September 2009 Archives

Today I put on my black, baby-doll maternity shirt. You know the type, that cute little baby-doll top that says, "Yes! I'm pregnant! This belly is not just the unhappy side effect of too many chimichangas! I'm going to have a baby!"

I wore the shirt to my kids' swimming class. The swimming class is in a big, echoey room with an indoor pool. This small detail will become important as my story continues.

Class went fine. Hailey and Dylan had a good time, swam well and were pretty well behaved. The problems started as we were in the dressing room, while I was trying to get the kids into their cooler-weather clothes (we're in the second officially-chilly day of autumn now). Have you ever tried to put jeans on a wet kid? It's really not easy.

Hailey was dancing around acting generally obnoxious. I told her to keep still and let me dress her, and she responded with a resounding "Shut up Mom!"

The swimming teacher keeps a jar full of gummy bears in her office, mainly to use as withholding threats ("You behave or you won't get a gummy bear!") The kids are usually pretty good so they expect and look forward to their gummy bear.

Well, Hailey had just shouted "Shut up Mom!" into the big, echoey room with the indoor pool and I wasn't about to show everyone how much abuse I put up with by rewarding her with a gummy bear. So I said, "You just lost your gummy bear."

Hailey burst into tears. "I want my gummy bear! I want my gummy bear! I want my gummy bear!" she shrieked. She continued to scream this mantra as if her little life depended on it, and no amount of "Hush, Hailey! That's enough! Please stop screaming!" could convince her to settle down. Each consecutive shriek was louder than the last one, and each one bounced with greater splendor off the walls of the big, echoey room with the indoor pool.

Meanwhile I was still trying to get jeans on a wet kid. Dylan was trying to get shoes on his wet feet and despite my having purchased them more than a size too large for him they weren't cooperating. Hailey was screaming. Natalie was thinking it might be fun to try out some shrieking of her own, since the echo sounded so cool.

Finally, we emerged from the dressing room. Every single parent at the pool was staring at us. Hailey was still screaming. And then Dylan wanted to know where his gummy bear was.

I crouched down and try to explain to him that if I gave him a gummy bear, Hailey would scream twice as loud and could he please wait until we get home. If he could just be a good boy until we got home, I promised him, I'd find him a special treat he could have instead of a gummy bear.

The look on his face said he was about to start screaming too.

As I was in the middle of trying to diffuse this new development, the teacher shouted from the pool, "Can you please get them out of here?"

"Yeah, we're going," I muttered. All the parents were still looking at us. I didn't need to be a telepath to know what they were thinking as they stared at my "look at me, I'm pregnant!" baby doll maternity top:

"Jeez, if she can't handle the three she's got what business does she have having a fourth one?"

Oh, if only I could melt into the walls.

Did you know that children have access to an alternate dimension that adults do not?

It's true. Here's an example: When Dylan was about two we were driving the van down to Sacramento, which is about an hour and 15 minutes from our place. To keep him occupied, Martin took off his watch and gave it to Dylan to play with. By the time we got to our destination, the watch had vanished.

The next day, I spent an afternoon tearing the van apart in search of the watch. I looked between seats, under seats, in door pockets, and even in places Dylan didn't really have access to, like glove boxes and storage panels. I never found the watch, and had to conclude that it had fallen out of the car, perhaps when we opened the door to unload everyone. I ended up buying Martin a new watch.

About a year later, Dylan, Hailey and I were headed to the grocery store. Suddenly Dylan pipes up: "Hey Mom, look!" I turn my head and there he is, strapped into his car seat, proudly holding the watch in the air for me to see.

Now if that's not proof of a kids-only alternate dimension, I don't know what is.

Kids can be quite devious in the way they choose to use this alternate dimension. When they'd rather wear the Bumblebee sneakers than the blue sandals, they can just drop one of the sandals into the dimension and then sit back and enjoy watching Mommy tear the house apart in frustration until she finally gives in and pulls out the Bumblebee sneakers. Then later, when it suits them, they can simply access the dimension to find the missing sandal.

