bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
… he knows how to hire a campaign-logo designer.
Discussion over at Ann Althouse’s: the logo apparently evokes "sunrise over the heartland," "bridges," "red, white, and blue," and a big fat capital O, of course.
I think it’s a good logo, don’t you? And do you suppose we’ll ever again see a logo that doesn’t include a URL, or whatever we use to specify such information-dumps in the future?
—
|
I wrote that title before reading the entirely predictable, but funny, comments on this post over at Amy’s.
Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, made a secret wartime mission to an abbey in Spain in search of what he believed was the Aryan Holy Grail, a new book claims.
h/t Amy of course.
"Woman who left preschool sons in car not charged:"
A Duluth woman who left her two young children in a parked car while temperatures were well below zero won’t be charged with child endangerment, authorities said.
Police said the woman left a 14-month-old boy and a 3-year-old boy in the car for about a half-hour Saturday after the vehicle wouldn’t start. The outside temperature was about 20 degrees below zero, and the youngest boy had early signs of frostbite on his finger tips when he was treated later at a hospital.
The children were taken from their mother, then returned Sunday, Deputy Police Chief John Beyer said.
"Was it potentially some poor parenting? Probably,” he said. "But she was distracted and once she noticed something was wrong she brought them in and sought medical attention. If this had happened two weeks ago when it was 32 above it would have been a non-issue.”
Based on the information available in the news stories, it’s not impossible to imagine something like this happening to my family.
Are my kids always well-dressed for the cold? Usually, but it’s happened before that one kid or another has shed gloves or coat on his way out the door, and I haven’t noticed. And since I expect my car to be warm and I expect it to be warm where I’m going, at times I have dressed my kids for those expectations. Not for the possibility of the car failing.
Might my car fail to start? It has before. Kids leave the lights on sometimes. Or the door doesn’t shut.
Might I forget my cell phone? You bet. Just yesterday it died on me when I forgot to charge it.
Might I, then, find myself in a cold, non-starting car with my children under-dressed for the cold weather outside and no way to call for help? It’s possible. Since the article doesn’t say where the car was, she might not have been visible to other drivers.
Might I, then, have to leave the car to get help? Yes.
And might I decide that the children were safer in the car, sheltered at least from the wind, than walking with me outside? Yes.
So yes, it could happen.
Moral to the story: one obvious (hint: Boy Scout Motto), one not so obvious (hint: Matthew, chapter 7).
I’ve been letting this gem of a post at Real Learning bounce around in my head for a few days.
I want to zero in on "pegs" today. Pegs are set times of the day around which other activities were organized. … For us, those pegs are "food times." And in my house, children expect to be fed at the same time every day. So, even though I really don’t keep a strict schedule of the time between the pegs, the pegs happen at the same time every day. With each peg, there is prayer. This provides order in our days. And all the rest takes on a certain cadence.
Whenever I read some post or book or tip that seems to have The Answer, the way that I’m going to get my life in order, I’m tempted to focus on the details. Yes! We too will try having lunch at noon after praying the Angelus together! Result: we try it for a couple of days, the novelty is interesting (ironic too, since in Tip after Tip a regular, reliable schedule is the key to family peace), then either it doesn’t work for us outright or I get lazy and it’s back to the old routine. The semi-chaotic one in which we get no housework done and Mark spends his evening doing laundry.
Better to sift a general principle out of the brilliance, right? Especially since remembering to pray with the kids throughout the day is one of the things I have a tough time with. Hang your daily life on a few reliable "pegs." Mealtimes might work for us too, with the exception of teatime, a habit I’ve never had in my house (and tend not to encourage because my children are never hungry for dinner if they eat an afternoon snack). The other difference is that our rhythm is more predictable on a weekly scale, not a daily one. I’m not sure, so I’m letting it bounce around.
Now that we’re on day 3 of antibiotics, it’s time to turn to yeast prevention. We’ve never been prone to yeast infections, so I’m not terribly concerned, but I’m going to take the easiest precautions anyway:
She’s not herself yet but the medicine is staying down. Hurray! One week to go.
The last two antibiotics doses have stayed down. I’m feeling more optimistic.
It’s hard to have a sick baby. I made the comment I’ve quoted below earlier today on a post at Asymmetrical Information, in which Megan was wondering why she, an agnostic, found herself praying for her sick dog:
I’ve been praying a lot this week.
I don’t know whether God is more likely to help me out because I’m praying, or not.
I grit my teeth and find that it’s very, very, very hard to pray "Not my will, but Yours, be done." And to pray, "Whatever happens, I will be thankful that You gave her to me."
