The Queen's Rambles

I had a lengthy phone conversation with the ped today. I think there must be a general rule that you don’t want to have lengthy phone conversations with the ped. I’ve never had a lengthy phone conversation in regards to Erik. Elsa is another creature all together.

She is severely iron deficient. When doing an iron test, the desired result is 10%. Elsa is at 2%. The doctor sounded pretty worried and told me to do whatever it takes to get the iron supplement into her, even if it means giving it to her in straight sugar. She needs to be taking 60 mg of elemental iron a day and hopefully that will get her levels where they need to be. She has to have another nightmare blood draw in three months.

She also gave several other suggestions for getting the iron into her, none of which have worked so far. She said she didn’t want to tell me to quit nursing because she loves that I am still breastfeeding, but I have to cut way back and hope that she will start eating. That’s the main problem, I think. She’s just a super picky eater and is not getting the dietary iron that she needs.

I’ve been looking up iron rich foods and am planning on getting them in front of her. Getting her to eat them is another matter entirely, but I have to try. Sometimes it can take a kid 20 times before they’ll even put the food in their mouth.

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That was all written yesterday. Today things are looking a little better. I was able to put the iron in her pancake batter. I know she hasn’t gotten enough yet, but she got enough to turn her poop black. That’s a start, at least. She absolutely refuses to be spoon fed anything, so I need to find something to bake it in. I have a mini-muffin pan. My plan is to bake some kind of muffin or cookie or something and put a 2 ml (she needs 4 ml a day) in each treat so I can control the dosage. Just gotta figure out what I’m going to do. Didn’t have time to figure out anything today because we were off having fun. Guess what we were doing?

The sun was out, so I decided to unleash Erik on the world. He responded by harassing innocent children with “crazy hugs.”

Even Miss Elsa found a friend just her age. They seemed to like each other if the amount of eye poking and fingers-in-each-other’s-mouths was any indication.

Why am I posting pictures of kids who sort of look familiar to many of my LJ readers?

Yes! It’s a Heather!. We were very excited to get to hang out with Heather, Rob and Tora for a few hours. Ok, so I was really excited. Erik was actually really excited to hang out with Nate. I was excited that Nate kept calling me ma’am. What a good boy! And Erik was mostly nice to him.

The thing I hate about blogging is all my friends living so far away. The thing I love about living in the DC area is that many of my friends come through here for one reason or another.

It is really a shame that I don’t hang out with Tora more since it is totally doable, except for the traffic. If Erik didn’t have preschool smack-dab in middle of prime non-rush-hour-traffic time I’d be able to do a lot more. I’ve been pretty incognito this past year. Also, tired. And mothering an infant. Mothering an infant and trying to juggle a social life is hard, especially a sleepy infant. Maybe all the iron will make the baby less sleepy.

And now I have to go mother that sleepy baby.