Happy birthday!

It was my sweet baby boy's (who is more boy than baby now) birthday and he had a jam-packed day. First, preschool, where they gave him a crown and had muffins (mommy-baked, peach and blueberry) and sang "Happy Birthday." His teachers gave him the run of the place for the day, so he had a good time.

Then lunch at Chick-fil-a with Mommy, always a hit, then a nap, then speech therapy. His teacher brought presents for both him and Mommy (nice!). Daddy came home early and grilled him his own pizza and then it was cake and presents and bed.

For three, a pretty full day. The party will come later when his friends are back in town and Grandma and Grandpa are here (and Mommy is not double-booked for meetings).

But he's so amazingly cute and sweet. Liz and Bill sent a box of stuff (a wonderful surprise) and A tore through it like mad as a before-dinner treat. But he's so amazingly smart. He opened a book he's never seen and said, "Oh, it's Dr. Seuss!"

We just got back from Balboa Park. I took him to the puppet show (Pirate Paul) to get a birthday surprise: a crown and a card and a little frog prince finger puppet. Then an auditorium of people sing "Happy Birthday" to him. They called his name and he just ran down (we were sitting in the very back row) to the front without one look back for Mommy. He's getting so grown-up and worldly.

Hormones

Yup, I've got 'em. It's official.

Last week, I woke up at 4AM and couldn't get back to sleep. So I did some ironing (it's been hot and 4AM is the coolest time of the day) until A got up and then I went into the kitchen and looked at the dishwasher and the counter full of dishes and had a nutty. To his credit, when C heard me slamming doors and dishes and mumbling under my breath to myself ("Sure, I'll unload this thing again since I'm the one who loaded it and ran it and unloaded it and ran it the last five times,"), he sent me out of the kitchen and finished doing it himself and didn't say a word to me about it.

In my own defense, there's something about unloading the dishwasher when you've loaded the dishwasher that makes me feel like a complete drudge even when I'm not pregnant.

Then the YouTube crying attacks started. I teared up to the birth slideshow on one of the blogs I read, because the husband and wife look so in love and newborns are so tiny. People sent me the YouTube video of the bridal party dancing down the aisle and I teared up every time the bride came down the aisle.

I've got no reasonable defense for that.

Last night, I had to print volunteer recognition certificates up for the writing organization I am the Volunteer Coordinator for. All I had was a .PDF file, so I had to run them through twice, once through Adobe for the certificate and once through Word for the names. The paper crumpled or curled or misfeed so it was a complete failure. And that's when C came in and took over for me and got things to a point where I could manage to go to Staples and finish it today.

And my darling husband hasn't once said, "Dear, you seem a bit irrational and crazed," because he's very wise and he knows there's nothing he can do. But, yes, dear, I am aware that I am irrational and crazed and thank you for taking up the slack and stopping me from being quite as destructive as I could be.

I have no earthly idea how I'll make it through a "thank you, wonderful volunteers," speech today without blubbering.

Audiology success

Today was A's third hearing test. This time, he's old enough to try a more interactive test, so he was given small tasks to do every time he heard a beep. Being the old hand at testing that he is, he responded only to the first beep of each frequency. If they tried to retest him, he stared at them like, "Oh, please, can't you leave me in peace?"

The good news is, the test went great. He had some test fatigue that gave him some funky numbers on his right ear, but even if the funky numbers are right, they aren't in a range that would impact his speech development abilities, which was the whole impetus for the testing in the first place.

So it looks like he's got no hearing losses. His eardrums behaved beautifully. The hearing receptor cells in his ears are responding as expected. He's just bored the third time through his hearing test.

Due to funky numbers, we have to go back for a retest in one year, which I am fine and dandy with. And the audiologist was nice enough to give me a copy of the audiogram, which is what the school district wants to show he's been tested and that's not an issue they have to start testing him for on his speech.

Great news. And C and I did the two-car tango today to take car of a punctured tire and and oil change, so the car's in good shape, A's ears are in good shape, and it's almost Friday.

Rock star mommy

Oh no, audiology, I will not be your humble supplicant again.

I got a call from the audiology department. As you'll recall, this is my third time trying to schedule an appointment and I first requested a hearing test August 1, 2008.

