Category Archives: Health

When your 4-year-old gets food poisoning and poops in her bed at 3am

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Chris and I are still taking turns waking up in the middle of the night to take Kaia to the potty to “dream pee.” We decided not to put her in pull-ups for this trip since it would be too long of a time frame out of this routine and might cause her to regress. Our bodies have a muscle memory, so we thought doing that would set her back too much. Our goal, of course, is to have her wake up on her own to pee if she needs to, and to stay dry all night. It was my turn last night to wake up to have her pee. I set my alarm for 1am, but at around 12:30, she woke up and came to our bed. I touched her bottom and realized she was already wet. This seemed a little odd to me; I had been able to wait until 1:30 or even 2am to have her pee, but I didn’t think much of it. So I cleaned her up, lay a towel on top of the small wet spot on her bed, and had her go back to sleep. Kaia fussed and indicated she wanted me to stay. So I ended up staying there and passed out until 3am, when I woke up to go back to my own bed.

Within 10 minutes of going back to my own bed, Kaia started crying. She jumped out of her bed and ran to me. And before I even touched her, I immediately smelled something very foul. I touched her bottom and even in the darkness, I could see that my hand was covered in something dark and mushy.

“Oh, no, baby!” I exclaimed lightly. “Did you poop in the bed?”

She had this pained look on her face. “It was an accident! It was an accident!” she said over and over. Then, she told us her stomach hurt. And then the sequence of events made even more sense.

I proceeded to clean her and her poopy shorts. Chris gathered the towel I lay on her bed, and luckily it caught almost everything. He emptied it into the toilet, then called housekeeping to see if they could help with this emergency cleanup and new bedsheets. Luckily, they came up right away and were quite gracious about the whole accident. We had to keep Kaia in a towel just in case — we had no idea if everything had come out, or if there was still more to come. I was bracing myself if she might not be able to control her bowel movements while sleeping for the rest of the night. It’s not like we had easy access to laundry here.

From the smell of her poop, I could tell immediately that it had to be the seafood lunch we had on the boat the previous day. Although lunch was quite tasty, it clearly did not sit well with my sweet baby’s young tummy. Luckily, Chris and I got through the night and the rest of today just fine, so our stomachs were not negatively impacted by the same food Kaia ate. As the day went on, it seemed like Kaia was doing just fine. Her poops were more solid; she seemed to be in a good, chipper mood. She said her stomach no longer hurt. So we’re lucky that this passed through her relatively quickly.

i always wondered when Kaia’s first poop accident or poop-in-bed might happen. And well, now, it finally happened, and I suppose with “good” reason since she got a mild case of food poisoning. I felt so proud of her for getting through the day and being so good about it all.

20% Azelaic acid in the U.S. vs. Australia

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I learned about azelaic acid for skincare a few years ago, as a low percentage of it was in a face toner I bought meant for helping with hyperpigmentation and fading sun spots. The toner didn’t do anything for my skin, so I stopped buying it. But the ingredient kept coming up in conversation with my esthetician, who highly recommended it for treating and preventing sun spots. Azelaic acid has been heavily researched in recent years and has been demonstrated to diminish skin blemishes and help fade sun spots and post-acne marks, refine skin’s surface, and help to fight inflammation.

In November when I went for a dermatology visit, the dermatologist suggested I use a 20 percent azelaic acid cream that would require a prescription. She warned me ahead of time that my insurance would unlikely cover it given it is for cosmetic reasons. So when I went to CVS just to ask how much it cost, the pharmacist looked up the product and actually laughed out loud as she responded, “A tube for a one month supply would be $648 (USD).” I gasped.

