Lux et umbra vicissum…

We did come up with new names for our kitties the other day. Well, Joel had the name for his a while ago. Right after we chose them (before they actually came to our house), he said he liked the name Katie. At the time, he was thinking of naming his Katrina and calling her Katy for short, but then it morphed into just plain Katie. He said he hadn’t settled on it, but within a few days of the cats being here, he was having trouble thinking of her as anything else, so Katie she is. 🙂

That made my job a little easier since now I could narrow my choices down to things that went nicely with “Katie.” Joel suggested “Kenya”, but I found out that means “animal horn”, and that just seemed odd. I decided I probably would stick with a “K” name, though, so I started hunting through K names on baby sites. I considered several (including Kaindra, Kyly, Kaya, and Kiara), but none of them quite worked. They didn’t sound right, or I didn’t like the meaning, or they just didn’t fit my kitty. I finally settled on the name “Keesha”. It means “rainfall” which seemed reasonably appropriate since her feet patter on the carpet like rain when she runs and she’s gray like a rain cloud. It also seems to fit her looks reasonably well.

So we are now the proud owners of Katie and Keesha. 🙂 I’m sure I’ll be reporting their exploits on here from time to time.

I would love to understand certain parts of the human brain. How do we form memories? How do they stick? Why do some stick more than others?

I think every mother with grown children probably has numerous memories that have been burned into her brain… you know, the kind of memories that form quickly and are crisp and clear years later. Everyone has that sort of thing happen at momentous times: September 11th, JFK’s assassination, the bombing of Pearl Harbor… people can remember exact details of where they were and what they were doing when the news reached them. It’s just that, for mothers, there seem to be more “momentous occasions” than there are for other people. I experienced one of my first this past Tuesday morning.

Let me back up first and give a little background. Last Monday, the day we put Sheba down, Alexis started sneezing and I figured she had probably picked up another cold somewhere. The next day her nose was like a faucet and I concluded that I had guessed correctly. She continued with cold symptoms for several days, and Branwen started with a runny nose on Friday. Par for the course; we’d been through this before. The first jarring note in this rather tiresome routine was Friday night after Alexis had gone to bed. I went to check on her and noted that she felt rather warm. Joel said he had thought so, too. We didn’t check her temperature then because we didn’t want to wake her up. Saturday morning, her temperature was somewhere above 100, and I started to think this might be more than a cold. By Saturday night, she had started coughing so hard that she was throwing up, and her fever had gone up to 102.3. I called the doctor and he had us start home breathing treatments immediately since Alexis has a history of asthma. The treatments helped and the bit of a knot in my stomach began to relax somewhat. Sunday we continued treatments and she was hanging in there, though the medicine kept her awake most of Sunday night since her body hadn’t adjusted to it yet. We had an appointment to see the doctor Monday morning. In the meantime, Branwen continued with her cold symptoms, and I was getting rather coldy, too.

Monday, Joel stayed home from work to go to the doctor with me because both kids seemed pretty sick and I wasn’t feeling good. After talking to us a bit and listening to both girls, the doctor announced that they both had pneumonia. He said it was most likely viral, but he wanted them to take an antibiotic anyway since their lungs were somewhat compromised and open to other infections. We left the office with instructions to continue the breathing treatments for Alexis, begin them for Branwen, and start antibiotics. We were to return in about a week and a half to make sure their lungs were clear, and we were to call if anything else happened to concern us. The pediatrician also told me I should probably go to my doctor since I had many of the same symptoms as the girls.

So things were ok. We knew what to do. We had the medicine, we just needed to use it. We’d done this sort of thing before. No problem. Branwen’s fever went up to 101.8 Monday afternoon, but Alexis had had a fever before, too. It was all to be expected. Of course, then Branwen had a bout of projectile vomiting Monday night… I hoped it wasn’t a reaction to the antibiotic, but I figured I’d have to call the doctor in the morning to see what he thought. Which brings us to Tuesday.

I got up Tuesday morning after another not-so-great night’s sleep. Alexis had woken up at least once an hour from about 1AM on. I went in feeling sleepy, but still sympathetic since I knew the girls were sick. But as I walked into the room I thought I heard an odd noise, and as I was changing Alexis’ diaper, I began to realize with a growing horror where the noise was coming from. My baby, my 5 1/2 month old, wasn’t able to take a normal breath. Every breath she took gurgled, rattled, and bubbled. Her little body was working like she had been running a race, and all she was doing was trying to breathe normally. Of course, being the calm, cool, and collected mother I am, I freaked out completely. I yelled for Joel (who, I am incredibly thankful, had not yet left for work) and had him bring me the cordless phone. In the meantime, I raced through changing and dressing Alexis. She started crying that she wanted to put her shirt on by herself at one point, and as I pulled it over her head I hastily explained that Branwen was very sick and I had to hurry so I could take care of her. Alexis replied, “I’m sick, too!” How do you explain to a 2 yr. old that this isn’t favoritism? I just told her that that was true, but she was getting better and Branwen wasn’t yet. She seemed to kind-of understand that.

