Advice for Parents of Newborn Babies (especially if it's your first one)

I wrote these advisory thoughts to a good friend as he was preparing to welcome his first child.

It is not possible to spoil an infant by holding it too much, so touch your baby as much as possible. Cradle, rub, hug, massage your baby every day. Find comfortable positions to read/watch TV while the baby sleeps on you. You will never regret having spent five more minutes touching your baby.

Of course, it is also not possible for an infant to harm itself by crying, so if holding/burping/bathing/serenading the baby isn't working, it is OK to put the baby down and go listen to the radio for five minutes. Eat some chocolate, and try again.

No one is interested in your baby's poopies but your spouse, so no matter how interesting you think they are, do not discuss them. The baby's poopies are a legitimate and important subject, which you by all means should discuss with your spouse, but no one else. Unless you need advice.

Discuss parenting choices with your spouse now. Will baby be nursing? If so, who will do all the other baby work at night, so Momma can nurse in a relaxed environment? If not, how will you share all the baby work? How do you feel about co-sleeping (letting the baby sleep in bed with you)? Pacifiers, yea or nay?

Find ways to date your spouse after the baby is born, without the baby if possible. Even if it's just a walk around the block for an ice cream cone, make it a habit now. Find a baby sitter you TRUST! People may volunteer but decide as a couple what criteria you feel is important. There are some people we love as friends but wouldn't leave our kids with.

Don't get into the habit of just setting the stinky diaper outside for minute, because you'll put it in the garbage can later. You will forget, and it will stay there for hours, maybe all night. It's an impossible habit to break, and it's gross. Take it all the way to the outside garbage can.

You are going to get peed on, so get used to the idea now. If you are lucky, this is the worst of all the baby bodily fluids (and fluid-like substances) that you will personally encounter. If you are really lucky, none of these fluids will never accidentally get into your mouth. I don't know any parents who are that lucky.

Daddy should volunteer to take the baby in when it is time for the PKU test. This is a test where they determine whether or not your baby has Phenylketonuria; babies with this condition can experience profound mental and physical problems when they ingest certain artificial sweeteners. It involves repeatedly stabbing your days-old baby in the heel with a sharp piece of metal, and massaging the bleeding wound onto a piece of paper until several dime sized circles are filled with blood. It seems like Dads handle the emotional burden of causing their children pain better than Moms. If you can swing it, volunteer to do the same for any immunization shots.

Are you Jewish? If so, and it's a boy, good luck with the Bris.

It's OK to lick your baby's face clean, but you should probably not do it where other people can see you.

If you are going to censor your baby's entertainment when they are older, you should start now. I once had a two-year old child call a sibling a "stupid ass" based on something I had watched on TV. Sure, it's a funny story, but how are you going to explain it to the kindergarten teacher?

It's OK to stay home with the baby for a little while, and not take baby out in public. If you go out, your baby will be touched, breathed on, grabbed at, etc, and you will feel guilty when your baby gets a cold.

When your baby is sleeping during the day, do not make any special effort to be quiet. I'm not saying run the vacuum as soon as they fall asleep, but it's OK if they doze during the phone ringing, so during the quiet of night it is easier to sleep. Don't tiptoe around. Live.

Some babies really like to be in a moving car. Some moms use the noise of the dryer, or put the car seat on the washing machine as a way to get baby to go to sleep with noise/vibration. But be careful, because it can become a crutch. Lots of parents end up having to frequently drive kids around for YEARS, because it ends up being the ONLY way they'll sleep.

It's OK if a baby eats a little plain, non-chocolate ice cream. Eggs, shellfish, peanut butter, honey, chocolate, nuts, (I think it is the complex proteins) no. Ice cream, yes. Unless Mom says no. Is Mom looking?

Buy lots of Lysol. Find a kind which smells good to you, and use it often. Not on the baby, though.

Wash your hands before you pick up the baby. That way, you can use your pinky, held upside down, as an emergency pacifier.

When your baby has fallen asleep in the car seat, it's OK to unbuckle the car seat and carry it inside, baby and all, to prevent the baby from waking up.

Sing really cool lullabies. Many rock songs work when sung slowly, sotto voce.

Keep a journal, even if it is just emails to family, of everything that happens. You will not remember a quarter of the feelings and experiences that you have otherwise.