Wow. That was like paying rent. I told her that I’d pass on it, and I immediately started researching other ways to either source this product, or to get a slightly lower dosage. Chris suggested I look it up in Australia, as a quick Google search revealed that this product did not require a prescription there. So we went to Chemist Warehouse today, where I asked the pharmacist. He confirmed to me that it did not require a prescription here, but it was behind the counter. He grabbed a tube for me and said it was just one unit per customer (and then Chris went to request a second tube). The cost for this tube: $18.99 AUD ($12.54 USD). So, $648 vs. $12.54 it was. That is beyond crazy to me! The price wasn’t even remotely in the same ballpark! Well, it’s clear there are massive benefits to having access to behind-the-counter pharmacy items in two different countries — and especially outside of the U.S.

“Thank your body for being able to move in this way”

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Since college, I have lost count of the number of fitness classes I have taken, ranging from pilates, barre, zumba, yoga, trampoline — it’s been a lot. After I got a range of these foundations down, I was comfortable doing workouts via apps, whether they were just audio and now video. The encouragement throughout the videos always helps, especially when they know, based on their teaching, when potential “breaking” points are and to “hold it, HOLD IT!” But I always notice, especially during yoga and pilates courses, when the class is coming to an end, and the instructor usually expresses similar sentiments around calming down both the mind and the body from this exercise/practice, and giving thanks for this time, for this mere ability and privilege to move in this certain way.

The more I have thought about it, the more I really believe and know it’s true: It really is a gratitude, a privilege to stretch, twist, balance, and move our bodies in all these different ways. Not everyone is able to do this. Some people have to work towards different levels of flexibility and mobility. Some people have chronic pain. Others have joint or muscle issues. As I was finishing my pilates video class yesterday and especially twisting my torso in odd ways and getting the most intense (but quiet) workout in my core, I just thought to myself that it really is a blessing I am able to move myself like this. And the feeling I get at the end of these workouts is always the best: I always feel more energized, more lengthened and relaxed. I also really revel in the “good” soreness that I feel after these workouts. It’s definitely not pain. It’s a feeling of, “Ooooh. I want more of this!”

Perimenopause and planning

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Several of my friends, who are all within five years of age of me, plus or minus, have been talking to me about perimenopause. One of my friends who is several years older is already considering doing hormone replacement therapy and proactively looking for “perimenopause symptoms,” which I learned can come on as early as age 38. Another friend, who is health obsessed and tracks every gram of fat, protein, and carbohydrate she consumes, is trying to optimize her current exercise regimen (which is so above what almost any average human does!) to ensure that she is strong and doesn’t lose too much muscle when menopause sets in. I must have done a search on perimenopause to read about it on my own in the last few weeks because now, I am constantly seeing ads for perimenopause supplements and products, all of which I have continued to block. There’s marketing and a product for literally everything and anything out there!

Because I recently went to see my primary care doctor and had my usual bloodwork done, I decided to take my lipid panel results and throw them into ChatGPT to see what it says regarding the results and what they say about my perimenopause trajectory:

Quick Summary

During perimenopause, declining estrogen tends to cause:

  • LDL increases
  • HDL may decrease slightly
  • Triglycerides may rise
  • Total cholesterol and non-HDL increase

But:

Women who start with an excellent lipid profile—like yours—generally experience smaller, slower, or less concerning changes.

Why Perimenopause Affects Cholesterol

Estrogen has powerful, protective metabolic effects:

  • Raises HDL
  • Lowers LDL
  • Improves insulin sensitivity
  • Helps regulate fat distribution
  • Reduces inflammation

As estrogen fluctuates (and eventually declines), these benefits weaken.

How Your Current Profile Might Change

Here’s how each number typically shifts during perimenopause and what this likely means specifically for you.

1. HDL (Currently 77) — “Good” cholesterol

Typical change:

  • Can decrease by 5–10 mg/dL over several years
  • Some women maintain high HDL even after menopause

For you:

  • Even with a 10-point drop, you would still be in the very healthy range (60s).
  • Your high baseline gives you a lot of buffer.