This is where all those missing socks go, by the way, and all those little choking hazard bits of Lego that your kids swore they wouldn't drop or misplace.

Scientists, forget string theory. That's just science for the sake of knowledge. Instead, let's study something useful, let's get some government funding to figure out how to get adult access to the kids-only alternate universe. I sure would like to find that stupid pink sippy cup before the milk goes sour.

Yesterday morning, my four year old son Dylan refused to get out of the van. He told me he didn't want to go to school.

School is good for Dylan, but it's also good for me. I need him to go to school, for my own sanity. Plus I pay for it, so there was no way I was letting him off the hook.

Now if I'd been a mother-of-one, I would have sat down in the back seat next to him, and calmly explained to him why he needs to go to school. I would have asked thoughtful questions to get to the root of his reluctance, and after a reasonable, two-way discussion I would have convinced him that he did indeed want to go to school. The conversation would have ended with a hug and a kiss, he'd have gotten out of the car and that would be that.

But I'm not a mother-of-one. I had a 25-pound toddler balanced on one hip, my 21-weeks pregnant body was screaming that my back can't take the weight any longer, and my three year old daughter was threatening to run wildly out into the busy street rather than wait for Dylan to make up his mind. So instead of having a quiet, understanding conversation with my son (one that would have made Nanny 911 proud), I started off by begging him to get out of the car, proceeded to threats ("your whole collection of Lego men is going in the trash!") and finished off by dragging him out unceremoniously and herding him up the stairs like a steer.

Oh what the other moms must have thought.

Patience is impossible when you have three kids preschool aged and younger. It's times like these when I really start to question our decision to have a large, closely-spaced family.

If Dylan had a few extra years between himself and his siblings, his home environment would be so much more relaxed, he'd get yelled at a lot less and the stress in his life would be much reduced. Instead of being told to do things "now" without any clearly outlined reasons, he'd understand what was expected of him and why. He'd have some consistency.

What he wouldn't have is two little sisters who adore him, and who can play with him pretty much on his level. He wouldn't have that close sibling relationship that doesn't really happen with kids who are spaced much further apart, at least not on the same level.

I don't know which scenario is better. Sometimes I do long for the days when it was just me and Dylan. I wouldn't trade what I have now for what I had then, but I still miss it.

A few days ago we found out the sex of our baby-to-be: a boy! This was just what we were hoping for. The birth order is perfect for us. Our oldest is a boy, and we have two girls who are 21 months apart. Having a boy as our youngest child will round everything out perfectly. We will have no "middle children," instead we will have an oldest boy, an oldest girl, a youngest girl and a youngest boy. And my husband won't have to feel outnumbered.

So when my doctor confirmed that we were going to get our wish, I was pleased. And then I got home.

I was looking through one of my knitting pattern books, hoping to get started on a little blanket for the latest addition to our family. Instead I found myself thumbing through photos of little flowered booties, pink ruffled dresses and frilly hats. Suddenly it hit me: never again would I buy a purple size NB dress with lacy trim. Never again would I strap a tiny pair of shiny patent leather shoes with a flower motif onto little baby feet. I would never again put a pink bow into whispy strands of barely discernible hair.

I felt sad.

I wonder if I'd feel the same if the birth order had been opposite--girl first, two boys, one last girl--would I mourn the loss of the "little man" clothes: cute little clip-on ties, collared shirts and tiny loafers? I probably would.

Maybe it's just because it's one of those moments you can never get back. It's fleeting. There are a thousand things you can do in your life that you can repeat over and over, as many times as you like. But only for a few short months can you repeat that act of putting those sweet little dresses on your own baby girl. After that, those moments are gone and you will never get them back.

It would almost be tragic, if you didn't trade those moments for so many other joys that come with watching a child grow up.

And, I suppose, there's always grandchildren.

I really don't get why people are arguing against universal health care.

