#SummerofDad Week Two: Off to Austin

This week will be a short post, as Dad is (mostly) getting the week off.

Jenny, Gabe and I are in Austin—sunny, wonderful Austin—where Jenny and I first met, where I was born and raised, and where my parents still live. It’s also where we’ll be going to a good friend’s wedding. So this week is not too heavy on the #SummerofDad childcare front, as Dad has back-up in the form of energetic and eager grandparents who don’t live close to their grandkid—score! So they’re still excited to not only see him, but to help out with everyday tasks such as naptimes and feedings and diapers—double score! And they’ll take him on night of said wedding, which means we’ll basically have a built-in fancy date among friends—need I say it?—triple score! Continue reading “#SummerofDad Week Two: Off to Austin” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Summer Lovin’

Wow, two weeks went by without a WSDW post! It was kind of nice to take a little bit of a break from the blog, but it’s really crazy how fast the days go by even without “working”! With my days completely off, I was still pretty tired running errands, filling my little toddler’s days jam-packed with fun summer activities, sending out my resume and taking calls to get feelers out there for prospective jobs. It’s really surprising how even without my deadlines for blog writing, I was still very busy. Being a stay at home mom is really tiring! It’s one of those things where you can appreciate the exhaustion the other type of mom goes through – either Mom A works all day and is tired from work, cooks dinner, puts baby down to bed, packs up baby bag and meals for day care/babysitter, then passes out. On the other hand, Mom B at home gets up when baby wakes up (or earlier) and from start to finish it’s: meals, cleaning the kitchen/house, picking up after toddler, running errands to the grocery store and Target of course, meal planning, activities, driving in traffic, bedtime routine, laundry. Both are a lot of work and mom doesn’t get much time to herself. Yeesh, that was tiring just thinking about it.

With my little break from blogging and after I wrote last Saturday’s post about high-risk pregnancies, I realized how much I missed having a “purpose” after Jia went to bed. I guess it made me appreciate the work I put into my own posts. I feel like I’m doing something good, aside from raising my little girl. Doing the research and writing up informative posts is kinda energizing – as long as I’m not entirely pooped, that is.

Anyway, continuing on… Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Summer Lovin’” »

What is a “High-Risk Pregnancy”?

Now, let me start off by saying that my pregnancy was not considered uneventful, but I also don’t personally consider it a “high risk” one, either. Sure, the last 4 weeks of my pregnancy were spent on early dismissal from the demands of ICU bedside nursing, and yes I saw a high-risk fetal medicine doctor every single week for being on “pre-eclampsia watch.” After my weekly OB appointment, I was sent downstairs to the docs with the big guns. They hooked me up to the external fetal monitoring set-up (for those who want technical terms: the tocodynamometer which measures uterine contractions/activity and the ultrasound transducer to monitor baby’s heart rate) then brought me into the ultrasound room for a quick scan to measure the placenta and amniotic fluid levels. But, after each appointment, everything seemed completely on track. I didn’t necessarily “feel” high-risk, even though we were labeled as such.

That was me. However, going into a routine run-of-the-mill OB appointment can quickly turn any soon-to-be parent to panic-mode once your OB says with that concerned-but-trying-to-still-sound-upbeat tone, “well, just to be sure, we’re going to send you to high-risk fetal medicine to run some tests to make sure that {insert reason for concern} is okay…” Your OB may want you to see them immediately, the same day, or no later than the next day. Either way, thoughts of panic begin to flood your mind as the room starts spinning and you feel your face turn flush with anxiety. As your heart begins to race, you think to yourself, well if the baby’s heart rate wasn’t high enough before, it certainly must be NOW!

So What Does it Mean to be Considered “High Risk”? Continue reading “What is a “High-Risk Pregnancy”?” »

Intro to #SummerofDad & Week One

Hello!

So, Jeni did a great job introducing me, how we met, and how we came about the #SummerofDad idea. In the last (nearly) 10 years (!) since Jeni and parted ways after graduating from Purdue, I’ve done a lot of things.

I’ve traveled to Costa Rica, Greece, and throughout the US. I worked as a pharmaceutical research coordinator for a couple of years. I applied to grad school a bunch of times (three, to be exact) and even moved to New York City to attend a physical therapy doctoral program. But I dropped out after a few weeks. Luckily, a girl I knew (and liked) moved up from Austin that summer, too. So instead of heading back home, I decided to stay and hang tough in the city and see about a girl. Also, I decided that, since I didn’t know what I wanted to do for graduate school, I needed to try something different: so I got into publishing.

During my four years in New York, two amazing dreams came true: I got to work in publishing for a couple of years at Penguin/Viking (as well as some other very cool places); that girl (Jenny-with-a-y) became my best friend, partner-in-crime, the love of my life, and then my wife. We got married in Austin in 2012 and in 2013 we did an amazing 6-week backpacking trip through Turkey and Greece for our belated honeymoon. About the time we got married I was realizing that publishing wasn’t working for me. Though I love writing, I wanted to get back into science. I learned about genetic counseling and applied — 3rd time’s a charm — for grad school. I ended up getting into my top program at Johns Hopkins and the NIH.