2. LDL (Currently 76) — “Bad” cholesterol

Typical change:

  • Often increases by 10–30 mg/dL
  • Driven by hormonal shifts, not lifestyle

For you:

  • Even if LDL rose by 20, you’d be at ~96 mg/dL—still great.
  • You would remain well below the average levels seen in women your age post-menopause.

3. Total Cholesterol (Currently 166)

Typical change:

  • Often increases by 15–25 mg/dL

For you:

  • You’d still likely remain below 190, which is well within normal.

4. Triglycerides (Currently 45)

Typical change:

  • Often rise by 20–40 mg/dL, depending on insulin response, sleep changes, and stress
  • More sensitive to lifestyle during perimenopause

For you:

  • Even with a significant rise (to ~80), you’d remain excellent.

5. Non-HDL Cholesterol (Currently 89)

Typical change:

  • Often increases by 15–25 mg/dL
  • This is a key predictor of cardiovascular risk post-menopause

For you:

  • You’d likely still remain under 110, which is better than average even for younger women.

The Real Change: Body Fat Distribution

Estrogen decline affects where fat is stored:

  • More visceral fat around the midsection
  • Higher blood sugar variability
  • Slight insulin resistance

This can gradually influence triglycerides and LDL more than diet itself.

But women who:

  • exercise regularly,
  • maintain good sleep,
  • manage stress,
  • eat balanced meals with healthy fats,
    often blunt or even prevent these shifts.

⭐ Why Your Starting Point Matters

Your numbers are not just “normal”—they’re exceptionally protective.

This means:

  • You have significant metabolic resilience going into perimenopause.
  • You’re less likely to experience high-risk lipid levels even as hormones shift.
  • Genetics + lifestyle appear to be working strongly in your favor.

What Helps Maintain Good Numbers During Perimenopause

Evidence-supported strategies include:

  1. Consistent aerobic activity (biggest impact on HDL and triglycerides).
  2. Strength training (reduces visceral fat and insulin resistance).
  3. High fiber intake (soluble fiber helps curb LDL rise).
  4. Healthy fats (olive oil, nuts, seeds, fatty fish).
  5. Stable sleep routines (sleep disruption increases LDL and triglycerides).
  6. Maintaining muscle mass (protects metabolic health).
  7. Limiting simple sugars and refined carbs (prevents triglyceride spikes).

Hormone therapy (HRT) also significantly blunts cholesterol changes for many women, but that’s a medical discussion for your clinician.

Based on the above, I suppose I feel comfortable about perimenopause, especially given I am turning 40 in less than two months. But the visceral fat point above is definitely frustrating. Hormones are definitely not in a woman’s favor as she passes her prime reproductive years, and it almost feels as though it’s nature’s way of saying, “hey, you! Your purpose in life is done, finito! Time to get a move on to your grave! Gain fat, especially around your abdomen because no one cares about you or wants to look at you anymore!”

Kaia, the voracious and good eater

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I went to Kaia’s school for their annual Thanksgiving lunch today. All the parents pitched in money, and the teachers and staff put together quite a feast for us. The staff bought a delicious roast turkey with gravy and made numerous sides, including mac and cheese, mashed potato, mashed sweet potato, stuffing, roasted broccoli and cauliflower, creamed corn, corn bread, pumpkin pie, and cinnamon rolls. I didn’t realize that all the food other than the turkey would be made either at home by the staff and teachers, or on site at the school. It was really sweet to see that the staff went to all this effort just for us.

While the parents and kids were all sitting together eating, I was chatting with some of the other parents when I realized that Kaia had actually stolen all the broccoli off my plate as I was talking. One of the other parents also noticed this, and he exclaimed, “Wow, Kaia is such a good eater! Look at all the broccoli and cauliflower she just ate! She even just stole all of her mom’s broccoli!”