"He's cleared from his ENT and his ears look great, so I'd like your next available appointment."

"That would be September 11 at 10AM."

Excuse me? So I cajole and wheedle and reluctantly type it into my calendar, and then I get my inner rock star on.

"May I speak to your supervisor? I'm very disappointed; his ears are clear; we've been through this twice now and I don't want to wait and see if he's sick in September or not so we can go through all this again."

Um, she doesn't know why I'd want to speak to her supervisor. After all, her supervisor isn't here.

"How many supervisors do you have?"

"Well...which one did you want to speak to?"

"The one who can get me an earlier audiology appointment."

"That would be audiology. Hold on."

I hold.

"This is Elisha."

I explain, nicely, that I'm trying to get an audiology retest for my son. Both times the audiologists saw something in his ears; after the second time, they recommended going to the ENT and calling to say, he's clear, he's well, do it soon. And I did that and they offered me September, and while I understand how swamped the schedule is, I don't want to go through this again if he's sick in September when I know he's well now. It seems that by going by the system and always having our next appointment six to eight weeks out, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Elisha says she'll look, and while she's looking I reiterate how busy I know they are and if this wasn't the third re-test, I wouldn't be talking to her.

"How's Thursday at 9?"

"Thursday, like two days from now Thursday?"

Yes. We'll take it. For bonus rock star glamour, I call his preschool teacher and get him rescheduled for tomorrow instead of his usual Thursday. And now I have an extra Wednesday morning free this week!

All clear, preschool registration

So it's been a week. C had comp time for his horrible work schedule of a while ago, and so we had a go about our normal crazy routine week. A couple highlights for you:

A had two follow-up doctor visits so far and he's doing great. One with the asthma specialist at our pediatrician's, who says he's sounding great and is taking him off most of his drugs. One with the ENT (finally) to check his ears to see if they are affecting his hearing tests. His ears are crystal-clear gorgeous and he's fine and ready to go to town on the hearing test, so cross your fingers that we can get that scheduled soon.

While C braved the pediatrician's, I went to public preschool registration, which was a little three-and-a-half hour slice of hell. First of all, when I entered the room (about the size of my grandparents' barn, but louder), there was a violin class for eight-year-olds going on at the front of the room. Thirty little children sawing away on their violins weren't even the worst of the noise. There were randomly arranged tables and hundreds of metal folding chairs that appeared to have been dropped from the ceiling and left where they fell, because there was no order to this room.

The room was filled with screaming, largely unattended children, mostly under six. It was stuffy and hot and the parents were obviously too frustrated with the processes of bureaucracy to care about whether or not their little ones were behaving. There were two sisters who took on the alpha mean girl roles and took toys away from other children and hit them when the other kids complained. They were nasty enough that other parents were just saying, "Stay away from those two," instead of slapping the girls around.

I was number 108. I was second to last.

The system works like this:

1. Go to entry table. Show all documents (birth certificate, immunization record, proof of address, proof of income). They make copies and assign you a number.
2. Wait to be called. For three hours. In kiddie hell.
   
3. Go to the document confirmation table. Woman confirms that you have all the documents and that you filled out forms correctly. She gives you a folder for all your copies. Go back and wait some more, maybe twenty minutes.
4. Wonder if the small children coughing near you have TB. Take your hand sanitizer and wipe out your lungs.
   
5. Go to the proof of income table. Woman does math with paystub to determine whether your child qualifies for Head Start (low income and disadvantaged in some way), preschool (low income but not as low or disadvantaged as Head Start), or School Readiness (everyone else). Smother urge to ask woman if you really needed to go through this charade since you darn well know you are not low-income.
6. Wait again. Cheer up when you talk to someone who made it to the inauguration and how amazing it was.
7. Go to the nurse table. The nurse sees the asthma box checked, hears the word, "hospitalization," and produces four more forms to be filled out by you and the child's doctor. She also tags your folder with a sticky note that says ASTHMA so she'll know who you are later.
8. You're almost the last one, so there's no waiting for the last table, the school choice table. You ask for the school near you that has public preschool for kids regardless of income and a great speech therapy program. She tells you it's almost full. What are your second choices? Um... She makes some suggestions. You accept them, because you have no clue. He's only three. You're beginning to feel like he's not going to get in anyway.

