rivka

I'm reading A Little Princess to Alex right now. If you don't know the book, the rest of this post won't make any sense to you, but I feel compelled to post it anyway.

Apparently, at some point in the past I gave Alex a brief plot synopsis of the whole book so that she could decide whether or not it was too sad to read. It's the only thing that kept her going through today's chapter, "The Diamond Mines Again," in which Sara is orphaned and impoverished in one stroke.

She sniffled a little as she leaned against my side. Then she looked up at me trustingly. "Mom? When Sara's father's friends come to find her in the end, do they kill Miss Minchin?"

...It occurs to me that she may not feel that my promise of a happy ending holds up.

A couple of times in the past, I've had a simple upper respiratory infection spiral into a massive case of reactive airway disease: shortness of breath, wheezing, dizziness, brain fog, and prolonged fits of coughing in a spasmodic, wheezy, and completely nonproductive manner. The first time I was amazingly ill and wound up in the ER, and then on multiple daily nebulizer treatments at home. I lay on the couch like a zombie for a couple of weeks. I occasionally needed an inhaler for months before my breathing finally returned to normal.

The second time, the acute illness wasn't as bad. But I still wound up on home nebulizer treatments, and carried - and needed - an inhaler for months afterward.

I've been having episodes of wheezing and shortness of breath recently. Not consistently, but sometimes. Michael caught me having a can't-breathe-coughing-helplessly episode and browbeat me into going to the doctor. Fortunately, they've opened up a new urgent care clinic right near my office, for members of the university community only.

I went there this morning. My inconsistent symptoms obligingly appeared for the nurse practitioner. (More accurately, I started having them on my way in to work, and that reminded me that I'd promised Michael I would be seen, so I went.) She gave me a breathing treatment in the office. The heavens parted and choirs of angels sang hosannas as I found myself able to take deep, satisfying breaths.

The breathing treatment had albuterol and something else in it. She looked up the something-else to see whether it was safe for breastfeeding. Class B; fine with me. She wrote me a prescription for an albuterol inhaler, which I dropped off at the university pharmacy.

This afternoon I went to pick up my prescription. There was a bright yellow sticker on the inhaler box: "Not recommended for use while breastfeeding." I asked to speak to a pharmacist, who hunted through the package insert and found that the "not recommended" label was due to animal studies, that human studies are lacking, and that the manufacturers suggest that one "consider whether to stop breastfeeding or stop use of the medication."

Refused the prescription. Called the nurse practitioner, who has yet to call me back. Came back to my office and did some googling for albuterol breastfeeding.

According to the National Library of Medicine's LactMed database: "Although no published data exist on the use of albuterol by mouth or inhaler during lactation, data from the related drug, terbutaline, indicate that very little is expected to be excreted into breastmilk.[1] The authors of several reviews and an expert panel agree that use of inhaled bronchodilators is acceptable during breastfeeding because of the low bioavailability and maternal serum levels after use."

So I don't know what the hell is going on with the Proventil package insert, or whether I should believe the folks who actually made the medicine or the database. I understand that for liability reasons they are on much safer ground if they tell pregnant and nursing women to never take anything, and online sources seem to be pretty much in agreement about the safety of albuterol. But. But.

The wheezing and coughing aren't really that bad. Crap. I don't know.

This video is a thing of beauty.

Michael: Colin, are you going to plot world domination?
Colin: (gropes at waistband.) First Colin pants off.

3:30. Nia (our nanny) is feeling sick enough that she needs to leave. Stopping 1.5 hours short of my plan, although I guess I can try to start some decluttering downstairs while supervising the kids.

I hope she'll be up to coming on Wednesday.

In the meantime, I accomplished:

• Ran errands.


• Cleaned out, sorted, and reorganized the other half of the massive floor-to-ceiling storage unit.


• Cleared my desktop down to bare wood.


• Washed down the closet shelves and started loading them with their intended cargo of games and puzzles.

Left to do in the study:

• Set up a filing system for homeschooling-related paper; sort and file same.


• Clean out and reorganize my desk drawers.


• Clear away trash and donations.


• Sweep and mop.

...That's it. Dude. I got a lot done up here.

9:00 Begin working on study. Take embarrassing panoramic photos.
10:36 Fifteen minute break to drink water and make notes.

Accomplished so far:

• Study table and all its drawers cleaned out.


• Medium-sized collection of empty cups and glasses out of study and into sink or dishwasher.


• Closet totally emptied & closet items put away in new homes.


• One full bag of trash, one full bag of clothing to be donated.


• Large load of clothes to dry cleaner's.


• Three loads of clean laundry put away.


• Friends list and online forums successfully ignored. They are off-limits, even during breaks, until after 5pm.
  
• Listened to two Teaching Company lectures on the history of controversy regarding evolution.

I was just about to go downstairs for a basin of soapy water to wash down the closet shelves so that I can load them up again with their new intended contents, but the kids came home. I need to hide out from Colin, so washing the study shelves will have to wait for his nap.

Okay, my fifteen minutes are up. My plan is to do another 90-minute session and then reward myself with a trip to my favorite thrift store. Colin and I need long-sleeved shirts and Alex needs more Magic Tree House books.

