Hark, There Be Wild Things

Emily informed me a few minutes ago that I should write about the movie we went to see this afternoon. So, here I am, writing about the movie we went to see this afternoon. I'm a very obedient wife!

Uncle very kindly took the baby for the afternoon, so we could have some time to regain the parts of our sanity lost over the last week of sick, cranky baby. We took a long walk, lay down in the park on our coats and stared at the sky (well, I stared at the sky, she read Foucault) and went to see "Where the Wild Things Are".

First off, it is not a kids movie, it is a movie about childhood. I really don't think I would take a child much younger than late elementary, early middle school to this movie. It has lots of scary bits. However, I highly recommend it to the older set. It is beautifully made and so well written. To be fair, I've had a bit of a love affair with Dave Eggers since I read "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", so I was prepared to like the writing. I don't want to ruin the movie for those who haven't seen it yet, so I will just say it is definitely worth your time to go see it. Emily reflected at the end on the poor PA who had to vacuum the muppets during the shoot. I reflected on how I viewed it differently as a parent than I think I would have before X was born.

One Year Molar for the WIN!

And just to make life interesting, Emily called down the hall this morning while changing his diaper. Guess who just had their first one year molar break through during the night? The poor baby, his entire head hurts.

We have an answer (well actually two answers)

X was running a fever of 102 when we checked this morning, so we were off to the pediatrician again for the second sick visit this week. We waited 45 minutes to be seen, but as soon as they took his temp and it was 102.6, everyone was very helpful. We were given tylenol to give him (which made me a bit anxious as it was 20 minutes early and he's on both tylenol and ibuprofen, but oh well). The nurse tried to give it to us in a suppository, and we were like, "we are not putting anything up his butt that we don't have too, please can we have the liquid", and she gave us the liquid in a cup, and we had to ask for a syringe, because our twelve month old is seriously not going to drink medicine from a cup, even if he is the best baby ever at taking his meds.

Then we saw our doctor, without even seeing the resident first. And it was so great that we got to see Dr. A, because for the first time all week, X didn't scream the entire time he was being examined. He was quiet and let her poke him and check his ears without even turning his head away and even gave her a tentative smile. I love our pediatrician, she makes my sick baby smile. She smiled as soon as she checked his first ear and said, "We have an answer" and then checked his second ear and said, "Actually we have two answers." Yup, poor X has a raging double ear infection. Poor baby. He is now on anti-biotics and should be feeling better in the next day or two. Thank heavens for an answer that doesn't involve the word flu.

Baby continues to be ill

We are slogging through. He remains feverish, whiny, clearly in pain. We'll head to the doctor tomorrow if he hasn't improved. I really hadn't realized on a practical level how pleasant and lovely it is to have a well child until the last two weeks. No one is getting enough sleep and everyone is cranky. To remind us all that there is a happy, smiley baby in there somewhere, here is X on a happier day:

There is no place in the Baby Book for "Baby's First ER visit"

Well, we have survived X's first (and last, at least for a long time, I hope) trip to the Emergency Room. Chalk the trip up to first time parents and a child who has breathing trouble even before he has a fever of 101.3 for two days and heavy congestion.

We ended up going because his fever wasn't getting any better and after waking up from his afternoon nap, he seemed to be in worse distress and his breathing rate was increasing and so we called his doctor and she said to take him in because she couldn't tell if he was getting sicker and better safe than sorry. We rented one of the two Zip.cars in the garage a block and a half from the house (yay, I love Zip.car) and drove to the hospital where he was born, home of the local pediatric ER. It was actually a very positive ER trip. Everyone was kind and good with X and he was seen quickly and we were reassured and not told that we were crazy first time parents (which we were kind of expecting to happen). And we got him home in an hour and a half and only an hour late for bedtime.

The funniest thing to come of "Baby's First ER Trip" was this: The first sentence in his discharge papers: "Your son has been diagnosed with a viral syndrome, also know as a 'cold.'" When we saw this we couldn't stop laughing. The entirety of the discharge paperwork was so clearly written by someone insanely frustrated by constant ER visits for silly things. This is totally going in his baby book (if I ever get to filling it out!)

