Did that seriously just happen?!

My oldest turns three in May.  She is beautiful, smart, resourceful, funny, and stubborn.  That last quality has had her on and off the potty training wagon for almost a year and half.  These past few months, however, it has really been clicking.  So, this week we took the daytime diapers away.  When she is awake, she has to wear underwear.

This hasn't been too much of a big deal to her, until tonight ... when she had to poop.  She asked for a diaper. ... "Only babies wear diapers during the day." ... You could see the response in her eyes "that's ok.  I'll just hold it until I get a diaper." ... Only she couldn't.

After a rocky start, she had success!  She repeatedly apologized for not pooping in her diaper.  It took three tries, but I finally got her to understand that the potty chair is supposed to hold poop and potty.  Once she understood that, she was very proud of her success.  She needed to show it to dad.  "Daaaad!  M has something that she wants to shoooow yooooou!!"

A victory dance later, we were in the bathroom, ready to flush her poop.  She wanted to wave goodbye to it ... and blew it a kiss.  She wanted to give it a snuggle ... but changed her mind when she learned that it would leave poop on her dress.  We eventually flushed it, so it could go on the "slide" to the sewer.  (I really don't hope that comes back to bite me.)

Once everything was cleaned up, we celebrated with some pop rocks.  The smile on her face when she figured out that chewing them makes them pop louder was absolutely priceless!

Has SIDS been demystified?

I found this article and thought it was pretty cool.  If you would like to read it for yourself, you can find it here.

A study was conducted by the Rhode Island department of health that connected SIDS to a particular type of inner ear damage.  What that study concluded was that babies with this type of inner ear damage have a hard time waking up when they experience a build up of carbon dioxide in the body.  Since they don't wake, they don't shift positions or cry and the carbon dioxide continues to build until they suffocate. 

Side note:  A build up of carbon dioxide will occur anytime you are not breathing normally.  This includes any time you have a cold, are too hot (so your body pants to cool down), or your nose and mouth are partially blocked (head under covers, arm in front of face, etc).  Normally it is not a big deal.  You will either take a deep breath or move and the problem is solved.

A pediatric anesthesiologist took that study and went a little further.  He damaged the inner ear of some mice in a similar manner to what the study found.  He then lightly put them to sleep using anesthesia.  The mice which had their inner ear damaged were more difficult to wake up than mice without the damage.

He is currently seeking funding for the next step.  He has test he hopes will detect this inner ear damage, and identify babies that have a greater risk for SIDS.  He would like to use it as part of the newborn hearing test that is routinely done to see if the test is able to identify the babies that have a larger than normal SIDS risk factor.