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November 30, 2003
Working with Ella
As part of my (many) finals and term papers that are due this time of year, I had to do one that was a complete pediatric physical and medical. One of the VERY FEW times that being a mom/student is an advantage, I had a captive subject easily at my disposal. Ella loved letting me listen to her heart, her breathing and her tummy with my stethoscope as long as she knew she would have a turn. It is so cute—she doesn’t like to put them in her ears (they are pretty tight) so she puts the stethoscope around her neck, but still tells me she is listening to everything. Not only will she ‘listen’ to her heart and her tummy, but she will also ‘listen’ to her diaper, her knee, the chair, and her hair. She also gives physicals to her stuffed animals and I can hear her coaxing them “Take a deep breath”. So precious. I have to say, too, that she does a pretty good job of placing the stethoscope on the right landmarks for the heart, lungs and bowel sounds. That’s my girl.
One of the best parts of this assignment (now there’s a phrase I don’t use often—HA!) was doing the developmental screening. (Warning-bragging mom alert). Specifically, we were given the Denver Developmental Screening Test, which checks newborns-age five for all sorts of different developmental milestones and thus you can determine if a child is developing at an appropriate rate. Well, I just love this stuff, especially since I am proud as punch about my little girl and convinced she is an absolute genius and any concrete evidence I can get of this fact is just icing on the cake. So, going through the screening test, I was able to determine that Ella is basically on course with her Personal/ Social development (She is able to brush teeth with help, wash and dry hands, and name a friend, but is not able to put on a tee shirt, or really put on any clothing without some help from me). Her fine motor skills and her gross motor skills are a little advanced—about the level of a 29 month old child (she is 26.5 months), as she can build a tower of eight blocks, imitate a vertical line, balance on each foot for one second, do a broad jump, and throw a ball overhand. Her language, however, was the most advanced (I had suspected this but this was the first time I have actually screened her), functioning on the level of a 39 month old. She was able to know five adjectives, know four actions, name the use of three objects, know 2 adjectives, and name four pictures (all these skills I am listing are more precisely defined within the test). She could not count one block or define five words.
Ella loved trying the various skills within the screening. She was very excited about all the things I asked her to do and when Jamie came home while we were doing them she yelled down to him “I showing Mommy tricks”. You sure were, darling.
Sick
Poor little Ella. She has had the most mysterious illness lately. She had just recovered from her ear infection and her ever lasting cold when this one hit… It started with just diarrhea and, she was in such good spirits other then this, we actually were naive enough to think that she didn’t like the microwave popcorn we gave her. WRONG!
Things only got worse when we drove up to Jamie’s niece’s house in Maine for Thanksgiving. We were there for three days total and she spent the whole time being very clingy, very easily upset, and very antisocial. All she wanted to do was just lie in Jamie or my arms and be left alone. She still had the diarrhea but, aside from the new malaise, didn’t have any other signs of infection (fever, rash, vomiting, complaints of pain).
It was very sad, of course, but even more so since I was really looking forward to her hanging out and playing with her cousins Kirsten (7) and Madeline (4), especially since she had had such a great time playing with her other cousins this summer in California. She warmed up to Madeline a little by the last night, but it was still very half hearted. Her cousin Helen (10) who lives nearer to us was also up, and this was another problem. Helen is a nice little girl—very bright, talented in many sports, enthusiastic about everything. She definitely likes to be the center of attention but who doesn’t? Ever since Ella’s birth, Helen has been crazy about her and whenever Helen sees Ella usually goes rushing up to her and tries to pick her up and carry her around gushing “Oh, how’s my favorite baby cousin…” The trouble is, this is just not Ella’s style at all, and as Ella gets older it seems more and more obvious that she is not going to grow to like this approach. Ella is much more into being left alone while she adjusts to a situation. Whenever Helen rushes at Ella, she immediately gets fussy and pushes Helen away and Jamie and I usually have to step in to smooth over the situation. With Ella sick in Maine, coupled with three days straight of Helen, it was a recipe for disaster. By the end of the trip, any time Helen so much as entered a room with Ella in it, or attempted to talk to play with her, Ella would whine and fuss and reject Helen completely. On many occasions, I chastised Ella, telling her to be kinder to her cousin who loved her so much, but I knew it wasn’t going to solve the problem. I think Jamie is going to have a talk with Helen and try to get her to back off a little (or a lot, until Ella relaxes around her). We don’t want to hurt Helen’s feelings, but her relationship with Ella is very poor right now, and she is Ella’s most nearby cousin so we were hoping they would be better playmates then they are now. Sigh.
Anyway, back to Ella’s illness. We have a few member’s of Jamie’s family who practice alternative medicine—cranio sacral therapy and another one that I can’t remember the name of. I am normally a conventional medicine kind of girl, but since we were all there, and Jamie’s sister in law (Rachel) was doing some of her work on various family members, we decided to give it a go to see if she could figure out what was bothering Ella. It was the weirdest thing—Ella sat on my lap and Rachel ‘asked’ Ella’s body permission to use my body as a conduit while Rachel thought about different things that could be wrong. Based on whether she could make my arm move or not, she determined that Ella has food sensitivities to wheat, oranges, tomatoes, and potatoes and is also teething. I know, sounds super weird, right?!?! It does to me too, but her whole family use this method to determine ills, including deciding what vitamins and medicines to take and for how long. I don’t know what to think, but it probably would be a good idea if we cut down on wheat a bit—between cereal, breads, crackers, and pasta we rely on it for most meals and snacks and I can’t imagine that is good to be so heavily concentrated. I figure I can get rice crackers, corn cereal, and some none wheat pasta and that should even things out a bit.
Ug. Off track again. Anyway, to finish the saga, it is now nine days after Ella’s first signs of illness and it is still sticking around. I called the Dr. and she said there was a bug going around but that is what they ALWAYS say. She didn’t seem too concerned and didn’t say I needed to bring her in. I’m not real real concerned either, I just wish it wasn’t such a lingerer. It also didn’t make for the best Thanksgiving holiday, but they can’t all be the best, I guess. Maybe next year….
As always, thanks for reading.
Bonnie
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