I smiled. My little Pookie stole all my broccoli. I was totally fine with that. Kaia had quite the appetite at lunch today. Of course, she indulged in her little treat, which were the “veggie sticks” that everyone likes. She dug into the turkey first on her own, then the broccoli and cauliflower, and then the mashed potato and stuffing. Unfortunately, Kaia wasn’t too keen on the sweet potato mash and told me to eat it. She cleared almost her entire plate, minus the mashed sweet potato, cinnamon roll, and some mysterious brownie-like thing that her teacher put on her plate. If you compared the plates across all the kids in 3K and 4K, you could definitely see that Kaia not only ate the most food, but she had the largest variety of food.

“It’s amazing that she eats so much, and she eats all her vegetables,” another parent said to me. “My kid basically just eats carbs, meat, and chocolate!”

I am fully aware of my child and all that she is and does. Even if I didn’t get comments like this as often as I do, I still feel very proud of my Kaia Pookie all the time. Since she was a baby, she’s always been very curious about everything, especially food, embracing new foods and digging in. I can only hope that it continues. I love that she eats a large variety of the same foods that Chris and I eat, and I never feel like I need to make her something different (what work that would be!!). It always makes me so proud. Today, seeing her eat this really well rounded meal on her own just made me feel like I was nearly bursting with pride. All the work I put into her baby-led weaning/early feeding days is most definitely paying off. I loved every moment of that work (when can we say that about any “work” we do?), and I still fondly (with an extreme amount of nostalgia) go back to my video memories of those days, encouraging her to eat and try new foods as a little wee baby. That little baby is not so little anymore.

Our neighbor friend also remarked the day that she stopped by a few weeks ago and saw Kaia eating dinner in her high chair how amazed she was at the sheer variety of food she was eating and what was on her plate. She said she could only dream of her son eating the way that Kaia did.

My Kaia Pookie is setting examples. I just love it.

Eating out is never quite the same when you’re a maniacal home cook

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Yesterday during our play date lunch, I chose a general Thai place that was walking distance from Dumbo Space Club because I wanted something that was walking distance and also had enough space to accommodate six of us. It would definitely not be a place I’d choose if it was for me, or for me, Chris, and Kaia, but I figured it would have something for everyone at the table. One of the moms chose a green curry with chicken, which I probably would not have ordered since I just made green curry last week and really liked it. When the green curry came to the table, I already had a feeling I wasn’t going to love it: it was more white in color and not very green at all. The chicken used was just white meat (ugh, less flavor and far less moist), and there was basically very little flavor other than coconut milk in it. This green curry made me sad because it wasn’t anywhere as vibrant as the green curry I had made earlier this week (with the best tips from Pailin from Hot Thai Kitchen!!), and of course, it wasn’t zippy or spicy in the way my homemade green curry was. In fact, I don’t think I can ever order green curry at a restaurant ever again because I know exactly how to make it just the way I want it at home.

I shared this with my friend who cooks a lot, and she told me she feels exactly the same way. And funnily enough, she also had the exact same experience with green curry at a lunch recently with another friend.

“I didn’t want to sound like an ass to (my friend), but that curry was so bland and boring,” she told me. “My curry at home was a hundred times better! It’s just the truth!”

Usually when I order food out, I want it to be food that is not food I know how to make and make well at home, or using ingredients that I don’t easily have access to, or that is so laborious that I just have to leave it to the experts. The other moms enjoyed the green curry, and I’m happy they did. But I’d never willingly order this dish at a restaurant ever again.

So much chicken stock, what to do?

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“This fridge is packed!” Chris said earlier this week after opening our fridge and inspecting the contents. “Are these all just ingredients, or is this stuff we can actually eat?”

Our fridge usually has a lot of food in it, but oftentimes, it’s mostly raw fruit and vegetables, condiments and sauces (homemade and store-bought), different milks, yogurt, and Chris’s stockpiling of kombucha. This week, though, since I just emptied out my vegetable scrap and bone bag from the freezer, we have a lot of jars of my homemade, gelatinous stock, aka bone broth. I can assure you that this is most definitely “bone broth” — it jiggles with so much collagen that it’s almost like jell-o after cooled in the fridge.

