Kelly Mom's Advice for Breastfeeding Mothers

I just love this website and have it stored to my favorites for easy reference. Many times your general physician really has no idea about whether or not a medication prescribed for you is safe for breastfeeding. He or she will tell you to ask your pediatrician or ob/gyn. Very often, they are just guessing as well. So I always double-check at this website. She references primary documentation that you can read for your edification.
http://www.kellymom.com/health/meds/aap-approved-meds.html

U.S. News and World Report's Articles by Jay Tolson

Part of this story is three months old.

I was in the dentist’s office – alone! – while my houseguest watched the baby so I could get my teeth cleaned. My last visit was seventeen months ago, so I was only eleven months late for my regular checkup. The previous checkup had been seven years prior.

It was quite a challenge to get in for any kind of doctor appointment during my homeschooling years. During a dental exam, if you need any kinds of x-rays, no children can be in the room. Neither can you leave them in the waiting room unattended. So a babysitter is needed. Not wanting to impose on my other homeschooling friends during school hours, I would just have to wait until an out-of-town relative came for a visit, and schedule all my appointments accordingly.

While waiting, I was able to catch up on back issues of U.S. News and World Report. My eye was immediately caught by two front cover stories, both devoted to the Catholic Church! When I noted the author, Jay Tolson, I wondered if he was Catholic, and decided to do an internet search on him when I got home.

In the December 24, 2007 issue, Jay Tolson wrote “A Return to Tradition: A New Interest in Old Ways Takes Root in Catholicism and Many Other Faiths”. Highlighting Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam, he noted the most remarkable traditions that are currently being embraced within each religion.

Most notable within the Catholic Church is the return to the Tridentine Latin Mass, the pre-Vatican II rite which has been brough back by Pope Benedict XVI. There also has been a renewed interest in personal confession, the recitation of the Rosary, and the wearing of habits. The latter has been brought to the public eye by the traditionalist and habit wearing Nashville’s Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia.

Mary Bendyna, Executive Director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, was quoted as planning to launch a large study on sacramental life in January. Mary Bendyna’s vitae can be found at the Georgetown University website. She has been widely published and I would watch out for the publication of the pending study.

In the April 7-14, 2008 issue, Jay Tolson writes “Catholics at a Crossroads: The Pope Reaches Out to a Troubled American Flock”. The article revisits the return to Latin Mass, explains principles of Vatican II and Pope Benedict XVI’s mission of renewal of the core of Catholic values – again mentioning the Sisters of St. Cecilia. He delves a bit into the problem of today’s relativistic culture, and wonders if America is ready for the Pope’s fundamentalist values. He poses the thought that a return to fundamental values may be the solution to the Church’s present problems.

On the website for Templton-Cambridge Journalism: Fellowships in Science & Religion I found the following biography:
“Jay Tolson is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report, covering culture, ideas, and religion. Previously the editor of the Wilson Quarterly, he has written for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, the Times Literary Supplement, Civilization, Slate, The Sciences, DoubleTake, and other publications. A graduate of Princeton University, he is the author of Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy (1992), which won the Southern Book Award, selected by critics of the Southern Book Association, and the Hugh Holman Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in Southern Literary Studies, and he edited The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy (1996). “

I could not find what his religious background is, but it is good to know there is an excellent journalist out there who is portraying the Catholic Church in an intelligent and positive light.

Allelujah! He is risen!

Separation Anxiety and Naptime Refusal - Part III

If I complete this post, you may assume I have achieved some reasonable amount of success in the sleep stand-off between me and my toddler. I had considered waiting until I had triumphed completely and reestablished a normal sleeping routine for several days, but as I have yet to find a complete account of my problem described anywhere else I thought it better to publicly share the process.

I called the pediatrician’s yesterday, stating that I had a question about a change in my child’s sleeping patterns. I was immediately connected with the doctor.

“How are you?” he cheerily asked.

“Not so good, Dr. The baby is turning 18 months old this week, the incisors are coming in, and she is refusing to go to sleep. She will not nap at all during the day, and at night she will only sleep for a few hours at a time. When I lay her in her crib, she clings to me and screams,” I summarized the problem.

He listened, and then I asked, “Is this normal?”

“This happens sometimes,” he answered, “There is one thing you can try. Give her a teaspoon of Benadryl at night.”

“Thank you,” I happily replied.

Of course in the past week I had wondered if there was such thing as a sleep medication for babies. Surely if there was everyone would have heard about it. I was glad to hear there was something considered safe to give.

