![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Two months, grandparental health issues.
Jul. 12th, 2007 10:03 pmEvelyn's two-month doctor appointment was this morning. Two months! Can you believe my baby is already two months old? She now weighs 12 pounds, 6 ounces and is 23 3/4 inches, which is 90th percentile for both. Head is around 50th percentile--I never really realized they checked head size so the numbers don't stick in my head very well. He said--but only when I specifically asked him to check, which I think is an important distinction since he'd already examined her--that her head may have a mild flat spot on the left side, but he wasn't particularly concerned about it. Then she had an oral vaccine that she loved (she would be oh-so-happy if I would just let her drink stuff more often, it seems) and then three nasty shots. That was very hard on... me. ;)
I was very, very happy with the nurse for making a point to ask me if we wanted to vaccinate her at all, though, since I refused the HepB shot at birth. M and I have decided to do the vaccination thing, but I just didn't feel the urgency on doing it at birth. I haven't done a significant amount of research on the pros and cons, like I once planned to. I was gearing up for the fight if we decided not to, but once we actually started talking about it, we decided not to bother resisting. I just have a gut feeling that there are acceptable risks with many things, and it's hard to deny that vaccines have done a lot of good things over the years--polio, etc. The idea that my child is safe from these diseases only because nearly everyone else has been vaccinated and therefore there aren't that many opportunities for her to catch them just doesn't feel all that secure to me, or that socially responsible. I suppose I might feel differently if she reacts badly to them.
Anyway, she is looking good. M was with me, which was good because I wasn't sure how I would handle them sticking my baby. That was not so much fun, and she screamed, as expected, and I wanted to cry with her, but I did alright in the end. She shut up as soon as I offered her a snack, and she's been asleep basically all day, and a little more whiny than usual. Poor little baby. She cried a bit when she was awake, but mainly she just seems like she feels very... small, and tired, and sad in a weary sort of way. I, of course, feel crappy for causing her to be hurt. Parenting is fun.
Oh, by the way. Is this weird? While the doctor was examining her, he whipped a tongue depressor out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in her mouth. He had a few in there, and they were just hanging around with some other stuff.. a bit of paper and some other sort of medical supplies. Am I just being a fussbudget or would you think that he should have not been carrying around unwrapped in his pocket something he was going to stick in someone's mouth? I didn't expect it, so didn't have time to say anything, even if I had wanted to, but I was certainly surprised by it.
When I called my mom to tell her about the super-giant grandbaby, she was at the emergency room. My grandmother was in pretty bad shape. She's far gone with Alzheimer's, but she caught pneumonia last week and she had some other problems this morning. She isn't over the pneumonia, apparently, and now she has a severe kidney infection, so they've admitted her to the hospital. I feel a bit adrift--I feel like we should go up to see her, but it's a ninety minute drive and they didn't tell me she was in the hospital until four, and I couldn't take Evelyn in with me anyway. Evelyn met her great-grandmother for the first time week before last, and as sad as it is--Evelyn was just about as aware of the situation as Mamaw was. You know, four years ago, I couldn't bring myself to think about what was happening to her and I just put off dealing with it. Turns out that you never get accustomed to something like that, and I still haven't really dealt with it, either. I've been a miserable, awful granddaughter because I should have been there more to help. If my mom/family talks about me like they do my dad's brother, who has been very absent during his mother's illness, I completely deserve it.. if I'm honest with myself. They never say that to me but it's how I feel.
Meanwhile, my mom's dad has prostate surgery coming up. He's been going to all of his doctors to get cleared for the surgery, and the first thing they find is that his kidney function is impaired, so they send him for a bunch of tests. Turns out that he has chronic kidney disease! I told my mom that I am just going to stop calling her because she never has good news. I am trying hard not to worry about that but they said that on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is (according to Dr. Google) kidney failure, he's a 3. That doesn't strike me as positive news. *sigh* I am lucky to be nearing thirty and still having 3/4 of my grandparents (sorta) but is it so wrong that I want Evelyn to be nearing thirty with 3/4 of my grandparents still living?
I take that back about Mom never having good news. Last week, she called to tell me that my cousin's baby's heart murmur turned out to be nothing to worry about. That was nice. Oh, and a month or two ago, she called because my aunt had good news--a guy had come by while my uncle was out of town. He was looking for my uncle to let him know that he had won a brand-new riding lawn mower, pull-behind cart thing and weed-eater. The lawn mower is the exact one that M and I just bought at the beginning of May, and my uncle had been talking about needing a new mower for a while. It's actually funny because while we were buying the lawn mower, I fell into cuteness-love with the cart thing, for no particular reason, and then he ended up winning one. He had bought a charity raffle ticket from some kid, and then he actually won it. That never happens! Which, this is a pretty random story because you don't know my aunt--the one who came to visit with my mom this week--or uncle, but still. Free riding lawn mower, yay!
