On Mommy's Guilt and Sleep Strikes

Today is Charlotte's last day at daycare.  Monday, she'll start at Miss D's.  Her teachers haven't made it very easy on us though.  They love Charlotte and have been sad everytime I've gone and picked her up.  Yesterday, when Chris dropped Charlotte off, they presented him with a handmade card.  Every baby in the class had put his or her handprint on the card, with their names next to it.  Just about broke my heart seeing that card.  One of her teachers, Miss Sandra, wrote "Charlotte, I'll miss your sweet smile."  Chris and I are both a little sad about leaving the school, but we think it's the right thing to do now.

Today I dropped Charlotte off, which resulted in Charlotte bursting into tears as I left the room.  Miss Tiffany said that only happens when I drop off, which made me feel even worse.  Poor Charlotte.  It makes me feel like I'm abandoning her. Thankfully (for me), Chris usually drops Charlotte off and she is clingy but not sobbing.

I've been feeling a lot of guilt lately, ever since Charlotte started her clinginess and separation anxiety.  I have a much longer commute, so most days, I leave for work before Charlotte even wakes up.  And then it just takes so long to get home that we have so little time together, especially when a good portion of the evening is figuring out something Charlotte will eat and cooking it fast enough that she doesn't have a fit in the meantime.  The poor girl wants to eat dinner by 5:30, and we usually don't get home until 5ish.  Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to work part-time, but I really like my job.  I just miss my little girl. It's really hard sometimes and some days are much harder than others.

Which brings me to sleep strikes.  Charlotte has always been easy to put down to sleep.  Even when she didn't seem remotely sleepy at her bedtime (7 o'clock), she'd be almost eager for bed because that's when she gets her pacifier.  We give her a pacifier and a stuffed animal, turn the lights out, and shut the door.  Oftentimes, we'll hear her talking on the monitor for a few minutes and she'll go to sleep.  For the past week, things have changed.  Bedtime has resulted in hysterical crying and we'll find her standing up in her crib sobbing, having thrown all her pacifiers overboard.  No amount of comforting or patting works, so we've resorted to bringing her downstairs for a half hour or more until she's calmed down enough to go back to her crib.  This usually works but not always.  Charlotte seems to have thrown the 7PM bedtime out the window.  She did okay the one night we pushed her bedtime back to 7:30.  It's not a bad thing in the grand scheme of things because it means I get some extra time with her in the evenings, but I'm wondering if I need to look at some new sleep solutions to get her back to being okay with bedtime.

Oh well, not exactly the happiest of posts. Sorry guys. Like I said, some days are just harder than others.  At least today is Friday, and I get to spend two whole days with my favorite girl.

The Face of "Pre-existing Condition"

We've been able, through careful scrutiny of food labels and asking questions of waiters at restaurants, to keep Charlotte's sesame allergy under control.  However, it's not always in our control, and we know there will be a time in the future when she'll be at a friend's house or at school and ingest sesame.  Case in point.  When I was in Dallas, Chris received a call from daycare that there had been an incident.  Another one of the toddlers had brought in a cracker (and you know how much Charlotte is obsessed with crackers) that was covered in sesame seeds.  Charlotte, being the cracker-lover that she is, tried to grab the cracker from the other boy.  The teachers were able to pry the cracker out of her hands before she ate it, but not before she touched it.  She then rubbed her hands on her eyes and they started to turn red and swell, a little.  The teachers gave her Benadryl, and Chris came right over to pick her up.  I was really mad to hear this a few hours later and gave a stern scolding to the school the following Monday (as in, maybe you need to tell the other families not to bring in outside food?!).  But I say all this to remind myself that as much as Chris and I try to protect Charlotte, there will be more incidents in the future.

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I don't think I've mentioned this before, but we received our bills from Charlotte's reaction to the sesame in the baba ghanoush.  All told, the ER visit, which consisted of an hour and a half of us sitting in an exam room, a physician assistant and a nurse taking Charlotte's vitals and administering an extra dose of Children's Benadryl and steroids, and waiting until the swelling went down enough to go home, came to about $2000.  $2000!  There were no blood tests, no x-rays, no other types of tests, and we were seen by a mid-level provider and not even a doctor.  I have no idea how that can add up to $2000, but that was the total. And the ambulance bill was over $1000.  Our of out-of-pocket cost? A measly-by-comparison $100. Charlotte's three Epi Pen Jrs were only $20 total, when the real cost would have been 10 times that much. All because we are blessed to have really good insurance through our jobs. We're lucky, but we know that there are so many who are not, who stay up late, worrying about medical bills.

