Questions from a First-Time Mother

You're right, dadpad. Only, it's not the lemonade adults drink....it's like 1/2 tsp of sugar with a splash of lemon juice - just enough of both things to change the taste of the water. This child of mine will JUST not drink water otherwise. But thanks for the reminder - I plan to reduce the amount of sugar & lemon slowly and let her get used to the taste of water gradually.

heatwave I remember all the well meaning advice i recieved as a new parent and also how i ended up doing "all the wrong things" just too save my sanity. Believe me when i say it's soooooo much easier to coach from the sidelines than to be actually in the game.

I still cant help but wonder what would happen if you did not fortify your childs drink with sugar. Even half a teaspoon is a LARGE amount. Add it up over a month. Try fresh squeezed fruit juice (orange, lime) as an addition to water. Many of the processed fruit juices you buy in supermarkets have sugar added as well.

I think free duck is right about kids being tough. They do bounce. I also think that if you stopped fussing so much over food and drink your child will respond accordingly. Milk, fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grain bread allow the kid to graze on these at will but do not allow any other options

I know its hard to believe but your child will not starve him/herself if you have a ready supply of those items, nor will he/she dye of thirst, "here is water to drink" "if you dont want it then you really aint thirsty and even if you whine and cry i am not giving you anything else but i still love you." Followed by a big hug and no further attention.

I say these things from some experience with a child (Another mother whose child we cared for) who had real problems with food and drink. Kids dont actually need a lot of food to survive. Certainly not as much as we make available to them anyway.

Yeah yeah, its easy for me to say, I know, I know.

Good advice, dadpad. I know I'm a fussy mother-hen when it comes to M's diet. Didn't used to be...until we returned from a 8-day trip to India in July. My kid used to be a little plumpy, dimpled baby. Well, the peak-summer heat, the madness of having a wedding in the family, and the fact that it was the hubby's side of the family which meant I *could not* focus on my kid as much as I should have (partly coz I wasn't 'allowed' to) - meant that I came back with a child (just turned 1) who had barely eaten in 2 weeks, traveled 28 hours each way, and was a pale shadow of her earlier self. Her tummy had gone for a six, she wasn't eating, breast-feeding listlessly...I was beside myself. She weighed less at that time than she had at her last well-baby visit a month & 1/2 prior to leaving for India. Yeah. She was this child who barely smiled, had sunken sick-looking eyes - it just was awful. Since then, I've been trying to nurse her back into her prior healthy self - been focussed on trying to get her into the same height/weight percentiles, which were only average to begin with (50 for both).

Well...I've realized that part of my problem is that I'm projecting still from the time she was ill. Given that my husband & I are both average in terms of height/weight (in fact, if she continues in the same height percentile she'll actually be taller than me) - I should probably relax a little b/c she's probably just following our genetic patterns. But I just want her to be healthy - coz if she falls sick again the way she did during/after that trip - she won't have the same fat/energy/health resources to fall back on.

I guess you could say that your post, dadpad, hit a nerve. :wink: I do know that I have to chill out a little, and probably it'll be easier on all of us. I'll try to do that. I'm also going to go grocery shopping in the next hour or so and on my list are oranges to squeeze at home for her. Thanks!

Yikes, that's scary! No wonder it's affected you.

I do have to amend dadpad's advice a bit -- there is sugar in fruit juice too, just that it's naturally-occurring. Cavity-wise, you want to avoid all of that stuff. Well, you want to avoid it in sippy-cup or bottle situations, where small amounts are being sipped often. Straight drinking (from a cup) can be more sugary, especially if teeth are brushed after.

Fruit juice is generally healthier than sugary drinks, but it's not necessarily better for teeth, and in fact the acids found in fruit juice have been found to have an important role in forming cavities.

If you haven't started brushing her teeth yet I'd advise doing so -- brushing regularly can erase a lot of the "what goes in her mouth" worries.

Yikes, that does seem scary, Heatwave. I can certainly see where you're coming from now. So is she fattening up at all?

I guess I would be doing the same thing as you in the same situation if she's still not her regular self. I just wouldn't put her down to nap with a sippy cup of juice, but I'd probably relax the rules a bit on sugary drinks until I was sure she was up to snuff. You can always dilute fruit juice, and it sounds like your "lemonade" is more like a diluted lemonade.

