Rebellin

I’d like to reach out and give the author of this article a big old virtual hug.

The Kids Are Alright: What the latest day-care study really found.
By Emily Bazelon

The headlines blared this week. “Does Day Care Make Kids Behave Badly? Study Says Yes” (ABC). “Child Care Leads to More Behavior Problems” (Fox). “Day-care Kids Have Problems Later in Life” (NBC). “Poor Behavior Is Linked to Time in Day Care” (New York Times). And, ironically, “Bad Mommies” (Slate).

It’s useless to rail at the press for leading with the bad news and for ignoring the researchers’ caveats that no cause-and-effect conclusions can be drawn from their data. Still, coverage like this feels designed to twit working parents. And it turns out that in the case of day care, the headlines and the stories really were alarmist—even wrong.

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Little Miss has a cough that is causing asthma, yet again. The nebulizer, which I put away for a total of two weeks, is back out again. I stayed home from work on Monday so that I could ensure Little Miss got all of her treatments and some good long naps (which are nonexistent at daycare).

And finally, it hit me that I should ask daycare if they would administer treatments during the day. I knew that they have a policy against administering medications, but I thought I’d ask. And they said they could, if I got them a doctor’s note giving them permission to administer the nebulizer (my permission isn’t good enough evidently).

I then contacted my doctor’s office, who said I had to fax over a letter granting them permission to give the daycare permission to give her nebulizer treatments.

Seriously?! Is this what our sue-happy culture has come to? There really isn’t a wrong way to administer this treatment, so it really boggles my mind that it required so much of a paper trail.

But now that we’re all set up, daycare is administering two nebulizer treatments a day. I can’t tell you what a load off of my back that is. I don’t have the guilt factor, wondering if I should be leaving work twice a day to administer treatments, and then wondering how that would be perceived by coworkers. Little Miss evidently likes to get the nebulizer treatments from the daycare workers, as she takes it like a champ with them. At home, after about 5 minutes, she starts crying and trying to get the mask off of her face.

But the important thing is that now we can all breathe easy. And that is a good thing.

This is Trevor.

It breaks my heart to hear about sick children. My brother works Trevor’s dad. Trevor was born with leukemia, which was discovered the day they were going to check out of the hospital after he was born.

I think these types of situations hit home a bit more now that I’m a mother. Imagining what it would be like for my precious baby to have a life threatening disease is something I don’t even want to contemplate.

In times like these, people should bond together as a community, even if it is an online community. Trevor needs a bone marrow transplant. There isn’t a facility in my area to test for bone marrow compatibility, but you can donate to cover the fees associated with those tests. I donated, and would appreciate it if any of you would either spread the word or do what you can to help.

Here is an excerpt from Trevor’s story, and you can learn how you can help at the Trevor Austin Kott site.

Trevor was born full term on October 14th, 2006 and was given a 9 Apgar score. He was 8 pounds 6 ounces. We were discharged the day after he was born with the hospital giving him a clean bill of health. Just before we were leaving (He was actually in his car seat) a nurse informed us that the little t-shirt the hospital had put on him needed to be returned. While taking it off mom noticed small dots on his arms and asked the nurse if it might be a rash from the sweater he had on over the t-shirt. The nurse practitioner took him away for a closer look under better lighting and ordered a complete blood count (CBC) to get some answers. Turns out he had a white count of over 190,000 and they knew almost instantly it must be leukemia.

They told us he had congenital leukemia which is “exceedingly” rare and has a very poor prognosis (less than 5 percent survival rate). They told us he probably only had days or weeks to live. They immediately took him to the NICU and put in a Broviac catheter (central line) and he had two total blood exchanges, medications, etc. Basically the prognosis was so poor they put us in contact with Hospice and sent us home. He developed a fever at home and we took him back to the hospital after only 4 days. At that point we decided to go ahead and treat him because he seemed to want to fight. Then he had a bloody spinal tap and barely came out of the sedation. They sent him home again to die. The next day at home, he was bright-eyed and acting like a normal baby. We just couldn’t sit there and let him die without a fight. He seemed to be speaking to us and saying, “I want to LIVE! We brought him back to the hospital and he’s been there ever since for his chemotherapy treatments.

Trevor relapsed after his third round of chemo and his ONLY chance for a cure is a bone marrow transplant. He also has a very rare bone marrow typing and has no available donors. We are currently undergoing a grassroots bone marrow drive effort to find him a donor. Time is of the essence. Please read the journal on ways you can help.

Many kids have “cuddlies” that they take to bed with them.

For the past three nights, my daughter has taken a rubber duckie to bed with her. The night before that, she took a block to bed with her, but that’s besides the point.

She is a bit obsessed with duckies. Luckily, we have several, and she lights up when she sees them, saying “da!”

OK, she calls almost everything “da”, but anyway… Here is a picture illustrating the obsession. There is a reason why her Dad and I call her Duckie.

Wow, it has been a week since I updated. Last week was crazy, with three days of all day meetings with people from corporate headquarters. After that, I was really ready for a refreshing weekend.

The weekend was wonderful, but went by in a flash. On Saturday, I went skiing at Mt. Rose with my brother, Chuck. We arrived at 2:30 (slopes close at 4 for you non-skiers), after finally deciding to go at noon, and having to coordinate with JB’s ski schedule so that he could watch Little Miss while I skied. One Chute was open (Beehive), so we hit it three times in a row until they closed the Chuter chair. The snow was slushy (as it has been in the 60s on the slopes), but still lots of fun. I think we managed to get in 6 runs in an hour and a half, which isn’t shabby. Gotta love having a ski resort within 15 minutes of your house…

Saturday night was Date Night in our household. As I was getting ready for the big date, Little Miss discovered that playing in the toilet is pure fun (as she yelled “Da, Da!” while splashing about). I cleaned her up from that escapade just for her to open up a bathroom drawer and proceed to fall face first into it. Ah, the joys of toddlerhood are starting already.

JB and I went out for sushi, and then headed to O’Skis (click here to read my write up on this original bar), where his band used to play for St. Patricks Day. His old band was there, so it was fun to say hello to the old crew and have flashbacks to my days as his band’s number one groupie.

We then headed to Brew Brothers inside of the Eldorado Casino. It’s a place I’d dub as a preppy hang out, but definitely a place where we were some of the older people there.

I’m a bit baffled by the latest trend of college aged women walking around a bar holding each other’s hands. They were everywhere — pairs of women holding hands as they scouted for men. Reminded me of the buddy system in elementary school.

I spent Sunday recovering from staying up late and then having to get up early with Little Miss. She has been a bit of a pill lately, launching into toddler tantrums and having high pitched screeching being her main form of communication. I have renewed motivation to teach her sign language so that she can TELL ME WHAT SHE WANTS ALREADY instead of SCREECHING at the top of her lungs.

So, that’s it for now. What did you do this weekend? (As I search for someone besides spammers to comment on this site.)