The big life changes kept coming, because almost exactly a year after being accepted, in June 2014, my son Gabriel was born. This past year has been quite a challenge, balancing grad school, family, and my wife’s writing career. I also write, and have published fiction pieces in various places, but most recently I’ve been writing for the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Genome Advance of the Month, where we try to explain interesting developments in genetics research!

So onto the post for this week…

Continue reading “Intro to #SummerofDad & Week One” »

A Guest Writer Comes to Little Sproutings!

So I’ve been a little MIA lately, because I’ve been dedicating my energy and little spare time I have when Jia is asleep, to job searching (when it’s not collapsing on the couch and indulging in DVR’d episodes of Inside Amy Schumer after intently staring at the monitor until I know Jia’s “out for the count”). I needed some time to send out resumes and schedule phone calls without the pressure of my self-made deadlines to publish my intense research posts here on Little Sproutings.

So the News!…

So I am very excited to share with you some news that has been in the works for a couple of months – my good college friend, Kyle Davis, will be guest posting here on the blog! Kyle and I first met when we both rushed our honor fraternity, Phi Sigma Pi, back in the Spring of 2003 (I am pretty sure it’s 2003) at Purdue University. We made an instant connection – we were both goofballs with a lot of energy. It didn’t matter if he was studying psychology and I majored in dietetics, or that aside from PSP, we didn’t have a whole lot in common. After weeks of pledging into PSP, a couple philanthropic road trips as a group, and many honor fraternity-hosted events around campus, we became good buddies with an obnoxiously silly handshake and penchant for going out dancing at the Neon Cactus and singing song lyrics at the top of our lungs while gyrating in 1920’s costumes.

Continue reading “A Guest Writer Comes to Little Sproutings!” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Stack ’em Up!

Since I’m taking a break from the research posts I publish on Saturdays, I figure I should still write a short update on what Jia’s been up to. These posts are a lot easier to write since I don’t have to go digging through research journals, evidence-based practice recommendations/best practices, etc.

What she’s been doing in the past week:

She starts kissing the doggies by smacking her lips and chasing after them while making her kissy noises. So cute!
Poor Puggies. Pug kisses aside, she is starting to find entertainment in pulling the pugs’ tails and grabbing their feet – Kona is particularly perturbed by this new activity, but he’s a good boy and knows when to walk away.
She can stack her wooden tower (cover photo) finally! Before, she would just remove all the wooden parts but now she’s discovered she can stack them onto the peg. No they’re not in order, but baby steps!
She knows the word “rabbit,” so when I say “where’s your rabbit?” she’ll look around the room and grab this squishy little light-up rabbit toy my grandmother got her for Easter, and bring it over to me.
My mother-in-law bought Jia an inflatable Spray ‘N Splash pool from Buy Buy Baby on sale for a cheap $14 and I finally blew it up yesterday since it was a hot upper 80s/low 90s day out and I didn’t want to drive anywhere. So I filled it up with the hose out in the front yard and she had so much fun splashing and going down the slide! At first she hesitated because it was strange, but after a few tries, she soon wasn’t eager to hold onto my hands and would try to thrust herself down the slide on her own. The zebra on ours sprays when hooked up to the hose, but I detached it soon after we had it going, since the spray was a little much (I’d already filled the pool, so additional spraying would over-fill the pool. Anyway I highly recommend this pool, with a manual air pump it was exhausting but way worth it! Don’t try to inflate it with your mouth, you’ll pass out I’m pretty positive.
Eating is getting better. Broccoli, mango, pot roast, chicken shu mai (from Trader Joe’s), and really getting used to smoked salmon in her eggs. She also loves toast with breakfast, because we usually have toast, so I butter hers up with some unsalted Kerry Gold organic and give her a half of a piece. We have to give her white whole wheat bread, because I think she may struggle a bit with our high fiber bread… and she poops enough!
Weaning: finally on full concentration cow’s milk, but we’ll continue to give her breast milk that I have frozen, for during meals (mixed with a little cow’s milk). Still nursing in the morning and before bedtime, but I’ve finally stopped pumping before I go to bed, which completely is a relief to me! I love not having to pump! So exhilarating being able to just go to bed without having to stay up to pump at 11 PM. (It was my own doing, requiring myself a pre-bedtime pump session)

For me: Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Stack ’em Up!” »

What’s She Doing Wednesday: Happy B-Day Mom!

Mother’s Day 2015

I had this vision for writing this Mother’s Day post as a letter to my mom for last weekend’s Sproutings Saturday but I decided to give myself a break since I’ve been so so tired. Makes me think I need to get some bloodwork done to see if there’s a reason why I’m so exhausted all the time. Anyway, so I wanted to post a photo like this for that post, but since it didn’t happen I’m just going to use it for this post! Oh so my intentions for this week are to write a post about lipase in breastmilk and how it affects some babies, or about what the research says about breastfeeding and trying to get pregnant. But, I gotta be honest again – I’m recovering from a brush with pesticide poisoning and my head doesn’t even want to write this post but I’m fighting against my desire to cuddle up with my pillow but I’ll write this anyway.

Continue reading “What’s She Doing Wednesday: Happy B-Day Mom!” »