I called the doctor, but he didn’t have openings till 11:30. He said to give her a breathing treatment right away and if she got any worse at all we should go straight to the hospital. I then called my mother, burst into tears, and begged her to come visit at least for the day. Being my mother (and these being her only grandchildren), she came and stayed through today (Friday) instead. 🙂 It took her a little bit to pack, then 2 hours to get here, so she got here just as I was leaving to take Branwen to the doctor’s office. We had given Branwen the breathing treatment, and though it didn’t seem to help a whole lot, she also didn’t get worse. Through this whole time, she wasn’t active at all (understandably since her energy was being used in breathing) and was falling asleep fairly often. One of our friends is a physician’s assistant, and when she got wind of what was going on, she called to see if she could help. I tearfully asked her how we could tell the difference between Branwen falling asleep and passing out, and she calmly explained the warning signs (gurgling, which we had already; chest and tummy being sucked in, which I saw occassionally; and gasping for breath, which she wasn’t really doing yet). Thank God for friends who know what they’re talking about. When I got Branwen to the doctor’s, he listened to her and said she was definitely worse than the day before, and was most certainly the sickest baby he’d seen yet that day. He checked her oxygen levels, and the first readings he got (from her toes… the machines they use to measure these things just intrigue me) showed her levels around 85 or 86. For her to be considered ok enough to be out of the hospital, her readings had to be at least 93. He switched the little clip to one of her fingers, and the readings were better… now they were 92, 93… occaisonally 94. He ordered a chest x-ray, another breathing treatment as soon as we got home, and another visit either later that day or early the next morning. He told me that if Branwen went into the hospital, she’d stay there until her oxygen levels stayed up whether that took a day or a week.

It was an exhausting day, mostly of waiting for results and wondering whether I’d be sleeping at home or in the hospital. The x-ray came back just as the doctor expected which he said was a good thing. He was hoping the results wouldn’t show worse pneumonia than what he thought was there. The breathing treatments seemed to at least be keeping her in a holding pattern, so the doctor said that if we kept a close eye on her and gave her treatments every 3 hours or so through the night, we could keep her home. We had to keep her elevated so the fluid wouldn’t settle in her lungs, so we brought her swing, something we rarely use anymore, up into our bedroom. We set our alarms to wake up every 3 hours or so and gave her treatments, most of which she slept through.

The next morning, Joel brought her back to the doctor’s office. By this time, I was feeling absolutely miserable myself and felt a distinct lack of energy, so he and my Mom (who was taking care of Alexis) let me sleep in. Branwen’s oxygen levels had gone up about a point. Based on those readings, the doctor said that, though we weren’t out of the woods yet, he thought she’d be ok as long as we continued the round-the-clock treatments and kept an eye on her. If her fever spiked again, if she started vomiting again, if her breathing seemed to get any worse, he wanted a call immediately even if it was 2 in the morning. We have a very good pediatrician.

Since then, Branwen has steadily improved. We’ve been able to take her off of the nighttime treatments now. Alexis is down to only 2 treatments a day, while Branwen is still at 4. Alexis only coughs now if she gets really active. Branwen still has a rattle in her lungs occassionally, but you only hear it if you’re holding her instead of being able to hear it across the room. Sometimes I can’t even hear it, but I can feel the rattle with my hand on her back. Through this time, she’s gotten a bit more attached to me, too. She even says, “mamamamama,” and though she really has no idea what she’s saying, it’s almost as if she does. She says it whenever she’s upset, and she calms down as soon as she’s in my arms. It seems very sweet right now, though I’m sure it will become more annoying and less endearing once I know she’s well. It’s also a new and amazingly enjoyable thing to watch her play. I see her laugh at a toy, and my chest gets tight knowing that we might have been in the hospital at this very moment with my baby attached to tubes and an oxygen mask.

Oh, I did get to the doctor on Wednesday thanks to Joel making an appointment for me. I don’t have pneumonia, thankfully, but I did manage to get a double ear infection and a sinus infection. Joel has kept himself mostly healthy, though he does have some fairly minor cold symptoms… sinus drainage and an occaisonal cough. We’re hoping that’s the worst he gets.