Still, I had some reservations about giving any kind of cold or allergy medicine to an under-two, especially considering the current debate among pediatricians that has resulted in many children’s medications being taken off the shelves. So, upon purchasing the bottle of Children’s Benadryl, I warily asked the pharmacist if there was any reason I should avoid giving the medication to my child.

“How old is she? How much does she weigh?” she asked while studying at the ingredients.

“18 months, about 25 pounds,” I replied.

“There are only 25 mL in a teaspoon. As long as you don’t give any more than that, there are no side effects other than sleepiness,” she assured me.

I questioned her about the current debate regarding cold and allergy medication being given to babies.

“That is because people were over-medicating,” she replied.

(Of course, I highly caution any parent or guardian reading this to consult your pediatrician before giving any over-the-counter medication to a child under age 6.)

Armed with a new tool in my battle against her (our) sleeplessness, I put her to bed at her usual time of 7:00 PM. As usual, she went to sleep at that time with little problem. When she awoke at around midnight, fully alert, I gave her the teaspoon of Benadryl before nursing her.

When I lay her in her crib, instead of coming to with an anxious jolt as she has been doing of late, she settled herself calmly. She slept until 5:30 AM.

Today, at the normal naptime of 12:00 noon, I made up a sleeptime area on her bedroom floor. This consisted of a large blanket to lay on, a large Winnie-the-Pooh to lay her head on, and her favorite blanket. I nursed her to sleep on the floor.

The idea here was to re-establish her normal routine and eliminate her fear of being alone in the crib, before trying to have her nap in the crib again.

I waited until she was in a deep sleep. Carefully, over the course of about five minutes, millimeter-by-millimeter, I removed myself from her side. I replaced myself with a large stuffed cat.

I tiptoed over the squeaky floor to the door and cautiously closed the squeaky door.

I unplugged my printer before turning on the computer. The printer is very loud when it turns itself on during the booting-up process.

A half-hour later, she is still asleep! A mini-triumph!

[Author's post-note Jan. 31: The Benadryl was used for exactly three nights before her normal sleeping habits were naturally restored.]

Above: "Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child"
Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485
Tempera on canvas, 122 x 80.5 cm

A Vision of Divine Mercy

For the past twelve months my son and I have been on quite a journey exploring his vision.

I took him to the optometrist for the first time last July, at the age of 5, for an annual exam before entering Kindergarten. He had never shown any difficulties and I expected him to pass with flying colors. Therefore I was quite surprised to find that he presented with astigmatism and convergence deficiency (meaning his eyes did not focus together close-up) – this despite 20/20 vision.

Glasses were prescribed with a follow-up visit in one month to see how he was doing with the new glasses. August came, and the doctor was not happy. The prism he had installed within the lens had not done what he had hoped for, as far as bringing his eyes to focus better together. He suggested vision therapy.

I spent a frustrating few days making telephone calls, before finding one pediatric ophthalmologist in my area who performed visual training and took our health plan. She had a good reputation – and was booked for almost three months.

In the meantime, I taught him how to do “pencil push-ups”, in which the child looks at the tip of a pencil eraser or other interesting object while moving it from about a foot away to the tip of his nose. This was an exercise I used to do as a child for the same disorder. An internet search showed this was still the most effective at-home exercise. One study also found at home exercise to be just as effective as in-office visits, when monitored by a professional; the key was diligence in doing the exercises.

That October I took him out of school for the long-awaited visit. It required dilation of the pupil, which would cause some discomfort and blurriness of vision. When I entered the office with my son and the baby, I was a bit put-off by the doctor’s haughty attitude. She also had two young women with her, whom she introduced as “doctors”, although they had earlier introduced themselves to me as students. When I described my family ocular history, and told her of my other two children, she gave me a hard look that seemed to condemn me for bringing four children into the world with eye problems. I was just so astounded by her attitude that I literally became dumb-founded.

I listened, nodding, as she patronized my optometrists techniques and said my son showed absolutely no sign of convergence insufficiency (“A sign the exercises had worked?”, I thought), but instead had a strabismus – or “lazy eye”. She could easily correct this with surgery, she said. She prescribed a course of “patching” the weak eye for one to two hours per day for three months. At the end of those three months, if enough improvement was shown, there would be no need for an operation.

Although I had done some experiments in visual perception as a graduate studying Experimental Psychology, the questions I had in my mind were clouded and could not be formed into words. I therefore came out of there feeling as if she had treated me like an idiot. And wondering to myself why I had been unable to speak.

I scoured the literature for information on this surgery. There was some risk involved and a high rate of repeated surgeries. My gut reaction was to avoid this except as a last resort. Then I found a whole body of literature about vision therapy, and learned about several exercises I could do at home with him.

