My Elective Induction

Introducing Marmoset

The last few months of my pregnancy turned a bit crazy. Everything was shaping up for a typical third trimester till I finally asked my OB what was safe to take for these incredibly awful itching fits I was having, especially at night. They had been getting worse for weeks and I'd finally reached my breaking point. She suggested benedryl and claritin and told me to let her know if it was worse at the next appointment.

Indeed, the meds did not improve the itching so she ran some blood tests. She mentioned a couple of possibilities, among them ICP, which would require an early induction. I scoffed. She knew I'm a hands off patient. I would never consent to an early induction. Then she said the word all pregnant women fear - stillbirth.

I did what any person would. I immediately hit the internet and binged on every piece of information I could find. Unfortunately, what I found was conflicting. There seemed to be a few houses of thought on ICP. Some believe the disease is overly hyped and risks to the baby are due to other undiagnosed issues that tend to coincide with severe ICP. Others believe it is under diagnosed and the criteria for diagnosis should be widened. The one thing I did read over and over again was that the results of the blood test used to diagnose ICP can change quickly. It can go from a normal level to what is considered by most doctors to be dangerous overnight with no warning.

I found a couple of support groups through the ICP Care website. Over the next few weeks I watched women comparing bile acid numbers, seeing how they truly could triple or quadruple in a week. I found women whose doctors were proactive putting them on medicine to lower their bile acid when their levels were lower than mine. Then I saw women like me. My doctor was among those that only felt worst case scenarios needed treatment. So my levels, to her, were not worthy of diagnosis or treatment. By the fourth blood test she had decided my levels weren't going to change (they were only slightly increasing with each test) and further testing was unnecessary.

At this point I'd been getting an average of 2-3 hours of sleep a night for months. Not much in this world is more persistent than a hormonal woman, except perhaps a sleep deprived, hormonal woman. I called my nurse pleading with her to do another blood test. I was bawling by the end of the phone call. My doctor had told me we would keep an eye on it, but here, in the last weeks, when levels were most likely to spike she abandoned me. My nurse convinced her to do one more draw.

It is recommended that women with ICP deliver by 38 weeks. I went into my 38 week appointment ready to argue. I was told that I was being stupid, but that she was willing to induce. She was tired of me calling for results and tired of me insisting on getting retested. According to her I did not have ICP.

I went in to be induced that night. At check in the nurse asked why I was being induced and after my convoluted answer covering the whole situation she summed up with, "So... elective induction." After a long pause I answered, "Yes, I guess so."

By far the easiest, shortest birth I ever had. Under 12 hours! Want to know the funny thing? The final blood test came back a few hours after I gave birth. My bile levels had finally gone out of what my doctor considered normal range (mind you these were results from blood drawn over a week before). My doctor only came to see me once after the birth where she said, "Well, at least we don't have to draw any more blood." The rest of my stay she sent her intern.

Moral of the story: Listen to your instincts.
Moral number two: Don't argue with a pregnant woman.

Week Six, Seven and a Note on Organization

I'm glad I started the school year early because it's been hard with all the appointments (speech for Howler is now twice a week plus all the extra OB appointments here at the end) to do everything I wanted to do. We're about three weeks behind on science, but oh well. They're enjoying it and that's what matters. We're still on schedule for basic work which I can't believe. Two months in and all I've had to shuffle is science. Oh, shuffle, here let me explain a bit better how our system works. I have a monster 2" binder with two sets of binder tabs, one for each of the older kids.

I put a week's worth of work under each tab, when this binder is full I am planned five weeks out. The girls have their own binders (color coded so they know immediately which is their's) I fill Sunday night. Since I have the days of each week separated by post-its, it's easy to move each day over to the tabs in their binders.

I've already stripped the binding off all the workbooks and three hole punched them so they are in the back of my monster binder. When I get down to one or two weeks prepped, I start shifting pages around to refill the vacant tabs.

It's been a serious time saver. I don't have to find all the workbooks, tab which page they are on, make sure no one skips pages (which always happens when working IN books), etc. They also know exactly what is expected of them for the week and in some cases happily do a week's worth of their independent work by Tuesday.

Did I mention in my last school post how much I am LOVING REAL Science Odyssey?? Because seriously, I am LOVING this and so are the kids!

Crustaceans

Playing with rolly-pollies is one of my earliest memories. And I have to admit they are just as much fun as an adult as they were as a child. If you can't tell from the pictures the girls loved this science lesson!

It took a lot of convincing for them to release them.

One of our red claw crabs happened to meet an untimely death (no, not on purpose, but it did work well into our plans) so we got to look over his carcass as well.

Fish


We used my infrared thermometer to check the temperature of the water and fish so they could see that they were the same. We didn't expect the fish the think the laser sight was edible. They thought it was hilarious and have been teasing the fish with it all week.

Measuring fish in a tank was harder than expected, but what better time to teach about estimation. I don't advocate pulling fish out of a tank to measure and weigh. It stresses them out so estimation will do.

One of the books had a picture of a large walk through aquarium which caught Tamarin's attention. I wish we could go to the Oklahoma Aquarium, but right now my bladder is not up to road trips (haha). I'm lucky to make it thirty minutes before the baby starts bouncing on my bladder so an hour and a half road trip is just not in the cards. Dragging four kids into gas station toilets is NOT my idea of a good time.

Bad Kitty Birthday Party

Count on my kids to pick the most obscure birthday themes. Tamarin wanted a bad kitty birthday based on the Bad Kitty Book Series. I did the best I could.

 

The first picture book has always been a favorite of ours. It inspired the table decorations, penguin pizza, jellyfish jelly, insect ice cream (chocolate jimmies and gummy worms) and sardines. I used a chocolate mold to make cat prints and chocolate covered peanuts served as cat poop :) Black pom-poms for hair balls and an old table cloth torn up completed the bad kitty ambiance.

