Categories Everyday Life, Parenting

Mornings at Prairie Elms

Leave a comment by

There’s a baby giraffe and a baby hippo on the side patio, which makes today the perfect day for Louis to finally be strong enough to open the patio door. I shut it tight and hold it while trying to decide whether I should call the zoo or animal control. Who does one call when exotic animals are loose?

Tirzah Mae flicks on the overhead light, awakening me from my dilemma. I fear she’s also awakened Beth-Ellen – but Beth-Ellen’s belly is still full from her dawn feeding a half-hour prior, so she settles back down in her bassinet after a few kicks to make sure mama’s fully awake.

I get out of bed to turn off the light – and lead the naked Tirzah Mae to the laundry room for some clean panties. “There aren’t any panties in my drawer,” she gave as an explanation for turning on my light. “And the music is off.” Technically, the “music off” rule is for rest time – she’s supposed to stay in bed in the morning until the sun comes up. But morning comes earlier to her east-facing bedroom than to my north-facing one, and I see that she hasn’t broken the “sun-comes-up” rule.

Louis lets out a single pitiful “help” and I get him out of his crib. He and I head back to my bed, where Tirzah Mae joins us as soon as she is dressed. Why do I persist in getting back to bed once they’re up, I wonder. It’s not like I’m going to get any more sleep.

While I’m fumbling with the key to get out my medicine, they’re arguing over who gets to be next to mama.

By the time I’m done taking my medicine, Louis has moved on to repairing the headboard with his “impact driver” (a small water gun). Unfortunately, the repairs that need to be done are directly over Tirzah Mae’s head, which is currently nestled in my right armpit – and under Louis’s foot.

I start to intervene with the usual “don’t step on your sister” rule when the impact driver drops below the bed.

“Saved!” I think, as Louis moves to the side to find something else to do with his relentless energy. But then Tirzah Mae begins to cry. She really wanted the impact driver herself and now it’s gone.

Five minutes later, I’m putting a mallet in time out because it was being naughty and hitting someone’s head.

I give up on trying to take my blood pressure and get out of bed instead.

Louis had not yet started trying to open the little plastic packages mama keeps in her bedside table. We were ahead for the morning – best to get out of bed and keep it that way.

Categories Pregnancy

Rupture happens

Leave a comment by

Select at random from the massive group of women who’ve had c-sections in the past twenty years, and ask them about rupture.

Chances are they’ll tell you that uterine rupture is common and life-threatening for those who choose to VBAC (have a vaginal delivery after a c-section.)

They’ve gotten this impression from doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies who, after a ACOG (American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) position paper in 1998 decided that VBAC was too risky to support.

On the other hand, talk to a bona fide crunchy-granola homebirth mama and you might get the impression that uterine rupture doesn’t actually happen – at least, not with any frequency.

Neither are quite true.

Rupture happens.

Some degree of separation along a former uterine scar occurs in up to 3% of VBAC attempts. In less than 1% of VBAC attempts, a complete separation of the scar occurs, requiring an emergency c-section to avoid life-threatening complications (in other words, a TRUE emergency c-section, as opposed to the much more common “failure-to-wait” section.) In the remaining 1-2% of VBAC attempts that result in rupture, the separation is small and/or partial and requires no treatment other than monitoring hemoglobin levels. (Data from VBAC.com.)

Generally, these incomplete ruptures are caught by manual examination after a VBAC. The attending physician sticks his hand inside the newly delivered mother’s uterus and palpates the incision scar to see if there are any holes or weak spots. Yes, it really is as awful as it sounds (It was more painful for me than the previous 42 hours of unmedicated childbirth.)

My rupture wasn’t identified in that manual sweep. It was discovered by ultrasound a week later when I went back to the hospital with intense abdominal pain. That we know of, the pain wasn’t caused by the rupture – the pain resolved on its own before I left the ER.

My hemoglobin had dropped, but it had stabilized at the next check, a couple of days later at my doctor’s office.

I never required any treatment for it.

It won’t prevent me from getting pregnant again or having another VBAC, although it does mean that I would be wise to give my uterus plenty of time to heal before I subject it to more contractions (in other words, I should try to avoid labor until Beth-Ellen is at least 18 months old.)

Moral of the story?

Rupture happens. It can be life-threatening, but it isn’t necessarily so. Those considering a VBAC (or who have been talked out of a VBAC) deserve to hear the whole story – instead of only hearing worst-case scenarios or empty reassurances.

Categories Pregnancy

What did you do?

Leave a comment by

If I’ve been asked once, I’ve been asked a dozen times.

“What did you do differently this time around?”