Yeah, the idea has its problems. But our current health care system has problems too. The question should not be, "should we have universal health care?" but "how can we make universal health care work?" There is no "should." Every country in the western world has some form of universal health care except us.

I really don't want to argue about rationing, waiting lists and all that stuff that people point out is wrong with the health care systems of other nations. The truth is, we ration health care too. The people with money get health care. The people without don't. That's rationing. And let's also remember, rationing doesn't mean you don't get care; it means that certain types of care aren't covered by insurance. That's true with private health insurance plans. If you want a test or medication that isn't covered, you can still get it--you just have to pay for it. It would be no different under a public system. And we have waiting lists here too. I recently had to wait three months to get an appointment with a dermatologist, and I'm fully insured.

But I did say I didn't want to argue about that stuff. I really just want to make one point.

If there's a child in my kids' preschool who comes down with pertussis, you're damned right it's in my interests that that child has access to health care. I want her to get antibiotics. I want her parents to understand how contagious her disease is, and it may take a doctor to get that information to them. In the most selfish sense, it is in my interests that that child's illness is treated, because she's going to be exposed to my own children. So this "it's not my problem" attitude that people have about uninsured people is simply not based on rational thinking.

How about this: let's have a law enforcement system that is like our health care system. We will no longer pay for police services with our taxes, instead, individuals will buy private law enforcement insurance. Then, if your house is robbed or your sister is murdered, you will call your insurance company and file a claim. The police will come to your house and help you and insurance will pay for everything.

Now, if you can't afford law enforcement insurance, well, that's not my problem. If my child's schoolmate is abducted from the bus stop and her parents aren't insured, that's not my problem either. And if another child is abducted from the same school then hey, as long as it doesn't affect me why should I care? After all, I can afford my law enforcement insurance.

Anyone with the capacity for rational thought can see the ignorance of that paragraph. Of course it's everyone's problem--there's a child abductor on the loose but we have to wait until one of the victims' families can claim from insurance before law enforcement will do anything about it?

Why would a pertussis outbreak be any different?

And let's not forget the one fact everyone seems to be leaving out when they cry about how their taxes will go up, and how they can't afford to pay more taxes.

Each year, large numbers of uninsured patients seek medical care in emergency rooms, which by law are required to provide care regardless of a patient's ability to pay. These visits cost a total of about $45 billion per year. On the whole, this type of medical care is more expensive than the care given to the insured. Why? Because the uninsured wait until the late stages of a disease to get treatment (and late treatment is much more expensive than early treatment) and they go to emergency rooms, which are more expensive than care from a GP or a specialist. Who do you think pays for their treatment? It's not the uninsured, who ultimately can't afford it. It's YOU. Because what happens when patients don't pay their medical bills? Doctors raise their rates. And when doctors raise their rates, insurance companies raise their rates. So guess what, you are already paying for all those uninsured people--the difference is, it's coming out of your insurance instead of your taxes.

So yes, it's in everyone's interests to have universal health care. A healthy society is ... well ... a healthy society. That can never be a negative.

One of the reasons my husband and I are a good match is because we enjoy cooking. Or at least, because I enjoy cooking and he enjoys eating my cooking. I love to try new recipes and I cook meals from all over the globe; before we were married we would often eat homemade sushi, Thai and Indian recipes, authentic Mexican food, dishes from Africa, Jamaica, Europe, China, sometimes even from wherever I happened to point to on a map when I was looking for mealtime inspiration.

Then my kids came along, and dinnertime commentary changed from "wow, this is really great!" to "No!!! I don't yike this!!!! It's too gross!!" My ego has really taken a blow.

We don't want to change the way we eat. I can't imagine having chicken nuggets and french fries three nights a week, or rotating between pizza, hotdogs, chicken nuggets, hotdogs, pizza ... ugh. I don't mind cooking those things for my kids occasionally, because occasionally it's really nice to sit down and see everyone in the family actually eating at the same time. But I can't give up chili, lamb vindaloo, crab enchiladas, salmon and jerk chicken. And let's face it, a steady diet of pizza, hotdogs and chicken nuggets is really not what's best for the health of anyone in my family.

