Crying Baby

I know when new parents become pregnant their main concern is if they are going to be any good at caring for babies when the baby is upset.

What you should realize is that once the baby is here, almost everything important becomes instinctive. You find very soon that the baby is probably crying for either hunger or wet diaper.

If you do both, feed and change the baby, and they continue to cry, then maybe you should take him/her to the doctor because they may have a serious issue such as colic or any other serious baby issue.

You can never be too sure.

You will find that caring for babies can be really hard, especially when you have a “cryer”.

There is nothing worse than constantly hearing that high pitch cry from a baby.

Even when they aren’t colicky, hungry or wet, sometimes they just cry.

If you haven’t received enough rest (especially when breast feeding) than it makes it twice as hard to deal with the crying. The most important thing that you need to do is keep your patience.

Never lose your cool because it may lead to baby shaking, neglect and/or death.

I know from experience that post partum is also a serious issue and if you feel that you are having bad thoughts and ideas about harming the baby you should first talk with your spouse and then seek professional help.

If professional help is not a possibility, please talk with a family member and ask them to help you by relieving you for a couple of hours or a day and let them take care of the baby for that time.

This will at least give you some time to gain your composure before you do anything drastic.

Always keep in mind that caring for babies is a very stressful, but beautiful event that all we parents must endure.

You are not alone.

Daughter and Granddaughter

On September 5, 2009, my daughter, Kimberly, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Reagan, but unlike most uneventful pregnancies, Kimberly faced life-threatening challenges to her and her baby and she needed the best of care.

Let me take you back a bit in time. On April 6, 1981, at the age of 21, I gave birth to my second daughter, Kimberly, at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. Her birth was going to be the most difficult emotional experience of my life. Kimberly was born with Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) a hole between her right and left ventrical, and for the tiny baby that she was, born 4 weeks early, any hole was a big one. Hers was about the size of a dime, but with a heart no bigger than a half-dollar, that almost cost her her life. She was blue and immediately rushed to the NICU where they monitored her condition. I held her in my arms for a mere 1 minute before she was wisked away. My heart sunk, my temperature spiked. My daughter and I were not faring very well.

The next day I was able to visit Kimberly in the NICU and I breast fed her for the first time. She didn't do very well with that and I had to pump every day and feed her. Mother's milk was the best for baby, and I knew it might make the difference between life and death for her. She had tubes and connections, but holding her close was all that made such deep maternal love possible. As I looked into her precious blue eyes and felt her tiny fingers wrapped around my index finger, I knew that together, Kimberly and I, would survive, and that she would teach me much about motherhood, mothering, caring, and love - and almost 30 years later I now know those things are true.

When Kim was 3 months old, she had her first open-heart surgery to repair the hole in her heart. Dr. Head placed a dacron patch over the hole in her heart and Kim quickly grew. She was pink and healthy and chubby too. She bounced back like a charm.

When she was 4 years old, doctors discovered Kim had aortic stenosis and needed to correct the obstruction in her aortic valve as soon as possible. So, during Christmas of 1985, Kim had open-heart surgery again, shortly after this picture was taken.

Kim did great, and I put up a Christmas tree in her room with presents and all. Santa was going to visit Kimberly in Walter Reed, and he did. More than anything, Kimberly wanted to go with me each time I left her room to go to the cafeteria for an ice cream. She couldn't leave the ward because of her tubes and connections. She didn't like that one bit and would cry every time I left to get her an ice cream. Shortly after Christmas, her cardiologist came into the room and said "Kim, would you like me to take out those nasty tubes?" Kim looked at me with a twinkle of apprehension in her eyes and said "yes." I asked if I could hold her hand and the doctor said "yes."

Kim was so brave. Braver than any child I've ever known. Her doctor pulled out multiple tubes one at a time from her chest and sides. I cried. I was a complete mess and I held Kimberly's face to mine and we both cried - but Kim was the braver of the both of us, by miles.

The doctor said cheerfully "Kimberly! I'm all done! You are such a brave girl!" and I popped up my head and smiled at Kim, red eyes and all, and said "He's all done! Yay! Are you okay?" I looked at Kim with a lot of concern in my eyes and she said rather coyly, "Mom, does this mean I can go with you to get ice cream now?" Her doctor and I both laughed and said "yep, you want to go right now?" She said "Yes!" and with wheelchair and Kim in hand, I strolled her to the cafeteria for her first ice cream out of her room.

