Pajama Day Interrupted

Since Claire's sick and it's cold, wet, and rainy here, I had planned a pajama day where we sit around and watch movies and maybe get out the Play-doh later if I felt like I could deal with the mess, but MG and C had other ideas. They demanded to wear their flower girl dresses from Mimi's wedding, and they are "booful" - running around in their Easter shoes and their tulle and satin dresses.

Who do these kids belong to, honestly? Because I am the opposite of a girlie girl. I am a jeans and t-shirt girl. I would no sooner wear a dress for fun than I'd go shopping for fun. Yuck. My kids, though, are clothes horses. They start developing their own ideas about what they're going to wear around 18 months (THAT guessing game is fun) and at 3.5, MG shows no signs of stopping and stepping into her jeans and t-shirt birthright.

On the other hand, if I could look this cute this effortlessly, I probably would, too.


It's like the Midget Prom around here.

They'll be precious at the pharmacy later... when I get out of my jammies.

My Dream House

When I sleep, I dream about this house. Check out the floor plan. Isn't it amazing? Someday... Someday...

All the storage in those bonus rooms makes my toes curl. Three garages - one for all the tools and junk, one for each car. I wouldn't know what to do with myself with all this space. Each bedroom has its own bath (so of course it would be a bad house for toddlers - it'll be better that we wait to build it until they're older and can clean their own bathrooms!) It looks so cozy and homey. I love the master bedroom. I love the home office. I love the kitchen.

*****sigh*****

Fun with Medicine

Ok, so I quit drinking the Raspberry Leaf tea at noonish yesterday, and the symptoms I described before had returned by this morning. So I had a cup of tea for breakfast, and they're gone again. I think we're on to something. I'll quit the tea again today at noon and keep you posted. I'm anxious to hear back from those of you who are trying it for other reasons (generally heavy periods, etc.). I'll post your results, anonymously, here too.

In other news, Claire doesn't have the Mexican flu. After several days of symptoms like a fever (up to 103), runny nose, wet cough, saying "ears hurt" and "tummy hurt," and talking like Kathleen Turner, I put the kids in the car to take MG to preschool and every last channel on the radio was freaking over the Mexican flu, and how a kid (23 months) in Texas died of it yesterday.

I called the doctor's office in tears. (Hey, I'm a little hormonal right now...) "I know she doesn't have the Mexican flu," I said, "but she's sick and I want to hear it from the doctor that she's fine, even though we had Mexican food last week..." It was kind of embarrassing. But while she doesn't have the Mexican flu, she does have another ear infection. The doctor and I decided to wait and monitor the situation through Friday, and to see if she can fight it off on her own before we give her more antibiotics. After all the shenanigans in March, I'm just not going to go down the antibiotics/side effects/back to the doctor/pick up another bug/more antibiotics/more side effects/etc. road again, at least not willingly.

My dad, who is a nurse and generally well read and knows stuff, when asked if I need to freak out about the Mexican flu, said, "Yes and no."

He says that "Yes, an awful lot of people are going to get the flu, but no, not a lot of people are going to die of it."

I am doing my best not to freak. After all, if it were the end of the world, we would've been informed by REM. Besides, it starts with an earthquake, right? Oh shit.


(too obscure?)

I gotta go get MG from school.



(It's Leonard Bernstein.)

And now for something completely different...

Pictures of my cute kids, to erase all of the other mental images my last post may have conjured.

Sometimes when you feel crummy, the best solution is formal wear.



Nerderella. She must get it from her daddy. Haha...

The Thing About The Mirena

I've debated a lot about whether or not to post this, because, well, it's icky. So there are going to be multiple disclaimers. Here's the first one:

This post is icky. Don't read it if you are easily grossed out.

I'll warn you again before I get to the really icky parts. The thing is, I made a couple of important discoveries that NEED to be shared (you'll see why), so I'm going to post it. With lots of disclaiming.

I do not want to get comments about how gross I am, because seriously, if you can see yourself commenting something like that, don't read this post.

Ok, so I had a Mirena IUD for two years. I'd link to Mirena's website at this point, but it's been down for maintenance for a while. What's the point?

While the Mirena was in place, I loved it. I found the insertion to be completely painless (perhaps because my cervix had just been dilated to 10 cm 6 weeks before the insertion, so what's a little stretch the size of like a hairpin, at that point, really? I'll tell you - it's nothing). I did not get periods. I spotted a little here and there, particularly when I weaned Claire. We (icky part here, don't read it) had a little trouble with the strings, if you know what I mean, initially, but they literally soften up over time, and after a short while neither of us had any trouble with them again.

I loved not having to think about it. I loved that the hormone, while present, is an extremely small and localized dose. I loved not getting periods. I loved not getting pregnant. Love love love. I was all over other peoples' blogs' comments singing its praises to the skies.

So, then we decided to think about another baby, and figured I'd get it removed and we'd use other methods (like business travel) until we decide that we're really ready for another baby. Cause every time we'd say, "Ok, let's go for it," the kids would have a REALLY bad day before I could even make the appointment, and I figured if I had to have a run of good days between the conversation, making the appointment, keeping the appointment, and not chickening out - it would never happen. Besides, I was due for a check up.

I got it removed on 4/16. The removal didn't hurt at all. I'd read horror stories that insertion and removal hurt other people really badly, so I was feeling very smug and lucky... Until Sunday.

All right, if you've read up to this point, and you're easily grossed out or offended or you don't want to know way too much about my very angry uterus, this is your last chance to turn back. This is where things take a turn for the seriously yucky. I am not even kidding. It's only going to go downhill from here. You have been warned.


