The last thing any parent wants is to have their child sick. So after we learned that one of her friends was sick with an ear infection late last week, and they had spent time together, I wondered if Kaia would catch the sickness. Ear infections are not contagious, per se, but apparently the colds that result from ear infections are. In the last couple of days, my sweet baby’s appetite has not been good; she’s even rejected her favorite things, like oatmeal fingers, mushrooms, and even bread (MAJOR RED FLAG). Kaia has gotten sick a few other times, but only once before, when she had COVID back in June, was her appetite affected. She’s been fussier than usual, especially in the late afternoons and evenings. Luckily, in the mornings, she still seems of good spirits, and she even enjoyed her first music class yesterday and was bobbing her head up and down and “dancing.” And then last night, she kept waking up about every 1-2 hours to fuss when she changed positions. She’s been sneezing a lot, and with each sneeze, her boogers and nose discharge fly everywhere. My poor little Pookster.

I cannot even imagine what it would be like if she were sick literally every week, which is what I hear from many parents regarding their young babies/toddlers in daycare. It would be never-ending exhaustion and borderline worry. I really feel for other parents and their seemingly perpetually sick babies. It’s like you never get a real break.

Today, I went over to the Upper East Side for a follow-up appointment with my orthopedic doctor. Honestly, I was hoping to never, ever see him again after my last two visits in October, when I had a cortisone shot on my left wrist and my right wrist, because seeing him again would mean that the pain and inflammation in my mommy thumb/wrist returned. Early last month, I realized that the pain had returned in my left wrist. It would come back quite suddenly and painfully after the most random movements, whether that was slipping my hand through a sleeve or just holding something in a certain angle. That horrible, sharp “snapping” pain would re-emerge, and I’d just think, really? AGAIN? I figured that this time around, I probably shouldn’t wait five months before just sucking it up and getting the shot.

So after a quick chat and examination, the doctor gave me my second steroid shot in my left wrist. He told me that in 80 percent of cases where someone comes in for a steroid shot for mommy thumb/de Quervain’s Tenosynovitis, they are cured fully and never have to come back again. I suppose that means I’m in the unlucky 20 percent that had the pain return… at least for now, it’s just in my left side. The shot helped for the last 4+ months, so a decent amount of time. Now, for those who come in for a second shot, it’s really 50/50 whether the pain will fully go away (please…), or return. He said if the pain does return, while a third cortisone shot would always be an option, surgery to release the tendon would be the more permanent option. A third cortisone shot would usually not be a permanent fix.

I do not want surgery under any circumstances. Please, inflammation, do not ever return. Please…..

Yesterday, I went to the dentist to have a mold created for my very first crown, and a temporary crown placed on my decayed tooth from last May. While I have gotten over the fact that an unexpected side effect of pregnancy was a decayed tooth, I still have not gotten over that I’m getting a crown before the age of 40. I’ve always taken such good care of my teeth (at least, what was within my power), and so just thinking about how I had to get this done, plus that god-awful root canal last spring, was really a dent into my self esteem.

The other sad thing is that this tooth that decayed, had a root canal, and is now getting a crown is right next to one of my two baby teeth that still linger in my mouth. As a previous dentist once said, “they are hanging on angel wings.” There’s literally no root for them to hold onto in my gums. And the latest x-rays show that the bit of bone that they used to hang on… has since deteriorated since pregnancy, likely meaning that pregnancy was also a culprit for this bone wearing away. This baby tooth next to my soon-to-be crowned tooth could be further destabilized because of the crowning.

“You need to start saving for (tooth) implants – two of them,” my dentist warned me yesterday. “Those teeth could really go anytime… tomorrow, in two years. Who knows! But you’ll need to be ready.”

Dental health – the absolute worst. I would like to never have to get any implants, especially since a single implant from start to finish can cost $6-9K. But who knows – it may be in my uncertain future. My real takeaway from this is… even though all of this was pretty much out of my control: I need to try my very hardest to instill good dental hygiene and care into Kaia. I really do not want her to face all these issues when she’s older. And good habits start young.

Despite being very irritable and unhappy last night at her congestion, Kaia woke up this morning seeming as chipper and happy as she could have been. Just listening to her babble, giggle, and whine, I could tell she was still congested, but it didn’t sound as bad as last night luckily. I had to regularly rub Vicks vapor rub on her chest and under her nose to try to keep clear, as well as suck her nose with the Frida Nose sucker every 4-5 hours. Elsewhere, anytime she crawls around and/or sneezes, she seems to be leaving snot and runny nose liquid everywhere. I guess we have a lot of laundry to do in the next laundry cycle.

And well, something happened that I think a lot of new parents who use a snot sucker fear would happen. I was being lazy and wasn’t always replacing the Frida snot sucker filters that prevent the snot from getting sucked… well, into my mouth. I figured that Kaia had not been anywhere as snotty as she was as a newborn, so there wasn’t a need to use a filter each time. The annoying thing about the filters is that there’s only so many of them that come with the snot sucker, and so once you use them up, you inevitably need to buy more (win for the Friday baby product company, but a loss for every parent who buys Frida anything). And because I’m cheap, I don’t want to buy more. So it finally happened today: she had so much snot and yuck in her nose that I sucked it hard enough to get some of it IN MY MOUTH. I immediately realized what happened and went to the bathroom to spit it out. Chris was holding Kaia as this happened, so he sat there holding her, laughing at me getting our daughter’s boogers in my mouth.

