Spring

Spring is finally here in the Northeast. I was starting to get a little worried since the weather when I came back from Peru was like the weather was before I left for Peru, 50 degrees, overcast and rainy. Today it is sunny with highs expected in the 60s so I guess we’re making some progress. Spring always brings out the athlete in me. Yesterday I went to the bike store with an eye towards getting a bike and trailer so Jack and I can explore the City together. He’s been spending too much time inside. I noticed a distinct change in his demeanor when he came back from a week on the farm with grandma and grandpa. He seems much happier when he has been outside.

There are two options to get your kid involved with your bicycling habit. The first is the bicycle seat which attaches to the rear rack of the bike. The second is a trailer that you pull behind your bike. The first option is good because you can throw Jr. on board with a minimum of fuss and spend more time riding than assembling and hooking up a trailer. The second option is good if you have more than one child, and there is the added benefit of being able to actually use it as a trailer to haul groceries and other gear. If, like me, you can’t make up your mind you can always buy both. I’m leaning in that direction now. Get the seat for short trips during the week, get the trailer for rides on the week-end. I’m hoping to take Jack up the West Side Highway to Inwood soon so he can see the Dominican neighborhood where daddy used to live when he was a poverty stricken lawyer for the City. We can get roast chicken and visit daddy’s abandoned motorcycle near Inwood Hill Park. Sounds like a great way to spend a sunny spring Saturday.

Traveling

So I have been gathering my rosebuds, getting stuff together and packing for my trip to Peru which begins on Friday. This also means getting Jack’s traveling kit together. Who knew such a little fellow could fill up two suitcases with his spring wardrobe and collection of familiar toys? I suppose the ball machine does take up a fair amount of space. I’m really going to miss my little buddy. We have become quite the team, Jack and I. I just hope he isn’t scarred for life because I went away for a week. I suspect a few days of playing with his cousins will ameliorate any seperation issues. On the plus side, maybe grandma can teach him how to eat with a spoon and fork, a skill that has eluded both him and me recently.

A few years ago I can remember my idea of planning for a trip out of the country usually involved cramming a few days worth of clothes into a knapsack, remembering my ticket and passport and heading for the airport bar. It’s not as easy when you are leaving a part of you behind. This now responsible parent spent the better part of this past week drafting a healthcare proxy and a will, getting vaccinated against strange diseases, purchasing travel insurance with emergency medical evacuation coverage, registering my trip with the state department (I know, I know) and sending a detailed itinerary of where I’m going to be on any given day, including hotel phone and fax numbers, by e-mail to every responsible adult that I know. Adventure travel indeed. I can report, however, that for the first time in many trips I feel like I am fully prepared for anything from an outbreak of cholera to a minor insurrection. This sort of preparation would have been impossible without cell phones and the internet and indeed, the first time I went overseas in early 1993, I had neither. There was something more, I don’t know, adventurous, about picking a hostel out of a Lonely Planet guidebook and making a reservation over the telephone without having the benefit of being able to view a panoramic 360 degree slideshow of the place on the internet. The world really is flat.

Jack is going on his own carefully controlled vacation. I’m sure he will have as much fun scaling the sides of the chicken coop as I will climbing the last 1000 feet to Machu Picchu. If all goes well, in a week I’ll be back and we can swap stories.

Autism and Vaccines

If any of you have been watching CNN over the past week or two you know that they have been relentlessly reporting on autism from every conceivable angle. I suppose this makes sense since April is Autism awareness month, but the constant in your face flogging of the issue has made me intensely paranoid. Every time Jack flaps his hand or shakes his head I become convinced that he is regressing developmentally. The thing most disturbing about autism is that it appears out of nowhere, for unknown reasons, often after a child has made significant developmental progress, and there is no cure. Autism has become an epidemic in this country. 1 in 153 children by some accounts fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, an increase of 172% from the levels of the 1990s, and no one knows why. There is a large, vocal group of parents that is convinced that the development of the disorder in their own children is related to vaccinations they received, specifically the MMR vaccine, although other vaccinations were also suspected. Although studies thus far have failed to show a correlation between any vaccine and the development of autism, there is compelling anecdotal evidence and some question as to whether the existing studies, all funded by the pharmaceutical industry, were free of taint. Many, many parents relate stories of taking their children in for multiple vaccinations only to see their formerly bright bubbly children descend into introspective madness within a week of being inoculated. This is some scary shit.

