Immunization Update and Finding Childcare

It's been a week and a half since we went ahead and did Thomas' immunizations. I'm happy to report that it went perfectly. He had one injection in each thigh. It was so sad of course to hear him scream afterwards. I was pretty tense about the whole thing. Steve came with us so he held him afterwards and I held pressure on the sites. Then I made little pressure dressings for his legs which was suggested by a lovely reader of my blog, "sarasarasara". Thanks for the tip, Sara! I folded a 2x2 gauze, put that over the site, and wrapped the whole thing with Coban tape. That's the stretchy tape that sticks to itself, not skin. Here's a pic of the poor little guy after he got all bandaged and breastfed.

I put ice on his legs for ten minutes also. It may have all been overkill but he didn't get so much as a bruise so you can bet I'll be doing the same thing next time.

Several people suggested getting the shots subcutaneously rather than intramuscularly. For those wondering, subcutaneous injections go just into the fat under the skin and are unlikely to cause trouble with bleeding. Intramuscular injections go into the muscle which can cause a bleed. Anyway, our hematologist looked into it and said only the Hepatitis B vaccine could be given sub-q. I asked our family doctor as well and she said she had never heard any evidence that giving them sub-q would be effective. So, that's why we went with IMs.

With that all behind us, we've moved on to arranging childcare for when I go back to work. That isn't until April of next year but I wanted him in a centre and they can be hard to get into. We decided to first try for the centre where Ty had gone. It's familiar and we had a good experience there overall. Still, because Thomas is different, it's pretty stressful. When I was still pregnant, my biggest worry about daycare was whether they would use our cloth diapers. That seems pretty trivial now. Well, kind of. It was still our second biggest concern.

The Canadian Hemophilia Society has really thought of everything. We were given a booklet about choosing childcare and also one that's meant to be given to schools to explain what hemophilia is and what the school needs to look for. There's also a grant available to the daycare centre for any extras they may need to look after Thomas.

We went to meet with the director this week since Steve was on vacation. I was nervous. I guess on some level I worried that they may not even accept him. Well, I didn't have to worry too much. When we explained Thomas' condition, she didn't seem concerned at all. She said they have had all kinds of special needs there. Tell the teachers what they need to know and they'll look after it. She was quite laidback about it. At first I thought that maybe it was because she didn't get it but by the end of our meeting I think she did. She said they are an "inclusion" centre which I think means that since they get government funding, they can't turn away kids with special needs. (Don't be fooled, government funding doesn't equal cheap. We may go broke paying for childcare.) It's a bit hard to tell someone what to expect from Thomas by the time he starts there because we just don't know. Maybe he'll have a port by then or at some point after that. I did tell her that and she said that was fine, too.

So overall, I felt pretty good about the whole thing. We paid the enrollment fee to hold his spot so he'll be starting in mid-April. When I asked about cloth diapers she actually said that we could just write out exactly how they wanted us to handle them to make things easier for us. HA! Easier for us? I had planned on making things as easy as possible for them by saying they could just fold up the diaper and put it in the wetbag. But maybe I should take full advantage of this and have them dump out the poop!

The director was going to look into applying for the grant. I have no idea how much money it might be but any suggestions for what we should ask them to get with it? She said they have first aid kits in each classroom but I didn't look at them. I was thinking maybe a really good one just for Thomas? Ice packs? I don't know what else...