The Lord is good. We have wonderful friends and family who helped us when we needed it, we have an excellent doctor and home medical equipment that allows us to take care of our baby at home even when she’s very ill, and through it all His strength sustained us.

The memory of that rattling breath will haunt my dreams for quite some time.

I sincerely hope we don’t have another week like this anytime in the near future.

I wonder if there’s any way to find out exactly what the reasoning was for failing bill HB581. The bill basically prescribes exactly what is needed for a Certified Professional Midwife to become liscensed by the state. It seemed pretty comprehensive. I just don’t understand why they would fail it.

It was failed in committee, 10-N to 5-Y. The Virginia Friends of Midwives will be trying to get the bill passed again next year. Having it make it through the House was encouraging, anyway. There’s still a chance that by the time I have my next baby, I can have a home birth that’s covered (at least out of network) by insurance.

A messy/dirty house, a fussy/teething baby, and a needy/cold-ridden toddler… it’s a recipe for frustration. What can a mother do? My house has reached my breaking point, the point at which, when I was in college, I would respond by suddenly breaking into a fit of frenzied cleaning, after which everything would be spotless and organized. Funny how that’s not quite as easy when you have children. Even nap time doesn’t quite work because Alexis naps upstairs and Branwen naps downstairs. This effectively keeps me from doing any noisy work in the house. 😛 I’m hoping to move Branwen upstairs for naps soon, but she tends to wake up a couple of times during nap time (she goes back to sleep on her own, but does cry while awake), and Alexis is touchy during naps so that if she wakes up she’s not likely to fall back asleep. Well, this too shall pass… we’ll just see if my house is at all clean once it has. 🙂

In good news, we know our roof is finally fixed. We had a good rain the other night and none of it ended up on our bathroom floor. 🙂 Now to fix the hole in the ceiling…

Our kitties were spayed Tuesday and apparently came through it quite well. The foster mothers are keeping them during recovery and then they’ll deliver them Sunday afternoon. Lulu (the cat who is soon to be formerly known as Lulu?) had to have a tooth pulled, too. It was growing in crooked, crowding other teeth, and keeping her from biting down properly to chew. Her foster mom says that she’s actually perked up a bit more than before the surgery and is eating a healthier amount, so the tooth must have been affecting her. I’m glad they found it and were able to take care of it! We’re looking forward to having them in the house. 🙂

Gotta go change a dirty diaper and comfort a squalling child. Maybe I can scrub the floor a bit while they sleep this afternoon… IF they sleep this afternoon. We’ll see!

Well, we found our kittens on Saturday! We attended an adoption fair where Joel, the family “cat person”, was expected to fall in love with some cat or other which we would then claim. Surprisingly, Joel did not fall in love with a cat… I did. 🙂 She’s beautiful, and her sister is quite nice (Joel likes her sister better, so this should work out just fine). Their current names are Dixie and Lulu, but that’s going to change. Joel suggested calling them Fuzz Butt and Clown Face (Dixie has a bushy tail and Lulu has white and gray markings on her face), but I’m pretty sure he was joking. 🙂

Anyway, they’re both quite adorable kittens, so image my chagrine when the rescue worker mentions that, at 6 months old, they’re considered kitty teenagers! They’re apparently going to be going through some typical teen rebellion/insecurities about now and we shouldn’t worry about it… it’s not us. Hm. Right. I’m not sure how I’ll know the difference since the only cat I’ve ever owned was adopted by us when she was more than 4 years old.

Oh well. I’m sure we’ll make it through, and we’ll have two pretty kitties to keep us company for many years to come. Now to think of good names…. Any suggestions?

It’s been quite a week and a half or so here. It amazes me sometimes how quickly some things tend to happen. You think you’ll have plenty of time to deal with major life changes, but that’s not always the case. Ok, so maybe this wasn’t as major a life change as some, but it was still significant.

A week ago Sunday (the 15th), Joel noticed that Sheba, our kitty cat, wasn’t eating or drinking. Monday, he got an appointment to take her in to the vet where they did a battery of tests. By the next morning, they were able to tell us that Sheba had developed chronic kidney failure. We went in Tuesday evening to learn how to administer subcutaneous fluids (looks like an IV, but it’s not in a vein, it’s just under the skin). We administered fluids every night in the hopes that she would bounce back enough to lead a decent life for a while. If she did bounce back, we’d have to keep giving her the fluids every night, but other than that she could seem relatively healthy.

However, Sheba never quite got back to acting like herself. Besides being a little less social than normal, she started throwing up once or twice a day. Joel finally decided on Saturday that it would be cruel to keep her going as she was, so we took her to the vet on Monday night, left the kids home with a sitter, and put her to sleep.