I know that soz! but nowhere near the amounts we find in processed and packaged foods and certainly not half a teaspoon full of sucrose.

sucrose is a recipie for diabetes. Not just the sugar in the sugar bowl it the sugar in processed foods that do the real damage.

Heatwave sorry if I upset you. Just dont get too caught up in being "the best mother ever". All parents make mistakes.....maybe thay arn't mistakes just variations in parenting.

Keep in mind what I said about fussing. If you are transmitting it to me over the internet your child must be getting the message loud and clear.

You are probably doing fine as a mother and should only view my (and other) comments as discussion for thought.

It sounds like you have a beautifull kid, I suggest you have a practice run with hubby for making another.

Hey, Sozobe, Freeduck - it was scary alright. I swear that's when I sprouted my crop of grey hair. I have been 'brushing' her teeth morning/evening since they first showed up - finger'brushed' her gums before that, as much as she'd let me. Now, it's like a couple swishes up & down her four bunny teeth and then she likes to chew on the toothbrush. !!

FreeDuck, she dropped from being in the 50th. percentile for weight to the 5th in the span of the trip. (Right after coming back from India, we moved cross-country and our lives changed dramatically coz I went back to working full-time and M ended up in daycare.) To cut a long story short...she now in the 10th percentile and steady in it. Don't get me wrong - she's an active, happy baby - since we moved she's obviously grown a couple inches taller, started walking (now running), hugely expanded her vocabulary. Her pediatrician is very satisfied with the way she's developing now. BUT....I can't get around the fact that she's a picky, moody eater. And I need to try new things, be more creative than I am in planning her meals.

Dadpad, hi! Your post did not *upset* me - I just am a little defensive about this stuff. I need to do better w/o stressing myself & M over it. Your post was actually very helpful. And you're right - M's absolutely adorable (even allowing for maternal bias here). I wish I could post a couple pictures of her at her naughtiest best...but am leery of posting pics on public websites. Once I build up to PM-privileges, maybe I can share some. And yes, since we definitely will need to add to our family in a couple years, will keep practising till then.

Ok. So I'm extremely frustrated.

M's been night-time coughing for 1 1/2 months now. Urgh! Her doc put her on a 10-day amoxycillin stint that got over on Nov. 30. We were ecstactic when 3 days into the meds - the coughing stopped.

Well. My kid coughed ALL last night! ALL night. This morning, she has a green-stuffy nose as well. I've been dosing her with Pediacare Cough - which seems to relieve it a little for a couple hours so she can sleep. And I'll be giving her Pediacare decongestent and cough in the daylight hours - so she can have some respite from the cough. But I know that that's all it will be - a respite. This damn cough is going to keep lingering on!!

Considering that I'd been dosing her with Pediacare in the AMs & PMs even before she went on the amox - M's been on some form of drugs for a full month now. I don't like that at all. I'm going to be calling her doc soon to take her in (gotta make sure it's not something 'bad' like the Pneumonia a kid I know has), and I'm sure the doc will prescribe some more drugs. (This practice seems to be overly fond of medication - not something I like v. much.) I am also going to buy a cool-mist humidifier to use in the nights.

So, questions:

Does anyone have any particular brand of humidifiers that you might recommend? (I've never used one before, and don't know zilch about it.)

Somebody suggested using a nebulizer (sp?) as well - as an effective way of getting rid of tenacious coughs. Any thoughts on that? (I'll be checking w. the doc as well - but am interested in your thoughts/ideas/experiences as well.)

Does anyone have any home-remedies that might work well with a 17-month old?

Thanks in advance, everyone!

I can't remember the humidifier brand we used. Both my babies were born in the winter and we had forced air heat at the time that tended to dry the house out and make us cough a lot. We just picked one up at the CVS, as I recall, and it did the trick for a while when they were tiny.

As for the chronic cold, I don't have a good answer except that I think it is fairly common. I tend to stock up on things containing vitamin C during this season. If she likes oranges, that's a good place to start. Whole Foods (also known as Fresh Fields, I think) carries a kid "tea" for colds that has echinacea and something else I can't remember in it. That's if she likes that kind of thing.