For three months, for a half hour each day, we did these together. We also did the maximum recommended patching – and prayed. In January I brought him again, hopeful that she would find an improvement.

She found a fifty percent improvement – but still wanted to operate! I realized that what I had neglected to do, in my inability to ask questions at the first visit, was ask for her parameters for success – how much improvement was she expecting as her guidelines for whether or not to operate – and I felt that she just wanted to operate on my son from the very beginning. She sat silently waiting for an answer – when did I want to schedule the surgery? I paused for a moment before responding.

“Well, seeing he’s made such an improvement so far, can’t we see if he’ll do even better if given three more months, perhaps with more time patching?” She seemed doubtful but “didn’t want to push” – so she agreed. “Just don’t wait for too long. His depth perception is failing, and as his neural pathways are forming they will be set in this wrong way of seeing. If he should ever lose vision in the other eye he would be legally blind.” Nothing like scaring a mother into trusting you with her son’s eyes! I found another doctor for a second opinion and pushed on with the exercises for another six weeks.

The night before this all-important appointment, I decided to do the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. (I found a nice website with good directions at: http://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/mercy/index.htm). My mother had said it was particularly powerful – and that was just what was needed. I had never been in the habit of saying rote prayers before, but quickly discovered that, by losing my self in the words, the intent was brought into clearer focus.

The doctor had his assistant administer a simple test in which he was supposed to try to pick the wings off of nine dragonflies as they appeared to “fly” off the page. They looked at eachother in amazement. “He picked all nine! This child has perfect depth perception.” The doctor said to continue doing whatever I was doing with him, as it seemed to be working.

This spring we were amazed at how well he did with baseball. Without depth perception, it is impossible to hit a baseball. This was more proof of the improvements he had made since the previous summer. In hindsight we can see he wasn’t even seeing the ball!

At the last check-up, both eyes were found to be equally strong, with a slight tendency to diverge. Our optometrist said, “If you had chosen to operate, his eyes would have focused at one distance but not another, and another surgery would have been needed, followed by more vision therapy.” He presently is working with us hand-in-hand, recommending at-home exercises with monthly office visits to monitor his progress.

We learned so much from this experience. We learned about the relation between self-education and the treatment received in doctors’ offices. We learned that with faith and a willingness to go the extra mile the seemingly impossible can be achieved.

Prayer to St. Odilia

O God, Who in Your Kindness did give us St. Odilia, Virgin and Martyr,
as the Protectress of the Order of the Holy Cross
and the Patroness of the eyes and afflicted,
grant us, we humbly beseech You,
Your protection through her intercession
from the darkness of ignorance and sin,
and grant us healing from blindness of the eyes and other bodily infirmities.
Through Him, Who is the Light and Life of the World,
Jesus Christ, Your Son, Our Lord.
Amen

**********************************************

I am adding some more information to my post in answer to a reader's questions about where to find the exercises that I have been doing with my son. I was unable to reply using blogger and did not have a personal email address available. I think the information could be helpful to others, so here it is...

Dear Reader,
The most helpful website I found was www.children-special-needs.org
Go to the library and look up "vision therapy", "eye exercises", "orthoptics", "Bates Method". There are several books based on the work of W.H. Bates, an opthalmologist who wrote "Perfect Sight Without Glasses" in 1920. "Better Vision without Glasses", a few versions of which have been written by one of his followers, is one that describes many of the techniques I have been using. There was also a video that I used with my son. I am not posting the name of it because there are probably some better, more current ones available. The Cambridge Institute for Better Vision has a program at www.bettervision.com; you can save yourself the program fee by taking their book out from the library.
The exercises we are mostly using are called:
thumb rotations
near-far shifting
convergence string
pencil push-ups
If you can't find these please write to me with a personal email address and I will describe them for you.
There was also one my optometrist told me to do and I don't know its name. I use a flashlight in a darkened room and flash a light intermittently on all four corners of a small wall. He is supposed to use one eye at a time to follow it. I rotate to the right, then to the left, first with one eye closed, then with the other eye closed, then with both eyes open.
Baseball is also a great, fun exercise.
You can't hit a ball that is coming to you without depth perception!
Best of luck to you,
Elizabeth

Witnessing in the E.R.

I had an unpleasant yet interesting occurrence last night. I was nursing the baby to sleep, when she accidentally poked me in the eye. I immediately put her in her crib and checked out my eye. There was a half-inch long, bright red line in the white part – the sclera. I showed my husband and he said, “That’s not good, is it?” I called my mom, who is a Doctor of Nursing. She advised me to call the emergency room and speak to an ophthalmic specialist. I did, and they said to come on in. “We see this fairly often. It needs to be treated with an antibiotic right away.”

