jammaker

I had twins. I could tell which one was kicking, who had the hiccups, when one had been asleep/not moving awhile (even if the other one was active), etc. They were positioned vertically left and right and so for the most part it was pretty easy. I also knew how it correlated when they came out because they label the babies A and B based on position (A being lower/first to come out typically). And for whatever it's worth, their early personalities did kind of line up to what I noticed in utero. One of them very laid back/low energy, and the other much more intense. We saw it on many of the dozen ultrasounds I had with them too. Note: I do not hold this against him, but I did find it interesting when they were infants. The problem with Michelle is how she phrases it and acts about it, not that she can state which twin was kicking more. If it was "it was so interesting how different they were even from the time they were in utero" that would be very different than "Jana kicked me a lot (that bitch)".

I actually think I own this same suit and love it. It's a tankini with shorts that go not quite to the knee, so it's pretty impressive for her! It's fitted but not skin tight (which makes it very forgiving of curves), and it's a lot more comfortable for me in the pool with my little boys too. She'd definitely blend right in at the pool or beach with it, which considering where she started from is huge.

Maybe, and I wouldn't fault them for it. Many hospitals are doing away with nurseries and strongly encouraging rooming in with your baby (sometimes giving no other options) even after a c-section. So when you've just been cut open, still have a catheter, and are on some hefty medications, having another adult there becomes nearly a necessity. After my last birth, my husband couldn't stay (other kids to take care of) and the nurses only took the baby to the nursery because I had lost too much blood and wasn't allowed to hold him yet. He was the only baby there that night; I was not the only c-section that day. There are many things wrong with these people, but that I can't judge them for.

Same! I have a medically complex kid. He's had a lot of surgeries, he had a feeding tube for a long time, we see a lot of doctors. (All totally legit, I swear.) I'm utterly fascinated by how she pulled this off. How did she con so many doctors? How did she get it all paid for? Insurance requires so much documentation, and then still denies it half the time. I have so many questions! I guess with Dee Dee dead though, there's only so much they can tell with some degree of fidelity to the real-life events. There's fictionalizing relatively known events, and then there's speculating on what may have come before.

I feel so bad for both of them. Gypsy was so obviously abused for so long and felt she had no escape - but would she have even thought of violence if not for Nick's (Victor's) influence? Would he have actually ever turned violent if not for his love of Gypsy/her influence? The serial nature of the show also has me putting more blame on Gypsy than I would have just based on reading articles, etc, because I'm a week removed from Dee Dee's abuse as I'm watching Gypsy plan and lie and worry about seeing Star Wars. It was an interesting perspective shift for me this week, having to remind myself how she got to this point.

Total lurker here, but I felt the urge to reply to this. When I asked my endocrinologist about the morning drag, she added liothyronine to my regimen. It's T3 already so my body doesn't have to convert it, and it made a huge difference in symptoms. I take a little of that each morning and it gives my body the jumpstart it needs while my body works on the levothyroxine. Also sympathizing with all the weight-gain posts. I've gained 100 lbs in the past 10 years, most very rapidly. I have no thryoid anymore, I'm stuck on hormones because of endometriosis and nothing I do takes the weight off. It's awful.

I've been watching The Act and I really loved how well tube-feeding was portrayed in the first couple of episodes. My son was tube fed for 10 years and I have never seen it so accurately done on television (you know, in the 2-3 times I've seen it at all). The blending, the feeding, the tube changes, and the pile of dishes on the counter. I wish it was done in another context other than the craziness that is DeeDee and Gypsy, but still, I appreciated the portrayal.

Ok, I see this said a lot. As a twin mom - yes, it is possible to tell which twin is kicking. Mine were oriented so one was up the left side and one was up the right. They settled in there early and stayed there. They definitely had unique personalities and kicking patterns. One was prone to the hiccups; the other never got them. Fraternal twins have separate placentas and separate sacs - it's not a free for all in there. And once they get to a certain size (for me, it was at 20 weeks), there's not a terrible lot of room for them to shift around. If you know where they are and how they're situated, it's definitely possible to know which one is kicking. I don't think this is a Michelle hating Jana thing.

It's not just you. It's very minimally bleeped, but not enough for it to still sound exactly like it to my ears. Almost as though they have the shortest of bleeps over the "u" sound and nothing more. And it seems like it runs twice an hour during the afternoon ER runs, which is frustrating when you just want to sneak in some ER viewing when your kids are otherwise occupied but still technically able to hear the TV.