What they’re really asking is, “Why didn’t you get preeclampsia this time?”

The answer to the question as asked is that I didn’t do anything I “should” have. I ate what sounded good (precious little) instead of eating careful balanced meals like I did with the other two. I barely exercised instead of exercising diligently like I did with the other two. I didn’t plan for or expect a normal birth. If preeclampsia were a matter of human control, I would have been more likely to have gotten it with Beth-Ellen than with the other two.

(Incidentally, the one preventative action with any good evidence behind it is taking a baby aspirin during pregnancy – and I did that with both Louis and Beth-Ellen, with vastly different outcomes.)

The answer to the real question is simple.

God willed it.

It was God’s grace that gave me preeclampsia with Tirzah Mae and Louis – and God’s grace that gave me a normal pregnancy with Beth-Ellen.

What did I do?

Nothing.

God did everything, in His inscrutable wisdom.

Categories Everyday Life

Proving the Porch Prophets Wrong

1 Comment by

When we were designing our current home, I read about front porches extensively.

Social commentaries wrote of the decline of front porches as a metaphor for loss of community. Design folks talked about how so many homes have inadequate front porches – large enough to add expense, too small to actually live on. Go big or go home, they seemed to say. Yet they cautioned that plenty of people dream of a front porch, even build a usable one, only to find that their lives don’t match their aspirations.

I was, and am, determined to avoid that terrible fate.

Our front porch

We spent last summer putting a railing on the porch, made a gate for the front steps right before we licensed for foster care this year. Daniel got us a porch swing for Christmas and I used saved up gift money to buy a table and chairs.

Whenever the weather warms to sixty degrees or so, Daniel and I will move “couch time” out to the porch swing, swinging and talking about our days while the kids play in the yard. The wind chime Daniel gave me for my birthday a couple years ago jingles merrily behind us.

I get up to make dinner, and when the time comes to set the table, I tell Daniel that I think I’d like to eat on the porch today.

“I’m shocked,” he replies. “Shocked.”

Categories Parenting

A tale of two batteries

Leave a comment by

I clicked on the mouse.

Click. Click.

Nothing.

I turned the mouse over to see if it was turned on.

Rattle. Rattle.

That’s not normal.

I opened the battery slot to discover…

that Louis had taken out the mouse’s AA battery and replaced it with the baby monitor’s AAA battery.

He’s been using the baby monitor as a clothes iron.

Categories Thankfulness

Abundance: I Don’t Have to Start a Fire

1 Comment by

Have you ever considered that for most of human history, if you wanted to eat hot food you had to start a fire?

I’d defrosted some BBQ Pork from the freezer, intending to put it in the crockpot this morning before church. But instead, I had to throw together a Sunday school lesson (what happens when one teacher is gone for the week and then two more get sick? Well, the one that’s left makes do!) and neglected to put in the pork. So we microwaved the pork when we got home from church.

And then, while I was cleaning up dishes, my PrayerApp reminded me to give thanks to God for the material blessings he has given us.

That’s when I started thinking about the abundance I enjoy.

I don’t have to start a fire.

Instead, I can start one of my two crockpots (if I remember in time). Or I can throw food in the microwave. Or fire up my propane range with the turn of a knob. Or I can stick food in one of the two ovens I own (convection or standard).

That’s right. I own SIX food-heating devices (and that’s not counting the specialized water heaters I have – an electric coffeepot and tea kettle – or the waffle iron or George Foreman grill).

We have such an abundance.

Thank you, Lord, that I don’t have to start a fire.

Categories Books

Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

3 Comments by

I’m glad I set my expectations low for this year’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge – because we didn’t get far.

But Tirzah Mae and I read Little House in the Big Woods together during rest time. I had to convince her to put down the picture books so we could pick up Laura nearly every day – but, nearly every day, she tried to convince me to keep reading Laura when I came to the end of the chapter. So I’m going to call it a win.

She asked me to re-read “the part where Aunt Ruby and Aunt Docia are fixing their hair” several times and named Louis’s doll “Charles” after Pa. The harmonica was renamed as a fiddle, all the better to play “Buffalo Girls” with. We played with a balloon like Laura and Mary played with the pig’s bladder (although Tirzah Mae and Louis had a harder time sharing the balloon than Laura described her and her sister having!)

I occasionally wondered how much Tirzah Mae was understanding, but the things she talked about indicated that she understood more than I thought. I’ve also come to realize that some of the beauty of this first volume is its episodic quality. The seasons of the year (from the onset of one winter to autumn of the next year) provide structure for the book, but there is no overall narrative arc that one must understand. So if Tirzah Mae doesn’t understand churning butter? No problem. She’ll learn later and will still be able to enjoy the dance at Grandpa’s house.