Rotate the stuffed animals and blankets your baby sleeps with. Older kids who insist on sleeping with their blankies or fluffies are creepy.

There's nothing wrong with plopping your baby in front of the TV for 1/2 an hour while you make dinner, or do some other two-hands-are-necessary activity. Baby Einstein series of videos is good, but anything with bright colors and music will work.

No matter how short the trip, always take spare clothes. Have a spare shirt for you, too. It only takes one serious blow-out poopy diaper to ruin an outing. Note, you can share stories about blow-out poopies, because they are funny.

People who recommend using cloth diapers and home-made diaper wipes are all insane. Remind them of the sewage burden created by washing cloth diapers. In an emergency, wet paper towels, wet toilet paper, even wetting that spare shirt you brought along can substitute for diaper wipes. Sometimes, the little velcro/tape thingeys on the diaper will fail; duct tape works just fine.

Don't buy any newborn sized clothes. They fit for about ten minutes. 3-6 month clothes may be a little baggy at first, but your baby's fingers and toes won't turn blue from lack of circulation.

Ebola Part 4

>SMACK!<

And that was That. My final injection for this research study. Once every volunteer in all three protocols has received all of their injections, the Vaccine Research Center can “lift the veil of secrecy” and tell us whether we got the placebo or the actual vaccine. I love the image of lifting the veil. I mean, I already feel terribly pompous about the fact that I am involved in this super-dee-dooper exclusive bleeding edge of science study. The fact, that on top of just being able to participate, I get to be on the big reveal, the grand poobah secret? Total gravy.

But the suspense is terrible!

I hope it lasts.

So here I am today for the follow-up blood work. What stretches before me are gradually increasing periods of time between appointments until next December, when the study ends. A month, then two, then three months between visits. I feel like such a hardened veteran. I’m already thinking about which study I’ll sign up for when this one ends. They have a study on a smallpox vaccine, and an HIV vaccine. Both are remunerated. *cough* Do you remember what it was like to get an income tax refund check in the mail? If you still get one, you are probably savvy enough now that you have it direct deposited. But do you remember how you could just tell what it was? That kind of orangey-yellowy colored check you could see through the address window on the envelope? The return address was the IRS? I get compensated with one of those every time I have an appointment. So, so very cool.

But another study would also involve repeated snack cart opportunities, which of course is way much cooler than getting checks from the IRS every couple of weeks. Well, more sporadically, now, that the appointments are going to spread out. *sigh* So now I’m downstairs giving my tenth of a liter of blood for Science.

(ObDexter) SCIENCE!!!!

It’s a time for pondering and reflection. Preferably something besides the bloodletting.

I helped my sister and her husband move this weekend, and during a lull in the hubbub, was teasing my mother, “Mom, I am powerfully grateful for the wonderful things I’ve inherited from you. The blue eyes, the love of language and literature, the tolerance. All wonderful boons.

“I could’ve done without the bum knees, though.”

Being poked and bled for the eleventh time, I recall that conversation, and her chuckling. I will probably need to have my knees re-kneed (heh, alliteration is funny) sometime in the next ten or twenty years. My Mom’s joints. You take the good, you take the bad...

I’ve got good (well, bad, but you know what I mean) odds of having either colon cancer or heart trouble, if my two Grandpas are indicators of my genetic destiny.

And now I’m thinking about my own kids. Three out of five so far have needed braces. Three out of five need glasses (again, so far). All three boys are color blind. Two out of four have periodic asthma.

So many things will happen to them, to their bodies, to their lives, because of me. And not just what I do, but what I am physically. The very fact that they were born, and have grown up healthy thus far is a statistical miracle. Genetic roulette being what it is, though, something will eventually catch up with them. Like it will with me.

The fact that mortality stalks us all makes some people quail at just the thought of doing things. Having a family, taking risks, living, loving. I cannot accept that rationale. I concede the raw practical reality of mortality, that any good thing I do will eventually end. More likely than not as Ozymandias’ empire, in great irony.

But I know that doing anything can make a difference. Even if the difference is just for a while, perhaps one person’s lifetime, or even just one person’s day, that difference matters.

