Sick Day

Fever Check: 99.8

Better. Better enough for Playette to return to daycare and me to work? We'll see.

Big ups to all that work in/from the home with kiddos. 'Cause my house was a mess today and I didn't get nearly as much as I needed to get done.

A friend just told me that she's taking a class and is doing a research project on children with Ds. She asked a simple question that really made me think.

I told her about some common misconceptions. Here's some of what I shared:

- People with Ds are always happy.
- Children with Ds are a burden to their families/society
- Ds is a condition not compatible with life (hence 90% of pregnancies are ended)
- People with Ds are not healthy.

I keep thinking about the whole "healthy" piece. I think that many folks like to believe that people with Ds aren't healthy and that's just not true. Doctors believe it, which leads to new parents believing it, which leads to many, many abortions.

That's a fact: Lots of people decide not to carry to term after receiving a diagnosis of Ds. (This is their right, of course, but hopefully accurate information will make a difference, which is the point of the Prentally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act.)

Yes, there is an elevated risk that the extra 21st chromosome brings to every person that has it for a few different things. I don't at all mean to take anything away from those that have gone through watching their baby have open heart surgery to repair a congenital hear defect or chemotherapy to battle leukemia. Goodness, no. That is real and only those individuals can tell you how that feels.

All I mean to say is that a fear of the unknown could change if there was more accurate information provided to, well, everyone. There is risk associated with being born, period. Imagine if all expectant parents were told what could happen to their unborn children in the way that parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Ds are told. There would be a lot less people being born, that's for sure.

And you know what? Children that don't have Ds can have congenital heart defects and leukemia.


Full Disclosure:

My daughter has a fever. She's teething (well, I think and I hope that she is cause she sure could use some teeth). Maybe that's why? Who knows. I'm new to this mama thing. I gave her Tylenol.

My daughter has hypothyroidism. We give her 25 mcg of Synthroid (the size of a birth control pill) every day in her dinner. I crush it is with a baby spoon, tucked inside of piece of paper towel that I rip off the roll as I walk by.

My daughter has a heart defect that causes her no pain and places no restrictions on what she is able to do. It doesn't fall well into a category which is why I can't even recall what the doctor called it. We'll go back to the Cardiologist in 1.5 years (at my insistence) to make sure that everything continues to stay that way.

My daughter has this annoying click that happens when she turns her head a lot of the time. Now this? This worries me. But we're working on finding out what's going on. The x-rays show nothing bad, but still. The clicking!

I think this chick is more healthy than I am. (BTW, I went to the Pulmonologist today and I have to have a Bronchoscopy the first week of November. Ew and Ick.)

Please don't come away from this thinking I'm naive. I know there are other challenges and things that make Playette different from her peers. But I've got 29 more days + a lifetime to address those.

And now, some faux toes.








Overall, we had a great day together. She trashed the joint and I let her (well, except the part where she tried to rip the lamp chord out of the wall and pull it down on top of herself). She ate her lunch all by herself - I didn't feed her one bite - and that was great. Oh, and she's officially a 4-point crawler. I haven't seen her do the "floor swim" move all day. Hooray for milestones!