Against this backdrop I had to take Jack to his 12 month physical to receive his booster vaccinations. He actually had his physical the day before his birthday but I held off on the shots because his big party was the next day and I didn’t want him to be crabby and tired as he usually is after receiving a few shots. I decided before taking him in that I would speak to his doctor about delaying the MMR vaccine until he was two years old (and splitting the vaccine into its separate components) and his immune system was more developed. I girded myself for a battle, since I fully expected to be lectured on voodoo science and how the danger of measles, mumps and rubella far outweighed the minimal risk of vaccinations. Imagine my surprise when his doctor not only agreed with me but admitted that there were a lot of unanswered questions about the nexus between vaccines and autism and it was therefore better to err on the side of caution. She wrote me a script for a split vaccine and I let Jack get his HiB and HepB booster shots which he was none too happy about but which I was relatively sure were less dangerous than the MMR.

Of course, if I want Jack to go to daycare I have to comply with New York State Law and ensure that he has received the MMR vaccine. I understand the public health impetus behind such a law, but I also note that certain exceptions are made for religious beliefs. Section 2164 (9) of the NYS law states in relevant part: "[t]his section shall not apply to children whose…parents, hold genuine and sincere religious beliefs which are contrary to the practices herein required, and no certificate shall be required as a prerequisite to such children being admitted or received into school or attending school." In order to invoke the exemption a parent must (1) hold a religious belief against vaccination, as opposed to a belief founded upon medical or purely moral considerations; and (2) sincerely hold such belief. It is not required that the parents belong to an organized Church, but it is required that, “the opposition to inoculation…must stem from religious convictions and have not merely been framed in terms of religious belief so as to gain the legal remedy desired." Matter of Sherr v Northport-E. Northport Union Free School Dist.

So, the state is willing to grant an exception to people based on their belief in fables and fantasy with no grounding in science, yet the rationalists who believe that drug companies are only interested in making a profit and haven’t adequately explored the safety issues are left to twist in the wind. Seems sort of unfair, doesn’t it?

Being Prepared

I have been dealing with the complexities required to arrange for Jack’s care when Erin and I go to Peru at the end of next week. For someone not used to extensive future-oriented planning this has been rather challenging. In the last two days I have made out a will and executed a document known as a “consent by proxy” which is a legal form that allows Jack’s interim care-giver (hi grandma!) to seek medical treatment should the need arise. As a lawyer I am a bit of a stickler for having my documentary ducks in a row. God forbid something happens to me in the mountains. I can’t get that movie “Alive!” out of my mind. You remember, the one where the plane goes down in the Andes and the survivors end up eating their dead friends until two of them gain enough strength to walk out of the woods. True story. More likely threats include food born illnesses and tropical diseases. I finally found a clinic where I could get vaccinated yesterday.

I am also slightly concerned that Jack is going to forget about me in the week I am away. I recognize at some level that this is just paranoia ungrounded in reality and perhaps some guilt at taking a week-long vacation without him. But I still worry, probably needlessly. He is being left in capable hands and I suspect that running around a large lawn in rural Virginia chasing chickens is just the thing he needs to shake of the remnants of cabin fever. It’s just that since he was born I have never been away from him for more than a few days at a time, and those separations were business trips and not by choice. I’ll miss him. As much as he depends on me for all his physical needs, I depend on him for the comfort that his presence brings to me. The feeling I get when he smiles at me is simply inexplicable. I am really looking forward to the day when he’s old enough to come with me and we can explore the world together.

April Folly

Parenting is an exercise in managing terror. By that I mean everything Jack thinks is fascinating and fun to play with I tend to see as potentially lethal. Yet at the same time that I’m running around the house hiding the knives, I also am wondering whether being over protective is going to stunt his natural curiosity and development. Jack has recently started walking and he is exploring a new level of reality; one that is approximately one foot higher than the reality he has been exploring since he learned to crawl a few months ago. At this new elevation await new things to touch and chew on, as well as new perils. The trick is sorting out which things need to be immediately removed from his grasping hands (glass, electrical cords, the oven, radiators, the computer, cameras, etc., etc.) and which are benign enough to allow him to fool around with. (Remote controls, whatever is on my plate at dinnertime, DVDs, stereo controls, the cat). Some things I take away because the potential for a time consuming clean-up outweighs whatever intellectual satisfaction he is gleaning from the experience. (The cat’s food and water fall into this category, as do most things in the refrigerator. I’d also lump 5lb. cans of decaffeinated coffee from Costco here. I’m still not sure how he managed to get the lid off-but what dexterity in those little fingers!) Then there are the wild-cards, like balloons. There are still a few balloons kicking around from the party and Jack loves to bat them around and chase after them. This is a relatively benign pastime, although I wish he was wearing a football helmet since he has a little trouble with balance and coordination. Moreover, he likes to chew on the knotted end of the balloon, and I hazily remember reading somewhere that this was very bad since he could choke on it. I’m not the sort of person that takes balloons away from children though so I usually let him gnaw away under my watchful eye. I figure when the first one pops mid-bite he’ll probably seek out other inanimate objects to nibble on.