Doctor's followup

Of course, they recommend you see your pediatrician within a couple days of being in the hospital. Of course, our pediatrician was all booked up, so I asked for the asthma specialist instead. I had to get all Bryn Mawr on them when I made the appointment. ("I'm sorry, maybe I didn't make myself clear. My 3-year-old just got out of the ICU and needs to see his pediatrician for follow-up care within one to two days. Would you like to check the schedules again and see where you can get us in?")

So today we went and saw the asthma specialist, and learned the following things:

1. One of our practice's doctors was physically in the same hospital we were all weekend and nobody called him to let him know we were there, which they're supposed to. This makes the doctors in our practice a little pissed.
2. The chest X-ray A had in the ER did show some interesting congestion and was not as clear as I was led to believe.

The doctor wasn't thrilled with the way A sounded, upped his meds again, and wants to see him on Tuesday to double-check the congestion he's hearing.

So that's where we are. A is still much more active and happier than he's been, but he's not 100% yet. But he can do normal activity levels, with lots of drugs.

We got word today that he's been accepted into the preschool he's currently going to once his free services expire, so hey, that's one less thing to worry about.

Hospital alphabet soup: ER and PICU

Happy Fourth. We all had an exciting one here. Very early on the 4th, like 2:30 a.m., C woke me up and said, "A's retracting. I just gave him albuterol and it didn't seem to work. I think we need to go to the hospital."

Now sometimes it takes me forever to wake up, but that one got me instantly awake. I looked in at A and said, "Yeah, we're going to the ER." C had been up since midnight with A (letting the pregnant lady sleep, thank you). When A can't breathe, he can't sleep. But A was pretty pale and lethargic and uncommunicative.

Off we go. We throw clothes for A and some other random supplies into his preschool backpack: a book for me, extra underpants, his immunization card. We make it to the hospital around 3 and park at the curb in front of the emergency room. We go to the front desk of a huge waiting room and explain what's happening to A. The nurse takes a look at A and immediately takes him into the back to put him on oxygen. His first oxygen saturation level was 82-85%. Normal is in the 90s, the high 90s for being awake. At 75%, you pass out.

We were in the ER for about three hours while they tried a couple different drugs on him: albuterol, xophenex, magnesium sulfide. They put an IV in to get stuff to him quicker than the nebulizer. They took blood tests. Nothing was making him better, so then they admitted him to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) where he could get more treatments and continuous monitoring.

So we spent Saturday in the PICU while they worked on A. He slept for about an hour during the day, but spent most of his time watching television (what a novelty!). They changed up his drug cocktails and put him on heliox, which is a helium and oxygen mixture that's not as hard for someone to breathe as straight oxygen. By the end of the day he was stable but not great. He was so hungry but they weren't letting him eat until they were happy with his oxygen levels and drug cocktails, so he didn't get to eat anything until the afternoon. First some juice, then a popscile, then it was the clears for dinner: broth, Jello, Italian ice, juice.

C and I slept in the PICU with him, C on the pull-out chair and me on the window seat that was just shy of five feet long. None of us slept particularly well. Both C and I were up with A at different times. A was hooked up to six different sensors, plus the IV, and all that tubing is hard on a wiggle worm who moves around a lot in his sleep. The nurse eventually knotted it all together into a kind of corset so he wasn't getting tangled every five minutes.

Sunday he looked a lot better. He was alert and had opinions about what movie he should watch and how he didn't want the sensors on him. He ate a bowl of cereal. He was let off the sensors to go to the potty and that became his way to get up out of that bed. [A side note: the kid is potty trained. He wouldn't go in his diaper, even when we told him there was no way to get him off all the monitors and IVs and he should go in the diaper, so he held it until we found a bedpan and took the diaper off. He is so potty trained.]

Sunday night they debated releasing us or sending us to the medical/surgery floor for observation, deciding (with our supporting opinion) that he should probably spend another night just to make sure the maintenance treatments were working. So down we went to another floor, another room. When we got there, we were in one of the few double rooms on the floor with a family loudly watching soccer with two obnoxious wounded children, but they checked out not long after we got there and we had the room to ourselves for the rest of the time.