What I am doing (what for all real purposes I have nearly finished doing; only three appointments left now) in this study . . . some days seems trivial. I get up a couple of hours early, listen to the morning NPR news cycle, eat a danish and drink some orange juice, develop an amazing resilience to being creeped out by needles.. But, if this vaccine works, what good will come to the world? Maybe a few thousand people saved from death over the course of the next century; that’s a pretty big deal, isn’t it?

I’m just a little, tiny piece of the program here. If I hadn’t filled the role, someone else would have. But, and I think this is important, I *did* fill the role. And I was only able to do so, because of my relative genetic health. The screening nurse told me today that they had a higher than expected rejection rate for applicants for this study; nearly three out of every four applicants was bounced.

So with my achy knees, has come the ability to serve strangers I will never meet, in a continent I will probably never visit. With everything else, I am grateful to my Mom for that.

My eleventh visit to NIH has ended, and now it’s time for me to go to work

Ebola Part 3

I had to take some time to write this one.

You know how some days, you feel like your emotions are really close to the surface? Something traumatic, or dramatic, happened yesterday, or earlier in the week, but you held everything in check, but you feel the tears, or the fury, just hovering there on the periphery of your vision.

Today was like that. I've been keenly worried about my littlest sister all week. She had a heart ablation procedure scheduled for Tuesday, where they were hoping to fix the arrhythmia and elevated heart-rate problems she's been having. She's so young.

I am completely kicking butt on the commute this morning. Traffic is light, the drive is smoove (yes, I know that's a silly way to spell 'smooth' but it just felt smoover than smoother this morning, you know?). I actually am getting to the NIH fast enough that I start to worry. My appointment is for when they open, right at 7am. And I'm on track to get there before 6:45. I might have to park my own car!

No worries. Even with my early arrival, the guys that run the valet service are already there. And the Vaccine Research Center ladies are also already at work. This week, my nurse shoos me on down to phlebotomy first for the blood draw. I peek inside my bag o' vials; Eek! There are a whole fistful of 10 ml tubes! I'd thought since it was just a two-week follow-up, that it's be a small blood draw, 40, maybe 50 ml worth. They're taking at least twice that much today. Well, they warned me when I started that being a volunteer, I allow NIH to use my blood for other research projects, too, so...filled with righteous justification, I head towards the snack cart.

D'oh! It is not open before 7am. But I get right in to have my vein tapped. I happen to have the same phlebotomist that drew my blood at my intake appointment two months ago. Have you noticed that the older the nurse or phlebotomist, the easier the blood draw? OK, maybe the rest of you haven't had your blood drawn repeatedly over the course of months by a dozen different people. Sometimes, it feels like a sharp jab into the crook of your elbow. Sometimes, it feels like a slight poke. The better the phlebotomist, the slighter the poke. Mine today, at phlebotomy station number four, is a magician. I read the comics she has strategically posted on her cubicle wall in the direction away from where the blood is drawn, and feel something akin to a brush stroke, a pinch at the crook of my elbow. It is always a pleasure to work with a professional, even if their profession involves stabbing needles into you.

Four ounces lighter, I go back to the snack cart, which by now is in place. If I sounded annoyed earlier when it wasn't there, I wasn't, honest. I mean, it's staffed by a sweet old lady volunteer, so how irritated can you really be that it wasn't there at 6:55am?

There is a child, a little boy I think (it's hard to tell because the child has no hair, and is dreadfully thin) sitting by his Momma eating an iced pastry from the cart. He has his mask pulled down to his chin (like the one's your Dentist wears? You know, really sick patients wear them to add a small barrier to their weak immune systems?). And he laughs at something his Momma whispers in his ear. Unless you've lived with someone who is terminally ill with cancer, and whose hair has all fallen out from the devastating treatments, "laughing" is probably not an activity you imagine. He looked gleeful in that moment, and it stunned me. A sick little boy laughing sounds *exactly* like a healthy little boy laughing.

The sadness, hovering on the periphery, rushes in, and I start crying. I wonder if my little sister had any snacks before or after her ablation. I try to be subtle as a I pick up a napkin to dab my cheeks before leaving with my banana and juice (orange, 2 cartons). As I walk back out of the lobby, I sneak another glance at the the smiling little boy before turning the corner back towards the elevators.