My pediatrician tells me not to short order cook, but she also tells me not to try forcing my kids to eat anything they don't want to eat--a rule I agree with because I came from a household where us kids were required to eat everything on our plates, and to this day I have a hard time leaving food even if I'm already over-full. And every night my mom used to serve previously-frozen vegetables, boiled in water until they became a pile of mushy gray fibers. She'd then serve these "vegetables" (devoid of all nutrients anyway) with an enormous dollop of mayonnaise on top (it still makes me gag to think about it). At some point I developed a technique of placing the pile of gloopy slop under my tongue and washing it down with a glass of milk without ever having to taste it, and that's how I ate my vegetables until the day I moved out. Until I was 19 and was served steamed broccoli while visiting a friend's house for dinner, I had no idea I even liked vegetables.

So I don't want to force my kids to eat what I cook, even though I'm pretty sure it tastes better than pulverized, over-cooked, mayonnaise-smothered broccoli. But I don't want to cook them anything special either--if I make seafood pallella for dinner, then that's what they get. But I also don't want them to go without dinner five nights a week, because that's invariably what happens. They start screaming about not liking something the second I put it in front of them, before they even taste it. If I serve some bread or a salad on the side, sometimes they will eat that and only that, but usually they will go hungry. A glass of milk at bedtime is the only thing that remedies this.

We've compromised a little; my husband and I have two nights a week where we eat together, and the kids have their meal of whatever-they-want by themselves. Then after they are in bed I can cook a nice seafood meal or something spicy, which I'd never be able to do otherwise because there's no way in hell I could even get my kids to consider trying something like that.

Am I being fair to them? I want them to grow up with refined palettes, but maybe that's too much to ask of small children. I do make sure I cook at least one family meal a week that I know they will love, but that usually means something unhealthy, and I don't think that's fair to them either.

Anyone ever publish a book called "the gourmet kid?" Maybe I just need new recipes.

For parents, the Internet has been so great in so many ways. I have to say this, of course, as the author of a blog, but I truly do believe it. When I was having trouble breastfeeding, I found a wonderful community of women online, all of whom had similar problems and could offer support and advice. When I want to learn what stage of development my unborn baby is in, I can look that up online too. I can also find pregnancy classifications of over-the-counter medications, and I can bargain shop online for kids' products. I rely on the Internet so much, in fact, that I seriously do wonder how parents got along without it only a generation ago.

But I also can't ignore the dark and ugly side of the Internet. And I'm not talking about the obvious stuff--sites dedicated to hate speech, terrorism, child pornography and all those other things I don't even want to think about--I'm talking about seemingly innocent websites that masquerade as informational resources and mislead parents into believing false information. In many ways, these sites are far more dangerous than those obvious ones.

In the days before the Internet, parents got their information from different sources. They got it from books and libraries, or from magazines and newspapers, from credible professionals such as doctors, or even from the evening news. Now these sources of information are by no means infallible. The media, for example, doesn't always get things right, and quite often certain news outlets (I won't name any names) misrepresent facts or leave them out entirely in order to push their favorite agendas. But they rarely publish deliberate lies or unverified information, because these media outlets depend almost entirely on credibility in order to exist. If they are caught telling lies or publishing hearsay (and sooner or later they will be), they lose readers/listeners/viewers, which leads to the loss of advertisers which means the end of their business. So most media outlets have fact-checkers on staff, people whose sole responsibility is to make sure that the facts are verified before the information goes to press.

In the past when parents wanted to know about the safety of a new vaccine, for example, they would ask their doctor. Or, they would read about it in the US News & World Report. Or if they were particularly devoted to the question, they would go down to the local library and delve into the medical research.