Sunday night, I slept in the folding chair and C slept on the floor. We were all a bit slap-happy at that point. A was disconnected from all the monitors and his IV, so he slept much better. The nurses checked A's vitals every four hours; the respiratory therapists administered treatments every four, and none of them really woke him up from sleeping, so that was fabulous and appreciated.

Monday, A was much, much better. He spent all the time he could in the playroom and took a nap around his normal naptime for a really long time. The nurses decided around noon that we would go home; we just needed a lot of paperwork and approvals because the PICU was still following A's case. But they let us go around 5-5:30, loaded A up with drugs and us up with filled prescriptions, and sent us home. And our friends and family from out of town delayed our dinner reservations so we could go home, hand off A to our darling neighbor, and go out for a fabulous dinner.

I'm so tired. A's pretty tired. C is tired. We've got new drugs to hopefully keep us out of the hospital in the future; we've got appointments with all sorts of doctors to keep us on track and help us figure this out. But as I write this, A is laughing in the tub and having fun with Daddy so things are much better here now.

Children's Museum, Adieu

We've been members at the children's museum for a year now, and we're going to let the membership lapse. But it expires Tuesday so I thought we'd suck the marrow out of it and go today.

And so we did. A got to participate in a class where we made parachutes out of grocery bags. Goes like this: Take a regular plastic grocery store bag. Cut the sides open a bit to make them more airy. Take two small (1/2-3/4-inch) washers and thread the handles of the bags through the washers. Punch two holes in a piece of cardboard and thread the handles through so that washers are flush with the cardboard. Fold the remaining cardboard over the washers and seal with tape.

Wah-lah. Parachute.

Except that they don't work very well without being launched, and so they have four jerryrigged cannons made of rubber bands, clothesline, funnels, and brightly-painted MDF to launch the parachutes into the courtyard below.

Now, the project was great fun, and then there was some marching, and then there was the launching, and A thought launching was fabulous. Except our plastic bag was a pretty green one from a bookseller (he picked it, not me) and as such did not have the appropriate lightness and capacity to make a good parachute. So it torpedoed onto the gallery below us, where people were painting a car and playing with clay.

A thought this was the most fabulous thing ever, because all he saw from his position behind the balcony was the launch. He could not lean over the balcony to see the landing. I could, and I saw people scurrying out of the way and sometimes getting hit in the head.

Well, once you launch, they drop a bucket down to collect the parachutes. And they kept sending A's back, so I kept letting him launch it. If they're stupid enough to send a projectile back up, I'm stupid enough to let him launch it. He launched it five times. He had a blast.

Anyway, it was a good last day. I think we'll join one of the other, more exciting museums (the Fleet, perhaps) that has share days with the children's museum and that'll suffice. But it's just not as super as we anticipated.

The boy is more right than he knows

Conversation over dinner:

Me: And what's your name?
A: A------.
Me: And what's my name?
A: Mommy.
Me: And what's Daddy's name?
A: Home.

Yes, A. That's what I call Daddy too.

Post 400

In honor of Post 400, we're introducing Baby 2.0. That's right; I'm pregnant. I think most people have heard, but this is the official blog announcement.

A laundry list of answers:

• The due date has gone from being "definitely before Christmas" to "hopefully before Christmas." It should be this year.
  
• I'm fine. I've been sicker and achier than the last time, but I'm into the second trimester now so that's improving.
• So far, everything looks fine with the baby.
  
• We haven't discussed Baby 2.0 with A yet, since time seems to go forever for the almost-three set. We'll probably discuss it after his birthday, once he could feel the baby kick.
• We're not planning on finding out the gender before birth this time either.
• We're going to try for a VBAC instead of a C-peat, since the recovery time last time was oh-so-sucktastic.
• I'm probably showing but my relative pudding-ness makes me just pudgy. As with the last time, my breasts grew first and their size de-emphasizes my belly.
• It's not twins. I've had two ultrasounds and it's not twins.

And I think that's it for potential questions, the polite ones which will get answered, anyway. I've got some older unpublished posts that I'll publish now that Baby 2.0 is public, but there you go. Happy post 400.

