• artsy fartsy,  the great illness of 06

    Meet Sludgie*, the Gallbladder Pillow

    I’m working on a little something something for those of you who participated in my “help-me-entertain-my-baby-while-I-die-of-gallbladder-pain” contest. I thought it might be fun to make gallbladder pillows/Christmas ornaments as a prize. Doesn’t everyone want to hang a little green gallbladder with googlie eyes on their Christmas tree? At least those of us in the no-gallbladder club will appreciate it since we’ve evicted our own gallbladders (Thanks to my friend Kate for that reference.  She called me up pretending to be my gallbladder contesting her eviction.)

    My problem is that there are too many of you who had good ideas that I actually used. Measuring spoons in a box! Junk mail! Toys all over the floor! I used them all. I wanted to make all 31 of the participants a gallbladder pillow but it took me TWO hours to make just this one. Mostly because I was sewing it at my Aunt’s shop and I spent most of the time yapping. But what else is new? I love hanging out with my Aunt in her sewing shop.

    Yesterday I was super anxious the whole time because I left Baby Bug at her Aunt Becky’s house and I kept imagining her crying because she missed me. I’m sure in reality she was fine and didn’t miss me a bit because she loves her Auntie Becky but trying to get that through my thick skull is impossible. Because I was such a worry wart and I had to get back to Becky’s so she could play taxi and pick up her own kids from school, I only had time to sew one gallbladder pillow. The pinking around the edges took a lot more effort than I planned on (the felt is wool and quite resistant to cutting). So I hope everybody who participated is patient (and likes Sludgie the Gallbladder) because it might take me a while. OR I might just think up a different prize.

    *Stuffed toy not recommended for children under three. Unless you are like me with an eagle eye watching your little kid because it is possible for little babies to pry off the glued on eyeballs with their wiggly little fingers and eat them.

  • Bug,  illos

    My Baby Has a Giant Head

    Baby Bug doesn’t really have a giant head. She has a very nice small round head. It’s just that sometimes when you go to the doctor and they tell you that your child is in the 10th percentile for weight, the 25th percentile for height and the 95th percentile for head circumference, you start to think crazy things. I’ve never really been very good at math, so in my wacky brain I’m imaging that she is very very skinny, she has a teeny tiny little body and a GIANT head. What’s up with that? Maybe I should tell the doctor that I just don’t want to know. Because if anybody is a worry wart, it’s me and I will worry myself silly over my baby’s size 95 head. See how I am? Size 95. Where did I get that?

    Baby Bug has a new doctor. We changed doctors. What an ordeal that was. Anybody ever tried to get records sent from one doctor’s office to another? You’d think they were still using the pony express or maybe carrier pigeons for how difficult and time consuming that whole process was.

    We switched because I didn’t really like her old pediatrician. It’s not that I’m picky about doctors (obviously) it’s just that well, he was the smiley type. At first I liked that about him because my OBGYN was not the smiley type and after nine months of doctor’s appointments that left me with that missing feeling, I was very happy for some cheery bedside manner. But then his smiles started to feel fake and patronizing. And after we asked about Baby Bug’s clogged tear duct for the fifth time and he started drawing over simplified pictures of eyeballs and talking to us like we were dense kindergardeners, I started to think I might find another doctor I liked better. Plus, the waiting room was always filled with very scary sick kids and the clerical staff wasn’t much better than the staff at the department of motor vehicles. I had lots of reasons to switch.

    Thankfully, I have good friends like whoorl who have connections in the medical world. Whoorl recommended a new doctor that I like very much. (Not counting the news about Baby Bug having a size 95 head of course.) The new doctor is so nice! She smiled just the right amount. The sincere kind of smiles. She gave us a prescription for Baby Bug’s infected eye before we even asked about it. She told us all about clogged tear ducts and all the different kinds of massage you can do to help speed up the unclogging process. (Something the old doctor didn’t say a peep about.) She told us how some people don’t agree on massaging methods and gave us her opinion. If Toby wasn’t so antsy to get going because he had work appointments, I could have hung out with her all day listening to her advice. But of course with talkative doctors comes long waits in the waiting room because they are always talking to the patient before you…so we were running a little late by the time we got to see our new wonderful doctor.

    The other advice the new doctor gave me is that I need to feed Baby Bug more fat. FAT. Ew! Babies need lots of fat apparently, especially underweight ones. I already give Baby Bug a lot of cheese and yogurt but the doctor said I need to give her more, and none of that non or low fat kind. She told me not to worry too much about Baby Bug being underweight, since both Toby and I are on the small side, but I still worry. I always worry! I guess I mostly worry about what I’m going to feed her all the time. I can’t let her fill up on empty calories because she needs every calorie she can get to count. She already keeps me hopping with her crazy demands for big people food. I try to save her bits and bites of things we eat but it’s still a big job for me to keep up with. Maybe I’ll have to start planning her meals when I plan our weekly meals. Yikes.

    So anyway, I guess I just want to say that I’m worried but I’m not worried or that I know I’m not supposed to worry but I worry just a little bit anyway. I mean, isn’t that what mom’s do? Toby says not to worry. He says that’s just how Ponnays are. They are just very “concentrated” in their small bodies.