Month: January 2011 (Page 4 of 7)

One household of my cousins grew up with limited menu options as each child had some sort of food allergy: one with seafood, one with poultry (yes, that includes chicken) and one with a milk intolerance. As a result, my poor Aunt was pretty much limited to finding creative ways to serve beef and pork on a rotating basis. Honestly, I can’t even imagine my life without chicken in the rotation. But this set of circumstances rendered the youngest child able to say, “there ain’t a part of the pig I don’t love.”

Whether wrapping something in bacon or enjoying a good hot ham & cheese (and apple! she introduced me to it- try it!) sandwich, Rebecca loves herself some pig. I’m curious if, like the Native Americans and a buffalo, she were to be a pig farmer on the plantation if she’d find a way to consume the whole animal in a tasty fashion.

Rebecca’s inclusiveness doesn’t find its limits when it comes to meat consumption. She has a knack for making sure everyone is involved and participatory. In our ever-growing family, there can be a tendency to assume that all parties have been informed of familial news; Rebecca can be counted on to be the one to follow up. Or if you’re coming into town on a random weekday, she’ll gather the troops so we can eat a quick lunch. Like most families, some individuals stay closer to the center of connectedness than others; Rebecca is always the one to know how those others are doing.

But it’s more than simply keeping people informed, though she’d make a superb Communications Director someplace. Rebecca keeps the lines open because she really values what is going on in the lives of the people she loves. Even if it’s something that she wouldn’t necessarily do (though I’ve come to decide that there’s very little Rebecca won’t do at least once), she still wants to know how things fair in your life. She’s a listener, a person who wants to hear you when you’re speaking.  She takes the good with the bad and enjoys the whole story.

Rebecca values the whole as much the part. There ain’t a part of you she don’t love.

Time for another quick update on the kiddos. Because I’m a failure at baby books, this is where I’ve been recording the events of the family, specifically the milestones and makings of the children. So even if you’re not interested, I need it logged somewhere.

H Boy

• Though with a somewhat limited vocab, he’s becoming quite conversational. Lots of talk about what we’re doing, what he sees, what he wants to be doing, or what he wants YOU to be doing. As in, “mommy! play!” 
• Jump around, jump around! This boy jumps up, jumps up and falls gets down. Most recently daddy has taught him how to leap from footstool to couch or dad. He finds it hilarious.
• The christmas gift of a kitchen proved successful. He serves tea with the best of them. 
• What is it with child-sized seats that kids love? He also got a table and chairs set from Grandma Marj and he loves to sit there to eat or play. 
• Last week we had friends over for dinner who’s son Kyle is close in age. The boys wrecked havoc in the basement while we enjoyed a semi-chaos free dinner. Win win. Win. 
• We have a new sitter. You know she’s great when it only takes about 10 minutes before he just says “bye bye mommy!” and continues on with the playing. No, no… my heart didn’t break. 
• His addiction to the bink seems to be progressing to the point of obsession. I continue to pretend it’ll be fine and disappear on its own. I’ll let you know how that works out for me. 
• We’ve been wearing big boy undies on a semi-regular basis, when we’re home. We’ll drink a good cup of milk, wait, then sit on the potty to read 5 books and sing 3 songs, only for him to be “all done” and then 30 seconds later peeing on the floor. Boy, I love parenting. It makes you feel so… effective.
• H can name yellow and pink. I think he recognizes the other colors, but yellow and pink are the answers to “what color is that?”

Miss M

• MOBILE is the key word of the month. She’s got the crawling thing down and is getting quicker. Now she does a army crawl hybrid/real crawl, and then when she gets to her destination, she automatically goes to her feet in a down dog position. She’d like to just stand up but she’s still a bit topheavy and doesn’t quite know how. I give her 2 months. 
• She loves standing and playing and has climbed a stair or two in her time. Up she goes. All. the. time. 
• Like her brother, she’s inherited the good eating genes. If her mommy would get it together and offer her a bigger variety, I think she’d really take off and enjoy a lot of foods. We just need to get them introduced. 
• On that note, she was able to feed herself some blueberries. Not so much a pincer grasp as a poke with her index finger, like a single prong fork. But whatever works. 
• M has won the super sleeper award as of late, frequently going the 7-7 distance without requiring that we enter her room. Her brother, on the other hand…. ugh. 
• Clap, clap, clap your hands! she says. She loves a good clap. Brother loves to get her to do it. 