I was very, very happy with the nurse for making a point to ask me if we wanted to vaccinate her at all, though, since I refused the HepB shot at birth. M and I have decided to do the vaccination thing, but I just didn't feel the urgency on doing it at birth. I haven't done a significant amount of research on the pros and cons, like I once planned to. I was gearing up for the fight if we decided not to, but once we actually started talking about it, we decided not to bother resisting. I just have a gut feeling that there are acceptable risks with many things, and it's hard to deny that vaccines have done a lot of good things over the years--polio, etc. The idea that my child is safe from these diseases only because nearly everyone else has been vaccinated and therefore there aren't that many opportunities for her to catch them just doesn't feel all that secure to me, or that socially responsible. I suppose I might feel differently if she reacts badly to them.
Anyway, she is looking good. M was with me, which was good because I wasn't sure how I would handle them sticking my baby. That was not so much fun, and she screamed, as expected, and I wanted to cry with her, but I did alright in the end. She shut up as soon as I offered her a snack, and she's been asleep basically all day, and a little more whiny than usual. Poor little baby. She cried a bit when she was awake, but mainly she just seems like she feels very... small, and tired, and sad in a weary sort of way. I, of course, feel crappy for causing her to be hurt. Parenting is fun.
Oh, by the way. Is this weird? While the doctor was examining her, he whipped a tongue depressor out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in her mouth. He had a few in there, and they were just hanging around with some other stuff.. a bit of paper and some other sort of medical supplies. Am I just being a fussbudget or would you think that he should have not been carrying around unwrapped in his pocket something he was going to stick in someone's mouth? I didn't expect it, so didn't have time to say anything, even if I had wanted to, but I was certainly surprised by it.
When I called my mom to tell her about the super-giant grandbaby, she was at the emergency room. My grandmother was in pretty bad shape. She's far gone with Alzheimer's, but she caught pneumonia last week and she had some other problems this morning. She isn't over the pneumonia, apparently, and now she has a severe kidney infection, so they've admitted her to the hospital. I feel a bit adrift--I feel like we should go up to see her, but it's a ninety minute drive and they didn't tell me she was in the hospital until four, and I couldn't take Evelyn in with me anyway. Evelyn met her great-grandmother for the first time week before last, and as sad as it is--Evelyn was just about as aware of the situation as Mamaw was. You know, four years ago, I couldn't bring myself to think about what was happening to her and I just put off dealing with it. Turns out that you never get accustomed to something like that, and I still haven't really dealt with it, either. I've been a miserable, awful granddaughter because I should have been there more to help. If my mom/family talks about me like they do my dad's brother, who has been very absent during his mother's illness, I completely deserve it.. if I'm honest with myself. They never say that to me but it's how I feel.
Meanwhile, my mom's dad has prostate surgery coming up. He's been going to all of his doctors to get cleared for the surgery, and the first thing they find is that his kidney function is impaired, so they send him for a bunch of tests. Turns out that he has chronic kidney disease! I told my mom that I am just going to stop calling her because she never has good news. I am trying hard not to worry about that but they said that on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is (according to Dr. Google) kidney failure, he's a 3. That doesn't strike me as positive news. *sigh* I am lucky to be nearing thirty and still having 3/4 of my grandparents (sorta) but is it so wrong that I want Evelyn to be nearing thirty with 3/4 of my grandparents still living?
I take that back about Mom never having good news. Last week, she called to tell me that my cousin's baby's heart murmur turned out to be nothing to worry about. That was nice. Oh, and a month or two ago, she called because my aunt had good news--a guy had come by while my uncle was out of town. He was looking for my uncle to let him know that he had won a brand-new riding lawn mower, pull-behind cart thing and weed-eater. The lawn mower is the exact one that M and I just bought at the beginning of May, and my uncle had been talking about needing a new mower for a while. It's actually funny because while we were buying the lawn mower, I fell into cuteness-love with the cart thing, for no particular reason, and then he ended up winning one. He had bought a charity raffle ticket from some kid, and then he actually won it. That never happens! Which, this is a pretty random story because you don't know my aunt--the one who came to visit with my mom this week--or uncle, but still. Free riding lawn mower, yay!
