My Day Care Pet Peeve

When I was looking for a day care for my young son, I read reviews on Yelp and looked at the photos for each place. I was shocked by how many professional licensed facilities had pictures of blankets and toys in baby cribs!

As a new parent, one of my biggest fears is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a term used to describe the sudden unexplained death of a child under age one. The experience of SIDS is tragic and heartbreaking for any family that goes through it.

Although much is still unknown about SIDS, many important risk factors are known, and by following the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines, parents and caregivers can significantly decrease the risk that this tragedy happens in their own home.

Among the recommendations, for children under the age of one, the AAP says that babies should sleep on their backs with no soft objects or loose bedding in the crib. This means no blankets or stuffed animals.

This advice makes sense to me, given the way I have seen my own baby interact with blankets when we are together (putting them in his mouth or grabbing and pulling them over his head). Babies who are still learning motor skills are able to get themselves into situations that they cannot get out of, and objects in a bed can shift at night. These scenarios can lead to suffocation if a child gets stuck with their nose and mouth against a soft object.

Yet based on the photos I saw and the in-person visits I made to facilities, there are many child care professionals still ignoring this critical advice!

Even at the day care we ultimately selected, which has kind and caring staff and a nurturing environment, we were asked to provide a blanket for our son, who was just shy of four months old when he started attending. Instead, I wrote on all his forms that he wears a sleep sack (see examples here, here, and here) to stay warm during naps and should never be given a blanket or any other object in his crib. His caregivers respect our wishes, and we know our son is safer for it.

Although we took care to make sure our son was sleeping based on the AAP guidelines, I cannot help but continue to be bothered by the countless other children who are not benefitting from a safe sleep environment - both at home and when left with people who are supposed to be child care experts.

I sincerely hope that caregivers - especially employees of licensed day cares - receive more comprehensive training on the topic of safe sleep. Parents are trusting these facilities and professionals with their little ones.

Precious lives may be at stake.

Thankful for the Common Cold

Perhaps a little too predictably, after his first week at day care, my baby has a cold. Which means I have a cold. We just got over another cold a couple weeks ago. Apparently, this is my new life.

Yesterday, I found myself sitting in a closet - I mean lactation room - at work, sniffling through my stuffy nose while pumping breast milk, feeling self-pity that God would have the nerve to let my baby get this cold. Hearing my baby wake himself up with coughing in the middle of the night, watching him struggle to breathe well through his dripping nose, and seeing his grumpy tired face on the days we are home together is really hard. No mom wants to watch her baby suffer, and with the common cold, there has been a serious limit to what I can do to make him more comfortable. To make matters worse, my brain seems to have rewired itself to make fretting over my son its own full-time job, something I scoffed at in others until the day he was born.

But then as that pump kept whirring, I had another thought.

I am privileged to be able to expend so much energy worrying about the common cold.

I was reminded of all the things I am not worrying about - of all the things I have to be thankful for. I am thankful that my child has plenty to eat. I am not worrying about malnutrition's effects on my baby's immune system, because I have money to buy food, a well stocked grocery store of safe foods within walking distance of my apartment, and even a private room to pump breast milk for my baby while I am at work.

I am thankful that just this morning I was able to drive five minutes from my home to a doctor's office to get vaccines for my son, so that I am not worrying about him being paralyzed by polio, suffering liver damage from Hepatitis B, or experiencing apnea or pneumonia as complications of whooping cough.

I am thankful to have clean water available from multiple taps in my home every day, so that I am not worrying about life-threatening diarrhea. I am thankful that I had a safe birth experience for my son and that my baby came home from the hospital with me a few short days later with a working heart, strong lungs, a cancer-free body, and an ever-growing curiosity about the world around him. I am thankful that my child has four living grandparents who love him to pieces. I am thankful that I have the financial situation and employer flexibility to work only three days per week, giving me two whole weekdays to play one-on-one with my son. I am thankful that the region where I live does not have malaria-carrying mosquitoes. I am thankful for access to life-saving antibiotics and medicines should my child ever need them. I am thankful to live without fear of daily bombings around my home. I am thankful that my son has a pack-and-play for sleeping, a car seat for safer travel, and an abundance of diapers, along with a huge network of generous friends and family.