Bathtime continues to be a highlight for 3 of the 4 people in the house (though I take my bath separate from the kids).  It’s amazing to see what 2 inches of water will do to a short-tempered kid. And it gives me a chance to catch up on my reading.

So that’s the update, in short.

Thanks to an unknown parental source, I have inherited a sub-par blood clotting gene. My sister tends to blame all physical maladies on my mother, and seeing how her mother had a blood clot not long ago we might have just heard someone call Bingo. But no matter the source of the fault, I am heterogeneous factor V (that’s five for those smart ‘ns in the world who use letters rather than numbers) leiden.

Whilest slow to do many things, it seems I’m speedy to clot.

For the average, healthy 30ish-year-old, this does not pose much risk nor even really require medical attention. But for the gal growing another human, it seems we must be cautious (did you know precautious is not a word? Per google spellcheck, it seems you can be cautious, inferring a timeline of pre-ness; you can also take precautions. But one is not precautious. Just cautious. Enough grammar). While a clot can be quite pesky in the leg or butt (not that anyone I know had a clot in her butt…), it’s downright worrisome when in the placenta or any of the feeding and nourishing mechanisms of the womb. So cautious we become.

Which leads me to treatment options, per my hemotologist (becase, as JE says, “every 30 year old should have one.”): 1) Daily injections of Lovenox. Yes, I said inject. As in, sharp, pointy object becoming embedded in my flesh. 2) Baby asprin 3) Cross our fingers that this pregnancy is like the last 2 and we have no problems. Because I’ve done this twice and the only difference this time is that we actually know I am leiden (haha!) with an abornmality, as opposed to most people’s strong inclination to guess it is such the case.

The doctor left the final decision to me. Well, this is always the case, but he actually vocalized it. The Lovenox is the “better safe than sorry” route and an easy pick for someone who loves the world of medicine. But for someone like me who’s become a bit skeptical and wary of what seems to be a trend toward over-treating for the sake of preventing lawsuits (not just because it’s the best course of action), it’s a bit tougher to decide.

In my brief consultation with Dr. Google, I read that it’s becoming more known that a daily dose of cod liver oil and a few of the B Vitamins also shows to thin the blood to a preventative level. But that’s not what the medical literature, the mainstream, points toward. And though I love a good home remedy, I have trouble anticipating similar results without some sort of proof.

But here’s the breakdown: who’s going to pay to study cod liver oil? Who will make money off that? Certainly not the pharma groups. They’d LOSE  money if that came out (right now it seems that the options for this kind of thinner are few and I’m sure Lovenox has quite the corner market). And who pays, at least in part, for a majority of the medical studies on these products? Well, the drug companies. They prove it works and then they market it like crazy, readily providing the studies to the doctors so the prescribers can take confidence in the anticipated results.

Our mainstream medical system operates off economics. My Intro to News Writing professor always said, “follow the money trail.” Someone, somewhere makes money off of it or it’s probably not a readily-available option. The suppliers of our drugs and medical equipment operate off of a supply-and-demand scale, like the rest of the American world. (That is, until it can be made into a generic). No one markets what is readily available and cheap.

So what now? Taking the low-risk chance, even if over-medicating, for the sake that “something could happen”? Or do nothing, returning to a state of “ignorance is bliss”? One shouldn’t make decisions based solely on fear, but also should avoid getting sand in her ears when trying to bury her head in the ground.

I suppose I just need to be grateful for 2 major things: that I have medical options and treatment readily available AND that my options lack the fear and side effects, in comparison to the treatment of other patients I saw today, as the hemotologist is also an oncologist. That can certainly put it all in perspective.