To Pee or Not To Pee

When I was growing up my mother used to tell people this one thing so many times it stuck in my head like a bad song...."Our Debbie learned to read at four years old and Vallie, she was toilet-trained at four!" Very amusing. I earned the moniker of 'wild-child' and often wondered if I'd been raised by monkeys rather than the attentive, personable and eager woman who claimed the honor.

Screech to decades later: As Sweetpea is circling around the potty I am acutely aware that I may be under some pressure to prove that I am not a Monkey and my daughter will learn to pee in the pot before she reads The Bobsey Twins. To that end our two-year old has progressed from the early days when she would stare at me in surprise when liquid poured mysteriously down her legs, to weeks later looking down at the general vicinity just as something is about to happen and then racing helter-skelter to the potty yelling "pee-pee!!!" at the top of her lungs. It's all very rewarding, I must say.

One thing parents don't warn you about is that there is a very, very long time between that first inkling of awareness to actually being "potty-trained". Being potty trained means you can take vacations on cruise ships and park your little one in the kiddie program (no diapers, please!). Or forever release yourself from the torture of carrying around that fashionable-as-it-may-be black-hole called the diaper bag. The one filled with any number of feeding, clothing, and changing implements that you have to keep close to you at all times with travelling with baby. It goes with you no matter what the circumstance or how far you have to shlep it (and the child) down the potted path to grandma's house, or to a baseball game, or walks in the park, or....well you get the picture. From here to there takes quite a while and the process is, shall we say, hit or miss.

We're not there yet, but to her credit, Sweetpea is well on her way. Mind you, it has been an interesting adventure. For instance, I discovered that she is much more likely to change her ways if she goes without a diaper. So in the mornings she runs around naked from the waist down doing what kids do. This requires some supervision: "Don't sit on your dolly, sweetie!" and "I know it itches but please don't scratch there with the hairbrush!" punctuated by periodic thumping sounds as she runs for the potty to do her business.

This morning she was playing in her room and I got complacent and let her out of my sight for a few minutes. All was quiet. Too quiet. My first clue was when our dog Daisy, operating on a sixth sense that all dogs have for certain aromas, got up and headed down the hall. Then I heard Sweetpea saying something like, "Uh, oh." I arrived just in time to see my lovely daughter standing there trying to keep Daisy from wolfing down the last of the poop she'd "deposited" on the floor. Best I can tell she was standing in front of the mirror when the urge came and I guess she thought she'd see what was going to happen. And here I was about to eat breakfast.....

Sweetpea was distraught and burst into tears. I mean, she'd never actually witnessed something coming out of THAT end. She'd been in diaper-denial. Not any more.

"Stinky!" she said with a certain amount of disgust as we washed our hands and ignored Daisy who slunk off somewhere. Then she sat on the potty for twenty minutes and wouldn't get off until I bribed her with a pair of pull-ups and a horsey ride.

All in all, I'd say it's going pretty well....

Me Happy

Yesterday our daughter, who has been creating phrases and sentences from her mastered vocabulary looked up with a toothy grin as she was sitting watching her dad play tennis:

"Me happy," she said.

Playing Doctor

This is Hollywood after all so I suppose having a celebrity pediatrician is par for the course. Okay, he's the father of a celebrity. An infamous celebrity (a rarer breed than your garden variety celebrity which are plentiful around here). And what I discovered today when I brought Sweetpea in for her initial visit was that he is really a very nice man. A very fine doctor actually. I feel really lucky to have found him.

I switched to Dr. Fleiss because his practice in a homey Craftsman house is right around the corner from us and because I was tired of the bum's rush I felt I was getting every time we went to our other pediatrician. Pediatrician #1 was a serviceable professional, but she relied too much on the sugar-free suckers she gave out to compensate for her distant and methodical demeanor. Doesn't work on kids. They have an innate sense of what's genuine and what ain't. Sweetpea screamed bloody murder every time she came near her so I got to wondering if that was why the good doctor had those suckers, which proceeded her through the door at the end of an outstreched hand.

After Sweetpea was given iron drops for a slight anemic condition despite my protestations that there must be dietary solutions less radical I decided it was time for a change. I'd heard a lot about Dr. Fleiss - he's well-known in the medical community for a holistic approach to healthcare and outspoken views on circumcision (not a concern for Sweetpea). He is also the author of several books and articles which I'd read with great interest. Mostly, I'd tired of having my questions to the other pediatrician elicit a blank look or a doc-talk answer meant to awe and deflect. She also was in the habit of poo-pooing anything that wasn't in the Physician's Desk Reference and was in and out of the examining room faster than a NASCAR pit crew.

