It's not just flu season, more critically for our small babies, it's RSV season. As such, I'll reiterate my advice to wash hands regularly and thoroughly... and maybe invest in Purell?

Simplified RSV basics:

• it presents in adults like a cold. So don't pass the baby off to the snotty, sneasy or otherwise wheezy adult.
• in babies, it thickens the mucous to where the sinuses/nares become occluded. Babies are obligate nose breathers... this alone is enough to put them in distress, but the same thick mucous lines the lungs and inhibits oxygen passage.
• babies and small children end up requiring inhalation therapy, frequent suctioning, and sometimes hospitalization for oxygen and possibly feeding help (if they can't breathe, they can't eat, especially small babies).

My first daughter, Phoebe, had RSV at 11 months of age and was hospitalized for 5 days. In clinic, her oxygen saturations were in the low 70's (of course the goal is high 90's). They treated her with albuterol, three times. The highest she got in clinic was low 80's. She was sent to the hospital where she was on oxygen, nebulized breathing treatments, and frequent suctioning. She wheezed like an asthmatic for the next few months with the usual asthma triggers - which the pediatrician said was "allowed" for kids who had had RSV, for up to six months, before they were diagnosed with true asthma. We now have a home nebulizer,which is, thankfully, collecting dust now in a bathroom cabinet.

I'm on my third kid, so I've been a mom for 5.5 years, and am working on my third babyhood. Amazingly until now I've never truly felt the Mommy Wars. Sure, on occasion there might be some debate about how to do certain things, but in the end I think everyone I've talked with has simply acknowledged that there are a lot of ways to get things done and what works for one kid doesn't always work for another. Granted, some of my practices are more against the mainstream than others, but I had never before had someone blatantly wish me ill for them.

That said, I recently encountered a mom who I thought would actually appreciate my efforts to EC. I even thought she would be open to the homebirth conversation, especially when the talk turned to birthing, and how great her last one was (she also has three), and how she could see how homebirthing would be a viable option at that point. So I thought I'd chime in with that it was a great experience and I'd highly recommend it.

The coversation turned somewhat odd at that point - rather, it killed it. Then I realized that I had to put Chloe on the potty at that time. So then (sort of unfortunate timing as it turned out), the conversation took a sour turn. Comments about "parent training, not baby training" and "that's what diapers are for", and "I'm just waiting to see her pee on you", all with sarcastic tones were suddenly the basis of the conversation. And then the turn to "I cloth diaper", like I was competing with her for who was more environmentally friendly (because I mistakenly commented that EC was environmentally friendly).

Okay, I admit it, you're a better mom because I've used disposables on my other two...

Ugh.

Shopping for the 2-5 year old crowd is veeeeery interesting. Curse the extended cable channels for aiming advertising at children (sadly, though, I still love Disney, evil company that it is - yes, I AM a hypocrite)! My kids have seen just enough tv to say "Mom, can we have that?" at every commercial. It's compounded by school classmates and the latest "cool" toys, characters, movies and so on and so forth.

So I find myself faced with a Christmas where I don't know what to get my kids. They have enough junk... and they have grandparents who will lovingly buy them whatever they want, both on a small scale and the big ticket items.

Additionally I find myself faced with a kind of "moral" dilemma of the kinds of toys out there. They're complex, have small parts, are all plastic, and are fairly uncreative.

Can't I just buy them some socks and be done with it?!? I guess not, Phoebe hates socks.

AGH!

Okay, deep breath.

How to approach disciplining your children has to stem from your own parenting philosophies, but it also has to be adaptable. The majority of the lessons I'm learning from my second daughter have to do with understanding how what worked for one doesn't always work for the other.

For example, I don't spank. I believe in respecting my children, and feel that spanking them is disrespectful to them. I also feel that chronic spanking is abusive.

Okay, I lie. In theory I don't spank, but there are times when all other options are exhausted and the situation warrants something "shocking". For example when Piper (my second daughter) was runnning away from me a lot. Restraining/constraining wasn't working, "time outs" weren't working, taking away privileges wasn't working, reasoning with her (ha ha ha) wasn't working, and finally a little pop on the tush worked. However, with Phoebe, the loss of a privilege was extremely effective.

I'm having a tough time lately, though, finding what's going to work to convince Piper to stop the piercing scream. And Phoebe's whining has to go as well.

I'm finding an occasional glass of wine with the whine to be very therapeutic. However, at the rate she was going this past week, I better watch I don't become an alcoholic.

I did something this weekend that I think I thought I would never do - I got on a plane and flew to another state to meet people I'd hooked up with on the internet.

Having chatted with a group of women with similar parenting philosophies from babycenter.com, all due around the same time I was, for almost a year now (well, we didn't all "discover" each other as a group until a little later in the pregnancy, but it's been well over six months now), some realized they were all in good proximity to Portland, OR, and decided to meet up there. Two women were local to Portland, and one was in Corvallis and had a friend in Portland (who also had a son not much older than our own babies). Then one decided to make the drive down from Seattle, and stay in a hotel, and I started toying with the idea of joining them.

At first it seemed kinda crazy... making such a trip to meet people who I couldn't be 100% certain of their identities. I mean, we'd all seen pictures of each other and our babies, but you do hear horror stories of people stealing photo's and claiming they were their own. Many of us had chatted on instant message and e-mail as well as on the website bulletin board, so I did feel pretty confident that everyone was on the up-and-up, however there's always the lingering "what if". However, I know that we all breathed a sigh of relief when everyone turned out to be who they claimed to be.

Chloe and I had a great time at the "baby play date" (which was how I explained the trip to my older daughters), and we enjoyed combining the trip with visiting my cousin, Jennifer, and her husband, and checking out the Portland area.

I am also happy to say that I LIKED all these women in person as much as I thought I would from "talking" via the internet all this time! So thanks Kendra, Christine, Beth, Lauren and Franny for a great time in Portland!