But the Internet has changed all that. Now, people just go online when they want to know about the safety of a new vaccine. And the sites that invariably come up in Google aren't the ones that are credible, fact-checked, written by medical and research professionals or endorsed by the CDC. They are the sites written and maintained by an army of people who are unqualified to discuss the subject, and let's face it, who really don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Anyone can launch a website and call it "vaccines-kill.com." You don't have to be a medical professional to register the URL and download a copy of Movable Type. You don't have to show you've taken an immunology class at your local community college. You don't even have to have a rudimentary understanding of the human body (or the English language for that matter). All you need is a credit card and a piece of software that will help you get your ideas online.

And yet, parents by the droves visit these websites every day and use them to make decisions about whether or not they will vaccinate their children. These same parents will often proclaim themselves to be better informed than those of us who don't visit these sites. "I have done my research," they say. "I made my decision based on a careful evaluation of the facts."

Except that they didn't, because so many of those sites don't contain facts. They contain opinions, speculation, scare-mongering and sometimes out-and-out lies. They are almost never supported by medical research and they are almost certainly never fact-checked.

What the Internet has created, in addition to all the wonderful benefits it has provided us with, is a new era of uninformed informed people--people who believe that all those hours spent researching a subject has made them better educated, when in fact it has brought them much further from the truth than they were previously. They are informed with false information.

I'll save my opinions about vaccines for a later post (though I'm sure you've guessed where I stand). And I don't want to discourage anyone from doing research, because there are many online sources that contain valid, credible information. I just want to caution anyone who may still be on the fence: when you do your research, make sure you're only looking at sites that contain information backed by doctors and other medical professionals, and stay away from the ones that contain mere opinion and speculation. Only then can you claim to be truly informed.

One of the great concerns of any large family is the grocery bill. Feeding all those mouths is priority number-one, after which comes the mortgage payment, the car payment, and all those ancillary expenses.

Earlier this year I discovered a website called "The Grocery Game" (www.thegrocerygame.com), which claims to help you save "as much as 60% or more on groceries." Further reading makes the premise seem sound: for a small fee ($10 every six weeks), you sign up for "The List," which tells you when products are at their rock bottom prices, and, preferably, when you can use a coupon to get an even better price.

I've never been a fan of coupon clipping but this seemed too good to pass up. Our grocery bill was approaching $200 a week, and cutting 60% would mean spending just $80. Wow! I signed up and prepared myself to spend my Sunday evenings clipping coupons.

I've now been using The Grocery Game now for about eight months, and I can say with certainty that I'm definitely not saving 60% a week. Is it still worth doing? I guess that depends on your perspective.

"The List" is basically a large database of grocery store prices. If your local grocery store is included in the database, you can sign up to get access to it. The database tracks each store's sales on specific products, and when an item is believed to be at its rock-bottom price (usually every 12 weeks or so) it appears on the list, along with a notation of any corresponding coupon, what publication that coupon appeared in and the date of the publication. The idea is that you buy your groceries on a "stocking-up" principle: you wait until they reach that rock-bottom price and then you buy enough to last for 12 weeks, until the product goes on sale again. Combined with coupons, individual items can sometimes have huge savings of up to 80 or 90%--sometimes (though rarely) they are even "free" after coupon.

This all sounded great to me, so when I started out I was religiously clipping coupons and filing them in a categorized coupon wallet every single week. This was sucking up almost all of my Sunday evenings (which I really should have been spending watching True Blood on HBO, but nevermind) and I discovered within three months that most of the coupons I so religiously clipped just ended up expiring unused because they never "made the list." By that time I was also discovering that my weekly savings were nowhere near the 60% touted on the Grocery Game homepage--in fact they were barely half of that, usually 30% or less.

Why? Well, there is one fundamental problem with the Grocery Game system. The list only ever includes items that you can save at least 50% on. Now that may not seem like a problem on the surface, but because of that threshold there are certain items that don't appear on the list often enough, or don't appear there at all. Also, the "stocking up" principle only works on non-perishable items such as canned and frozen goods. Produce and dairy products can't be purchased this way because their shelf life is far less than 12 weeks, and meats can only be purchased this way if you don't mind freezing them. Another problem is that that "rock bottom price" is often only achieved when a coupon is used, which is also no good for stocking up since most grocery stores will only allow you to use a coupon with one item.

