Pestilence

Evan is home from school today insisting that he is sick.  he doesn't look too bad to me, but his mate had some bug that had him off school for a few days and Evan is convinced that he has it too. It consists of upset tummy, headaches, general body aches, sore throat and runny nose.  Harry has decided that he's coming down with it too as he went off to school with a headache today. I gave him a dose of Nurophen and told him to call me if he got worse. Steve was complaining about aches and is a tad nervous as he has to fly to Sydney tomorrow for a job interview.  He doesn't want to be sick for that. I feel fine, Ellie seems fine and Sarah left at 6 this morning for a volleyball competition in Byron Bay.  I am assuming she's fine too.  I always find that the path of disease as it spreads through the family is slightly different each time.  A different mix of people seem to catch it, and a different person gets it worse than the others.  Usually, the pattern is that one gets it quite bad, one doesn't get it at all and the rest inevitably catch a slightly less virulent version over the ensuing days.

The other pestilence Evan visited on us today is a very annoying piece of malware that he downloaded onto my computer last night.  I have spent all day removing programmes, doing scans and removing shortcuts to get rid of the bugger.  So annoying and frustrating to have your computer hijacked.  I think he's banned from this computer from now on.

The last great pestilence epidemic that Evan visited upon the family was back in 2002 when he brought home chicken pox. Harry was a babe in arms so was spared the disease due to being protected by my immunity as I had already had chicken pox when I was a child.

Sarah, succumbed next followed by Steve with each successive victim getting a worse dose than the last. I must admit that I wasn't the most sympathetic to everyone's plight as I found the whole thing quite amusing.  They were dreadfully uncomfortable and I sat there perfectly comfortable, feeling like I had super powers as my immunity protected me.

 A few years after the event I wrote a couple of  children's stories about them.

No Spots For Harry

 

Evan came home from Preschool one day with a few spots on his skin.

 

 

“Mmmmm”, thought Mummy, “they look like they might be chicken pox”.

 

She wasn’t sure because she hadn’t seen any chicken pox since she had had them when she was four.

 

That was a long time ago.

 

She remembered that they were very itchy and that she had had a lot more spots than Evan had.

 

 

Two weeks later, Sarah who was a little older than Evan, came out in quite a lot of spots.

 

“Yes”, thought Mummy, “They must be chicken pox”.

 

 

Daddy started to worry.  He couldn’t remember whether he had had chicken pox when he was little or

 

not. 

 

He rang up Ninny and Pa.  But they couldn’t remember either.

 

 

Two days after Sarah broke out in spots, Daddy who is a lot older than Sarah and Evan, broke out in

 

loads and loads of spots.  Really itchy spots. 

 

From his head to his toes and everywhere in between.

 

He was miserable!

 

 

Although Sarah and Evan were feeling a little itchy themselves they couldn’t help thinking that Daddy

 

looked very funny.

 

 

There was one other person in the family who had not yet come out in any spots.

 

Mummy, Daddy, Sarah and Evan waited and wondered whether Harry, the youngest in the family at

 

only six months, would get any spots.

 

But Harry, who liked to snuggle up and breastfeed happily in Mummy’s arms didn’t get any spots at

 

all.

 

 

Because Mummy had already had chicken pox as a child she couldn’t get them again.  She had an

 

immunity to them.  It was this immunity that she passed to Harry through her breastmilk.  Harry was

 

protected from chicken pox because he was breastfed.

 

 

Harry and Mummy being so healthy, looked after the rest of the family.

 

Evan had a few little itches so on went the calamine lotion.  That helped him a lot.

 

 

Sarah had lots of itches so on went the calamine lotion.  But it didn’t help enough.

 

So she got into the bath as well.  That helped a lot.

 

 

Daddy was beside himself with itches.  Every spot from the top of his head to the tip of his big toe

 

itched – especially  the one right on the end of his nose!

 

On went the calamine lotion.  It didn’t help at all.

 

So into the bath he went.  But that didn’t help either!

 

 

So he went off to see the doctor.  But even the doctor couldn’t help him very much.  Poor Daddy!

 

The Doctor said that Daddy had to try not to scratch and wait for his spots to get better.

 

 

It was a long few weeks.

 

And Daddy did eventually get better.......

 

 

All  except for that one spot that left a scar right on the end of his nose!

 

 

Here is version 2

No Spots For Me!

 

One day Evan came home from preschool with a few         . 

 

Mmmm, ‘thought mummy they look like they might be the dreaded chicken pox.’ 

 

We hadn’t had any chicken pox in our young family yet. 

 

2 weeks later Sarah who was a little older than Evan came out with quite a few         . 

 

Daddy started to worry.  He couldn’t remember whether he had got the chicken pox as a kid. 

 

Mummy well remembered having chicken pox as a child.  ‘Ooh it was so itchy.’ 

 

Two days after Sarah broke out in

        , Daddy who is alot older than Evan or Sarah, broke out in ALOT of spots.  He was miserable. 

 

There was one other person in the family who had not had chicken pox yet.  Harry, the youngest in the family at only 6 months didn’t get any          at all. 

 

So while Harry was breastfed from mummy they were both protected fromthe dreaded                                           

        .  Harry and mummy looked after the rest of the family. 

 

Evan had a few little itches. 

So on went the cream. 

Sarah had lots of itches.

So into the bath with her.

 

Daddy was beside himself with itches.  He was covered from head to toe including the one right on the end of his nose.