The more I sat in that little room and thought about it, the longer the list grew. There are millions of parents throughout the world - and even in my own backyard - in the grip of deep suffering and fear for their children. I realized that in the big scheme of things, I really am one lucky mommy.

So while my ideal week would involve a little more sleep and a lot fewer boogers, today I feel thankful for all of the things I am not worrying about. And I am thankful for the freedom and privilege to worry about this little nuisance called the common cold.

Get a Breast Pump with no Copay!

Doctors, early childhood specialists, and public health professionals have shown that there are many benefits to breastfeeding for moms and babies who are able to do so. And a breast pump can help a mom continue providing milk for a baby even when she cannot feed him or her directly. For example, many working moms use breast pumps during the work day to express milk for day care the following day.

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act - also known as Obamacare - many insurance plans now cover breast pumps at $0 copay. The law requires it! Since I have not seen this new benefit widely publicized, I thought I should share with others. (It is important to note that some plans may be grandfathered, meaning they do not have to comply with all of the new rules yet, and some public plans may not be required to offer this benefit at all. But there is a good chance that your insurance does cover it, so why not check?) If you are pregnant and wanting to use a breast pump, even occasionally, I definitely recommend at least looking into it - all it takes to verify is a quick phone call or email!

And the great part is many stores that sell breast pumps will do the work for you to find out what your insurance covers.

For example, Target has a breast pump program. You can either call the phone number listed on their program website or email them at TargetBreastPumpProgram@mckesson.com with the following information:

- full name
- date of birth
- expected due date or delivery date
- address
- phone number
- insurance name
- insurance member ID (including any letters)
- insurance group ID
- insurance phone number
- first and last name of your OBGYN or midwife
- doctor's phone number

They will then contact your insurance company on your behalf and email you back with information about which breast pumps are covered in full by your plan. They will also let you know how much it would cost to purchase an upgrade, for example, to get a bag that can hold all of the parts. Then you email back about which breast pump you want, they handle the insurance transaction behind the scenes, and you simply go pick it up at the location they tell you (a Target store near you).

I was amazed at how simple it was to acquire my breast pump. Now it is hard to imagine life without it! I was able to leave enough breast milk in the freezer for my husband to feed our eight-week-old son when I left them alone together for a long weekend. And I was able to enjoy participating in a friend's wedding across the country knowing that our baby would be well fed back at home!

First Trimester Experiences of the Mind-Body Connection

Matthew and I are expecting our first child in September 2015!

I am at the start of my second trimester (now 15 weeks along). Most surprising so far, never has the mind-body connection been more real to me than during my first trimester of pregnancy.

9-week Ultrasound

The first trimester was rough. I was tired almost all of the time (constant napping) and got sick to my stomach almost daily, sometimes multiple times in a day. Whereas television makes morning sickness look cute (like on the Mindy Project this season – just throw up in a drawer, smile it off, brush your teeth, and then enjoy intimate time with your partner right after), it was anything but cute in my experience.

My expectation was an hour of nausea a day or some fleeting moments, with most of the day being normal; my reality was more like a couple hours of feeling good on most days while just praying not to throw up in class or on mass transit the rest of the time. Doing all of the activities of normal life while feeling extremely ill all day and with very few people around you having any clue that you are suffering in front of them is pretty lonely and hard. My most memorable lesson from those months was that throwing up a raw apple – even a full hour after eating it – is so painful and chokes you so much that it can burst blood vessels in your eye lids and cheek bones. (And I learned that particular lesson twice.) I know it sounds pretty graphic, but it was my everyday experience until I recently started feeling good more of the time than I feel bad.

Although people kept telling me that it would soon pass, having never had a stomach flu or food poisoning for two months straight before, “soon” didn’t sound very soon to me. It was hard to see past the moment.

But the challenge was not just in the physical. The first trimester is a hormonally tumultuous time, which can make it emotionally challenging for many women already. However, I found that when I was physically ill, my ability to control my thoughts and emotions and to lean towards optimism was much more limited than on the days when I was feeling physically stronger.