I know we live in a mortal world, and so all of us die, and I think of my sister again.

Please, God, please let them live through this.

And I have to stop and sit down a moment to let a sob escape me. The hospital, this early, is pretty quiet, so I'm thankfully alone. No one is walking by who would have to politely ignore me so I could grieve in peace. After a few moments, the overwhelming grief passes, I take a deep breath, and go back upstairs.

My blood pressure is better this week, 130 over 80. I don't tell the nurse I have a crying headache; maybe that helps blood pressure. I'm on my way to work in no time. The sun is just rising, promising a bright new day.

I hope, in my heart, it is a good one for us all.

Ebola Part 2

Urk. It actually snowed in DC last night, so traffic is ookier than normal around the top-side outer loop of the beltway. So I’m crawling, crawling, crawling to the NIH.

I arrive almost one hour later than I’d intended.

This is my . . . (counting on my fingers) fifth visit to NIH, so I’m feeling like I kind of know my way around. I no longer pause every time I walk around a corner, getting my bearings. I start to look closer at the environs, noticing some details.

The elevators are *old* but they have really cool brushed-steel-looking doors. Set into the doors are scenes of nurses and doctors caring for people, scientists doing . . . science stuff. I notice there’s a quaint little vaguely electronic-looking thingey on one wall in the lobby that shows what floor each of the elevators is currently at. And then one arrives for me.

Yes! They’ve restocked the volunteer fridge from last time. Ack! Nothing but apple juice and graham crackers. I feel like I am in nursery school, but being a volunteer of principle, I take one of each. Another volunteer is in the waiting room who has come in for the screening process. It turns out they are starting to screen for group 2, and are projecting a start of the group 2 trial near the end of February, after they complete the first two injections in my group.

The nurse sees me, but it’s all very routine now. Here’s your bag of vials for phlebotomy, see you in a few minutes.

So back down I go in the ancient of days elevators. I ponder why I think of them as old. The analog buttons, maybe? I think it’s the old, worn tiles on the floor. They are pretty fast, though. And I’ve gotten elevator number 1 for both trips; it’s manned by a lady sitting in a chair, who punches the buttons for you. And it looks like she’s writing down how high and how low down she is going, like an elevator blog. What is up with that?

Ah, the phlebotomy treat cart. Orange juice and an apple danish. They only draw about 90 mls of blood today. Still looking around at details, I read an “In case of accident” chart on the wall. So if blood spills are less than 10mls, they can just wipe them up with a paper towel? Oh, unless they are worried about it, then they are supposed to call 911. I’m in a hospital; if I dialed 911, does it go to the police, or just to the receptionist?

And holy smoke, they have a policy for spilling radioactive material? And they have a special clean-up material they use to . . . blot radioactive spills? Oh, that’s important, close the door and don’t let anyone in the room. Now I’m a little freaked out.

Near the end of the draw today, I notice one of those little “whiff” packages of ammonia (you know, the ones that they break open and put under the nose of people who pass out) taped to the wall. I ask the phlebotomist if she’s ever had to use one, and she said, “Just once, last week.” I think that means I’m statistically safe.


I go back upstairs, and they take my vitals. I notice with interest that everything is in Metric. My temperature is 34ºC, my weight is *mumble* kilos. I guess blood pressure is still the same, though. I get a stern lecture from the nurse about my blood pressure being too high (like 150 over 110). I mean, I kind of hustled coming back upstairs, right? I mean, getting on and off the elevator, anyway. And they just drew . . . (doing the metric conversion in my head) like 3 ounces of blood. That’ll make my blood pressure spike a little, won’t it? They shoo me back to the waiting room to read my book and await pharmacy’s delivery of the mixture. “Pride and Prejudice” is deservedly a classic, yo! Curse that awful Mr. Wickham!

The mixture is delivered, and they *SMACK* it into my right deltoid muscle. I think I said before it was my triceps, but I was wrong; I listened to the nurses talking about what they were doing. Ouch. I look this time, and see that the biojector actually makes a bloody mark. I guess even CO2, if it’s going fast enough, can leave a mark.

My half hour passes (they have to make sure I don’t pass out, I guess) and I’m fine. I snag a snack-pack of graham crackers to give to the kids later, and head to work.