Sheba was a sweet kitty. When we adopted her 4 years ago, we brought her home expecting her to run and hide at first, but instead she got out of the carrier and jumped into my lap, purring. She was that way with anyone who came in the house… sweet and attention seeking. She hated cat treats, catnip, cat toys, etc., prompting us to speculate that she was part dog. 🙂 She was good with the kids, too… very patient with a toddler’s poking and patting. It’ll be hard to find a kitty like her again.

Be that as it may, a cat-less house doesn’t feel right, so we’re already looking at some possible new kitties. We want two this time (Sheba didn’t like other cats, so she had to be an only), so we’re looking at sibling groups. It’s fun to look, and it takes my mind off of Sheba. We went this morning and bought some new things for whatever cats we end up getting. We never needed a scratching post before, for instance, because we adopted Sheba when she had already been declawed. We’d like younger cats this time, so we got some stuff for them to scratch. I got toys, too, since we didn’t bother getting them for Sheba. She’d rather play with a twist-tie than anything you could buy in the store.

I’ll have to post here when we do get new kitties. It’ll probably be soon.

In other news, I know that the Virginia midwifery bill HB581 made it through the House and was supposed to be voted on in the Senate sometime soon, but I haven’t heard anything else about it. I’ll keep checking on it to see what happens so I can post if/when it goes through.

Well, it looks like bill HB 581 is doing well. Check out the update. I couldn’t find an update on HB 1354, but I’m hoping to see something about it in the next few days. When there’s any news on it, you can find it here.

What a day! The leak in our roof has finally caused a hole in the ceiling, though I poked the hole myself. Sound silly? Well, it was soft enough at that point that we figured we would be cutting that section of ceiling out anyway, so we decided to poke a small hole there to allow water to drip through so as to prevent the wet spot on the ceiling from spreading any further. (Joel and my dad both thought of this solution.) When the roofer came to look at it again today (they tried to fix it yesterday), he said that poking the hole was probably the best thing we could have done, and it might just need a patch rather than a new section of ceiling. That would be nice. He said they might be able to get out here over the weekend. That would be even nicer! 🙂

Found Alexis in nothing but her diaper this morning happily telling me about smearing Desitin on the baby’s cheek and blanket sleeper. Oy! Thinking maybe the Desitin is a little too accessible. Gotta move that…

Well, I’m hoping Joel will be able to leave work soon because he’s put in extra hours this week, so I’m going to go for now. If I hear any more about the midwifery bills, I’ll post about them.

So, it’s been… what?… a week and a bit since we turned off the monitor in our bedroom? I have to tell you, I feel like a new woman! Are we still waking up in the night? Sometimes. When we do it’s maybe 2 times… 3 if the kids are at the peak of a cold. But compared to waking up 5 times every night, this seems like heaven. 🙂 Not only that, but even those 2 times we wake up don’t always mean we go into their room anymore. It’s easier to get back to sleep if you haven’t had to get out of bed in the first place.

We can still hear the girls. They don’t even have to be terribly loud for us to hear them. But it doesn’t wake us up quite as quickly, and it’s easier to let them go for a bit before getting them. Branwen is learning to put herself back to sleep, and I’m guessing Alexis is, too, since she hasn’t been waking us up nearly as much lately.

Now we just need to master the whole “getting out of bed when I shouldn’t” thing with Alexis and we’ll be set. 🙂

There are two bills now facing the Virginia General Assembly. If they are eventually passed, they will allow midwives to be licensed by the state of Virginia. Hallelujah! I’ll explain my excitement, then I’ll tell you how you can help if you’re a Virginian.

When I gave birth to my first daughter, I was induced at 43 weeks. The gel they gave me to prep me started my labor, but apparently my body was over-sensitive to it. My uterus was overstimulated and my body went through some pretty harsh stuff (not that normal labor isn’t harsh, but this was a tad worse). Thankfully, I had a short labor, but I was told afterwards that if it had been longer my uterus could have ruptured, putting me in danger and keeping me from having any further children.

When I became pregnant with my second child, I determined that I would have a home birth, partly because I wanted to avoid induction. I went to 43 weeks again, so I would have been induced had I had hospital care. As it was, my midwife allowed me to go to 43 weeks and 2 days, and I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl without facing uterine over-stimulization. In other words, homebirth was a safer option for me besides being more comfortable. The whole experience was less traumatic.