So unless you are very strict about only buying items that make the list (which means you may go without your usual staples, sometimes for weeks at a time), there's no way you will ever save 60% on your groceries. And no, it's not the quality stuff that makes the list. Quality stuff never gets discounted to 50%, because people who want quality are willing to pay for it.

Let me give you some examples. Below is a list of products that are regularly on the list:

• Liquid hand soap
• Salad dressing, mayo and BBQ sauce
• Canned vegetables
• Frozen meals, pizzas and desserts
• Toothpaste
• Deoderant
• Lesser quality shampoos
• Popcorn, chips and crackers
• Soda
• Hotdogs and lunchmeat
• Bacon
• Cheaper cuts of meat, like cross rib roast and chicken thighs
• American cheese
• Cereal and granola bars
  
• Bottled and refrigerated juice
• Boxed sides like Rice-A-Roni
  

Much of this is stuff you need and stuff you like to have on hand for special occasions (we try to limit our consumption of chips, soda, bacon, processed foods, pizza etc). But still, it's nice to have a small stockpile in case you need it. And it's definitely nice to be able to save money on things you use every day, like toothpaste and hand soap.

Here are some items that show up on the list occasionally, but because they are either fresh items (like produce, dairy or bread) or because they have to be combined with a coupon in order to hit that 50% off threshold, there's no way you can buy enough of them to get you through the 12 week pricing cycle.

• Fresh fruit (usually one or two varieties appear on the list each week, which is really not enough if you like your family to have a lot of different fruits to choose from)
• Fresh vegetables (again, you'll see one or two varieties a week, sometimes none at all. I personally like to buy seven different varieties each week so my family doesn't get tired of eating the same vegetable night after night)
  
• Household medication like Advil or Nyquil
• Better cuts of meat, like New York strip or chicken breasts
• Packaged nuts and dried fruit such as raisins
• Yogurt
• Packaged breads
• Potatoes
• Laundry and dish detergent
  

And here are some items that I have never seen on the list:

• Nicer cuts of meat, like prime rib, fillet and lamb
• Fresh fish (of any kind)
  
• Higher priced medications like Claritin and Zantac
• Diapers
• Toilet paper, tampons, paper towels and other high-consumption paper goods
• Quality cheeses
• Milk, sour cream and other dairy products
• Bar soap, lotion and other personal care products
• Bakery items like fresh baked bread
  

Now, I understand why the purveyors of The Grocery Game don't want to include any product that you're not saving at least 50% on. When the list has a lot of huge numbers on it, people get excited about how much they're saving. But in the long run they are doing their subscribers a great disservice by never including the aforementioned items on the list. After all, just because I can't buy fresh fish at a discount doesn't mean I never want to eat fresh fish. I still want or need those items, and I'd still like to know when they go on sale, even if I'm only saving 30% instead of 50%.

If I was completely faithful to the list I would be feeding my family very little in the way of fresh fruits and vegetables and quality cuts of meat, and they'd be eating a lot of processed, canned and frozen foods instead. That's not how I want to feed my family, even if it does cost me a lot less to do it that way. I might as well just take them to McDonalds for dinner every night.

Now I do still think The Grocery Game is worth doing, and ultimately I give the service a thumbs-up (though my wrist may be a little stiff in doing so) but now I don't even bother to clip a coupon until I see it on the list. I just date my coupon books and put them in a file folder, then I can pull them out when I need to clip something. And I buy fresh produce every week, along with the occasional cut of prime rib or fillet of salmon. My grocery discount still comes to about 30%, which isn't bad, it's just not what was promised. If the Grocery Game loosened their 50% threshold and started telling me about 20% discounts on items that otherwise would never make the list, I'd be even better off, but there's no indication that they plan to do this (and when I emailed them about it I got a curt, defensive response telling me that I should just go to club stores for that stuff, which isn't practical for us since the nearest club store is 45 minutes away).