Party party party

After a couple of craptastic weeks, we needed to have some fun this weekend. And boy, did we ever. Saturday was the big 0h-Three for our friend H, who had a rocking birthday party complete with bounce house, Cookie Monster pinata, and cake. Boy did A have a good time, and so did we. He even used the potty in the scary park bathroom--twice.

Sunday, we headed up to the House of Mouse for a day of rides. Oh my, rides. We rode Pooh and Buzz and the small world boats, of course. A looked at the map and insisted on going to see Nemo, so I waited in line with him while C ran off to ride roller coasters (it was Fathers' Day, after all). The lines weren't actually that bad at all. And we didn't have an asthma attack and end up in the hospital, so that always makes the day just a little more fun.

I should mention that A is currently in love with Dora the Explorer and maps. He can't get enough of maps. We go to the Zoo, we look at the map and map our route. We go to Disneyland, he gets his own map and wants to know where we are, where we have been, and points to where he would like to go.

We had a learning experience where A wanted to ride "the rabbit ride." This would be Splash Mountain, which is hard-core and has one of the taller height requirements. So I took A over to the dreaded "you must be this tall" sign and stood him there and had the guy explain that he wasn't tall enough yet for Splash Mountain. A is tall enough now for the Matterhorn and the little kid coaster in Toon Town, but we're waiting for him to ask to ride them before we take him on them.

We had Mickey ice cream and burgers and Mexican food and I fed the feral cats to protect them from toddlers. A used the potty and stayed dry all day, hurrah. So that was all grand. And we were in the car so A could be asleep by his normal bedtime and home in time so we could be asleep by our normal bedtime.

He had swimming this morning all by himself, which was good because I could pretty much let the teacher take him and see how he would do in a private, mommy-less lesson, and he'd do relatively well, I think.

Wee wee wee, all the way home

Potty-training minutiae, you've been warned.

Today's been another accident-free day, with the crowning achievement of the day being A telling me in the parking lot of Phil's that he needed to make water, and me without keys or potty to say, "Okay, let's go into the restaurant or into the parking lot."

So I told him, "I'm sorry, we can't go to the potty right now. You can go in your pull-up if you need to." (We had him in Pull-ups for a late night errand run that might have run into bedtime.)

We get home and he is bone dry. Bone dry for a fifteen-twenty minute car ride. He held it. He held it. Wow! Wow wow wow.

And now he's complaining that he wants to wear his big boy pants at night. We're not quite ready for that. We told him when he's dry all night (which he is irregularly) he can have big boy pants for bed. But the end is in sight.

Potty training success

We've had a good twenty-four hours of no accidents, so keep your fingers crossed.

We even went to the Greek festival and ate enough flaming cheese and baklava to make me sick.

Now I'm waiting for C to come home (maybe, since he didn't answer his work phone) and for A's pasta to cool so I can give it to him and he can eat and go to bed.

But keep your fingers crossed for us. A whole day, no accidents, running to the potty and everything.

One week of the suck

The boy's breathing, which is good. The daddy is working massive overtime (still not home), which is bad.

I am tired and getting to the end of my patience. We had potty training again today with not enough nap and that was a bad combination. I'm not even sure at this point if the potty training will actually take, but I know leaving him in diapers will not help. I'm sick of doing all the laundry that potty training entails. I'm sick of doing three meals a day plus snacks (usually, Mistah C does breakfast and often dinner) and loading the dishwasher and emptying the dishwasher. I'm sick of feeling like the Feminine Mystique for a new century.

I don't feel like I get a lot of time to myself this week, and not a lot last week, and so now that I've a stretch with pretty much no creative/play/social time for Kim as grownup non-mommy person, I've decided mommies need our grownup time. I get really cranky without it.

Accidentastic

C came home at normal times for the last two nights and so our lives feel more normal. A is doing well. He had an exit developmental evaluation today, and he's doing great, actually. He had the Bayley developmental assessment today, and that tracked him as on target for all areas of development, including speech. (I know! Speech too!)

The doctor doing the test made two recommendations: one, that we keep him in preschool (which was like, duh, no kidding), and two, that we keep him in speech therapy once or twice a week to work on his articulation. She said the words, vocabulary, sentence structure, and syntax he has are all on target, but that he needs help learning to articulate. This is super news as far as we're concerned.

