NYC Moms

So, you say I'm high risk?

Two months before I became pregnant with my second, I was 34 years old and considered low risk. Those were good times and they're gone forever. I learned some valuable lessons from my first pregnancy and the positive changes I've made this time around are going unnoticed. It doesn't help that I have a new Obstetrician because of my new lame insurance. I now pay out of pocket for 20% of all prenatal tests that my alarmist doctor pulls out of his hat. One or two false positive gestational diabetes tests from my first pregnancy got him all fired up recently. I'm scheduled to drink yet another glucola in a couple of weeks. I probably lost credibility when he realized I switched OBs at 6 months during my first pregnancy; it's frowned upon. Somehow consumers are not expected to shop around for OBs or other doctors, just take what we get.

I was told at 20 weeks by the non-alarmist doctor at the St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital fetal unit that I have a low lying placenta. Going through my mental rolodex of potential prenatal catastrophes, I immediately asked if I had the more serious placenta previa. He assured me I did not and told me there was nothing for me to do; the placenta would most likely move up with the growth of my uterus. So, imagine my surprise when I received a call from my OB weeks later to discuss my complete previa and modified pelvic rest.

I'll take the good with the bad. Emerson has Strabismus, but vision issues in young children can usually be fixed if caught early.

I don't take pictures of my little boy when he’s “patched.” Maybe it’s because if I document it… then I’ll really have to admit he has a problem. Or maybe it’s just that he looks sad and I don’t want to remember how he squirms and cries when I put it on. Or maybe it’s that the eyes are the window to the soul and with one eye covered, I can’t really see his “wholeness.”

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My little boy has strabismus in both eyes. In layman’s terms this basically means if his condition is not fixed he will have a permanent "lazy eye" in BOTH eyes. It was very hard to detect… but whenever I was in the car and looked back at him in his car seat… I could see his eyes just didn’t look like they were in “sync.” One eye would be looking slightly to the side… he’d blink… then the eye would Pop back parallel with the other. My mother didn’t even notice it. And she notices everything! Initially when I brought it up to his pediatrician they “poopooed” me and said he’s fine. I took it upon myself to bring him to the pediatric eye specialist when Emerson was 12 months old. They detected the wandering eye (strabismus) in his left eye initially, a few months later they saw it in his right. Then of course my pediatrician tried to backtrack. I’m not blaming him... but my big conclusion is always trust your instincts.

He has a very wide nose bridge which masks the wandering. After hearing a lecture on eye health at a recent blogging event… my big takeaway is that even if you DON'T see a problem you should take your

Sex in America

It's been a bad week for sex in America.  First, New York governor Elliot Spitzer, well known moral-highgrounder is found to be consorting with prostitutes, and then today came the news that one in four teenaged girls has a sexually transmitted disease.

Sex scandals are nothing new.  Powerful men in politics from Alexander Hamilton to Bill Clinton, to Jim McGreevy have all gotten embroiled in sex scandals while in office. And some of these scandals (Bill Clintons comes to mind)became national  -- even international -- obsessions.  But if the men involved weren't famous, wouldn't it all just have been sex?  Seems to me it's the celebrity that makes it scandalous, not the sex act itself.

Let's face it, our culture glorifies sex as much as it vilifies it.  We want our politicians to be tv-ready (witness the fawning over Obama's good looks), but then are shocked, positively shocked I say, when they turn out to be sexual beings.  Music videos (mostly watched by teen-agers)feature sex acts only marginally presented as dance moves.  Horror movies like Saw and Hostel entwine horror and violent sexual images so completely that they've generated a new film genre: gore-nography.  The Victoria's Secret "Fashion Show," has become a soft-core prime time ratings bonanza; shows like The Bachelor pimp women out to generate ad-revenue, and on and on and on.

But still, a politician who has extra-martial sex?  With a hooker?  How could he? Or a teenaged tv star, getting pregnant?   I'm shocked, positively shocked, I say. But sadly, not at all shocked to find out that nearly half of the African American girls in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey had at least one sexual disease. Because a world as sexualized and sexually confusing as ours is bound to have consequences for those too young  -- or too arrogant -- to navigate it.

Pundits are very quick to denounce Spitzer's hypocrisy: he was a moralist who prosecuted prostitution rings, after all.  And I agree,  I think he's a hypocrite and a fool and he should step down.  He broke the law, and governors can't do that. But maybe it's not him that's wrong, but the law that's wrong.

So what I'm about to say, I say  as a mother of a little girl, and with the full knowledge that many (if not most) of the regular readers of this blog will disagree, but I think public schools should be able to hand out condoms along with strong recommendations  for abstinence, and that prostitution should be legalized.

Coping With Illness While Caring For Family

RECAP!

We are the sandwich generation.  It's not that we have a great affinity for peanut butter and jelly, although our kids do, but we are the generation that will probably be simultaneously caring for our parents and our children.

We were older than our parents were when we started our families.  As a consequence, many of us have small children and parents with health problems.  Some of us may even be coping with health problems of our own.

So how do we balance all of this caretaking with our own personal needs and goals?  How do we retain our identities as women, not just mothers and daughters, when the stresses of a serious or chronic health condition are added to the already overloaded burdens we carry?  The women of the Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York, and D.C. Metro Moms Blogs discussed this very issue.

Silicon Valley Moms Blog

• Coping With Chronic Pain - Two Years And Counting
• Kids With Disorders - Moms In The Closet
• They Won't Be Around Forever......
• Life With Diabetes Age 11, 9 Months
• What We Don't Talk About
• 222 Potential Bone Marrow Donors
• Looking For Zebras
• The Long-Term Legacy Of Illness
• Little Boys To The Rescue

DC Metro Moms Blog

• When Mom Is Sick, Everything Changes
• How Do You Ever Cope When It's Mom?
• I'm Not So Different
• Is A Condition An Illness?

Chicago Moms Blog

• Doctor Recommended Costco
• Coping With The Unknown
• Giving Medicine To A Stubborn Child
• When The Mama Cat Comes Out

New York City Moms Blog

• LAM - A Little Known Disease
• Sandwich Generation