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I mean it.


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I really mean it. I am going to make fun of you and call you names if you post comments saying things like "EEEEEW!" after this, because you have been more than sufficiently warned.


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Seriously.


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Ok. So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I was fine. Then I started to bleed on Sunday. Profusely. If you have ever had a kid (and really, the only people who should still be reading at this point should be people with a vested interest in IUDs - maybe you're deciding whether or not to get one, maybe you're deciding whether to have yours taken out... Maybe you just want to know what to expect, but the "OMG THE MIRENA TRIED TO KILL ME!!!" forums are pissing you off, and you want someone a little... calmer... to tell you what to expect. Otherwise, why are you still reading, seriously?) you probably remember how much you bled after childbirth. A lot, right? Like, worst period ever? Maybe even clots?

This was worse than that. I am not kidding or exaggerating or forgetting (Claire is only two, and both of their births feel like yesterday). There was a great deal of blood and clots. Big clots. Golf ball sized.

Hey, I warned you that this was gross.

So, I called the on-call doctor on Monday night, after about 48 hours of feeling like I was bleeding to death, and she told me to watch for signs of infection (foul smell, fever over 100.4, tenderness just above my pubic bone, etc.) and to call back if I saturated a pad in an hour. She recommended I take ibuprofen.

What. Ever. Ibuprofen? Seriously? That doesn't have any anti-bleeding properties that I'm aware of.

I figured, "Ok, surely they wouldn't just let me bleed out..." and got online. I read all the scary forums (I refuse to link - google Mirena and OMG and you'll find them). I got on Mirena's (not functioning) website and tried to find out what is expected when you have it removed.

Nothing.

I read both the patient info and the prescriber info sheets - figuring that it had been 2 years, maybe I had forgotten something I'd read back then.

Nada.

So, I start doing science. I read about clots (because really, that was the scariest part). I read that clots are formed when you're bleeding too fast for your body's natural anticoagulants (natural things that prevent clots) to keep up. Ok, so what are some natural anticoagulants? I googled. Vitamin E. I can do that.

I took Vitamin E, and an iron supplement because I was feeling a little woozy.

That made it worse.

I ended that little experiment after about 12 hours, and called my regular doctor's office. I was told to watch for signs of infection, again. I was told that if I soak a pad in an hour that's "too much." I was not told what would happen if I met that little milestone. After I got a little pushier, the triage nurse set me up for a CBC test at the nearby lab.

It came back normal (12.6 - apparently a CBC measures how much blood is in your blood). However, on Sunday night I was so weak that I literally could not get out of the chair to check my e-mail. When Amy can't get online, you know there's a real issue.

The next morning I called the doctor's office again, got the runaround again. I was told to take ibuprofen again. By this point, I was more than a little pissed. I decided to call Bayer Pharmaceuticals, the maker of the Mirena, to see if they could shed any light - or at least say, "Yep, golf balls? Totally normal."

I finally got through the voicemaze to a person, and when I explained what I wanted to know, she said, "We really haven't studied that at all, that's why it's not in the patient info."

"WHAT? Don't you think that's a little negligent???" I said.

"Well, if you'll give me your name and the name of your doctor, I'll give it to our research department for follow up."

I sputtered, gave her what she wanted, and hung up.

"Ok, I thought, I'm smarter than this... I just need to think."

So, I started thinking again, and I thought about birth and how they stop bleeding afterwards with Pitocin. Well, I didn't think I could talk anyone into giving me a shot of it just for the sake of science. I needed something that acts LIKE pitocin, something that causes contractions...

Then I remembered that when I was pregnant, and particularly when I was trying to go into labor on my own to avoid being induced, I took Red Raspberry Leaf Tea, in huge quantities, and that when I took it I could feel the Braxton Hicks contractions kick up a notch or two.

Bingo.

After labor, they want your uterus to continue to contract (squeeze) down to a more average size, right? To stop the bleeding? Right?

So, I went to the grocery store (they carry it at Kroger!!) because the Health Food Store was already closed, last night, and I got myself some Red Raspberry Leaf tea. And girls, I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that it helped immediately.

I have had no clots today.

It only took two cups. I drank a third this afternoon, just to be sure.

I am still bleeding, but it's a much more manageable, average amount, and the clots are gone.

That's why I'm telling you all this. Because you may be bleeding heavily too, whether it's with your period or whether you just had an IUD removed. You may have been patted on the head and told "take an ibuprofen," by your triage nurse, too. Maybe you have endometriosis. Maybe you're pregnant and you want to tone your uterus. I don't know, but I know one thing. In my small, unscientific study of one - Red Raspberry Leaf tea HELPED. Between it and the iron supplements, I'm feeling like myself again. There's a chance, of course, that I would've felt better today anyway - after all, I was bleeding heavily for 8, nearly 9 days, but I doubt it. While I couldn't feel my uterus doing anything - contracting, cramping, etc. - it was too immediate a change to not have been the tea.

I promise that if I have another wonky period next month, I'll post further results. Also, I'm going to quit drinking the tea and see if the scary bleeding and clots come back. If that happens, and the tea works again, I think we'll have ourselves a solid theory.

So, thanks for all the comments and emails. Your concern for me was honestly touching. I hope that putting this information out there helps someone else who may be going through the same thing.

And Bayer Pharma, if you're reading this, GET ON THE BALL and DO YOUR FRIGGING HOMEWORK, already.

Edited to add: A couple of you have asked me for more details about the tea - It's Traditional Medicinals Raspberry Leaf Tea. Click through for more details and to order online (although as I said, it's available in the Health Food section of my Kroger).