Well, I’m amazed this didn’t happen to me sooner than the 15-month mark, so I am sort of pleased with myself that it took this long. I guess this is a rite of passage in some way?

After her mid-morning nap today, I noticed that Kaia didn’t sound completely clear. She sounded as though she had some congestion, and when I looked up her nostrils, she definitely had a lot of snot up there that needed to be removed. It wasn’t that clear that she had some sort of cold, though, until bedtime, when I sucked her snot with the Nose Frida and saw exactly how MUCH she had stuck up there. We decided that tonight, I’d sleep on the air mattress on the floor next to her to remove any separation anxiety and to finally get her acclimated into a full night of sleeping in her crib again — or so we hoped. But after 3.5 hours, this attempt was cut short because of her stuffiness. When I first went to lie down next to her, I noticed her snoring, which usually isn’t normal for babies her age unless they are congested. Eventually, she woke up at around 11pm and was clearly distressed. She had this look on her face that was half confusion, half panic: she started coughing, wheezing, and crawled over to me and buried her face in my chest. When she cried, it was like a feeble cry: super crackly, congested, and weak sounding. I knew she had some blockage and brought her back to our bed so that Chris could hold her while I sucked her nose with the Nose Frida again. We rubbed her chest and under her nose with baby Vicks rub, and then Chris had her lying slightly upright to keep her nasal passages a bit clearer.

It was sad and initially a little scary to hear her this way; in the last fifteen months of her existence, she’d never really gotten any real congestion or respiratory problem, and so this was all new to us. No parent of a baby wants to see/hear that their baby is having difficulties breathing; if anything, all of us try to reassure ourselves that our babies are breathing while sleeping all the time — by watching to see if their chest or back (if stomach lying) is rising and falling. Babies are so tiny, which means that their nasal passages are so tiny, which then means even the tiniest blockage can cause things like wheezing. Thankfully, Kaia is an older baby at 15+ months, and so she can learn through trial and error to breathe through her mouth; younger babies (less than four months old) simply don’t know how to do this, so when they get colds, it’s just that much scarier.

I also had thoughts of — how has she gotten sick yet again after hand foot mouth relatively recently? Is it all just because she’s getting exposed to more things? Is it because of the time of year with winter and cold weather? Or is it because now that I’ve weaned, she doesn’t have the protection of my antibodies anymore through consuming my breast milk? The mommy guilt slightly sat on top of me when thinking about this. It seemed futile, but I thought about it anyway and wondered.

We just wanted her to be comfortable and to monitor her more closely, so she slept between us on our bed once again. I hope it’s just a little cold that she gets over quickly. I hate to see my baby confused and not sound like herself.

I didn’t care that Kaia’s “toddler selectivity” started around the time she turned 1 year old. All these mom colleagues of mine teased me and said that there would come a day soon when my child would not happily shovel broccoli and asparagus into her mouth, when she would not embrace all food simply because I presented it to her. Annoyingly, the day came sooner than I was hoping, but I did not care: I was NOT going to face defeat with this. I was NOT going to stop giving her vegetables simply because she expressed disinterest at a handful of meals. I have gone through far, far harder things than this. I had to deal with my brother’s mental illness and suicide. I had a dysfunctional family growing up. I dealt with workplace politics, toxicity, and borderline bullying. I went through IVF and a natural birth. I exclusively pumped for 14 months and battled a love-hate relationship with it. I was tougher than this and was going to get through this!

So even when she repeatedly refused things, I still gave it to her. I still made sure she saw it on her tray. I made sure she saw us eating it. Even if she only touched it, that would still be a win because touching leads to eating. And this weekend, incredibly, she didn’t refuse anything we gave her. She at least ate a little bit of everything. She especially embraced her asparagus, which she hadn’t had since last summer; she sucked all the “meat” out of them until just the woody, fibrous pieces were left. She tore up her broccoli and shoveled it into her mouth. She even started accepting finger-fulls of hummus straight from my hands.

While many would say we are blessed with a good eater, I would say it’s partly a blessing and partly perseverance. This stuff takes a lot of time, patience, and hard work. And I remain committed to ensuring Kaia Pookie is a true omnivore.

In a lot of baby memento books and scrapbooks, you always see lists of “baby’s first words.” The truth is that since around 10 months, when Kaia first said the word “diaper” about 50 times, I have lost track of all the words she has said. Part of me is a bit wary of even recording them because it’s never been clear to me whether she understands the words she actually says, or if she simply repeats words we say because she hears us say them.

Either way, these are the words I’ve heard her say in some form. We will never quite know whether she understands the words coming out of her mouth at this stage, but hey, I suppose that’s what being a baby is all about, right?

Kaia’s first words that I can recall in this moment, in no particular order other than the first word:

diaper

byebye

purple

blue

got it

keys

ball

baby

hi / hey

Weetbix (haha)

berry

sky

happy

more

no

yeah

bubbles

up

go