So after eight months I still haven't been able to achieve that coveted $80 grocery bill, but I'm still paying my 60 cents a week for access to the list, and $2 for my Sunday paper and its coupon inserts. With a family of five (soon to be six) spending $2.60 a week to save $60 is a no-brainer. But I would caution other families out there not to get too excited about what The Grocery Game has to offer. Feed your family the healthy variety of foods they are used to, save where you can, and don't make any big compromises in the name of a few bucks. And if you want The Grocery Game to start including some of the more quality items, email them. If enough people ask, maybe they will listen.

I guess I never really got a chance to try out my dream of discipline perfection. You know, the one where you tackle every problem with serene, clear thought. You are reasonable, you are calm, you explain to your child why he is in trouble, you dispense loving justice, and your child emerges from the experience with a greater sense of morality and a new-found desire to be well-mannered and agreeable.

You had that dream, right? For me it vanished when Dylan was 15 months old, the day Hailey was born.

This is my discipline style now: "Dylan! Stop doing that now, or I will take your Spiderman away for the rest of the day!"

Parenting by threat. In our house, it's the only thing that works. With three kids ages four and under, I am the first to admit that I don't have the patience to sit down and reason with my children and get them to have a clear understanding of why they are in trouble, what they did wrong and how to avoid doing it in the future. I don't have the time to "redirect" bad behavior. And I guess a lot of people might think my kids are ill-behaved.

I know my discipline style isn't as effective as some of the zen parenting techniques out there. Believe me, I've watched Nanny 911. Unfortunately, when you have three kids and two arms you just can't achieve Utopian discipline practices.

Yeah, if you hear a kid screaming in Target it's probably mine. And I admit I don't always go straight outside with them either. And do what, leave all my shopping behind so I can drive back another day and do it all over again?

My kids are a little wild. But I also know they feel secure, they are loved and they are well-adjusted. Right now that has to be enough. And if I annoy that old lady in the supermarket, who cares. She can go home afterwards to a quiet house.

Meanwhile, it's kind of fun to follow her around the store with a cartload of screaming kids. :-)

So what's really freaking me out right now is not the fact that we have a swine flu pandemic, but the fact that we have a pandemic. Period.

Do you remember the bird flu scare from a few years ago? Swine flu itself is pretty tame in comparison, with a mortality rate of below 1%. Bird flu is estimated to have a mortality rate approaching 75%.

To put that into perspective, the 1918 flu pandemic, described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history," had a mortality rate of 2.5%. Bird flu has the potential to be 30 times more lethal.

So am I freaking you out yet? I don't mean to. But before this current pandemic hit I liked to believe that we have advanced both in medical technology and in our understanding of how to prevent a pandemic. And here we are in the midst of the most prolific flu pandemic that's ever occurred in my lifetime. What would have happened if it had been a bird flu pandemic instead of a swine flu pandemic?

Well, here's what I tell myself. For a start, I do still think that medical technology, hospitals, vaccinations and drugs have advanced since 1918, so I hope that means a bird flu pandemic would be met with greater efficiency than the flu of that era was. And I hope that the CDC would have stricter guidelines for controlling the spread of a much deadlier virus. For example, in the current pandemic no one is suggesting that all persons who have come into contact with swine flu patients remain in quarantine. If it were a much deadlier illness, then a child with an infected sibling would be prevented from going to school, for example. Lines at the supermarket wouldn't be as busy as ever (as they are today), instead we would see only a few nervous people with medical masks pressed to their noses, stocking up on beans, rice and bottled water.

Such thoughts are comforting, but when I allow myself to dwell I still worry. In my mind I have the scenario mapped out--I'd stay at home with my four children, ordering dry goods via UPS (as long as UPS continued to operate), and growing what fresh vegetables I can in the garden. My husband, who would need to continue to work, would move in temporarily with one of his bachelor friends, thus limiting the exposure my kids would have to the illness. And there we would remain until the pandemic was over.