Colin favors us with "Good Night, Ladies" from The Music Man. Kind of. As always happens, he was singing with much greater continuity and verve before I took the camera out.

(Here is Alex singing, at the same age. Man. Aren't toddlers 100% the best thing ever?)

Colin has been going through such a rough patch lately. He's had a cold for a couple of weeks. Even before the cold he had been ramping up his nursing, and with the cold it has been pretty much nonstop. He hasn't been eating more than a few bites of solid food; he makes up for it by constantly.wanting.to.nurse.

And his sleep, oh my God. Alex slept through the night starting at ten months. At Colin's age she could be put into the crib awake, and she'd put herself to sleep and sleep for twelve hours straight. Before the cold Colin was waking around 4:30 and then coming into my bed around 5:30-6 and dozing/nursing/dozing until it was time to wake up. For the last two weeks he's been up every few hours every night. The last two nights he slept no longer than two hours at a stretch, and each night there was a period of 90 minutes in which every time I put him in the crib and went back to my own bed he woke up and cried. I cried too.

What I need to do, and have needed to do for a really long time now, is nightwean him. The thing is that it's incredibly hard to do something that means even less sleep in the short run, when you are already getting so little sleep that you can barely function.

Thursday night was awful and I was wrecked all day yesterday. Last night was awful. Today Michael took Alex to the Rennaissance Faire, which means that I am on my own all day with Colin. I am so exhausted and angry and fed up.

So I'm doing the best thing one can do in a situation like this: I am pretending to be a naturally good mother. I took the kids to Alex's ballet lesson this morning and while she was in class I fed Colin healthy little snacks and pretended to be excited to read his train book again and promised him he could take ballet too someday. (He is jealous.) Then I brought them home and made myself some strong black tea and let Colin have half my breakfast when he asked for it. I felt a little desperate when Michael walked out the door and Colin also didn't have Alex to follow around all day, so I packed him into the stroller and took him to the park and we wandered around in the sun tossing a little neon-green toy football and playing "hide and seek" the only way you can play it with a toddler, which involves hiding slowly in very obvious places while talking to them the whole time.

I took him to the Italian deli and got some fresh hot bread and prosciutto and smoked mozzarella for our lunch and listened to him meow at the cats on the cases of Gato Negro and engaged him in conversations and fingerplays while we waited in line so he wouldn't ask to get out of the stroller. I let him sit in Alex's big-kid chair for lunch instead of his high chair.

I am pretending to be an excellent mother with all of these outings and interactions, but really my goal is not so much to nurture him and enrich his day as to keep him off me and minimize his need for my attention, and especially to keep him from asking to nurse. Because I have HAD IT.

He's napping now, so I should go lie down too. Because when he wakes up I'm going to need to be able to pretend to be an excellent mother again, because if I am my normal kind of mother there's no way I'll be able to get him to leave me alone.

How could I forget the cardinal rule of children's literature:

The beloved pet always dies in the end.

In my defense, I would never have dreamed that that trope started as early as the I Can Read series. But it does.

Alex sobbed. "Why would they WRITE a children's book like that?" she demanded. Um. Not sure. In middle grades novels, the dog dies to symbolize the lost innocence of childhood. But I-Can-Read books are for little kids.

Worst. Mother. Ever.

Alex had a doctor's appointment this morning for her annual check-up. It's Michael's day at home, but I decided to go in to work late and take her to her appointment so he wouldn't have to haul along both kids.

We rushed out to the car with juuuust enough time to make it to her appointment. We approached the car on the street side and I buckled her into her booster seat. And then she said, "Mom! What's on our car?!"

Safety glass. Safety glass is what she was seeing. Someone threw half a brick through our driver's side window. The brick was sitting on the passenger seat.



As I called the doctor's office and then the police non-emergency line, someone came out of the apartment building behind me and said he'd seen the guy. He heard the window break, looked out the window and yelled, and saw the guy run away. No description; it was dark. He called the police, who never showed up.

We keep our GPS in a hidden compartment. It was still there. We mostly keep home-burned CDs in the car, but we had some purchased ones in there too and from a quick glance I think they're all there. (I didn't do a comprehensive search, because everything was covered with glass.)

The police came in less than 15 minutes to take my statement and give us an incident report. Baltimore City doesn't actually investigate car break-ins or even, I understand, car theft. But they do come by and take your information and give you a paper to give your insurance company. He asked me if anyone had any problems with me. Rather than give that question the complicated answer it probably deserves, I told him I didn't think the break-in was anything personal.

Michael called our insurance agent, who pointed out that we have a $200 auto glass deductible and that it might not be worth our while to file a claim. And indeed, when he called the auto glass company they priced the repair at $297. Not worth filing a claim and having our premiums go up. They're going to send a truck out this morning to do an onsite repair and clean all the glass bits out of the car.

This is, like, the most hassle-free crime victim experience ever. But I still feel rattled. And annoyed that we missed the doctor's visit, because it took them three months to get her on the schedule for this appointment and the woman I talked to said her doctor's next available well-child visit was in January. At least she said they'd waive the missed-appointment fee.