I originally was going to use the bulk of it for a butternut squash green curry soup, but then Chris insisted that we have chicken green curry this week, and I didn’t want to double up on the green curry flavorings because it would be redundant. I had to noodle around in my endless recipe bookmarks to come up with inspiration because I couldn’t readily come up with any ideas on my own that would be simple. Since I am trying to use up what we have and not buy anything net-new unless it’s a fruit or vegetable given our remaining time here in 2025 is so limited, I need to focus on what I already have, whether it’s in the fridge, freezer, or pantry. So I decided to pivot to something lighter and quicker: Vietnamese butternut squash soup with ground pork, also known as canh bi do nau thit bam. More traditionally, the squash would be kabocha, but I just cut up my big 4.5-pound butternut squash, so I used that. I defrosted a bit of ground pork and tossed that in with aromatics before adding the butternut squash cubes and the gelatinous stock. I guess what really makes this “Vietnamese” is that it’s seasoned with fish sauce and then finished with chopped cilantro, and a lot of it.

The art and appreciation of cooking seems to be dying in my generation. People like my friend in New Jersey and I are like rare breeds. We value homemade, from scratch, from source foods. We view the time we invest into cooking as time invested in our overall health, well-being, and happiness. We don’t look at ready-made or restaurant food as better or superior. This soup is humble, but it’s satisfying, tasty, and homely. We need more of this kind of dish in our lives.

2025 AFSP Manhattan Out of the Darkness Walk at Pier 16/17 Seaport

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The AFSP Manhattan Out of the Darkness walk was rescheduled to today given that the original date of October 12 had stormy weather with flood advisories. Out of the twelve years that I’ve participated and fundraised, it’s the first year I’ve been on the Walk committee, and the first year I’ve actually volunteered to help with setup in preparation. I arrived at around 9am to help set up tents and stations. Chris and Pookster arrived once her swim class had completed, and my friend and her boyfriend, who also joined my team, came to the walk to support me and also support suicide prevention in general. My friend had a suicide attempt in her high school years that resulted in a days-long hospitalization. My friend’s boyfriend’s dad died from suicide when he was just a teenager. So suicide and mental health are very painfully relevant topics for both of them. My team was asked to lead the walk, so we kicked it off this year.

The walk turnout felt lighter this year, but I still think that overall, things ran much smoother than they did at last year’s. We were able to work out some of last year’s kinks. In addition, we tried to be more community oriented by calling out individuals and teams for walking with us for various numbers of years.

Volunteering for any nonprofit can be pretty taxing, frustrating, and time-consuming, not to mention insanely (but understandably) fundraising and money obsessed. But I felt happy and proud to finally be a part of the Walk committee, to get to know some of the committee members, and to also get to know our executive director more personally. I appreciated the opportunity to represent AFSP NYC on CBS News twice; it was definitely the highlight of participating on the Walk committee this year. New experiences like that are always exciting and fun, plus they test me in different ways and help keep me on my toes. It’s been a valuable experience, and maybe I will actually continue to be on the committee next year.

Overnight potty training, part II

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Luckily after sleeping almost 11 hours, I woke up this morning and actually felt much, much better. Though I didn’t have any real body aches, I did have an on-and-off headache yesterday, so I was happy to feel that it was all gone, and my phlegm and cough had subsided quite greatly.

In the last number of days, I checked my Oh Crap! potty training book, and I realized that given Kaia has been staying dry each night for about over a month now, we’re now ready to move to stage 2 of overnight training, which is instead of waking up at two different intervals at night, we will consolidate to one wakeup. We used to wake up at around 11:30 and then 2:30. Now, we will wake up just once, at around 12:30, and then just pray that she holds it until she wakes up to pee. This also means that both of us no longer need to wake up each night, that we’ll now alternate nights.