This all makes me wonder how the hearing test plays in.

Anyway, I felt confident enough (read: not too lazy) today that we went back to potty training, hard core, Supernanny style: underpants, no Pull-ups. (I would like Supernanny to get over to my house and clean up the resulting mess.) But I am resolved and stalwart and he will be potty trained.

Sucktastic

Yup. That's what our lives are doing right about now.

In order of sucktasticness: On Friday morning, A had his second audiology follow-up. He was having some problems breathing but we loaded him up on his inhalers and off he went.

Results: He has good hearing in his right ear but showed a non-moving eardrum in his left ear, which means maybe he's got some hearing loss in his left ear. But he also had the beginnings of a cold and possibly an ear infection, so the audiologist referred him to an ENT (ear, nose, throat) specialist and scheduled him for another follow-up.

Friday he wouldn't take a nap. Wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't. Fought me and cried. And I thought, it's been a hard week for him; maybe he's picked up some new tricks from our young visitor that we'll have to convince him don't work here. But then I remembered that when he's having trouble breathing, he can't sleep. So I looked at his throat and belly, and yes, he's retracting, and I called the pediatrician's office to say that I was bringing him in immediately (because I'm learning and I don't mess around with this shit).

So Friday afternoon, we get a breathing treatment and see our pediatrician who says, "Buddy, you're having issues." Since the nebulizer seems to have a better effect on him than the inhaler, she orders us a home nebulizer, which will be delivered to us this evening at home.

This means my Friday is completely shot and tasks like shopping for the bare essentials our house requires like milk and cereal is bypassed, as well as the fun stuff like the open mic three-minute prose reading I like to go are off the menu.

The nebulizer was delivered by the kind of creepy guy who made me keep my cell phone in hand the entire time he's in my house. He showed up at 7:45pm. (A had fallen asleep on the couch around 7 and I didn't have the energy to move him.) He didn't give his name, didn't have an ID badge or name tag, and didn't have his name on any of the paperwork he gave me. When he said, "So it's just [you and A] here alone?" I wanted to call 911. But I said, "Well, my husband will be home any minute now." And he's big. And scary. And could totally kick your ass.

I seriously wanted to take a picture of him with my phone and send it to everyone I know with a note, "If I'm dead, please look for this guy from Apria Healthcare who probably did it."

My anxiety about this was heightened because my husband was actually not coming home any time soon because he is in a crunch with the eye of the CEO of his company on what he's doing, which is a very bad place to be in. He ended up coming home around midnight. The next morning, he said, "Why were all the lights on?" and I explained about creepy guy. I don't know if lights would keep creepy guy away, but it's better than sitting in the dark.

Saturday from 9am-2pm, I had a board meeting of the writers organization I work with, and that was fine but arduous and not exactly relaxing. Once I got home, C was off to work again and didn't get back until midnight-ish again.

And this morning, after breakfast and (thank you, C) helping me with the shopping, C was off to work again.

A hates the nebulizer and cries every time we get it out. He screams bloody murder and none of the bribes I offer him are lasting.

I'm very, very tired.

And A ate the frosting off the last chocolate cupcake I put out for myself to warm up and eat later while he napped.

But the good news is: A's napping now, and I can go eat veggie chips and ginger ale on the couch like a twelve-year-old whose parents are out of town while I watch me some Ocean's Eleven eye candy.

Cross your fingers for C getting done today, maybe even before midnight.

Zoo freakout

We went to the Zoo a couple days ago to spend time at the new Elephant Odyssey (which is terribly neat if not big) exhibit.

A and I were walking along a path. A family with a couple kids walked by us. One of the kids was a boy about six-years-old. A saw him and started to freak. He was pointing at the kid, jabbering, very upset, to the point where the kid and his family noticed.

"What's his problem?" the mother said to me in a not-very-nice way.

I was trying to calm A down so I could understand, because he kept saying, "No shirt, no shirt," over and over and that was all I could understand.

Finally, I looked at the kid. He's wearing a striped blue shirt that says, "Handsome like Daddy," which I recognized as a pajama top from Old Navy, because A has the same PJs.

