In control

I'm a control lover. I don't know that I'd go as far as calling myself a control freak (although M might, at times), but I like to plan. Especially for trips. I like the feeling that if I just pack the right things, everything will go well. I am the person you want to have on your Eurail trip, or vacation in Costa Rica or Ghana. I'm the one who brings tiny mosquito nets, and Cipro (for, um, traveller's, um, food related illnesses), and Ibuprofen, and sunburn cream, and sea sickness pills, and extra ziploc baggies for stuff, and a lock for your huge ass backpack. And cards, and a small pair of binoculars, and a camera with a waterproof case for underwater photos, and extra batteries.

And, you get it.

With the arrival of baby A, and her who-knows-what-it-was sleeping problems almost 2 years ago, I turned these skills onto managing her environment. It didn't work, but it gave me something to obsess about, and make myself calmer.

She has now had 3 chest infections in the last few months, complete with horribly constricted airways that make her wheeze and breathe hard. And after bout number 3, I sit here at the computer, with baby Singulair in an unopened box. The pediatrician has suggested it, and said emphatically how it has no side-effects. And I chose it instead of an inhaler with spacer that she'd have to learn to take 5 deep breaths from. Last night, before opening the box, I went....yes, online.

I know. Dumb. But it is one of those basic-good-parenting things, where at least I want to see what side effects are written on the drug's website for this stuff she is supposed to take all winter long once a day. And even the pharmacist said only that it might make her a bit drowsy (so I was thinking, "Score!"). Let's just let the website speak for itself:

"SINGULAIR may cause serious side effects. Behavior and mood-related changes have been reported: agitation including aggressive behavior or hostility, bad or vivid dreams, depression, disorientation (confusion), feeling anxious, hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not really there), irritability, restlessness, sleepwalking, suicidal thoughts and actions (including suicide), tremor, and trouble sleeping. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have, or your child has, any of these symptoms while taking SINGULAIR."

You have got to be kidding me! Aggression and hostility and sleepwalking?! I mean, ok, now I've also gone to the forums and heard from parents whose kids have night terrors from the stuff. But how am I supposed to know if they are from her medication or would have happened anyway? Depression? Ai, ai, ai.

The package sits, still unopened, on my desk. Between this keyboard and the screen. And I'm thinking that the inhaler isn't sounding so bad anymore. I think that for a kid who is already excitable, and who is going through the tantrum stage, while we are also trying to adjust, and already screams in the middle of the night, and who I've suspected might sleepwalk someday based on how she wakes from sleep,....this medication will have to be the only option for me to start her on it.

So this is one of those cases in which I can control. But if I couldn't, as I've realized will be the case with any future pregnancies and birth defects, or behavior disorders (let's just say that the NYTimes Motherlode blog has been going all out on posts about all sorts of scary things), those are the situations I start to get nervous. Maybe, if we decide to have another child, we should adopt. How horrible a thought is that, to adopt to avoid birth defects. What if we have a kid who says he/she wants to kill us, at age 5? There was a post on Motherlode about this, too. Granted, the follow-up from the mother calmed me down.

Even though my brain can imagine a kid with all the possible problems all at once, nature probably cannot, and it is only in my upper-middle-class existence that I even have the luxury of pretending that any of life is predictable. That serious illness won't strike, since we can afford medication when A's breathing gets hard or my depression sets in. That it is worth planning for 10 years from now since we can assume we will all be around. That life can't suddenly get turned upside down. I forget sometimes that it already has, two years ago, and that it sucked, it was hard, I hated being in the middle of all of it, but, that in the end, we all survived.

Time to get some predictable work done, in my predictable Thursday, with my predictably sleepy dog.