January midwife visit: first ultrasound ever · Tuesday January 17, 2012
I had my 24-week visit with my midwife yesterday. My blood pressure is something like 110/62 (I can’t remember right now, but it was definitely normal).
I was measuring a little big — the acceptable variance in uterus size is +/-2 around the number of weeks gestation. Being 24 weeks along, anywhere from 22 to 26 centimeters would be considered “normal”. I was measuring 27, though, and so my midwife suggested an ultrasound, just to make sure it’s not twins. She didn’t really think so — after feeling my tummy, she could only seem to find one head and one bottom. But we decided to go ahead and try it. I had never bothered with ultrasounds for the other pregnancies; there’s really no great reason for routine ultrasounds. While they can diagnose many important conditions beforehand, even some that can be helped with some kind of intervention, most of the time it causes unnecessary worry more than anything else.
In any case, she explored a bit and found only one baby in there, so it was probably either the baby’s position, or lots of amniotic fluid that was causing the slightly big measurement she was getting. She did note the presence of four heart chambers. I got to see some ribs and spine. That was neat. The most bizarre part was feeling the baby move, but also seeing it on the screen.
My main complaint at this time is my symphysis pubis. It’s the joint (not a very mobile one) formed by three ligaments that joins your pelvis in the front. I am one of those people whose S.P.‘s ligaments become very painful in pregnancy. It is all made worse by the fact that if/when I injure any of the other ligaments in the hip area, say, something joining my leg to my hip, it takes much much longer to heal, and it doesn’t ever really heal completely until very shortly after the pregnancy. The worst was actually my first pregnancy, where I attempted to continue exercising. The main result of this pain is that sleeping is just very uncomfortable, and rolling over in the night needs to be done very carefully, and is still usually somewhat painful. During my second pregnancy, I quit exercising as soon as I slipped and injured a ligament, and it healed very slowly, but never got as bad as the first time around. The other day, I happened to slip on the stairs and ended up sitting down pretty hard on a stair, which hurt the S.P., so here I am again. I think that’s part of why I just don’t like going to sleep and end up staying up too late. I’ve heard that getting one of those pregnancy girdles can help, so I might look into that. There’s really nothing else to be done about it, other than continuing to be careful with movement, since it’s the pregnancy hormone relaxin that causes the ligaments to be so loose in the first place, making them susceptible to injury and pain.
— Jennifer
January kid update · Tuesday January 17, 2012
“I’m learning about tractors! —This movie is not junk food,” said Caleb. The other night, we were discussing with Caleb the difference between watching a movie like Wallace & Gromit and a video about, say, fire engines. Clint made an analogy and compared a movie that’s just for fun, to being like junk food (the kids really like the Berenstain Bears book about too much junk food). Caleb looked confused, so we quickly followed up with talking about how junk food is okay to eat sometimes, but not too much, and it’s not very good for you. With other movies, like the fire engine video we were watching at that moment, you get to learn about things. So, when we popped in a new video that we picked up from a thrift store about tractors, the above was his comment about halfway through.
After we put the kids to bed tonight (the boys are still sharing Caleb’s room), we came downstairs. After a while, I heard their door open, and I heard Caleb going into the bathroom. Then after a bit, I heard, “Josh, you need to go to sleep, or you will be grouchy….Yes, Josh, you do, you need to go to sleep.” I thought it was so funny, I let them continue talking there in the hallway until Josh started crying. Then I went up and asked Caleb what was going on. “I went to use the potty, and Josh got up too, and he doesn’t want to go to bed.” I’m still tickled when the brothers have their own little dialogues. I’m sure you can guess what I tell Caleb when he doesn’t want to to go sleep.
Even though Josh still only says “oh no” and “all done”, I am encouraged that he is in fact able to produce sounds on purpose. It’s just that he’s incredibly particular about the circumstances under which he will try to do so. I have attempted several times, in vain, to try to get him to mimic the sounds of letters or words when I write a letter on the Magnadoodle. He flat out refuses to do it. However, here is what I have discovered:
The Magnadoodle is for writing a letter and drawing an associated picture or two. Nothing else. If the letter is M, D, C, or J, the picture requirement is waived, and instead, that letter is for pointing to the associated person (Mommy, Daddy, Caleb, or Josh). If I don’t draw a picture, Josh takes the pen and draws his own picture, and makes noises that apparently are telling me about the picture that starts with that letter. This is what he started doing when I began refusing to draw, but instead tried to redirect his efforts toward reproducing the sounds for those letters. However, it’s the Hooked on Phonics letter flashcards — not just any flashcards, but a particular set from Box 1 that is held together by a ring, whose letters are for mimicry. But I am not allowed to hold the flashcards. He must hold them and flip them, and it’s only under those circumstances that I can say, “Okay Josh, that’s C — kuh kuh kuh” and he repeats, “kuh-kuh-kuh”. What was really neat tonight is that on one letter — I think it was B, he started out saying da-da-da, but I continued to say the correct thing to him, making sure to show him my mouth, and he was able to pretty quickly self-correct and then say ba-ba-ba.