Keeping that in mind, I sent a letter to the editor of the Sacramento Bee yesterday about the six month anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the health reform bill.  It hasn't been published (yet), but here's the gist:

Today marks the six month anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which means that children can no longer be denied health insurance due to a pre-existing condition.  Sadly, my 15 month old baby has joined those ranks.  We discovered that our daughter, through no fault of her own, has a life threatening food allergy, which caused a trip in an ambulance to the ER.  We're blessed to have good insurance, but now we are heartened to know that if we were to ever lose our insurance, we would be able to purchase insurance for our baby with her allergy covered.  And her condition is nowhere near as serious as hundreds of thousands of children out there whose parents cannot purchase insurance on the individual market.  It upsets me to no end that there are legislators out there, including my own congressman, who wants to repeal this law, which has the potential to help so many people, like my own small family.  Shame on him.

What today also marks? Children can stay on their parents' insurance until age 26, regardless of whether or not they're full-time students.  When I graduated from college, I was allowed to stay on my mom's insurance because I was still going to graduate school, but I knew many friends who lost their insurance the day they graduated.  Many chose internships or other entry-level positions that either didn't provide insurance or was made too cost-prohibitive.  Today, young adults don't have to worry.  They can take that internship, they can study abroad, all without the fear of getting in an accident and not being able to pay the hospital bills.  Should this be repealed?

Today, new plans must offer preventive services free of charge.  Mammograms are covered 100% without a co-pay, immunizations are free, well-child visits no longer require parents to pay money out-of pocket.  Should we take this provision away?

Lifetime and annual limits are banned.  This means that people with serious illnesses don't have to worry about whether they're going to hit that lifetime cap of coverage, at which time they're on the hook for every dime of coverage.  There are people who have to change jobs constantly because of chronic illnesses because they hit this cap.  One of my colleagues has no immune system and must receive a blood transfusion every three weeks to fend off infection. This provision directly benefits her.  Should this be replaced?

Finally, today marks the day that insurance companies can't rescind your coverage just because, you (gasp) actually use your insurance. I have heard countless stories of people getting cancer, only to have an insurance company drop them from coverage (despite paying hundreds of dollars in premiums) when they try to get care.  

Many more important changes roll out in the next few years, including prohibiting the denial of care based on pre-existing conditions for all age groups in 2014.

 

And please don't start yelling to me about the individual mandate.  I don't want to hear it. The individual mandate is what will make the insurance reforms work.  It will ensure that the risk is spread around; otherwise, it will all fall apart.  You can't ban pre-existing conditions without making sure that everyone has insurance, or people will wait until they're sick or in a car accident to buy insurance.  And to ensure that people enroll, you have to make it affordable by providing subsidies and hardship exemptions.  It's a fragile three-legged stool, and I'm determined to make sure that it doesn't fall apart.

It's my job to be passionate about this. It's my job to understand and defend this law, which expands coverage to millions, many of whom are the patients our clinics care for each and every day.  And it's my job to be an advocate for Charlotte, who has been to the ER more times in her short life than I think I have in my entire life.  It makes me breathe a little easier to know that today (and hopefully forever), she'll have access to insurance.  And I hope that the readers here (however few there are) will remember that the face of health insurance reform isn't just some poor person who isn't taking responsibility for his or her health, it's my daughter, my baby. And it could be yours too.

Mmm...Maple Syrup!

So I spoke to a lactation consultant the other day, the one who taught our breastfeeding class and helped me out so much when Charlotte was about 5 days old.  She gave me some advice including trying to pump one more session during the day, pumping longer, and taking fenugreek supplements.  I have to say that it's almost impossible to pump one more time at work, and hello, I'm already pumping for half an hour!  Half an hour at a time -- I feel like an industrial dairy cow!  So I'm taking fenugreek pills three times a day and like the lactation consultant warned me, I now smell like maple syrup.  I sweat maple syrup and I pee maple syrup, and now Charlotte smells like maple syrup. Weird. But I guess there are worse smells to have?

