Focus on the Positive, Focus on the Positive, Focus on the Positive

It's a good mantra for life in general ...  I was especially trying to apply it this week ... without much success.

Jude's doctor's appointment at Shriners revealed some new "issues".  I'll just get it out.

Some of her ribs are fusing together to each other where they connect at the bottom of the spine.  That's causing her spine to curve and not necessarily form correctly.   It was a kick in the stomach for me and Joe.  Just when we feel like the challenges of the past year were no longer an issue, this.

It feels like taking 2 steps forward, one step back. 

Also, the lower extremity specialist believes as she grows bigger, the distance between her two legs will get further apart.  Being the reporter, I asked him specifically "How do you know that will happen" and being a doctor, actually the Chief of Staff at Shriners, he gave me a somewhat condescending look and said he's seen 1000 cases like this.   I still think he could be wrong.  I write that knowing he will probably never read this blog.

It's not the news we wanted, but as Joe said "we'll deal with it"

It was a hard pill for me to swallow.  Hearing new "bad" news about my daughter's development sunk me into a funk for the week.  I'm trying to pull out of it.  As it's Friday and I'm going to sign off this blog and do the 6:00 news and go home, it's hard to not be in a good mood.

And really in the grand scheme of things it doesn't change anything.  My daughter is still a beautiful, happy child and I'm blessed to have her.  And how could I not smile, looking at this picture of Jude and Joey (I hope they'll always be this loving)

See, I'm focusing on the positive.

May you have a lot of positive to focus on for the coming week! 

Jude is trying to walk, she's doing great! But now the focus shifts from the arms to the legs.

Now that Jude is trying to walk, we have to address the issue of her legs.  The right one is shorter than the left.  By only about an inch.  It's not much.  But for a wobbly toddler the imbalance could pose a problem.

We go back to Shriners Hospital in St. Louis in about a week and a half and this time we will be seeing a leg specialist.  He will hopefully guide us on what needs to be done to make sure Jude develops her walking skills correctly.  One thing Joe and I have noticed is she strongly uses the right side of her torso more than her left. She uses it to propel herself forward as she scoots around on her butt.   We think she does this to counter-balance her shorter left arm.  But it has made the muscles on the right side of her back much more developed than her left.  So we need to ask them about that too.

There are some amazing procedures that are done to help kids with bone discrepancies.  Bone-lengthening is somewhat painful and invasive and I hope she doesn't ever have to do it. They actually put screws into the bones and then you turn a crank to pull the bones longer over a period of months. The crazy thing is, I just saw on an Oprah episode the other day that people in China do bone-lengthening on their legs on purpose, so they can gain like an inch or two in height.  I'm stunned by that.  Here I am hoping my daughter never has to go through it and some people choose to do it.

The other option sounded crazy to me, but I guess it's less invasive.  They actually cut the growth plate in the leg that is longer, so the shorter leg can catch up.  The doctor we've talked with said this is a better and less painful option than bone-lengthening.  

Either way I'm sure we will be looking at some special shoes or inserts...which is fine, I wore orthotics in my shoes my whole life and I don't want anything to slow her down.  She's just ready to burst out  and start running around, I can see it!  

They will also x-ray Jude's right arm again to make sure the bones are not growing back together.  The goal is to keep them apart and keep her bending and straightening her arm on her own.   I dread these visits, but look forward to them at the same time because I hope to hear good news.   We're keeping our fingers and our hands crossed.

About every six months, something happens that makes us re-evaluate our daycare situation.

We're encountering a milestone in Joey's life.  He's become too big for his current in-home daycare.  The place he and Jude go now is wonderful.  A woman's home, she lives in our neighborhood.  She's a former Kindergarten teacher and has two young kids of her own.  It's a great, caring, nurturing environment.

The problem is, Joey is the oldest.  Just him and the babies.  It's like having a bull in a china shop.  He has no 3 and 4 year old boys to rough around with, throw balls or socialize.  It's become very obvious to me now (it was obvious to my daycare provider a while ago - thank you for being patient) that Joey has just "aged" out of his current situation.

So now comes the dilemma of where to send him.  Joe and I have a challenging schedule in that doing the 6:00 news means I can't leave to pick up the kids until 6:30.  99.9% of daycares close AT 6:30 pm or earlier.   And if you know anything about daycares, you know they don't give you a 10 minute buffer. So it's a juggling act.  All parents have some sort of juggling act, it's just finding the right number of balls you can keep in the air for your own family. 

Do we move Joey and leave Jude where she is?  I hate to seperate them, but she's thriving in her current environment.  Should I try to hold out on moving Joey until the fall when he can enroll in a 3-year old pre-school or should I try to move him now to a daycare where there are other 3 & 4 year olds? He's REALLY ready now.   

We went to visit one place recently.  Great for Joey and I thought about switching Jude there too, but they don't do afternoon naps?  She definitely needs an afternoon nap....who doesn't do afternoon naps for  1-year olds?  .. it's always something.

