November 19, 2009

The Love Dare Challenge

I started the challenge again on Monday. It's been a while since I've done this. I decided every 45 days I'm doing to start it again.

I made a specific Blogger for it. I'll be creating a banner and posting it in here for those who are interested. Until then, you can just go to my profile and find it and click on it.

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Homeschooling

I just realized I haven't written about homeschooling for a while. There's really not a lot to write about (though I probably will).

We haven't been doing actual curriculum lately. For Bible we've been reading The Bible Story and discussing the stories. For Math I've been teaching measurements and fractions by having the boys help me with cooking/baking. And really that's about all we've been doing for quite a few weeks. The boys just don't do well with sitting at the table doing paperwork, so I decided to give something else a try for a little while. Starting at the new year, things will probably change a bit.

We HAVE to do some REAL curriculum. Especially when it comes to Math. So what I think we'll be doing is one subject per day (with the exception of Bible, of course, which will be every day). Math will be done on a day I have off. In the mornings we'll do curriculum work at the table, and in the afternoons I'll have them help me with baking/cooking and we'll have hands on activities for learning. The hands on stuff may not coincide with the curriculum stuff, but it doesn't matter. The movement will help their brains function faster.

Science will probably also be on one of my days off. We'll read about Science in the mornings, then do hands on activities/science experiments in the afternoons. Of course, these types of schedules will have to change a bit when my hours start picking up and I'm working more than two days a week, but I can work something out. It'll be a few months before I have to worry about that.

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Quitting smoking

By the time I went to bed last night, I had three small puffs from three different cigarettes. We ran out of filters, and I can't smoke without a filter or I get sick. So without the filters I have the opportunity to take advantage of quitting before the filters that are being ordered today for Mike get here (a week).

Mike's even said he'll quit smoking, too. But there is a compromise to GET him to quit. Seriously, he'll quit smoking if I...........

............(how do I phrase this modestly) give him more lovin.

Yes, he actually made me that deal. If I...give him more lovin', he'll stop smoking. *sigh*

I don't understand how he can actually think that will work, considering that he would be getting more lovin' if he would stop rejecting my advances. But I agreed. I told him he would BUT I would not be the one initiationg it anymore. He wants lovin', he initiates it. And not in a "do you wanna" kind of way. I told him if he wants it, he has to go at it romantically.

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An answer?

I may have an answer as to what happened to Chaya. It's not an official one, but it comes with some pretty lengthy research.

Back when I was pregnant, the Doc ran some genetic blood tests to see if there was anything wrong with me that had caused the two previous miscarriages I had told him about (I didn't mention the others because they weren't documented, though I think now that I should have). One of the tests came back showing a genetic abnormality, MTHFR.

MTHFR is Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. It is apparently a rare genetic disorder that can cause complications in pregnancy. Preeclampsia, which I had with both boys (and began to have late in my pregnancy with Chaya), pregnancy losses, stillbirth.

Having MTHFR, it reduces the ability of the body to absorb folate. Inadequate absorption of folate puts the fetus at risk for multiple issues, including congenital malformations....of which Potter Syndrome (basically a lack of kidney/kidney function, that more often than not results in death of the baby either before birth, or very soon after birth) is. Potter Syndrome is what we believe Chaya had, given the lack of amniotic fluid, as well as the identical symptoms my pregnancy had with Mike's sister's pregnancy, and her daughter was diagnosed after autopsy with Potter Syndrome.

Taking additional folic acid can help some women with certain mutations of the gene, but not all. And given the amount of folic acid I was taking, I may be one of those who has a mutation that cannot be helped by increased folic acid consumption.

It really bothers me that they didn't bother doing gentic testing on me when I began having complications with Micheal. Pre-eclampsia with two pregnancies, HELLP with one of them, should have given SOMEONE who was paying attention an indicator that perhaps there was more than meets the eye. At least enough to run blood tests, genetic tests, to rule things out. But NOOOOO. Because I was on state medical, it didn't matter. Had I been a paying patient you can BET I would have gotten that help.

It infuriates me. Suffering through this torment could have been avoided had someone looked past the "poor people medical" and decided that regardless of how it was being paid for, I would be treated just like the highest paying, richest patient that came through their doors. Had just ONE Doctor taken notice BEFORE, taken an interest BEFORE, we could have found this out BEFORE and avoided all of this. Because by the time a Doctor DID care enough to look past the source of the medical, it was too late.

Had one Doctor actually CARED, I would probably have my baby girl in my arms right now.