Meanwhile I turn to the baby herself and ask her, please, to keep the medicine down, and to stay with me. Since she’s not quite six months old, I suppose this is an irrational thing to do. But it’s the truest urge in my heart to ask her this.
That "Not my will, but Yours" is a %#%&, isn’t it? I got a couple of reminders yesterday, divine dope-slaps you could say, no need to go into details, that that’s got to be my prayer.
And then along came something I’d forgotten until just now. Today is Candlemas, a.k.a. the feast of the Presentation. Today’s Gospel includes this:
The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;
and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,
“Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be contradicted
(and you yourself a sword will pierce)
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
This is a bit of the strength that I need today, this story of offering a Child, of a prophecy that is sorrowful and redemptive at the same time, of a mother whose life was the prayer Thy will be done. If I could leave the house, I’d bring a candle to Mass to be blessed today, but instead we’ll just cuddle on the couch.
She is definitely feeling a little more herself, when she’s not sleeping.
MJ’s urine culture came back with what the doctor termed "dismaying" news: she has a strain of E. coli that resists most of the oral antibiotics. There is one choice, nitrofurantoin, and we’re trying it. She just threw up the last half-dose I gave her, so in a few minutes I’m going to try again. If she fails to keep enough of her doses down, we’ll have to go back to the hospital for another IV.
She really looks much better, and the fever is gone. So even though her bug turned out to be resistant to every antibiotic she got in the broad-spectrum IV on Wednesday, that infusion did help some.
She’s very drowsy. I guess that’s ok, a side effect.
A few notes.
– It’s a good idea to have Tylenol suppositories for infants in your medicine cabinet.
– UTIs are rare in infants, but they are not the no-big-deal infections that they are in grownups. They are serious. They are also the number-one thing to rule out if your baby has an unexplained fever for more than a couple of days. I had no idea.
– Diaper wars: Probably it’s best to do elimination communication with babies, but I’ve noticed an advantage of disposables over cloth, at least with totally-breastfed baby girls: It’s a lot easier to clean her off after a bowel movement when the disposable has absorbed all the liquid. The cloth dipes leak less, but her poop is much more smeared around in the cloth dipes than it is in the disposable. I’m guessing this advantage goes away after the transition to solid foods/solid BMs. Anyway, if you use cloth diapers with a new little girl, this is an argument for removing the diaper immediately when you notice a bowel movement is beginning, and holding her over potty or toilet or even the diaper, rather than letting her finish in the diaper.
MJ seemed intermittently more herself last night, after a long nap. But it seems we may not be done with this for a while, even if her blood test looks good today. Apparently the protocol for follow-up care of a severe UTI in infants is rather aggressive. It seems that having had such an infection prior to six months of age is a significant risk factor for serious kidney disease later on.
After dinner last night Mark sent the boys downstairs to watch a video, made us a pot of herb tea, and turned on the computer. We read medical websites until my eyes started to cross and I had to go to bed. He promised to do more research at work, where he has full access to most major medical journals. I have access to them too, because no one at the University has yet realized that I am no longer an active member of the staff (shhhh), but I probably won’t have a lot of time to devote to it this morning.
We’ve learned a few things already. She’ll have to be checked for urological abnormalities that might have made her more susceptible to infection. We’ll certainly have her screened for reflux, the condition in which bladder pressure drives urine up the ureter to the kidney. Reflux is pretty common in kids, which doesn’t surprise me; as far as I know, only gravity sends urine to the bladder, and that can be overcome by just a little pressure (e.g. "holding it"). One school of thought among urology researchers is that a UTI is more dangerous when reflux is present.
But this is apparently a point of controversy. Some researchers seem to think that the reflux is not as important a marker as the age of the child. For this reason, even if she does not appear to have reflux, even if the infection clears up right away (something we’re still not done with) we will choose a follow-up care regimen that will probably last a few years.
That’s what we know so far. What Mark’s diving into today is the state of the research regarding the nature of the follow-up care. The existing protocol is this: continuous, prophylactic, low-dose antibiotics to prevent recurrent infection.
This also the subject of some controversy: as far as I can tell from what I’ve read, the evidence is still being gathered to determine (a) whether prophylactic antibiotics really prevent recurrent infection, (b) whether prevention of recurrent infection reduces renal scarring, (c) how to identify the children for whom -a- and -b- are most likely to be true.
So we’ll probably need to decide, in scarcity of evidence, whether to accept for her a treatment regime that is theoretically preventative of a serious disease. Antibiotics are not free of side effects, after all.
Other parts of the follow-up will include being excruciatingly careful from this point forward about her diaper hygiene, bathing, etc.; probably immediately ruling out UTI when she has a fever in the future; and some kind of regular screening.
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Categories
…more to come later
bearing blog 