I play the options over and over again in my mind and always have that nagging "You should be a stay-at-home Mom" thought in the back of my head.  Doesn't every working mother?

You just want to do what's best for your kids, so they will grow and socialize and thrive as best they can.  It's the change you worry about.  Will they adapt to the new place? how quickly?  Will it be traumatic? (probably more for me than for the kids). Then we have to change in another year, when he definitely needs to go to pre-school.

Oi, the growing pains.  I can't believe my baby is getting too old for daycare...sniff, sniff

I've written about vaccines before, but if you're struggling to find the balance between being a good steward of public health and keeping your kids safe, this might be an option.

Working in the news can be a curse sometimes, especially when you're a parent.  I read and consume every horrible thing that's out there to hurt your children.  I go home at night with my head filled with probable cause statements about child molestors, recalls of cribs that will strangle and studies about toys that will poison your child.   If you try to digest it all, you'll get sick.  So ignoring some of it, is the best policy.  But you have to figure out what the biggest risks are for your children....or at least in YOUR mind, what are the biggest risks?

I can not get away from the parents I've talked to over the years, who are convinced that Vaccines caused a severe problem with their children's health.  From Autism, to the rare case where a child died after getting the MMR Vaccine. 

When Jude was born and that vaccine scheduled was laid out for me again, I felt like I had to do something to calm the fears in my head.

I'm one of those people that can see both sides of it (I guess that's a good thing for a journalist)  When my pediatrician tells me how important the vaccines are for my kids and it could save their life, I nod my head and understand.  I DO understand...I know vaccines are considered one of the greatest medical breakthroughs in the last two centuries.  I don't want my child to come down with Hep A or Chicken Pox or Rubella, so YES, please protect them.

But then, there's Ruth Dunigan, who swears her son David developed Autism after getting his DTP vaccine.  I've heard from other parents with similar stories.  Being a parent, you can't just discount these mothers and their instincts.  I believe a mother knows, she knows if something changed her child.

It's a dilemma and a controversy that won't be solved anytime soon.  Here's the approach I decided to take.  Instead of letting the doctor's office give Jude 4 vaccinations at one time.  We spread them out.  Somehow the thought of her little body taking in 4 vaccines at once doesn't make much sense.  So we do one shot and then we wait 2 weeks to do the next one. 

Yes it takes a lot of time and yes we make a lot of trips to the doctor and YES, they seem kind of annoyed by it.  But you have to stay strong.  Take the steps you feel good about to make sure your child's health care is exactly what you think it should be.   

One more story to leave you with, a friend of mine took her daughter to her pediatrician here in Springfield.  Her 2-year old had a fever of almost 104.  The doctor examined her, said it might be Strep, but then sent the mother and child home without doing a swab to test for strep.  It makes no sense, I know.  This is a good doctor too, I know his reputation.  Maybe he was having an off day. 

My friend didn't feel right about it, but she left the doctor's office with her daughter because the doctor didn't do anything else.  When she got home and called HER mother, her Mother said "You go back to that doctor and demand a strep test"  So that's what she did.  And it was positive. 

Moral of the story:  Mother's have an instinct about their child's heath and you need to follow that instinct.  Doctors CAN be wrong. 

The other Moral of the Story: Grandmothers always know what to do :)

Jude turns 1 year old today. Life has not been the same since she was born.

In a good way. 

I look at her now and it still brings a twinge of pain.  When she was born, Joe and I were so heartbroken over the challenges we perceived she would be facing, because she looks different. Her surgery at 6 months old was the hardest thing I've gone through in my life.  I never thought cutting her arm open, narcotics and painful rehabilitation would be something my baby daughter would have to go through.  But she did.  

It was a valuable lesson to me that you can't take anything for granted, like "getting pregnant will result in a perfectly healthy child with no problems"  It's not a given, like I thought it was. 

A year later I'm little wiser, just a little bit.  I don't fear for her future like I used to and I think she is going to blow us away with everything she will be able to do.

 A shorter arm, 3 fingers. ... What does it really matter?  If she can do everything she wants to do, who cares if she looks different?  I don't and neither does the rest of her family.  Hopefully she will come to realize that it's not important.  What's inside is all that matters.

She's learning to crawl right now, using both her arms.  She's starting to stand up and balance on both her legs. She makes this funny giggle when we give her a new food she likes.  She lights up when her big brother or our Labrador Duey come in the room.  She scoots on her butt to get around and she laughs if we tell her "No, don't put your hand in Duey's water bowl"  She loves the water and bathtime.  She cries if she's lonely.  She is starting to say "uh oh" and "hi" and she waves bye-bye when I leave for work in the morning.

All reasons to celebrate.  It's been a year of what I perceived to be a tragedy in the beginning, but now I realize a triumph over my own pre-conceived notions of what is right and what is wrong.  What is good and what is bad.  What is really hard to deal with and what is not. 

 We'll be doing a big family birthday party for Jude this weekend and I can't think of a happier occasion since her birth a year ago.