I mostly agree with you - from the other side of the fence. At our school, the moms of autistic children seem to largely accept the services the district provide and just kind of roll with it. As a parent of a medically disabled child, I fight, and I fight and I FIGHT for what he needs and deserves, and so I LOVE that about the Maya character. But it's not because I want him to "accomplish more" - I have to fight for it because if I don't, he falls between the cracks because his needs don't always scream PAY ATTENTION TO ME .. so I have to do the screaming for him. Also because in our case it's his actual life at stake (which I think was seen some in the 2nd episode last night on the show) - if someone screws up, he can end up in the hospital needing surgery or with long-term repercussions, so I need to make sure they actually understand the gravity of the situation before I can step away. Honestly the trash/person exchange perfectly sums up how I feel when I talk to school staff. Different context (because my son is mobile and verbal), but same feelings. They frequently put him in with autistic kids for "staffing and scheduling" reasons, when it is directly in conflict with his needs, and I have had to stand there and say "how is this serving MY child" and run through all the ways it should be obvious that it's not. I just want people to see him as a unique individual, and address him as a whole person, with dignity and respect. I want to believe that if I teach him how to fight for that now when he is young, it will become automatic for him to not accept anything less as he gets older - like it seems to have for JJ.

See, but what is the answer? To just abort everyone who has something medically wrong? What of children who can't be diagnosed in utero? Or people of any age who suffer a debilitating life event who then end up needing care for the remainder of their lives? Sooner or later, almost everyone becomes a burden on others, if by "burden" we mean "needing physical care". It's not about forgetting that fact, it's about accepting it. Language matters, semantics matter. When the professor started going off about "eradicating", she was saying that Toby and Lily's son, the baby they were supposed to be celebrating shouldn't exist. Is not worthy of existing, because ... what? Because he will need extra care? And even if no one in real life would say that at a baby shower, people do think it, so in that regards - good on the writers for expressing it (albeit in a very clunky way). Lily of all people is not walking into this blindly, and I'm sure that while she loves her son, she would gladly support research to help mitigate the worst physical effects of DS. There's middle ground between "special angels" and "eradicate", but very few people successfully land there. The woman that really confounded me was the train set lady. If she had known, she wouldn't have purchased a train set? Does she think children with DS can't play with toys?

Oh no, I totally get that when he was telling Daphne. I meant when Lily and Toby are talking about what to do, and neither of them say abortion, just beat around it with like "I think we know what we have to do" and "it makes the most sense". Given that they don't know each other THAT well and come from totally different backgrounds, I was sort of waiting for one to say abortion while the other said adoption. Because it would be another totally valid option to consider and possible given Lily's background that she would find it a better option. But the show already did touch on adoption with Angelo, so obviously they won't go near that again. I can't see this show, of all shows, going the abortion route though, not with a special needs baby especially. Which means they will parent it, no matter how much they don't want it and aren't ready for it.

One the one hand, I really get where Daphne is coming from. Growing up with something different, watching someone come to the conclusion that different = abort, she may truly wonder if Toby / society sees HER as having less worth. I didn't love the way Regina answered her, either, which may be where it all stems from. As a special needs parent, I'm VERY honest with my son that YES, his/our life is harder in some ways. Why would I lie about that? There's more to figure out, and it's harder, and sometime's it sucks - for him, for me, for the rest of the family. But that doesn't mean it's not worth it - HE'S not worth it. We're all willing and wanting to work harder because it means we get HIM. Regina almost made it there with her "you make our lives richer" but clearly Daphne is not confident about it. But that doesn't give her the right/place to try to sway Toby. If she had just said "this is how that makes me feel", that would be giving him information to process as he will, but as it was, she was really trying to push him away from his decision. Meantime, with Toby and Lily's discussion, I was waiting for there to be a big misunderstanding about abortion vs. adoption, because neither of them spoke the word. I sort of wish that had been in the conversation as an option. She's far enough along (probably end of first trimester? Given she's been dealing with it for "weeks" and already had testing done and results back) that getting an abortion will be both harder to get and a more involved procedure, so it seems almost odd that adoption isn't brought up as an option at all, even if it was just in passing.

My issue with the whole Deacon thing, is they acted like the diagnosis meant he automatically went on the transplant list - no, sorry, that's not how that works. You go through a bunch of other physical and mental evaluations, and then a committee meets and decides if you meet the criteria and *then* you go on the list. You can fast track it, maybe, but not an afternoon certainly. And a living donor has to go through the same thing. It takes months, not days. I believe it was on the order of 4-5 months for my mom's living donor (which was turned down at the last minute, and she's still on the list now). Donating part of your liver is a serious surgery with a serious recovery - not something they can just jump at doing in a couple days. I enjoyed the rest of the episode (yay! Nashville is back!), but the medical stuff was really annoying to me.

I wouldn't mind the extra credit if Daphne had taken it upon herself (or even after a conversation with Regina) to go to the professor, ask what she did wrong, and how she could improve her semester grade (i.e. going in thinking how can she work harder, what other resources can she access, etc), and then the professor rewards her initiative with an extra credit assignment. Provided that she applies that standard equally among other students coming in looking for help - that's not unfair OR unrealistic. Yes other people struggle too, but if you don't ask for help, you're not going to get it. But Regina going in first and playing the deaf card ... just no. Daphne is an adult. If she (Daphne) feels her deafness is what caused her to struggle - then by *all means* go address it as an actual issue (preferably before failing the exam). Cite specific reasons, and possible solutions. But Daphne didn't feel that way, and Regina was way out of bounds and gave the whole issue definite negative spin.

