Allergic to Vacation

We just booked our family vacation!  I should be excited.... right?

I'll be honest: as much as we need a vacation, it makes me incredibly anxious to think about the actual trip.  Sure, I'd be crazy not to look forward to sleeping past 4:30am and soaking up some vitamin D while reading some trashy fiction.  But the truth is that Dane seems to be allergic to vacations and holidays.

It all started with our first family vacation in 2011.  Dane developed a 103.7 fever on our third night.  We rushed him to the ER where he promptly vomited all over me at the check-in window.  The doctor ordered a chest x-ray.  He asked again and again if Dane had asthma (because he was on all the breathing treatments and medications any kid with asthma would be) and we replied over and over "he's too young to be diagnosed with asthma; he has allergies."  He had just turned 10 months old the day before.  I wasn't ready for asthma.  I also wasn't ready for pneumonia.  On vacation.  But that's what he had, along with an ear infection and eye infection.  He promised us that Dane would be fine.  They pumped him full of antibiotics, oral steroids, and albuterol.  They sent us "home" with instructions to finish our vacation and come back if his fever returned or his breathing worsened.  They also gave us the name of a local pediatrician we could check in with in a couple days to make sure his lungs sounded alright.  The experience was a pleasant as could be for rushing to the ER with your 10-month old at midnight on vacation.

We tried to hang in there for a day, but being on vacation made things seem worse.  I guess it was like going on a Ben & Jerry's tour if you're lactose intolerant.  He was miserable, we were as exhausted as we had been when he was a newborn, and we were at the beach.  After a day of tears, I told Jonathan I wanted to go home.  We packed up our car and headed for our real home at 10pm.  It was a miserable trip home.  Dane couldn't breathe well in his car seat, Jonathan snored, and I almost hit two deer standing in the road.  I was heartbroken that the family vacation I had dreamed about for years had hit such a wall.  Even so, we were happy to be home.

Here's a few of the other reasons I tend to flip out a little over planning a vacation, or any celebration for that matter:

• November 2010 (Nana & Papa's first visit) - rotavirus
• Thanksgiving weekend 2011 - ear infection and asthma trouble that required oral steroids
• Christmas Day 2011 (2am)- ruptured ear drum/ear infection
• February 2012 (BFF Owen's first birthday party) - pink eye and ear infection
• Thanksgiving weekend 2012 - asthma trouble that required oral steroids
• Christmas 2012 - on antibiotics for ear infection
• Disney trip 2012 - the norovirus "Sydney" that's hit so much of the nation this winter

I'm a little skittish about vacations and holidays, as you can see.  Thankfully, this year, we are going into it knowing a few things that we didn't when we embarked on our first family vacation:

• Dane's does have asthma, so we come prepared.  That means nebulizer, nebulizer meds, and oral steroids.  A little breathing trouble no longer scares us as badly because we know what to do now.
• Our relationship with our beautiful, fantastic, intelligent, selfless pediatrician (can you tell we're smitten?) has grown to the point where we have her cell number for the really scary situations.
• We know that the hospital at our fave vacation location is top-notch and we wouldn't hesitate to make a visit if it was necessary.

Even so, do us a favor and send happy vibes and prayers our way in May!

Top Mommy Tools

I've been trying to convince Jamie (well, Jamie's been on board, so I guess it's really her husband Jake that I've been trying to convince) that they need a video monitor.  This got me thinking about all the stuff we registered for when I was pregnant with Dane and what we found truly useful.  So here it is, my "top mommy tools" list for mothers of newborns/young infants.  I've tried to put things in order of usefulness.

1.  Sound Machine - Dane still sleeps with his on full blast each night.  It drowns out everything from annoying dog noises to annoying neighbor noises.  We each even have a white noise app on our cell phones for car trips and travel.  For home use, do yourself a favor and buy one that doesn't time out and that can plug in and run on batteries.  That way you can run it all night long.  It's always the gift Jonathan and I buy for baby showers if one hasn't already been purchased for the expectant couple.


2.  Video Monitor - Dane slept in a travel crib/play yard in our bedroom for the first 8 months of his life.  Part of this was because he had infant reflux from hell and I was terrified he'd choke in his sleep and I wouldn't hear/be able to get to him in time.  The other part was pure laziness.  I liked being able to stumble the few steps to his "crib" in the middle of the night, stick his pacifier back in his mouth, and fall back into bed.  When we did finally move him to a real crib in his own room, the video monitor gave us peace of mind.  Now, it more or less lets us know if we really need to go in his room or not.  Is he just crying out in his sleep or does he need help finding Elmo?  And of course, it's nice to be able to use the zoom feature to watch him breathe for those moments when the crazy worrier in me rears its ugly head.

3.  Movement Monitor - We used this until Dane was 18 months old and the cords became more of a hazard than it was worth.  Whether this device would have really protected us in the awful event that Dane did stop breathing in the middle of the night I really don't know.  What I do know is that white baby boys born in the middle of winter have the highest incidence of SIDS than any other group.  While my child was not born in winter, he is white and he is a boy.  Even if my child had been a little Ethiopian girl born in August, I would have made this purchase just for the peaceful rest it allowed me and my husband.

4.  Breathable Bumpers - The usefulness of this invention is rather short lived.  But at around $25-30 a pop, it's a great investment.  It does what bumpers were intended to do (keep limbs out of crib rails and pacifiers/lovies inside the confines of the crib) without the bulkiness and thus the SIDS risk.  Once Dane was about 15 months old, we switched back to the pretty bumpers that came with his bedding set.

5.  Cool Mist Humidifier  - Dane has asthma.  This took quite a while to figure out but we knew from 3 months old that something wasn't quite right with his breathing.  We still run our cheapy cool mist humidifier every single night at the advice of Dane's ENT and pulmonologist.  Even if your kid doesn't have asthma, little tots get snotty and this helps.  No doubt about it.

6.  Microwave Sterlizer - This is so much easier than dealing with a plug-in version or boiling bottle parts.  Plus, we stored ours in the microwave so it was out of site.

7.  Velcro Swaddlers - It really doesn't matter what brand.  They're all great in my opinion.  And if you have a kid that likes to be swaddled, you don't want to be fumbling around trying to remember what they taught you at the hospital the day your kid was born.  Because chances are you were pretty dang tired and overwhelmed that day.  My son insisted on being swaddled to sleep for seven long months.  The swaddlers were definitely worth the investment for us.

8.  Petroleum Jelly - Only a parent could know how versatile this stuff is:  best diaper cream on earth, good for boo-boos, dry cheeks, and thermometer lube.  Plus, it's ridiculously cheap.  Do yourself a favor though and splurge on the squeeze tubes.  Who wants to deal with trying to put a lid back on a tub with a slippery hand and squalling infant?  Not this girl.

I hope this helps all the expectant mothers out there!  Let me know if you'd like my list of things that were definitely a waste for us.