I read a book this past weekend called The Einstein Syndrome that helped ease a lot of my fears as far as Josh’s not talking. Also, I have read and heard from several different sources that one really ought not try to diagnose speech disorders before the age of 3 (though, if hearing troubles are suspected, those should be diagnosed right away), and reading that book helped affirm that. Basically, the thesis of the book is that not all speech delays are indicative of a problem, and people ought to recognize that while early intervention is important for genuine problems, there is a reasonably significant population of people who are quite normal (in fact, very bright), but don’t start talking at the “normal” time. Oddly, those people are usually closely related to at least three engineers (or other highly analytical fields of expertise). I don’t know that Josh is especially bright, but he is certainly related to two engineers and a physics major.
I need to find out when I started talking. According to my sister, I stopped talking entirely at one point, and then started talking again at a different time. This is interesting, because it is also one of the common things listed on symptoms of autism. As The Einstein Syndrome points out, though, non-problematic speech delay in a bright child often has outwardly overlapping symptoms with autism, and that it’s important for early intervention specialists not to jump to conclusions based oversimplified checklists. For many people who are now normal and successful adults, the book contends, it’s a good thing that there wasn’t so much paranoia about autism and early intervention before, otherwise they would likely have been subjected to a lot of unnecessary stress and therapy for their “condition”.
— Jennifer
bee update: 1/6/12: flying bees · Friday January 6, 2012
It’s over 50 degrees today, and lots of bees are outside the hive, relieving themselves. I, too, am relieved that they are still alive in there. A few weeks ago, I wrapped the hive with some insulation batting that someone let us use, so hopefully that is helping them.
— Jennifer
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Josh's noises · Thursday January 5, 2012
Josh loves onomatopoeia. I finally realized that he does in fact make a great variety of sounds when he’s making noises for things.
He likes doing animal noises, particularly ‘woof woof’ and ‘roar!’
The other night he was bouncing a ball, and he loved it when I said something like ‘bounce bounce bounce’. It cracked him up, so I kept doing it, and pretty soon he was saying something like it, too.
So I figured out that to get him to imitate sounds, I need to make it sound like a sound effect. Then he wants to imitate it.
He also knows some letters. He really likes me to write a letter on a Magnadoodle, and talk about it, and draw a picture related to it. It started one night when Clint took Caleb out and I had Josh at home alone. It was very nice to have some focused time with him, and I wrote ‘M’ and said, “M for Mommy!” and then we did C for Caleb, D for Daddy, J for Josh. He loved it and wanted me to write them over and over again. Then one day sometime after that, Clint was writing on the Magnadoodle with the kids and started to write ‘Daddy’, but before he was even done, Josh patted Clint on the chest. So that was neat. The only problem is because I happened to draw the J with a ‘hat’, he disagrees with me when I draw a J without one. He shakes his head, and doesn’t seem to accept that what I’ve drawn is a J at all.
So today, because he was jealous that Caleb was getting to work on reading, I pulled out the Hooked on Phonics letter flashcards. Just telling him the letter names wasn’t very interesting to him, so I started telling him what the letters say, and then I thought to say it repeatedly, as if making a sound effect. “This is T; T says ‘tuh’ — tuh-tuh-tuh.” He then was very happy to imitate me and say “tuh-tuh-tuh”. By doing that, I heard him say all kinds of sounds that I’ve never heard him purposely try to make before.
So I think my fears of childhood apraxia are unfounded. Apraxia is a speech coordination problem where the brain has trouble figuring out what muscles are needed to make a desired sound.
— Jennifer
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giggling · Thursday December 29, 2011
We came home from visiting family tonight, and when it was time to get ready for bed, Josh had his lambskin, bear, and blankets in Caleb’s room, because we had brought these things in from the car, but hadn’t yet put them in Josh’s room. Josh lay down on his lambskin and pulled his blanket over him, to indicate that he wanted to sleep right there.
“You want to sleep in here, Josh?” An affirmative nod.
Caleb said that he wanted to share his room with Josh. So, we shrugged and let them go to bed in the one room. We brought in Josh’s mattress and set it on the floor on the other side of the room from Caleb’s.
This is not the first time we’ve done this. The other time was when we had a power outage of unknown duration, and the house was getting colder, so we had them share a room.
This time, though, they are not going to sleep immediately. At least one of them is probably not in bed, and they are giggling, and Josh is making happy noises of various sorts, and we can hear Caleb talking to him. I have no idea what they’re doing, but I’m glad they’re happy. This, in my mind, is the stuff of sibling bonding and fond memories later on.
— Jennifer