My baby is sick

My baby is sick. We were blessed in X's first year with a child who pretty much was never sick. I mean he has his breathing issue (a separate post to come), but no particular illness. But now at 12 months and two weeks, he is making up for lost time. He's had the family cold for the last few days (tired, achy, congested, seriously runny nose) but seemed to be doing a little better. He hasn't needed to swim breathe in order to nurse in a day and he can suck his fingers (the middle and fourth finger of his left hand are his best friends) without choking and having to suck in air through his mouth.

He's been feeling antsy and he was looking better so I took him to the first class session of Baby Boogie at the YMCA (we just joined two weeks ago) this morning. He enjoyed the first part of class, playing with the kids his age (playing = crawling over and attempting to play with the same toys they are already using) and then he suddenly started melting. We were in the middle of doing the "meet another baby" segment of class and he started crying and clinging to me. So I excused myself and sat down to nurse to see if that helped. He hadn't had his morning nap and Em and I had agreed that if he got tired at class, I'd just pack him up and come home. Nursing didn't help and he had started wailing in a way that he has done so rarely that I started getting worried. I strapped him into the Ergo and walked to the bus, took the bus home and walked to the house. He sobbed the entire time. He collapsed into sleep five minutes before I got to the house, but woke as soon as I got inside, beginning to scream, the scream he only does if he is in pain.

He felt hot, so Em and I took his temperature and it was 100.8. We called the doctor and were told to bring him in. We packed him up and took the subway to the clinic while X finally slept for 30 minutes. Em checked us in. She told the office staff we were here for a sick visit, they asked if he had a fever, we said yes, they said don't even sit down, we'll put you in a room and we were ushered right in. They are clearly pulling all potential flu cases out of circulation, which is really smart. He woke up and started crying again and continued to for the full hour we were there, except for five minutes where Em lay on the exam table and held him. The poor baby doc (intern/first year resident, he didn't say) was so scared of him. He found it impossible to listen to X's lungs or check his ears because he wouldn't stop screaming. Babies are like dogs, they can smell fear. The intern finally said he just go get the doctor and fled the room.

I love our pediatric practice. There are four doctors and I like all of them. The doctor we saw today was the only one I hadn't met yet and he was great. Friendly, good with X, and very informative, explaining everything really well. We are really lucky that the practice we had with our awesome insurance pre-job loss is also the practice that runs the peds clinic at the hospital X was born in and takes Medicaid. Dr. G checked his lungs and ears and declared them clear. X's fever had gotten to 101.3 by the time we got to the office. We are to give him tylenol and ibuprofen in rotation to bring down his fever and watch him closely. We took him home and he nursed and fell asleep for an hour and when he woke up, he was much more like the baby we know. Tired and hot, but friendly and smiling and playing some. He went down around an hour early for bed and I am hoping will sleep through the night and feel less dreadful in the morning.

We have too much money to be as poor as we are...

Turns out I was wrong about that whole qualifying for food stamps when my unemployment runs out in January thing. There is an asset test I was unaware of and we have just a bit too much saved. So there goes that small bit of help, although I suppose I should view it as a positive that we have money saved, which I do, but still...

There is legislation in the Senate right now that I thought would help us. It will extend another 20 weeks of unemployment insurance to those losing coverage. Except...it will cover those who lose their coverage by December 31, 2009. Guess when I lose coverage? Yup, second week in January 2010. Awesome. There is some talk of getting the date extended as soon as this extension passes, but at the moment, no 20 weeks for us.

There are unemployment advocacy groups looking for people to speak to the media about the need for the extension to cover those losing their benefits after December. I am thinking about saying I would do it, because I think I have a sympathetic story, but I don't really like public speaking. But at the same time, I have a good story: I lost my job six days back from maternity leave with a three month old baby and a graduate student wife who I was helping put through school. Now X is on Medicaid and WIC and I got fired 10 days too late to keep getting unemployment past January. Would it have killed my former employer to downsize me 11 days earlier? Oh wait, it would have, because I would have still been on maternity leave and it would have been illegal. Sigh.