What cat wouldn't love a spilled milk bottle (The spilling was accidental actually. It turns out while food safe these bottles were not liquid competent.) With some hair bands from the dollar store, one piece of pink felt and $5 worth of black fleece I made enough tails and ears for everyone for right about $1 a kid.

I'm not sure if it topped last year's pirate party, but she was happy with it :) She also managed to wait a month before devouring the fondant bad kitty. I think that took incredible restraint on her part.

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

If you have no idea what this post is about then you've obviously been living under a rock for the last month. I have to admit I'm among those who didn't blink an eye at the videos at first, just kept scrolling, change the channel. Something about some disease and acting like a dousing of cold water on a hot day was unbearable. Whatever.

Most charities that draw my eye are about food and water shortages across the world. It's what I'm passionate about and what I've suggested people donate to many times on facebook as well as on this blog. What finally got my attention on this disease were the nay sayers, "Quit wasting ice and open your checkbook!" The more I saw this pop up on my feed the more I began to look into the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge which, as of yesterday, has raised over $50 million more for the organization than they had this time last year without this trendy obnoxious goofy annoying awareness raising phenomenon.

Then a friend posted an article about the true origin on the challenge - jerk sports celebrities being idiots with each other. Well, I have to admit they have been dunking cold liquids on each other for years (which always struck me as a strange celebratory habit) so it's not that surprising that this challenge sprouted with them. Apparently it turned into a dunk yourself or donate to someone challenge after a while. Then if I understand correctly from the couple of news stories I've seen it made it's way around to an ALS afflicted ex-baseball player and that's when ALS became the focus of donations. 

So it didn't START as the ALS ice bucket challenge therefore we should all just stop it.... Do I really need to respond to that sentiment?

"But they're spending money on ice" (please read in the whiniest voice possible), yeah.... and? Organizations raise money with things like this daily. Concerts, auctions, marathons, bike runs, lock ins, selling candy or stuff... I don't see much outrage over these things.... And in these instances the charity organizations is having to SPEND money to MAKE money. I've participated in enough charity races to know it's not cheap to put on these events. Many sponsors don't have the extra money to donate right now which means the organizations have to put up more of their own money. I know some that have opted to cancel long standing events in recent years because the cost out ways the increase in donations.

Here is a fundraiser that costs the organization NOTHING. And really? We're going to fuss over what, in most instances, is maybe a dollar or two in ice and water? The credit card company is probably taking more than that in transaction fee when you donate what has become the obligatory $10 whether you bucket up or not (because if we're going to be honest most of us common folk couldn't donate $100 to anything even if we really wanted to). Come on! 

Sure, there's gonna be those that see the bucket challenge as a self promoting moment and don't donate anything. Yeah, who cares? I know people that have shown up at charity runs/walks, haven't raised money or donated squat and still use up the resources and leave with "free" stuff. That pisses me off more than people posting videos on youtube. 

What matters are the numbers. ALS cost: $0, ALS (and a number of other charities world wide I might add): Millions and millions of dollars. You can't argue with that. I wouldn't be surprised if you see other charity challenges pop up because this business model is brilliant. 

There's other qualms I've seen about it too. "It's not raising awareness." Before last week I had no idea what ALS was and here I am researching and about to donate to them. So, that's definitely bull. It's raising more awareness than your bra color or insinuating where you like to have sex as the so called "breast cancer awareness" facebook posts over the last many years. 

"There's people all over the world without water, it's a gross slap in the face to waste water." .... Okay, at first I kinda felt this way, but seriously? If we're gonna be honest about western culture there's plenty of other things that seem far more insensitive in terms of waste than a little bit of water and ice. Hell, how many people fill their pools with thousands of gallons of water every year and don't blink an eye. Tons of people water their lawns all summer long without a second thought to water waste. And yet we're gonna get up in arms about this? Give me a break.

Which brings me to this video:

Where my husband has been challenged. I'm making suggestions to him on who he can call out. I do hope it doesn't occur to him to call me out. We'll see here in a few hours I guess. I'll update then.

Week Four and Five: A Shocking Moment

We had two appointments, two playdates, and a birthday party to plan in week four. I brought it down to basics and skipped science this week. Nothing interesting, reading, math, that's it. I'll post pics from the birthday party later :)

Week Five:

Spiders


The insect guide is pretty good. I'm seriously thinking of ordering this when the library wants their book back :)

Nesting set in this week. I've been cleaning nearly non stop for 6 days. While clearing out a closet at the end of the house the girls started screaming about a spider. Tamarin decided to capture it to study. I was knee deep in another closet so I didn't think much of it. It's common in this house for them to retrieve mason jars from the cabinet and come begging me if they can keep their new found pet.

I was expecting this:

(We found this guy dying in the schoolroom a few days later. He's a white spotted jumping spider.... or he was.)

Instead she came to me with this:

If you can't tell, this is a brown recluse. Yes, a fiddleback hiding among the shoes at the bottom of the closet. I can't believe Tamarin managed to capture it without getting hurt. My stomach sank when I saw this and realized how bad this could have turned for my oldest. I will definitely no longer shrug off screams about spiders.

The next day I returned to this closet to finish rearranging and I found this:

This closet will be further known as the closet of death. I picked up a door organizer for the shoes. The floor is now empty (save two pairs of boots and I'm seriously thinking of moving them somewhere else). I also spread lavender and peppermint oil in every closet of the house... okay so I may have actually spread it all over every room of the house.... enough that I am now out of peppermint....

Country life, so much excitement, but it couldn't have happened during a more appropriate week. Hands on schooling!