Three Resources for Surviving Newborns

I was talking to Amy yesterday and I realized that we have a lot of friends who are either currently pregnant or just had a baby (congratulations!). One of the things that gets really, REALLY old is parenting advice that goes something to this tune:

Random Person: Oh, you're going to do that with your kid? Well, I love my kid so we do this instead.

Me: Really? Okay well thanks for letting me know that you think I don't love me kids.

Anyways, in lieu of advice, here are some resources Amy and I used that we found really super useful:

1) The Wonder Weeks App. It costs 2 bucks, it's available for Android or Apple, and it's amazing. Turns out that almost every baby has mental leaps in their development around the same times and during these leaps they will do their best to break you like a Kit Kat bar (Good luck during week 5, we've been there). The app lets you know what to expect during the leaps, what mental abilities they'll start displaying after the leap, and a handy chart showing how close your child is to the next one.

2) The five types of Baby Cries. Turns out babies can communicate what they need. This was very helpful because it let us address what they needed instead of blindly guessing. Here's a short summary of the 5 types of cries, but the Oprah video in the link gives a good example of how the cries sound.

1. Heh - Baby is not comfortable (Too hot, too cold, dirty diaper, foot stuck, Timmy fell down a well? Who knows, babies are a mystery, but it's definitely something)
2. Owh - I'm sleepy, the sound is made as a reflex when the baby yawns. On our second it usually comes out like oo-wha
3. Neh - I'm hungry. When the baby get's hungry they have a sucking reflex so their tongue goes to the roof of their mouth making the "N" sound
4. Eh - Baby needs to burp
5. Eair - It's a deeper sound than the other cries and means baby has gas. Sometimes accompanied with baby pulling their knees up or pushing down with their legs.

3) Cutting out dairy. Okay, okay, this one is half advice, but it really is just meant as a resource for your benefit. My first born was borderline colicky. He was not happy about being out of his perfectly regulated, feed on demand, water bed womb and made sure everyone knew it. After 2 months of misery for all of us, Amy read that some kids are just sensitive to dairy introduced through momma's milk.

She cut it out of her diet and shortly there after first born's gas problems disappeared, he stopped crying non-stop, it was wonderful. If you got a kid who won't stop crying, it's worth a shot to cut our dairy, but a word of warning. It is in stinkin' everything.

It is crazy hard work to get dairy out of your diet. And no sooner are you successful then you go out to eat and the cook in the back is too lazy or incompetent to realize that it's not enough to not put anything dairy on the skillet when he makes your meal, he has to clean the skillet or work area prior to making your meal and now you got a kid who won't stop screaming, his poop is mucousy, and his mother is contemplating beating someone within an inch of their life with a spatula.

Well that's it. Good luck and remember, you can survive this.

Three Resources for Surviving Newborns

The Pointless Vilification of Vaccination and Anti-Vaccination

Sometimes, I swear I talk to people and what they hear is "I'm a backwater inbred hick without an ounce of understanding and I hate my kids."

When instead what I said was, "Other people would lump me together with anti-vaxers."

This is a multifaceted and extremely complex issue that I think both sides overly vilify the other over. I've wanted to talk about it when things were more calm, but people get crazy worked up about it so it's hard to find a good time.

So let me start with a quick setup to the question: "Why would other people lump me together with anti-vaxers?"

The unfortunate answer is because I dare to ask some basic questions about the current vaccination schedule. That's it, the big dark secret is out for the whole world to see, how dare I question my betters?

While I have many, many, many questions that unduly get strangers yelling at me through the wonderful power of internet anonymity let me narrow this down to only the three most worthwhile ones.

1) Do vaccinations have hazardous side effects?

No, no, no stand down keyboard warriors. I'm not talking about Autism, though that is what most people usually have in mind when they talk about this. Undoubtedly, you've seen some chart like this one

Whoops, sorry I meant to show a chart linking vaccinations to autism. Oh well, this one is just as relevant. The problem with this chart and the vaccination to autism charts is they seek to overly simplify complex issues by saying "This and this alone is the cause for that".

I do not believe that vaccines causes autism. I think that the real underlying issues around the increase in autism are related to a decrease in infant mortality, women having children later in life (sorry that's just science for you, and is in no way meant to be any kind of personal opinion on how late in life women have kids), and, most importantly, the increased range/better identification of autistic trends.

What I mean is that when vaccines are tested they are done individually. Test subject A get's vaccine A, observed result is X repeat 10,000 times. When it's done we have a good understanding of the expected side effects of that vaccine. But when vaccines are actually given they are often given in large groups. For example, according the to CDC vaccination schedule at your child's 2 month checkup they should be given the following vaccinations:

1) Rotovirus

2) DTaP (which is a combo vaccination that protects against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough))

3) Hib (Haemophilus influenza type B) (Fun side note when first discovered in 1892 this guy was erroneously believed to be the cause of influenza)

4) PCV (pneumococcus)

5) IPV (Polio)

6) Hepatitis B (Second Dose)

How do these shots interact together? What are the known side effects? We don't know. To the best of my knowledge there is no significant testing done on how shots interact together nor is there any requirement to report side effects that may be a result of a combination of shots instead of a side effect of one specific shot.

That's a problem that the CDC or WHO or some other responsible medical group needs to tackle to ensure that the schedule is having kids get shots as safely as possible.

2) Why should we do a one size fits all schedule?

When you go to a doctor for treatment they take the time to get your weight, height, and age at a minimum before prescribing any kind of treatment. But so help you if you deviate one iota from the all powerful vaccination schedule. It's like some people know that schedule better than they know the 10 commandments. Come on, now!