The first thing I discovered when Sweetpea and I joined the other waiting families in the converted bungalow was that kids don't have to cry when they visit the doctor. Everyone who saw us was kind, gentle, and patient. Very Patient. The nurse-practitioner reminded us of the kindly vet Gina on Sesame Street, which pleased Sweetpea greatly since she loves Sesame Street. She let my daughter try out all the little medical instruments she used, and talked in a gentle, sing-song voice that nearly put me to sleep. Sweetpea thought her delightful and and for the first time ever she actually asked to have her ears examined. I was verklempt at this point (kind of like crying but not quite). Soon Sweetpea was chatty and relaxed and kept clapping with delight every time she let the nurse do something like listen to her heart or feel her tummy.

The nurse gave me some good-tasting chewable flax-seed oil capsules for Sweetpea to help her flush the last of the cold she'd had out of her system and then the famous Dr. Fleiss entered for a look-see. He was older than I'd realized - probably in his mid-seventies, and a little frail. But he had a warm demeanor, and Sweetpea took to him instantly. I admit I was a little distracted by how much his daughter, Heidi (AKA convicted-madame-to-the-stars and soon to be proud owner of Heidi's Stud Farm in Nevada), resembled him, but soon I was was more interested in the copy of Sweetpea's medical chart supplied by Pediatrician #1. He sat next to me and we went through the information together, something no doctor has ever done with me before. I discovered a lot - the first being that I had been lied to by Sweetpea's pediatrician. Strong language, yes, but irrefutably true. You see, I had resisted her advice when Sweetpea had first come to her to re-immunize her despite full records from her orphanage. I had heard that another baby from our group had been tested to see if the records were accurate, and they were. So rather than re-immunize I'd asked that Sweetpea have her blood tested as well. The test is for 'titres' which are levels of antibodies to specific diseases (what happens when you are given an immunization). It was a painful and traumatic procedure but I felt it was worth it given that I felt sure Mimi would be spared the rounds of dozens of shots.

I was told later that the results showed no antibodies, which meant that she had to go through the round of shots again and catch up to other children her age. Sweetpea came to hate those visits and as often as not, she would get a fever reaction and be up all night (as were we), sometimes miserable and cranky for days.

In looking through her records, specifically the blood tests ordered that day, Dr. Fleiss showed me there were, in fact, no tests ordered or results for titres. I couldn't believe it. They'd tested for every bloody thing on earth, including HIV, Mediterranean Flu, and a bunch of exotic viruses (all negative) but no titres!!! Excuse me but the whole point of those blood tests had been for titres. Titres! Need I repeat myself? Okay....TITRES!!!! What that meant was my pediatrician had gotten her way, by hook or by crook as my grandmother used to say, and played me for a fool.

Then Dr. Fleiss looked at Sweetpea's chart and asked me why I thought she was anemic. Surely, I said, the results of the finger stick they'd done a month ago were in her chart? No. Apparently not. Dr. Fleiss looked at Mimi's face, palpated her fingernails, examined her gums, her eyes, and discussed her energy level (which is very active and engaged). "Not anemic" he said.

And what about the dozen or so shots the other pediatrician said were due? "Your daughter has had all the shots she needs, according to her current records," said the kind and wise Dr. Fleiss. We didn't need to mention the fact that she had come to us fully immunized anyway, something I know we would have confirmed had the pediatrician respected my wishes and not played games with me.

Dr. Fleiss, who is also a MPH (Master of Public Health) as well as an M.D. is my new hero. And my daughter's new friend. She gave him a heartfelt hug and kiss when he left to see to other patients and I honestly wanted to give him one too.

Tips for treating anemia without iron supplements:


Since iron supplements often don't work well, are hard on the stomach, and can stain children's teeth, there are very good dietary solutions to borderline anemia, which many children and women of child-bearing age have if they are not eating everything on the recommended daily food pyramid. Google will provide plenty of websites with lists of foods and how to avoid combining them with calcium (like milk or yogurt) which inhibits iron absorption. A very good way to get significant portion of your daily iron is in a teaspoon of Blackstrap molassas (tablespoon for adults). It's very good alone or mixed into a cup of tea. Cooking in iron pots or using an iron skillet also provides extra iron.

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