 

Daddy was frustrated. 

 

After a week the dreaded          started to fade away. 

Still mummy and Harry did not get those dreaded itches. 

 

After 2 weeks it was back to normal and they lived happily ever after. 

There is a postscript to this story.

Although we thought that Harry was immune from catching the chicken pox virus, some years later, when he was around 4 years old, he came down with shingles. This was an odd occurrence in a four year old, particularly one who'd never actually had chicken pox.  As it was an oddity we were sent to a paediatrician to have a look at him and check that all was well.  The specialist conformed that it was indeed rare, but not unheard of for Harry to get shingles at such a young age.  The specialist concluded that Harry obviously got a subclinical dose of chicken pox when he was a baby, and this virus had laid dormant in his body until he came down with shingles.  He also told us that Harry would not need to be immunised for chicken pox as he now had his own natural immunity to it.

That sounded great, except that two weeks after presenting with shingles, Harry came down with chicken pox. I didn't spend the $100 plus to go back to the specialist and show him that Harry had managed to catch chicken pox off himself.  I'm sure he would have presented as a very special oddity, but I didn't want to foot the bill to show the paediatrician, so he shall remain  a medical obscurity.

Baby led weaning

The main idea behind baby led weaning is to trust your baby to make good food choices by providing them with a range of foods that they can eat at each meal.  Their instinctive needs and likes and dislikes will drive their food choices.  Although each individual meal may not look balanced as babies often favour  just one or two food groups, their overall diet will tend toward being balanced over the course of a few days.

I decided to give baby led weaning a go with Ellie. Certain aspects of it were not that dissimilar to the way that I introduced solids with the other three.  I started them all at around six months when they were old enough to be able to sit up by themselves and to be able to hold onto food.  A lot of the food was finger food, but I did use some purees as well.

I remember the first thing that I fed Sarah was rice cereal, which promptly set like concrete inside her and she had great difficulty passing it out the other end.  Evan presented problems as he had eczema and I wanted to be very careful which foods I introduced and in which order.  The thinking back then was to introduce foods one at a time and wait a few days to see if there was a reaction before introducing the next food.  This was rather time consuming and I can remember us getting stuck with just eating pumpkin for a very long period of time.  Not surprisingly, he is not that fussed on pumpkin to this day. With Harry I don't remember too much about the solids stage except that it was really messy, and with carpet under the dining table I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees scrubbing it clean again.

Ellie, like Evan suffered eczema, so I was a little dubious about introducing foods haphazardly and simultaneously.  But if I was going to give this baby led weaning a go, that was what I had to do.  I must say that I got a pleasant surprise, with the introduction of food, far from getting worse as I had feared, her eczema improved.  Now she has very little eczema, so I was wondering if a restricted diet could have been the cause rather than the cure.

To start with very little if any food goes down. By handing baby chunks of fruits and vegetables they either taste them or toss them depending on their mood.  At first, Ellie was quite suspicious of this food thing, as when she shook it, it didn't make a noise.  Once she got past that she would then feel it by squishing it in her hand. As she was used to handling toys, she preferred foods that were nice and solid.  Banana, initially, was way too squishy and she wasn't interested in that at all.

The thing that mainly worries mums about baby led weaning is the fear of baby choking on a piece of food.  Obviously, you don't leave baby alone with food, but also,try not to be overly protective and watch them obsessively either.  Yes, it's true babies do gag their way through for the first few weeks.  This can be a little hair raising, but it's worth remembering that the gag reflex is a protective one, and it is natural.  It actually stops them from choking, so if you hear the gag reflex in action you know that baby is doing exactly the right thing and learning how to deal with chunks of food in her mouth. The gag reflex in a six month old baby is quite a long way forward in the mouth, about half way along the tongue.  I watched Ellie gag on a small piece of food and when I looked into her mouth I could clearly see the food sitting about halfway back in her mouth and no where near the windpipe. What she was doing was biting small pieces of food off, moving it around her mouth with her tongue, if it went in too far she'd gag it back to the front, and then she'd use her tongue thrust to push the food out of her mouth when she had finished with it.  She really wasn't bringing anything to the back of her mouth to be swallowed in the beginning.

This is where continuing with milk feeds is still so important.  You may have 'officially started solids' but the amount that baby is actually eating is negligible. Again, this means you need to trust your baby  and give her time to be able to learn how to eat, because this is exactly what she is doing.  Eating is a many step process and she needs to learn each one and also start to associate this food concept with the concept of hunger.  For Ellie, this took until she was about 9 months before she really started to 'need' food. Her nappies were still predominately consisting of the breastfeeding poo, nice and sweet smelling, with chunks of undigested food in them. Around nine months she started to pass some smellier poohs and she started to be really hungry for food.  Breast milk was still making up the majority of her diet but it became evident that it was no longer enough.

The great thing about baby led weaning is that baby eats what the family is eating.  It is so easy to just put a little aside on a plate for baby.  They sit up with the family and share meal times and they enjoy being a part of family life.  Basically, anything goes with food, so long as you are mindful about keeping it healthy and avoiding junk food.  Spicy food may need to be used with caution too, but that's not to say we haven't tried it on Ellie with some funny results. One meal laden with chilli made her bounce up and down in her seat and we could almost see the proverbial steam coming out of her ears. Ooops, maybe that was a bit too hot, mental note to tone it down a bit next time.
How we wish we'd had the camera handy that time!