The biggest trauma of all was probably the bill. Though homebirth actually costs less than hospital birth (there aren’t as many things to cover, after all), the cost to us was more since insurance wouldn’t cover a midwife unlicensed by the state. Virginia had no provisions set up to provide licenses to midwives, so licensure by the state wasn’t possible.

That could all change very soon. 🙂 The first bill, HB 1354, would exempt midwives from the statute governing the practice of medicine. (Many other professionals are exempt as well, and there are other statutes which cover the event of a midwife injuring a mother or baby, an event which has been shown to be extremely rare.) The second bill, HB 581, would provide a way for midwives to receive licensure from the state of Virginia. Hurray! This would bring costs down for many residents who wish to use the service of midwives, and it would make practicing midwifery in the state generally easier. 🙂

The bills will go through the first round of voting this Thursday, February 5th. If you live in Virginia, please help to support the right of women to choose the midwifery birthing option. You can call in your support to the General Assembly hotline at 1-800-889-0229, or you can contact your senator and delegate directly.

I think it’s a shame that the pro-abortion crowd has claimed the term “pro-choice”. I’m exceedingly anti-abortion (if you want to get me going, tell me you’re a pro-choice Christian), but I believe that we do have choices in a lot of areas and I believe that we need to give our children choices if we want them to be able to deal with life once they’re out of the house.

The topic that started me thinking about this is homeschooling. *sigh* Where to begin? I’m not going to homeschool my children. We have a perfectly good public school just down the road, and that’s what our children will most likely attend. My beef is that there are other Christian parents (mothers, mainly) who are quite outspoken in their belief that homeschooling is the only valid option for Christian families anymore. Some will allow for sending your children to private Christian schools, but since private schools tend to be rather expensive and don’t always provide a good all-around education, most of them still think homeschooling is the preferable option.

Quick side comment… I’m all for school vouchers. I think anyone should have the option of sending their child to what they consider to be a better school than the one their child is currently attending. This is another example of where I’m “pro-choice”.

Anyway, I have a couple of arguments against the homeschooling idea. There are plenty of good things about it, too, but right now I choose to focus on why I won’t homeschool rather than why other people might.

My first argument is that not everyone is cut out to teach their own children. Since I really don’t feel like facing any slander lawsuits, I’ll stick to some general examples, but if you search for homeschooling articles on the web you’ll see what I mean. Many of the homeschooling articles and encouragements that I’ve seen are fraught with grammatical and spelling errors. Note: I make errors as much as anyone else, but if you’re trying to make a point that anyone can teach their own child, can’t you at least take the time to edit your own work so it looks presentable? Admittedly, this is a pet peeve of mine since I was an English teacher. I learned (and taught) that informal writing was different than formal writing. Articles would be considered formal writing and should therefore follow the formal rules dictating grammar, punctuation, etc. Of course, English is the area of study that’s easiest for outsiders to judge since we don’t regularly communicate using math, science, geography, or the other subject matters touched on in a classroom. Perhaps the authors of said articles are better in other subject matters and are relying on someone else to teach their children English skills. I would still suggest they use an editor so they don’t make homeschooling look like a ridiculous option.

My second argument is that too many Christian parents use homeschooling as a way to further shelter their children. (Here’s my “pro-choice” theme again!) If we don’t give our children well-rounded information and let them actually choose for themselves what they believe, their “adopted” beliefs aren’t going to stand the test when faced with what the secular world thinks. This does not mean saying, “Ok, so some people believe the world was created while others think that everything evolved. You decide.” It means presenting your child with both sides of the issue and explaining why you’ve chosen to believe the side that you have. Hopefully, we all have reasons for our beliefs. If not, it would be good to figure them out. A good resource for the Creation vs. Evolution debate (as well as scientific evidence for the flood, how to explain dinosaurs, etc.) can be found at the Answers In Genesis website. They have info for adults and children.

Of course, how in-depth a person goes with their child should depend on their age. I’m not going to try to tell my 2 year old about evolution and creation. However, you can start with the basics when they’re fairly young. Answers In Genesis has family devotional and educational materials for children as young as 4 years old. For older children and adults, resources such as Know What You Believe, Know Why You Believe, and Evidence That Demands a Verdict are excellent.

Do I believe I’m cut out to homeschool my children? No. I might be able to teach them, but they would never make it out of the house to socialize. Besides, it seems to me that homeschooling is a calling, and I simply don’t feel it’s mine. Will I stay involved in my childrens’ educations? I hope so. I plan to be involved at least as much as my own parents were, as they looked over homework, took a look at what we were studying, etc. If I keep up with what’s going on in my chidrens’ classrooms, I should be able to provide any supplemental education they’ll need.