I went to my local Catholic hospital, where we have always had a wonderful experience. They took me immediately. “How old is your baby?” asked the triage nurse.

“One year.”

”We have an excellent pediatric unit – so if you ever need to bring her in you know where to go.”

Whenever people assume I just have the one baby, I am always quick to let them know otherwise. It would feel like a betrayal to the others not to do so!

“Thank you, I know. Two of my four children were born here.”

“Oh, wow!”

In person, I actually present as a rather quiet person - until you get to know me. Then I might never stop talking. I am a firm believer in teaching by example. There are no preachy bumper stickers on my car. I don’t go around quoting scriptures (although they may come through in my choice of words). As I discussed in my earlier posting, (“Are Those All Yours?”), I believe the way you present yourself has an indelible effect on how people perceive your “class” of people. In my case, people might be judging me as a Catholic, a mother with “lots” of kids, a breastfeeding mother, or a stay-at-home mom.

Whatever stereotype the staff of the emergency room might have had that night of a Catholic breastfeeding stay-at-home mother of four, their vision now must include the calm, polite, intelligent person who, after having her eye injured, put her child to bed, saw that the other children were in order, made the necessary inquisitory telephone calls, and proceeded to drive herself to the hospital.

The resident ophthalmologist first numbed my eye, then examined it with iridescent drops. The fluorescence showed a scratch to the sclera. Interestingly, the scratch was at 3:00 (imagining my eye as a clock), whereas the red spot was at 9:00. The red spot was a “bruise”, he said, caused by the scratch, which was invisible to the naked eye. If the scratch had been on the actual cornea, that would have been serious. He assure me that the sclera should repair itself within 24 hours. However, all scratches need to be treated with antibiotics to prevent infection to the eye.

He wanted to give me a tetanus shot. “Are there any contraindications with nursing?” I asked.

From his next question, it was apparent that he obviously had little or no knowledge of breastfeeding. “Do you nurse her every day?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“And how long do you intend to continue nursing?”

“Probably another year.”

”Oh. Well, I think maybe we’ll skip the tetanus shot just to be on the safe side.”

By my one little question, I accomplished two objectives.

(1) I escaped a rather unpleasant procedure (soreness, swelling, etc., following a deep shot to the shoulder region);

(2) I broadened the young doctor’s perception of nursing. (As I discussed in an earlier posting, many women neglect to let their doctors know they are breastfeeding, resulting in the profession’s stereotype that most women wean by one year.)

Incidentally, I left my library book in the room. I haven’t read enough of it to recommend it, but I absorbed the main points. The topic was the support and building of emotional bonds with your son. It might cost me a few dollars to replace it, but I hope the next person who picked it up was in need of reading on the subject.

Every day gives us countless opportunities to bear testimony to a Christian way of life. Even negative experiences can be turned to yield positives. The next time you are in a bad situation, ask yourself, “What can I do with this?”

Support your local Catholic hospital. Their very existence is essential to the ethics of health practice in American hospitals. My favorite Long Island hospital is St. Charles, Port Jefferson, New York.
http://stcharleshospital.chsli.org/aboutUs/index.html

Pictured above: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, English nurse and hospital reformer, 1820 to 1910

"Are Those All Yours?": A Social Commentary

When I was a child I distinctly remember my mother criticizing a driver for displaying a “Jesus” sticker on the car bumper. Sooner or later, she explained, that driver was bound to make a mistake on the road that would bear negative testimony on Christians.

Large families must recognize that they bear witness to the Culture of Life. Our very existence makes people stop and notice. Our public behavior will be the basis of others’ judgments about bearing children. Therefore I believe that we hold a huge responsibility in how we conduct ourselves.

(I include myself in the “large family” category not because I think of 4 as a large number of children – I know of several families with 5, 6, and 7 children – but because many other people here on Long Island seem to perceive us as such.)

Although I address myself here primarily to the larger family, my observations apply to those with one child or more. Misbehaving children cause strangers to point their proverbial finger and mutter to themselves or their neighbor, “That’s why I don’t want any kids,” or, “That’s why I’m not having any more.”

I recall a tired-looking father who was in front of me on the line at my local Wal-Mart with three lively, robust sons. I forget what the problem was – maybe his credit card wouldn’t go through – but he commented, “I’m such a loser.” Usually a silent onlooker, I felt the need to speak up. “Please don’t say that,” I said gently, “You have a beautiful family.” Hopefully my words encouraged him on some level.