This. Why didn't they get a (good) lawyer? If it was so believable that Bay did it instead of Daphne, couldn't the same case be made that it was believable that Daphne did it, not Bay - thus poking reasonable doubt into both cases? It was never the slam-dunk case they made it out to be, which is all the more frustrating.

I agree with you. Bay did choose to bail Daphne out of her mess by sacrificing herself. She can even still believe it was the right choice - and still be mad at Daphne for putting her in that situation to begin with. And she can certainly be angry that Daphne is suffering exactly zero repercussions (obviously not legal ones, because of Bay, but also within the family), while she's suffering and her family is all "good luck, Bay's a raging bitch on home arrest". I think Daphne made the wrong choice in not going away to school, and telling Bay she was doing it to stay home "for her". Bay needs the space - it's clear. She's saying that she can't be around Daphne because it's too hard; she can't watch Daphne living it up at college and NOT feel angry, and it's totally understandable. I think in time she will - and SHOULD (because it was her choice) - get past it, but it's too much to ask of her right now in the middle of it to be forgiving on top of self-sacrificing.

This gives me hope that maybe I'll get it soon-ish. I pre-ordered on Sept 1st. It's kind of frustrating to have no clue - makes planning what to read next so much harder!

It looks like Amazon has pushed Pioneer Girl off again, it's saying December 30th now. So annoying!

It also didn't make sense that he was unwilling to disappoint/upset his mother by telling her they couldn't afford a big church wedding, but was totally cool with telling her "sorry Ma, already married!". How is that better?

What I like about the proposal is that he asks Laura before he talks to Pa. He only talked to Pa the day before officially giving her the ring. Even today there are men who will go to the parents/father first to "ask permission", so I liked that he gave Laura the respect of getting her answer first. There's not much dialog saying what they ever talked about - I wonder if she was keeping their private lives private (as much as you can writing about your youth), or what drove that choice.

I've (unfortunately) spent too much time in a pediatric hospital and these two points don't bother me, because they're pretty darned real. Kids basically living there without parents? Yup. Really, really, really sick kids, sometimes really young (baby, toddler) kids left there. Without parents. For days, weeks, months. Yup. Breaks my heart every single time. But the reality is that if your child is inpatient for a long stay, and they are pretty stable, not all parents are going to make it in every day because life (jobs, school, other kids) doesn't come to a full stop. (And the other reality is that some parents just don't care.) So far we know Jordi has no one, Charlie's dad is the guitar volunteer who comes when he can (but isn't legally supposed to be there) and his mom was away on business, Emma's parents love her but stress her out, Kara's 4 parents have all been there, so that only leaves Dash and Leo. Nothing major is going on with them, they're pretty comfortably settled, so I can understand why we're not being shown their parents. (Now, let's not discuss why they're there when nothing major is happening, because THAT irks.) And as for visitors and walking in and out - I have never seen a ward other than ICU and maternity that buzz visitors in and out and monitor them closely during regular visiting hours. We have had pizza delivered directly to our bedspace without the nurses on the floor knowing. I have taken my kid off the floor without anyone seeing us go. So yeah, I can see teenagers up and walking off the floor - and once off the floor out of the building - without anyone noticing. (These are reasons I would never leave my minor child alone in a hospital, but it's reality.) Ideally when you leave, you're supposed to notify your nurse, but as long as you're not contagious or on the monitors, we've always been encouraged to go for walks out into the hospital garden, down to the cafeteria instead of ordering up a tray, etc. Yes they SHOULD have better security - but that doesn't mean that all/many hospitals DO. Overall this show feels like it's set in a different *time* of medicine. 20 years ago, being admitted for cancer treatments was a lot more common than it is now. Children in comas and with CF really may well be long-term residents. It was a different model of care.

I loved this part too - I would completely do that too! I wonder if Almanzo knew how poorly his sister was treating Laura, and also what sort of conversations happened there over the years. If my husband's relatives ever treated me/mine the way she did, I would probably never fully let it drop, as in every time her name came up I'd probably mutter something obscene, and if she came to visit I'm not sure I would be able to be polite. But Laura was much more a lady than I'll ever claim to be.

I always thought it was because the dime sociable that Laura went to was such a bore, Ma didn't want it to be associated. Or maybe after cooking, serving, and cleaning, she was pointing out that there was no real socializing going on except with the men - who got to do that all winter long in the stores anyways while women maybe got to get together to knit together on Saturdays, at most. Little Town is where the abundance of food comes back, and the family finally seems to be on its feet again and able to not pinch every penny. This book and the next seem to be the best times for the Ingalls since the Big Woods and the last of the good times really.

I never felt it was wrong to want Mary to go to school - I felt it was wrong to put the pressure on Laura to finance Mary's ability to go to school, have nice clothes to take to school, be able to come home for summers, etc. For me, it would have made it more palatable if this education led to Mary being able to contribute to the family financially after, but ultimately if you're pressuring your child to work, that money should be going to necessities not luxuries, and education for education's sake - while nice - is in the luxury category.