In general, I'm like you in that I don't like to medicate my kids unless it's necessary. If they are sick, I usually give them medicine at night so that they can get some sleep, but other than that I tend to let it run its course. The antibiotics will only work if the infection is bacterial, so if she has a virus that's making her sick they won't help. I had a really bad experience with this when duckie was only about 14 months old so you might want to really grill the doctor about the use of anti-b's

This is finally one that doesn't have a parallel in our experience -- sozlet's never been much of a cougher. If the cause is phlegm, I highly recommend doing a saline wash -- where you squirt a saline solution up the kid's nose, which helps clear them out (really well). However, I didn't start doing that with sozlet until about a year ago, and I'm not sure she would've been able to handle it when she was 17 months old. I also don't know if 17-month-old physiognomy is up to it. (When sozlet was 17 months old and snotty, we did the opposite -- used the bulb syringe to vaccuum snot out. God did she hate that.)

Hope the doc visit goes well, and that others have more useful advice. Take care.

Thanks, Freeduck. That's very helpful. I will talk to the doc about so much medication & the antibs.

M loves oranges - I'm going to restock today. She's been on a pear & bananas binge lately.

Re: echinacea (sp?) - our doc in CA specifically advised against it for infants & toddlers (not sure about older kids). Apparently recent studies have suggested that it could actually be harmful for little children. Will try to find more info online later.

Thanks, Sozobe. Am very glad that you and Sozlet don't have a coughing parallel.

Yeah, M hates the bulb syringe (though she likes to stick it in her mouth when mama's not looking).

Hadn't seen FreeDuck's post, agree down the line. Mangoes are the fruit that sozlet would always eat, if a little expensive and hard to find. Pear and banana both sound really good, too. (And that goes back to how, if you provide an ongoing good variety of foods, kids will eat what they need to eat. I was always amazed how sozlet would gravitate towards the fruits and veggies when she was sick.)

Oh, good point/observation. That's what M's been doing (more fruits, green beans, carrots etc.).

Update: So, M has Bronchiolitis. One more daycare gift.

Apparently, hers is a mild case (can't imagine worse ones, don't want to ever see one). We're using Albuterol in a nebulizer, twice a day....and it does seem to be helping her somewhat. As well, Tylenol for the fever. It's a slow process: it is a viral infection so must run its course. Must keep pushing the clear liquids, wash hands often, etc. Of course, she's back in daycare today (after we both stayed home y'day), so a lot of the liquids/hygience part will happen during 'home time.' Good thing is that the fever seems to have subsided for good.

Hopefully, cough-free days are just ahead as well.

Oh, _heatwave_, that sounds really rough. Hope she's feeling all better soon.

Yeah, daycare is an absolute hotbed of germs, unfortunately. Eventually they build up immunities. How long has she been going?

Glad you've at least got the knowledge of what it is and what to do about it. Poor kiddo. Hope it runs its course quickly.

Both my children stayed with grandparents when they were young. When the older one was 5, we sent her to pre-school (was a daycare with pre-school). Prior to that she was rarely if ever sick. When she first started, she was sick frequently - we all were as a result. After 6 months to a year though she built up her immunity and again was rarely sick. As a matter of fact, last year in 1st grade she had perfect attendance. So take heart - after several months she won't be bringing home every sort of sickness.

Thanks, Sozobe & Freeduck. She is doing a bit better - at least there's no fever. And my ears detect a little less 'rumbling' in her chest/throat with the cough now, maybe wishful thinking though.

Sozobe, she's been in daycare since August at age 13-months - so this is now her fifth month. We'd hoped to keep her home with her grandma till Jan '07, figuring that by then she'd be a year & half old, older, with a stronger immune system. But too much happened simultaneously - we moved from the 'left' coast, I went back to work almost immediately, and dad wasn't available either to watch her at home. Grandma came over from India as scheduled to watch M, but really was a 'stranger' to M. Poor little baby, so many changes with no real 'adjustment time' allowed - we were all sort of thrown willy-nilly into it. So grandma & M had a very rough week & half where we all cried a lot (regular cats' chorus). We thought putting her in daycare immediately would be one more change, but at least she'd have experienced baby-sitters and other babies to interact with/get distracted by. So we did. And it was hard. But turned out not-so-bad. I'd say turned out fabulously - except for the illnesses.

Fact: I have counted 2 grey hairs (maybe even 3) in the past few months - my first (and second). I'm convinced they appeared after M did. They are my lessons learned, battles won, badges of honor...

Ha - I also was so proud of the fact that I did not have any gray hairs. The morning after I gave birth, I found my first one. It was all down hill from there.