We all have our moments of children’s misbehavior in the store or doctor’s office – some more than others. I am the last one to give you dirty looks if your child is acting up in church – my baby could be the next to cry. If you were in the optometrist’s office with me this week you might have shaken your head at my children playing with the glasses instead of sitting quietly in the separate waiting area. (Remember that even Jesus’ parents once lost him back in the Temple?) But for the most part, people come up to me and, after asking, “Are those all yours?” with wide eyes, comment very positively.

Typically it is the very senior citizen, who then reminisces about his or her five children, seventeen grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren. “No one has large families any more,” they say. In church this Sunday a woman came up to me and said, “I just have to tell you that I’ve been seeing your family at Mass for years. You have such a beautiful family – and they are so well-behaved! I had three children and always wished I had a fourth.”

I hope our family helps to make a more positive attitude toward large families in our town. Our pediatrician loves us – “Everybody else just has two kids”, he recently said with an approving smile. When I first found a local optometrist and pediatric dentist, they would not book appointments for “so many” at once – they wanted the children to come on separate days. But, now that they have gotten to know us, we are favorites and they do not mind seeing us all at once.

I did have one negative comment made by a cashier at our local grocery store. When I was starting to “show” with my fourth, she looked at my belly and said, “That must have been a shocker.” I said, “Excuse me?” not because I hadn’t heard her – I couldn’t believe my ears. She repeated herself. “We wanted to have another,” I said (as if it was anybody’s business). “Most people would have stopped at three,” she commented with a shrug. “We enjoy our children,” I replied. There was a stony silence as I bagged my groceries and she continued her scanning.

“Most people view children as a burden,” my husband explained to me later.

How does your family come across in public? Is everyone well-rested, well-fed, and expected to behave? Or do you go out with children who are tired, hungry, and apt to misbehave? Do you appear to delight in your children – or to view them as a burden?

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”
Matthew 5:14

Pictured above:

Photograph of the Von Trapp Family

Recommended reading:

"The Story of the Trapp Family Singers" by Maria Augusta Trapp,

1949, Harper Paperbacks, 320 pages, softcover, Catholic

Natural Nutrition for Babies

At my daughter’s one-year checkup, my pediatrician asked me if I had started my daughter on whole milk yet. I answered no, that she seemed to be getting enough milk from me. He seemed pleasantly surprised that I was still nursing at 12 months.

It seems to be popular in America to wean by one year. However, in other nations women commonly nurse until ages 4 to 7. And in America, more and more mothers are secretly feeding their babies until two to three years of age. It is so difficult to obtain statistics on this, as they are reluctant to admit this practice.

I came across a lovely piece of research, which gives the actual statistics on weaning ages of those who practiced extended breastfeeding. You can see it at:
http://www.granitescientific.com/weaningages.pdf

La Leche League http://www.lalecheleague.org/ encourages mothers to nurse as long as their baby seems to want to continue, and to lovingly wean them, very gradually, if possible. We all know the benefits of nursing to both baby and mother. Doctors say these benefits are directly proportional to the number of months spent nursing.

You can download a twenty-page report from The Breast Cancer Prevention Institute http://bcpinstitute.org/ that states, among many other factors, that the incidence of breast cancer in women is lowered with each month spent nursing.

Kelly Mom Breastfeeding and Parenting http://www.kellymom.com/index.html is filled with great, well-researched information on such topics as tandem nursing and which herbal supplements are safe to use. She offers links to primary sources so you can see the actual research behind her recommendations.

If more mothers let others, including their doctors, know that they are practicing extended breastfeeding, new mothers would feel encouraged that it is a normal practice and not one to be ashamed of.

On a related topic, Gerber fell more than a notch in my estimation tonight. Normally I don’t even give a glance to the toddler foods. As soon as my babies have teeth, they are eating the same table food as the rest of the family. They compare the contents of the table to what is on their trays. If they notice something is missing, they holler and point to it. I do supplement with jarred food, to ensure the baby is getting a nice “rainbow” of foods. How easy is it to obtain such exotic foods as “apple mango kiwi” except in the baby food aisle? Well, tonight my eye was drawn to a “sale” sign in front of the Gerber Graduates for Toddlers. When I looked at the ingredients of the “popped corn chips” and other offerings, it was clear that they were creating junk food for babies! I was so revolted by this. With all the current research about the dangers of preservatives, added starches, and empty calories, what kind of introduction are they offering to our babies to the world of food?

“What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?”
Luke 11:11-12