April 2001 Archives

Vitamin D, Ursodiol, Rifampin, ADEK, Tylenol.

We've just finished giving Henry his morning barrage of medicine. The Rifampin is new today and the Tylenol is (we hope) a one-time thing to help with his teething pain, but we've been giving him the others pretty much every day for months. There was a time a few months ago when we were also giving him two kinds of antibiotics for an ear infection and vitamin E in addition to all the others. Although Henry does much better than he used to, it's still an exhausting way to begin the day. And he's not even sick.

Henry's been saying it. "Da da." Sometimes "Dad." Sometimes it sounds a little more like "hat." He also says "boo" in a variety of ways, sometimes trilling or raspberry-ing the "b" sound (with an accompanying spray of saliva), sometimes with a breathy "oo" sound, almost like he's practicing Lamaze breathing. Every now and then he adds consonant sounds to it: boot, boop, boob, boom, boog. He says these things in a sweet voice, musical and soft sounding. He also yells. There are two sorts of yells: a loud, I-just-like-to-hear-the-sound-of-my-voice "aaaahhhhh" and an upset, howling, take-no-prisoners banshee yell. And sometimes he grumbles and gripes, with whiny, breathy cries that may escalate into the yelling. He only seems to utter "maa maa" sounds when he's upset. Sigh.

I take my teeth for granted. Well, I did until the root canal I had last year. Now I use a Sonicare and floss religiously. But I don't think much about it. The teeth are there, I can still eat my favorite foods (chocolate and things made from chocolate).

Henry is now getting two more teeth, maybe more. (It is difficult looking into the mouth of an almost 7 month old! Almost as difficult as giving medicine, but that's a topic for another day.) It looks like his upper right eye tooth and his lower left eye tooth are about to break through his gums. And he is not happy about it. He wants to chew on everything but his mouth is now in a state where it usually hurts him to do so.

He got his first two teeth at four and a half months; it seems as though he has been teething since he was two and a half months old. What must it be like? Does it feel for him the way the root canal felt for me, but all over his mouth? And I suppose he doesn't understand what is happening. What is causing his jaw, ears, nose, and gums this pain? Why can't Mom and Dad make it go away? Why does nursing now hurt sometimes? No wonder he seems outraged from time to time. When his first two teeth started sticking up far enough, he began playing with them, pushing his tongue against them over and over again. It must have been surprising at first to have these new sharp things jutting up against his tongue.

We finally got off our butts and posted some more recent pictures of Henry. Weeks 21 through 26 (six months!) are now available for perusal in the gallery.

I'm on hold, waiting to be connected to "Solid Waste." We've been trying to get the city to deliver a 32 gallon trash can for some time now; we have been more than filling our 20 gallon can since Henry's arrival. We have our own 32 gallon trash can, but the city insists that we use their approved 32 gallon container. Until they get organized enough to deliver it to us, we are stuck with the smaller can but continue to be charged for the larger one. Sigh. And so, I am on hold. I think this is the fourth phone call we've made about this. I've checked my mail, read the misc.kids.breastfeeding news group, read a bunch of web logs, nursed Henry until he got too curious about the phone (he actually hung it up once, too!)... Finally, I'm talking with a human! Yes. Oh, rats. Back on hold. He's checking with his supervisor. Which is probably good. I presented the whole sad story. Maybe we'll actually get an approved waste receptacle this time! Wow, I actually spoke with the supervisor, Dave Lindsay. He says he'll intervene and we should get our can in the next few days. I can't wait.

In the early days of Amazon customer service, when a customer would ask to speak to a supervisor, we had to pretend. At first, we tried telling them that we had no supervisor. (At that point in the company's growth, our supervisor would have been Jeff Bezos.) But they didn't go for that; of course we had to have a supervisor. So, we'd just pass the customer off to one another and act supervisorial.

Henry whacked himself on the forehead today. He was sitting in front of me—I was supposed to be spotting him—irresistably attracted to one of the wheels on his dad's Aeron chair. I had just gotten through saying to Brad something like "We ought to supervise him a bit more closely now that he's becoming more mobile." And I watched fascinated, proud of his skills and curiosity, as he reached, reached, reached out for the Aeron chair and then lunged forward... There was a sickening, heart stopping, earth shaking, glass shattering thud (I was hearing with a mom's ears, I guess) as his forehead met the leg of the chair. He started crying a bit and I sat there sort of stunned with anxiety as Brad scooped him up and held him. Then came the big cry, the one he only uses when he is hurting bad, the one where he starts to cry and then doesn't make a sound and doesn't seem to breathe for seconds, minutes, eons and then finally breathes in and finishes with a agonized wail.

Now, ten minutes later, he's gurgling and raspberrying and laughing his breathy little laugh in his exersaucer, oblivious to the welt on his forehead. I've thus far resisted the urge to look up "concussion" in the baby care books.