfully stitched projects, beginning simply with those swaddling cloths.

3.  Organize the closets.  I keep looking around at our extra space and wondering, "what if we suddenly DID have family or friends move in with us?" (My parents have suddenly bought a place in Florida, and we have no idea what their plans are going forward.  Are they forsaking Ohio completely?  Planning to chuck in with us a month or two a year?  No idea, and I'm thinking they don't know actually either.  Secretly we're wondering if they wouldn't want to have their grandfather clock come and live with us!)  The acres of random, unfilled space in our home need to be made useful and geared for actual utilization, rather than just space to stack things.  Lord, I may even paint the guest room like I had imagined months back. Stop the presses. 

Right now, my plan is to simply vacuum.  Hope the kid is willing to help.  We'll make a game of it.  Game is called, "Help me vacuum or BEATINGS!"

(please note:  I don't actually beat my kid.) 

Cheers!