The mother and her family were still hanging around making clucking noises at A, so I said to A, "I know that's his pajama top. His mommy lets him wear his pajamas in public, and that's okay, even though your mommy doesn't let you wear yours."

A said, "No pajamas outside."

I said, "Yes, for you, no pajamas outside. You're right."

And the family went speechless and the kid looked like he wanted the pavement to eat him and we walked our pajama-less selves onward.

[To be fair, A is allowed to wear his PJs to Bread and Cie for the first run of the day. But only to pick up, certainly not to eat there.]

Another delayed-date post: Nuchal translucency testing

There's a relatively new test out there called the nuchal translucency screening, which is a screening (read: not a 100% sure thing) for Down's Syndrome (Trisomy-21) and Trisomy-18 (a terribly scary disease that almost always results in death soon after birth). This screening is the combination of a (maternal) blood test and an ultrasound. The tech takes a measurement of the fluid at the back of the baby's neck. A normal range of length would be up to 10-20mm, and an abnormal range would be 35mm or more. The ultrasound is then compared to the bloodwork, where the levels of two pregnancy hormones are checked to see if those levels are abnormal. In certain chromosomal disorders, the nuchal folds are thicker and the hormone levels are off.

I've already discussed my concerns about not getting prenatal screenings here, so I won't belabor it again. Since my doctor is in the process of having a birthing center built that I could actually use, I thought it would be the responsible thing (again) to find out if there was anything wrong with the baby before we made the decision on where to deliver. When I read that the nuchal translucency (NT) gave a 70-90% accuracy in detecting Down's without requiring things that scare me muchly, like amnio or CVS, I was all for it.

I had to go to the swanky La Jolla hospital to have it done, since it's only done by extremely specialized ultrasound techs. C joined me. The baby was not cooperative, although the shelf of fat from the C-section didn't help either. The tech pushed and prodded and had me get up and shimmy and finally the kid was visible.

Anyway, she ran off to get the results. The doctor came back in and I almost fell over, like, oh my, they sent the doctor to tell us the bad news. But no, everything looks great and he just wanted to look himself.

The results are given as odds. Right now, I'm 1 in 6,600 for Trisomy-21 and 1 in 58,000 for Trisomy-18. That's given as 70% accurate. It'll be combined with another set of bloodwork (the quad screen) in the second trimester for a 90% accurate ratio.

The only other thing is that the ultrasound dated the kid one week earlier than my date, but I'm still not sure I trust the whole gestational dating thing for ultrasounds. The gestational dating for A always put him a week or so behind and smaller than everyone thought. At my last ultrasound at the birth center, the tech said, "Oh, just over six pounds. Small like Mommy." (Mommy was over nine pounds at birth, but that's besides the point.) At the ultrasound in the hospital, the doctor said, "Six, six and a half pounds."

And he was seven pounds, 11 ounces. So I think the ultrasound sizing is a lot of hooey.

But I'll take the NT results.

Friday? No, Thursday

It's hard to keep track.

L and K left today, and I have to say we (being all the grownups) were unpleasantly surprised by how little A and L got along. They used to get along fine, but this visit was like a non-stop toddler cage match. They couldn't parallel play or cooperatively play. If one had a toy, the other wanted it. Tug of wars over toys escalated to throwing toys and shoving and hitting.

This was bad. Very bad.

The relatively non-stop screaming was also bad. I think every time C came home, he hit the Advil bottle pretty hard.

Neither of these kids act this way with anyone else. I'd ask at preschool, "Was A acting out today?" No, he was super. It's sad because A and L used to get along fine and after our fabulous visit of last week I thought, two birth class friends, playing together, what could be more fun?

Nope. Fun didn't happen.

Anyway, we're getting back to our normal existence, although tomorrow A has his second audiology exam so normal is relative, I guess.

Bone-freaking-tired

I am tired. Really tired.

We went to bed last night before 10, without any super duper TV viewing.

We got up after 6, which late for me.

And I am still tired enough that I could go to sleep.

But we have company coming--our photographer friend K from Texas with little L is coming and I have to finish moving all of A's bedding from his room to our room to accommodate everyone.

But it's hard to move a bed when I just want to be in a bed.