Ex Patria

Making bedtime easy

The secret is to make them really, really tired.  Then all you have to do is pick them up and tuck them in...

Access to Reproductive Health Care

For a German it is impossible to imagine that you could go into a pharmacy with a prescription for contraception and be denied the purchase by your pharmacist on religious grounds.  I really mean this - it's impossible to even imagine this happening.  Even though we are (co-)ruled by a party that carries a big C in its name (for "Christian") we also strongly believe that pharmacies and the church should not mix.  No, that's not right.  We don't believe this, actually.  Because that would mean we consider the possibility which we simply don't.

In the US, it seems, this distinction might be breaking up, with the consent of the law:

The Bush Administration has proposed regulations that could seriously undermine the ability of American women to get basic reproductive health care, including birth control and abortion. The regulations put politics above women’s health care needs.

As currently written, the rule leaves open the possibility that based on religious beliefs institutions and individuals can deny women access to birth control. It also permits individuals to refuse to provide information and counseling about basic heath care services.  And it expands existing laws by permitting a wider range of health care professionals to refuse to provide even referrals for abortions.

For years, federal law has carefully balanced protections for individual religious liberty and patients’ access to reproductive health care. The proposed regulations appear to take patients’ health needs out of the equation, leaving millions of Americans who depend on federally funded reproductive health care services with no protections.
Via ACLU.org

You can read the draft regulations here (pdf).  There is a 30-day comment period and you can send a comment to the HHS here (ACLU) or here (PP).  It's your basic right, make use of it!

Thank you.

Colic

Yup, here we go again - a new baby, and colic.  Poor Leah is such a good baby, even with all that gas in her stomach, she doesn't wail for hours at a time like all (!) her brothers did.[1]  Instead, she scrunches up her little face when the pain hits, and strains and strains to get rid of the gas, and whimpers and groans a bit, only to calm down again and fall asleep for five or ten minutes.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Medically, it doesn't qualify for colic if the baby doesn't do the required hours of inconsolable crying.  But as a mother of four, let me tell you that my baby has colic as I define it: she has bad gas problems.

So now, after two nights of getting almost no sleep (neither her nor me), I am again investigating my diet.  Likely causes can be cow's milk, soy, wheat, tree nuts and peanuts.  I have had all of those, besides the soy. I can eat tofu, I hate soy milk.  But I drink lots of cow's milk and eat lots of dairy.  Let's try that first.  Also the nuts.  Excluding wheat will be tricky.  Oh, who am I kidding, it will be gruesome.  But then again, living without sleep is tough too.

Leah is crying again, poor mite.  I gotta go and swing by the pharmacy for a gas medication for her.  Maybe it will help.

[1] Of course, inconsolable crying for just five minutes is also not funny.  I think it stretches time, baby crying does.

UPDATE:  Simethicone might have helped, but the caraway suppositories I gave her definitely helped.  She's been asleep for three hours now for the first time in 48 hours.  Gotta love caraway.

Baby picture of the day

Because somehow, with the husband gone to Burundi, a newborn and three boisterous boys on my hands, I don't really have much time to blog...

Go away, Mommy

Just lemme sleep.

Bounty

The end of summer is always bittersweet - you know that months of dreary bleak weather are just around the corner, yet those final days are filled with sweet fruit and glorious weather.  Fall is coming early this year, the leaves are already starting to turn after a dry, cool summer.  But our bounty is going to be plentiful.

Especially our apple trees are full of fruit - I need to find out which kind of apples we have.  We have five or six different kinds:

How to drive yourself crazy in no time at all

Leah is a tiny tiny baby.  She weighs two pounds less than her cousin-once-removed who was born two days after her.  She's the smallest baby I've had and she has not a single outfit that isn't too big on her.  Even size 50 - the usual starter size for babies - seems huge on her. (Today, she's wearing one of Jacob's old itsybitsy sweaters and her sleeves are rolled up and the hem is at her knees.  Hm.)  She's got tiny little ankles and tiny little wrists, her fingers are long but very slender, and she has no fat whatsoever on her scrawny little legs.

It scares the hell out of me.

She seems much less robust than my other kids were (or maybe I remember that wrong?) and I constantly have these nightmare-thoughts flashing through my mind.  I carry her down the stairs and see us falling, me on top of her, breaking her little neck.  Or I put her down on the couch, only to flash through a "Doug will sit down on her and break her" scenario.  It's nothing I can suppress.  I try not to dwell on these thoughts, and hold her a bit tighter.  This usually works but I can see how easy it would be to spiral down and be really paranoid really fast.

Although -- my midwife looked in on her today and said the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my kid: "... and she's gaining weight nicely."  Because, needless to say, I also worry about me not being able to bulk her up.

Does it help that she is the champion nurser among my kids? That she can get a whole meal in twenty minutes, and sleeps very well indeed?  That she burps easily and seems very laid back and content with her life?  Not really.

I like to think it's the sleep deprivation.  Because that means it will go away.

From the mouths of babes

Today:

I'm getting ready to nurse Leah.  Alan spots the Boppy next to the couch and says, "Wait, Mommy, here is your milking cushion!"

Monday photo blogging - Greetings from under the apple tree

Sort of boring for people who've never met us, these are really mostly for family and friends:

(For larger size, click on the photos.)

In praise of husbands

(Or rather, in praise of a particular one.)

Leah fussed all night.  I don't know why because she usually is a great sleeper, she's got the nursing down pat, burps well and is generally really easy to handle.  Well, we all have our good and bad hours.  This morning at 7:30, Jacob came into the room and insisted on reading a book.  It delights me that he loves books as much as he does but I had been up for most of the night and didn't feel like discussing the merits of various tractors regarding size, color and special equipment (Jacob loves balers).

Doug, who must have had a bad night himself, got up and took Jacob and Leah away, while I mumbled, "Give me half an hour."

Two hours later I woke up from deep, deep sleep, almost refreshed.  The kids were all dressed and fed (and changed, if applicable) and had just finished watching the first cartoon of the day, the living room was not in a state of mess (which is, alas, its natural state), the breakfast table was cleaned off, the dishwasher ran, and Leah was sleeping deeply.

Really.  How can you not love a man like that?