So far, I haven't noticed any upswings in the milk supply area.  Not pumping any more, but not pumping any less.  The real difference?  Charlotte has not been sleeping as well.  I think I've boasted about her ability to consistently sleep for 8 to 11 hours at a time (like 8 to 4 or 6) and then eating and sleeping for another three hours.  But now? She's been waking up at 2 or 3 for the past few nights.  On Wednesday night, when she woke up at 2 AM, I lost it and just cried and cried.  I mean, I haven't seen 2AM in weeks (like maybe since she was about 6 weeks old)!  My poor baby.  Is she such a crazy eater during the day that she was used to eating more than the 16 ounces Linda feeds her at daycare?  Does she miss nursing?  Ack.  And of course, this just means that I am exhausted and stressed and worried.

Chris and I decided to try something new for my sanity.  We put Charlotte to bed at 7:30, I went to sleep at 9, and Chris brought Charlotte in at 11PM for me to feed her again.  But I was so out of it that she ate and I pretty much slept through her eating until 12:30, when Chris put her back in her crib.  And then she woke up again at 4, ate, and then slept until 8:30 (I'm working from home today).

I guess I'm just worried that she's not sleeping enough.  When I dropped her off at daycare this morning, Linda said that Charlotte slept a ton yesterday - two hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. I  certainly don't want her mixing up her nights and days, but then again, Charlotte was used to sleeping through the night, eating, and then sleeping again for two to three hours.

This insanity really feels like I'm starting all over again.  We need to come up with a new schedule or I'm going to be a wreck at work.

Frustrations with Returning to Work

Before I went back to work last week, Charlotte had never had a drop of anything but breastmilk.  Now, here we are on day four of daycare and she already has to have half and half (formula and BM).  She literally has been drinking every drop I've been supplying.  Apparently I cannot pump anywhere near what I need to get Charlotte fed.  I guess I should have been pumping more often before returning to work to stockpile the milk in the freezer.

It's very frustrating.  We have an unused office in which to pump, but it simply has a fold out table and a phone, so it's not very inspiring.  I've been making myself miserable by pumping every chance I could over the weekend, and now I'm achy and sore -- it feels like the first week Charlotte was born all over again.  Linda convinced me last night when I picked up Charlotte that it's okay to mix the two.  She called this morning to tell me that Charlotte did fine with a mixed bottle, but still, I'm sad.

I guess I'll just do what I can and let Linda mix the rest.  The thing is, I don't even know how to mix formula to make a bottle.  I've never done it.  Tomorrow, I'm driving to San Francisco for the day to attend our organization's quarterly board meetings.  It will be a 12 hour day, and I'll be lucky if I get home in time to feed Charlotte before she goes to bed.  This means that Chris will need to feed her when he picks her up from daycare, and all I have is a lousy 3 ounces saved up.  Chris will have to decide if he wants to feed her formula or not.

In the meantime, I'm awaiting a call back from the lactation consultant on whether or not I can use some herbal supplement to try and increase my milk supply.

On the flip side, work itself is going really well. I'm happy to be back -- in a way, it feels like I never left.  I just wish that an hour of my day wasn't filled with such frustration.

It's Off to Work I Go

Four months. How did four months go by so fast? When I first stopped working at the end of May, I thought I would be completely bored and would be dying to go back to work. And then Charlotte arrived. Who knew that feeding, changing, and playing with a baby could take up so much time? Suddenly, the days just started flying by.


Anyway, I'm back. How am I feeling? Well, for one, I've never wanted to be a stay at home mom. I love my job, and I love that it's intellectually stimulating and makes me feel like I'm doing something important. But I also never knew that I could love anyone as much as I love that baby. So yeah, it's hard. I'm feeling a range of emotions. First, we just moved buildings so my workspace is completely bare and I don't know where anything is. Second, I feel lost. I've been completely tuned out for four months, so I have no idea what people are talking about. It feels like I just started this job! Finally, I miss Charlotte. She just started doing such fun things -- rolling over, grabbing her feet, and grabbing toys. It makes me sad that I'll be missing these things.


But I feel really good that she's in great hands. I found a lady who runs a small daycare out of her home, and her house is literally just across the greenbelt from our house. In fact, it's closer to walk than to drive, although when we're rushing around in the morning, that's not always going to be feasible. And the best thing? Miss Linda called me at noon and just gushed about Charlotte -- how she's just an absolute doll, and so good and happy. When I told her how much I appreciated her calling me, Linda said: "No thank you for having such a good baby!"


In the meantime, I'm taking things slowly (obviously - I'm at work right now), but overall feeling pretty good. And yes, I'm going to rush home at 4:45 to pick the sweet girl up.

Look how great she stands up! Charlotte will be walking in no time.