Having a child was a planned event for us, so I was not prepared for all of the mixed emotions that would come along with it. Although we have both always known we wanted children and feel we are as prepared now as we are likely to be, I think we also both feel satisfied with our lives and marriage as they are without a child right now. I never felt like something was missing. Rather, the decision was more about wanting to open myself up to what God might want to do with and in me – the ways He might want to grow and change me – through the special relationship of parent and child and through the unique challenges that parenting brings.

Many people I know with children have expressed that it is the hardest thing they have done, but that they now feel less selfish, have realized they are capable of more than they ever thought, and have a bigger view of God and the world due to the experience. On my best days, these were the things that encouraged me and gave me hope.

But when I was leaning over a toilet feeling sick, or laying on the couch moaning, or sitting on mass transit just trying to make it to the other end, it was difficult to feel any connection to those encouragements. In those moments of sickness, the fear and negativity easily took over.

None of our close friends nearby have kids yet – they will not understand or will write us off as being unavailable now. The culture of parenthood here in the Bay Area is very different than what I saw growing up, and people seem to disappear into another world. What if I don’t want to be disappeared? Do I even have a choice living here?

Or what if it’s me that becomes a bad friend? Of course I will have less time, but I lead a busy life now and still try to make margin for important people. What if I lose all of my margin and the ability to be available to those in need?

Our families don’t live nearby. We will have no practical and familial support. This is going to be very lonely. And then there's the added downside that the going rate for babysitters these days is astronomical. How will we ever do anything just the two of us again?

My new career in public health is just getting started, as I will graduate with my MPH in May. Will anyone hire me while pregnant? Do I even want to work during the last few months of pregnancy? What if I take a break until the baby is a few months old and then employers don’t understand when I go to apply for jobs again?

My body is changing. Even the purposes of my body parts will change. I like the way they all function now and don't like the idea of having to share so much of me with a little dependent person. Not to mention the skin stretching and the organ smushing and all of the other fun things to come. 

There are so many ways for a kid to be messed up in and by this world. So many addictions and harmful choices and selfish motives and hurtful words and prejudices and fears and broken relationships in the men and women around me, including in my own life at times. How will we ever raise a child to be a man or woman of compassion and integrity? 

I never had an overly warm and fuzzy view of having a baby in the first place. But I still want a family and at least expected the prevailing feeling to be happiness when our plans came to fruition. What is wrong with me that I feel so negative so much right now? I should be feeling something different than I am right now. There are people all over the world longing for what I have right now. I should be thankful that it happened so quickly and that God is blessing us with a child. Can all of these confused feelings really morph into a good and loving parent?

And perhaps the darkest place for me and the most prevailing thought of all: a baby will change our marriage relationship forever and change my life – but I truly like my life and my marriage right now. What if everything just goes south? Will it be worth it? What if after that six-month “hard period” that everyone talks about, we don’t rebound out of it into a healthy rhythm again? What if these are the last months of this great thing we now have, to be replaced by something mediocre?

I wish I could say these thoughts were fleeting, but they weren’t. They came and went in varying intervals, sometimes sticking around just for a few minutes and other times for a few days. And the sicker my body felt, the harder it was to cheer up or listen to other voices. The body is so deeply connected to the mind and spirit, so intertwined, that I could not separate the experiences of the two. Many tears were cried during the first trimester, both over the pain in my body and the confusion in my heart and mind.

Today, going into my second trimester, I feel like I am in a better place than I was for most of the last couple months.

Sharing honestly with close friends has made a big difference. An extremely supportive, understanding, flexible, and sacrificial husband has made a big difference. Spending time in prayer and scripture has made a big difference. And in a very real way, not throwing up every day (just some days) for the last couple weeks is making a big difference, too.

Today, I have been optimistic about our growing family. I have thought about the ways I want to savor and enjoy this time, instead of wishing away the days and weeks. Today, I remember that billions of people have entered into parenthood before me, that God promises never to forsake me, and that He will lead me through challenges in whatever way He knows is best for me. That gives me reason for hope and peace in this time of change.