A rational person should immediately recognize that inherent dangers of blindly adhering to a one size fits all medical regimen. But not only do people try to shame those who say, "You know what little Timmy really doesn't need vaccine X right now", but we try to legislate control of a child's health out of the hands of the parents and into the hands of the state! That's insanity.

No vaccine is so prevalent on the CDC vaccination schedule in America that we are any more at risk of having a disease mutate by having a subset of the population not vaccinated against it than we are having it mutate in the already existing subset of vaccinated kids who still end up getting the disease. For that matter, we're not any more at risk for having it mutate because a subset of Americans don't get vaccinated for it than we are at risk having it mutate outside of America for the portions of the world who do not have access to the vaccination at all.

3) What's up with that vaccination schedule?

If you look back at that list above, at a child's 2 month check up, they are due for an amazing 6 different shots totaling 8 different vaccinations! By the time your child is 2 they will have needed a total of 24 shots, that means at 2 months you get 25% of the total shots your child needs by their 2nd birthday.

By the time they're 4 months old they will have received half of the shots they're supposed to get by the time their 2. In fact, I'm being generous by saying two years old. If you look at the schedule, they could (and often do) get all 24 shots by the time they are 1 years old.

This question really ties in with the second question. The schedule is far too aggressive for the average kid. There are certainly cases where this schedule would need to be followed (i.e. kids who are going to be abroad), but for the average kid, do they really need to worry about getting the polio vaccine at 2 months? A disease which the CDC reports has been wiped out from America since 1979?

Or for that matter does every newborn really need the Ilotycin eye ointment at birth? (it vaccinates against Chlamydia and Gonorrhea as well as prevents pink eye if the mother had a vaginal rupture)

Let me be clear, I fully support vaccinating kids. I'm not going to tell you how we did it with our sons because it's none of your business.

But the mere fact that I look at this and go, "You know what? I can talk this over with his doctor and together we can administer these vaccines in a manner that doesn't needlessly overload his system." by default lumped me into the anti-vaxxer camp.

Which is pure insanity.  Parents have enough on their plate without having to worry that their friends or the government is going to attack them because they are pursing sound medical advice by tailoring the vaccination schedule to meet their child's needs.

The Pointless Vilification of Vaccination and Anti-Vaccination

Mary, Martha, and a Message for Moms

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(Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Diego Velázquez, 1618)

I'm driving home from work and call my wife to let her know.  As soon as she answers the phone I can hear it in her voice; she's completely stressed out.  She's trying not to talk to me about it because she doesn't want to have a heart that is grumbling or complaining, but I can tell.

I don't hear my son yelling or crying in the background or even trying to talk to her nonstop while she's on the phone.  I ask her how he was today and she tells me he was really good.  Okay, so she's not stressed over anything my son did.

The conversation continues for another few minutes as we talk about what we each did that day and what's for dinner.  Finally, unable to figure it out on my own, I just ask her, "Is there something stressing you, my dove?"  There's silence on the other end for a moment and then, "Well... it's the house."

Oh, this subject.  My beautiful wife is nearing the third trimester of pregnancy, has an almost 3 year old son who demands nonstop attention, talks to you about everything, and wants to run and explore (provided you're there running and exploring with him).  And as the old infomercial goes, "But wait, there's more!"  She's also in a lot of pain, my son was born asynclitic.  It's said to be the second hardest type of birth (the first being breach), and one of its unfortunate side effects, for my wife at least, is some lasting bone/muscle damage that's making her second pregnancy very difficult.  She's doing some physical therapy to help, but it can only do so much.

Needless to say, she's exhausted and can't walk for long.  I've been trying to take care of the things she can't keep up with, but I'm no mom.  I'm dad, which means housework gets done like a triage ward.  So clutter can stick around for a while, dishes sometimes pile up (especially when the dishwasher is clean and needs to be unloaded), but it's not like we're living in filth mind you.  I may be dad, but even I make sure the house is sanitary

Still, seeing the clutter stresses her, not because she's a perfectionist, but because she feels like it is a constant reminder that she's not doing her wifely duties.  I know she's being serious, but it always makes me laugh when she says that.  As if the Bible taught that a wife had to do all the laundry and all the dishes and the vacuuming.  It annoys her that I laugh, but you can blame my dad for it.  He drilled it into his sons' head that there were no gender specific chores.  If mom was doing dishes or sweeping or moping we'd better be in there helping her or doing homework.  Knowing how to do laundry was my brother's fault though; he knows what he did.

So I get home and I find a picked up house.  After we got off the phone my wife felt so guilty, despite me telling her not to worry about it, that she cleaned up the clutter.  Which was sweet and I tell her thanks, but she spent the rest of the night and much of the next day in pain.  The trade off isn't worth it.

In Luke 10:38-42 we're given a unique look into Christ's friendships outside His disciples.  He comes into the home of Martha and her sister Mary was there and Jesus sat down and began to teach.  Mary sat down and listened, but I love how the King James Version puts what Martha did, "Martha was cumbered about much serving."  Not just distracted, cumbered.  She's hindered, she's hampered, she's obstructed by the serving.

Martha wasn't just making sure people had a place to sit or getting dinner ready like a good hostess, she was being obstructed by overly focusing on the material concerns of how her home looked to her guests.  And what was Jesus' response when Martha finally got mad that her sister wasn't helping?  He rebuked Martha for letting the material keep her from enjoying the spiritual.

And this isn't just a thing for pregnant moms either.  Even before the pregnancy, my son consumed my wife's energy.  But here's the thing, hardly a day goes by that my wife doesn't send me a picture of my son's smiling face, or my son snuggled up to momma all worn out.  As Jesus put it, my wife "has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

So don't get stressed out about a house that gets a little messy, don't be ashamed to invite friends over, and don't stop investing in the good portion.

Mary, Martha, and a Message for Moms