“It’s like we’re back to the night nanny days, on nights and off nights!” Chris declared, laughing.

We have now had four nights of waking Kaia up at 12:30 to dream pee, and so far, so good. She has a bigger pee at that time, and then when she wakes up between 6:30-7, she has a wake-up time pee. Now, all we have to do is get her to wake up on her own to pee. How are we supposed to do that?

Another year, another sickness

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The most amazing things about years 2020 and 2021 are that I never got sick, even a single time. In 2020, I was isolated from pretty much the entire world, so who was going to get me sick? In 2021, we were technically still in COVID times, but I was still fairly isolated. Then I got pregnant and had Kaia. And I was still in the clear. Then 2022 came and the world was open and free again. Chris went to Chicago for a big work conference, came back and gave baby Kaia and me COVID. My milk supply (temporarily, thank God) plummeted for those days, and I still remember every pumping session was painful and so sweaty that I had to change my top and air out my pumping bras each time. After he got back, he learned that over a dozen of his colleagues went home with COVID. He never tested positive, so he annoyingly claims, to this day, that since he never tested himself, he never had it.

In early 2023, Kaia caught Hand Food Mouth from a friend in the play room, and then gave ME my first case of HFM. I had it worse than she did. In the spring of that year, she got sick, and I got really sick, too, AGAIN: I was sick on and off for at least a month. I was so miserable, with my violent coughing fits. I went to see a primary care physician, a respiratory specialist, and even a gastroenterologist just in case. I took lung capacity tests and even a scan of my lungs for anything potentially more serious (all came back negative for problems). No one could give me any answers for why I was having these coughing fits. I still don’t know why I get them now.

Then memorably in November 2024, so about a year ago, I got a peritonsillar abscess as a result of getting hit by two rare strains of first the flu, and THEN strep throat. Because both hit me at the same time, an abscess developed on my left tonsil about three times the size of a quarter. Ever since that happened, I told myself I seriously needed to isolate myself and stay the hell away from anyone remotely sick. Although I am not sick anywhere as often as my colleagues who have young children, when I do get sick, I get REALLY sick, and I hate being nonfunctional. Inefficiency is one of the things that pisses me off the most.

About two weeks ago, I could feel a sore throat coming on. I did all the things I was recommended: daily salt gargle, daily evening nasal saline rinse, all the ginger-lemon tea. I even added a few TCM teas into the mix, like apple-fig-apricot kernel and ginger-aged tangerine peel-honey. While I clearly had a cold because I had some congestion and a cough, I was fully functional for the last week and a half. I did everything I’d originally planned to do and worked every day. I just skipped a few mornings at the gym. It felt like a standard, mild cold. I could deal with that. Then, we had two friends over for lunch on Sunday. I thought I’d wake up Monday morning being 100 percent. No, I did not: I woke up with a scratchier throat, a sharper cough, and more phlegm than I’d had the previous week. I had no idea what was going on. Today, I basically moved any meeting where I had to speak a lot, or joined meetings camera-off when I could, because my cough and phlegm were so bad. Chris got me some soup, and I increased my hot liquid intake and took a long, steamy shower.

I keep maniacally checking my uvula to ensure it hasn’t deviated. It has not, fingers crossed. I also keep checking to see if I have any weird spots in my throat. I just want to be a regular person who gets a minor cold and then it goes away. Why is that so much to ask? In my twenties, I almost never took real “sick leave” because my colds were so minor that I’d just sleep them off. Now into my late thirties, it’s as though my body says, nah, you can’t have it easy anymore! Now, you have to suffer because you’re getting older and you have a child, muah hahaha!

Kaia tried to wake me up earlier than I wanted this morning, and I told her to be nice to mama because she’s not feeling well. She pat me on the head and said, “Mama, why are you sick?”

“That’s a good question, Pookie,” I said back to her. “Why am I sick? Is it because of you?!”