I interviewed Tirzah Mae briefly this morning (about a week after we finished) to hear her thoughts on the book.

Which part do you remember?
The bear

Was there one bear or two bears?
One bear

What was the other one?
The stump of a bear

What did papa do?
He’s not papa, he’s pa.

So, what did pa do?
I don’t know. Hit it with a stick.

Should we read Laura again next year?
No… Just today.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ll be revisiting Laura in the future :-)

Thanks to Barbara for providing the impetus to continue reading and re-reading Laura year after year!

Postscript: Louis also enjoyed a few of the “My Little House books” books – and I caught a great photo of him perusing one here.

Categories Everyday Life

Where do toys come from?

1 Comment by

If you were to ask my children where toys come from, I’m almost certain they’d say “Mama.”

Press further, and you’d discover that my kids think mama makes all toys.

I know this because I get the Constructive Playthings catalog, and, like children have been doing for at least a century, my children use it as a “dream book.”

But while other children might recognize the catalog for what it is and might ask their mother to buy them the toys found within, my children come running to me:

“You should make THIS (pointing at one toy) and THIS.” And then they’re flipping through the catalog like mad, pointing at virtually everything, singing together: “THIS and THIS and THIS.”

They have limitless faith in my abilities.

Categories B3RD, Homemaking

When labels mislead

Leave a comment by

I have a deep, dark secret. It’s bound to have other dietitians ready to throw me out of the club.

I don’t read labels.

Honestly.

I generally buy food based on price and count on my general tendency towards minimally processed ingredients for ensuring that I don’t end up with too much sodium or added sugar in our diets (although, who am I kidding, we get plenty of added sugar in our diets – I know it’s there because I’m removing it from my sugar bins by the cup- and spoonful.)

Anyway, there is one item where I routinely read the label (or at least read it when I’m deciding between stuff – then I go on autopilot.)

I read the labels on cans of fruit.

We eat canned fruit almost every day. If we were to try to get our 3-4 servings of fruit per day from fresh fruit alone, it could get pretty expensive (or pretty unvaried during certain seasons); but by using a combination of canned, frozen, dried, and (seasonal) fresh fruit, I can feed my family a good amount of fruit without breaking the bank.

But since I feed my family canned fruit on a daily basis, I have nutritional criterion for what I buy. I want as little added sugar as possible. What’s more, I want as little added sweetener as possible.

So, when possible, I try to get fruit packed in water. If that’s not available, I’ll go with fruit packed in its own juice or in extra light syrup. If fruit is packed in some other kind of juice, I want the concentration of that juice to be the same as the concentration of straight juice (so no using half the water to reconstitute fruit juice – that’s the nutritional and flavor equivalent of heavy syrup.) I only buy fruit in heavy syrup as a treat (for instance, you can’t buy canned plums any other way – and I have fond memories of my mom’s home-canned plums so I pick some up a couple times a year.)

Then came Splenda – and fruit canners decided all their dreams had come true. Unlike other artificial sweeteners, Splenda is heat-stable AND replaces sugar molecule-for-molecule. This means that they can use Splenda to get the same results as sugar (sweetness and better fruit texture) without the extra calories/added sugar that consumers don’t want. Perfect. They started using Splenda in their canned fruits.

I am not a fan.

Not to say that I’m not a fan of Splenda in general. It is a wonderful substitute for those who need to reduce sugar and still want to make their own recipes (so, it’s a great choice for diabetics who want to be able to eat their favorite dessert without having to make the rest of the meal completely carb free).

But even in the absence of the calories from sugar, I don’t want my children to grow up thinking canned fruit should be as sweet as it would be if it were canned in heavy syrup. I want to train their taste buds to think that water-packed (or “own-juices-packed”) fruit is “the way canned fruit should taste.”

But then I started using Walmart grocery pickup, where reading labels isn’t as easy as scanning visually while you’re tossing a can into your cart.

At first, I bought the Great Value fruit labeled “No Added Sugar.” But that was packed in Splenda. No go.

I switched to fruit “With 100% Fruit Juice”. It contains an extra 3 grams of sugar per serving (that’s 3/4 teaspoon) than fruit canned in water would.

But last week, I saw that there was a new item available: Great Value canned fruit packed IN WATER.

“Hooray! At last!” I thought, as I added it to my favorites and ordered some cans.

My hooray turned to disappointment when I looked at the label before I opened the first can of peaches.

These were not peaches packed in water. These were peaches packed in Splenda. They’d just changed the name of the “No added sugar” variety.

Grr.