A few favorite books

Ethan LOVES reading books. Here are a few recent favorites:

• Mouse Mess by Linnea Riley
• Miss Bindergarten Goes to Kindergarten
• Llama Llama Red Pajama
• The Lonely Moose and Carrot Soup by John Segal
• The Wizard by Jack Prelewtsky (kind of weird but Ethan wants us to read it about twice a day)
• Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard
• LMNOPeas (a alphabet book with silly peas in costume)
• Truck Duck
• The Paterson Puppies and the Rainy Day by Leslie Patricelli
• Any Richard Scary book (Postman Pig is currently in the book bin)
• The Hairy Maclary books (a collection of books about a Kiwi doggie introduced to us by our friends Kate and Benji!)

I am so excited for the day when Ethan can read the words himself. What a treat to be able to teach him how to do one of the most pleasurable things on earth - read a good book.

Amoskeag Rugby

Jeremy played for a new rugby team this spring - NH's Division 1 team Amoskeag Rugby Club. I think he really loved playing at a more competitive level, meeting some new guys, and getting out of the house in the early spring, when the New England weather can really wear on the spirit.

Ethan and I only made it to one game, but by a stroke of luck it was at an elementary school, so there was plenty of space for Ethan to play.

Nana was also able to join us
and take a few awesome pictures, as always.

Thanks, Nana!

God Bless the Sheep Clock

We went through a really rough period with sleep recently. Once Ethan graduated to the toddler bed last summer, he began wandering into our room at night. Mostly he would go back to sleep promptly, but sometimes he would be sad, mad, dramatic. That made us sad, mad and dramatic. Othertimes he would be all happy guy, ready to play. I do not like to play at 3 AM.

After our sweet winter vacation in Madison, when we all slept in the same room again, Ethan's nighttime wakings became unstoppable. How could he ever consider sleeping through the night on his own when he had these warm-bodied friends so close by?

He started waking up many times a night (4? 5?) sometimes up for hours either crying or playing or being mean or resting peacefully only if we were in physical contact with him. Jeremy and I got really tired. We tried yelling and time outs but those were totally ineffective and left us all bitter. We tried playing it cool, no drama, but that felt false (we were not cool with being up all the freakin' time).

Then we found the sheep clock. A neighborhood mom told me about a stop-light clock she got for her kiddo to help him stay in bed for nap time (even if he wasn't sleeping). We got a similar clock that has a sleeping sheep illuminated at night and an awake sheep that lights up at a pre-set time (we started with 5 AM and have worked it back to 5:30). Ethan understood immediately that he was supposed to stay in his own room until the sheep woke up. But he did not immediately obey the sheep. So, whenever he came into our room before the sheep awoke, we would walk him back to his room and trap him inside with the baby gate, which we didn't remove until the sheep woke up. That really sucked. He cried and screamed for hours. I felt like I was cruel and unloving, like I was torturing my little guy, who only wants to be close to us. But I know Ethan's tendency to push and push and push all boundaries until he encounters some firm consiquence. He loves to make us angry. He does not love being denied our attention while stuck in his room in the middle of the night. Perfect motivation to sleep through the night, right?

In spite of the screaming (which even earplugs could not obscure), we vowed to keep up the routine for a month. (Don't tell Ethan, but if the sheep clock failed we were going to set up a little bed for him in our room.)

After a couple of weeks, he just stopped coming into our room. It's been almost two weeks since he's come in before the sheep says it's okay. Sometimes he sleeps 45 minutes later than the sheep! He won't go to bed without it and he sleeps with the clock inches away from his face. He comes in every morning silently, holding the sheep clock up proudly, a huge grin on his face. God bless the sheep clock.

Trying again

I found this passage very helpful in thinking about getting pregnant again after a miscarriage. I copied and lightly edited the text from a religious site that I do not otherwise recommend.

Many sites and many providers give oodles of false information. There is no evidence to support waiting three months. There are some good reasons (listed here) for waiting at least one cycle.

Accept that there are many opinions.

Doctors are trained to recognize that a woman needs emotional healing, but not really to help them or explain it to them, since it goes beyond their "bones and tissues" type of practice. Three months is considered the average amount of time a woman will grieve hard over a loss, and will have a difficult time if she gets pregnant prior to that. While there are a few doctors who believe that your uterine lining must take three cycles to get back to rebuilding itself fully each time (especially after a D&C, where it gets scraped pretty thin), most doctors know that it doesn't really matter, and getting pregnant again right away does not carry any increased physical risk or miscarriage risk.

So even among doctors, some will say the standard "wait three cycles" and might even scare you into thinking you'll have another miscarriage if you don't wait, and others will say go ahead and try again now.

As for my opinion (and have talked to thousands of women who have had miscarriages) you really should wait for one cycle to complete, because if you do not, you will experience one of two situations, both of which will cause you much unnecessary grief and pain:

1. If you do get pregnant again before having a period, you will not establish a reliable Last Menstrual Period date (your miscarriage date is of no use). You will run into problems when you go in for your first prenatal sonograms and blood tests, causing you grief (often for nothing) and can wreck your relationship with your doctor (supporting the "difficult patient" theory.)

For example, the blood test will say you are six weeks; you will insist you are eight. The sonogram will not show a fetal pole yet, but you have read that you should see a baby by now. You will think your doctor should do something, but he or she will just say your date is wrong and come back in a week. You will spend a week of torture, wondering if the baby is dead, and why do you have to wait for answers. All these things can be avoided by knowing your LMP, or preferably ovulation. Most of the time, the babies are fine, but sometimes you are having another miscarriage. Everything is murky because you don't know for sure when you got pregnant, because you didn't complete a full cycle.

2. If you have retained tissue, your period will be "late" (although all post-miscarriage periods take more than four weeks and are late) and you can even have a POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST, but you are not pregnant. This is hCG left in your system from the miscarriage, which has not completed. You may begin bleeding and cramping and think you are having another miscarriage, but you are just still going through the first one. We have had women on the site grieving over a 2nd lost baby, naming it and everything, when it turned out she only had missed tissue from the previous loss. Having a D&C does not guarantee that all the tissue was taken. If you did not wait for a real period, you will not know if a pregnancy test really means you are pregnant again, or if your loss has become a long drawn-out ordeal.

Additionally, charting and even ovulation predictor kits are not reliable tools during that first cycle after a miscarriage, and the body will put out lots of signs of fertility or lack of it as it tries to adjust itself. Women may be absolutely sure of their pregnancy's gestational age, and still be wrong.

On the other extreme, not getting pregnant that first cycle, or for the next few, when you are fervently trying, will actually push your grief further down the line, month by month, and it can really be detrimental to healing, your life, and your relationship. Often your life will completely revolve around trying again and you will feel even more a failure, more unable to cope. This may also happen if you wait, but is more likely to pull you into a clinical depression if you are not yet dealing with your loss and are still having some hormonal upheaval.

Even if you feel like you are fine, the grief is really out there, and you need to work directly through it.

In the end, this is your life and your body, your baby, your future, and your decision.

These concerns do not dissuade me from trying again right away, as both of my pregnancies have had an unhelpful LMP, I've already had a negative pregnancy test since my miscarriage and I do not feel full of unresolved grief. However, the issues raised here are worth thinking over. They are certainly so much closer to the heart of the matter - which is that the primary healing and readying to be done before, and even after, getting pregnant again is emotional.