Paranoid, I know. Personally, I think it's better just to avoid dwelling on it. Like the threat of terrorism, nuclear attack, and the other horrible but slight possibilities that might threaten the life, health and happiness of my kids, I prefer to just file that stuff away into a worried but suppressed part of my brain. I'll switch into panic mode when the time comes, but in the meantime I want us all to keep living our lives as if nothing could ever go wrong. To do otherwise would be threatening the health and happiness of my kids today, and I'd rather not do that until I have a very strong reason to.

A few weeks ago I got the news: swine flu could kill me.

I worried about swine flu a little bit, back when there were only 20 or so cases in the entire country. But not long afterwards the CDC was saying that swine flu was no more dangerous than seasonal flu, so I stopped being concerned. Then came the frightening news: swine flu isn't really dangerous unless you are immuno-compromised, a child under two or pregnant.

This was sort of a double-whammy for me: I have a 17-month-old and I'm pregnant. Jeez.

The vaccine is expected to arrive in October, so all I had to do was get through the last part of August and all of September without exposing any of my three kids, myself or my husband to the virus and I should be golden. Then on Sunday, my 17-month old developed a fever.

So now I'm sitting here staring at my Relenza inhaler wondering just how bad it would be if I didn't use it. My daughter was diagnosed with swine flu, and in order to prevent contracting it myself I'm supposed to take Relenza for 10 days. The conventional wisdom is that it's better to expose my baby to the drug than it is to contract the virus and develop a fever that could be even more harmful to my baby.

Of course being the kind of person I am, I never take this sort of thing at face value (I even Googled the correct dosage for Tamiflu in a 17-month-old to make sure that my daughter wouldn't be one of the one-in-a-million cases where a doctor mis-prescribes a dosage). So I looked up "Relenza pregnancy" on Google and discovered that:

A. Animal studies suggest that Relenza may not be safe for use during pregnancy.
B. RELENZA should not be used in pregnancy unless the possible benefit to the patient is thought to outweigh any risk to the fetus.

Well, I guess I'm in category B, at least my OB seems to think so. But I'm still sitting here staring at this bottle.

Couldn't swine flu have waited just another couple of years? How about 2011, when I'm no longer pregnant (nor plan to be again) and my youngest child will be 1, fully vaccinated and ready to face the germs.

My daughter is doing fine. She is tired but seems to be recovering. I don't have any symptoms either. So what's a mom to do?

Sit back, close my eyes, and wish that swine flu had waited until 2011 to rear its ugly head.

Is it working?

I always said I wanted a big family. But what do you do when you are already in your 30s and haven't got started yet? And you don't want to still be having babies into your 40s?

Well, you have babies "the old fashioned way." You have a new one every year or two, until you are so exhausted you finally decide, "OK, that's a big enough family then."

We are on baby number four. I am 38 years old. I had my first baby at 33.

Dylan is four years old, Hailey was born just 15 months after he was and Natalie came along 21 months later. This next baby will also be 21 months behind the third.

When we are all out together we get a lot of looks. Younger people usually give us disapproving looks--a lot of those folks spaced their children much more sensibly, you see, three years apart. That appears to be the "accepted" way to have children in this generation.

Then there's the looks we get from older people, mostly those who had their kids in the 40s and 50s. These people often approach us smiling, fondly recalling how they raised four kids of their own, each one born in consecutive years. In their generation, it was common to have large families of closely spaced children.

What's right for one family isn't necessarily right for another. We wanted a big family. We were already in our 30s. So this was the choice we made. If we'd spaced our kids three years apart, I'd have had my last child in 2014, when I was 43. And I wouldn't have my beautiful Hailey, born just 15 months after Dylan.

No matter how tough things get (and I'm the first one to say that raising closely spaced kids is tough), I can't imagine ever looking at Hailey and thinking, "gee, I wish I'd never had her so that things would be easier right now." No matter what, I know that we made the right choice for our family.

And that matters way more than the looks we get from people who think their way is the better one.