The day she was discharged, Kimberly had a room full of balloons, and being the sweet angel with a heart of gold that she is, Kimberly asked if we could give her balloons to the children on the pediatric unit. I wish I had pictures, but imagine Kimberly with about 20+ balloons in both hands being strolled through the pediatric ward. I took her into each room one-by-one and she would give a child a balloon or tie one on a crib and she would say "I hope you feel better soon." It was a touching moment in my life, seeing so much compassion from such a young child.

When Kim was 10 y/o, she needed surgery again, but this time it was to replace her aortic valve. Her valve was leaking and she wasn't getting the oxygenated blood that she needed. She successfully had her valve replaced with a human valve.

When Kim was 15 y/o, she had her 4th open-heart surgery to replace the aortic valve again, only this time they performed a double-valve replacement at the Oklahoma City Children's Hospital, just weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing. We stayed in the Ronald McDonald House close by during Kim's stay and surgery. The doctors took her healthy pulmonary valve and replaced her aortic valve that was leaking again, then, they took a pig's valve and replaced her pulmonary valve. They did this because they knew that her healthy pulmonary valve was a perfect valve to replace her aortic valve, and they knew that her pulmonary, being a secondary valve, would grow with her and not require replacement for about 15 years. It would also be a less risky and invasive surgery to correct any complications with her pulmonary valve going forward.

So here we are nearly 15 years later, and Kimberly has grown up into the most beautiful young woman, wife, and mother. In 2009, when Kim gave birth to Reagan, it nearly cost her her life. She had developed gestational diabetes and a number of other complications during her pregnancy and needed to have her heart condition monitored every 2 weeks for the duration of her pregnancy. The last weeks were the toughest for her and she needed an emergency c-section to save her and her baby.

Kim's healthcare has always been critical to her life and health since her birth, and the care she received at Lehigh Valley Health Network during her pregnancy was exceptional in keeping her and her baby healthy.

Her story is so remarkable that Lehigh Valley contacted Kim and her husband, Zak, about doing a video story about the care she received during her pregnancy and her heart condition. The result? This beautiful video and story - below. I hope you will watch the video. It is wonderful, and it brings tears to my eyes every time I watch it.

I am so proud of my daughter, Kimberly, and the woman she has become. She is beautiful, inside and out. She has a heart of gold. She is a good mother and a loving wife. She is my angel and has taught me much that is good and precious about being a mother. She loves her daughter like I love her, and this Christmas I will thank the Lord she is alive, she is a part of my life, and that I have a healthy granddaughter too.

The Last Exorcism

In the surprise box-office hit The Last Exorcism the found-footage horror meme stumbles on ten years from its 1999 resurrection in the form of The Blair Witch Project although the genesis of this particular strand of gruesome cinema can be detected back to the notorious cannibal movies of the 1970’s. This latest entry to the sub-genre has more in common with it’s 1999 colleague in that it is an experience aiming for an effective insertion of chills and thrills rather than gore and disgust, a design achieved by presenting ‘real world’ events on a cinematic canvas that is more attuned to flights of fantasy and blissful escape. The Last Exorcism served as the closing night gala of this year’s hugely successful Frightfest, as it was a suitably high-profile finale to proceedings with the cast, director and horror superstar turned producer Eli Roth in tow for this eagerly anticipated European premiere.

In this malicious mockumentary a charismatic yet disillusioned preacher and part-time exorcist Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) has had an epiphany of sorts and invites a documentary crew into his life to illustrate how he had forged a shameful career in performing cleansing rituals on the allegedly possessed, an adumbration driven by the recent near-death illness of his beloved son and the revelation that a young autistic child had been accidentally killed in a similar deceit some weeks before. Taking a letter at random from those pleas for aid that he receives every day the Reverend and a modest two person crew of cameraman and producer / director / soundperson head down to the murky swamps of Louisiana to visit the afflicted Sweetzer family, a religious clan presided over by the gruff patriarch Louis, his hostile son Caleb and his doe-eyed, serenely innocent daughter Nell (an unearthly Ashley Bell), the apparent target of a daemon’s wicked infection. As Marcus and the team investigate the root cause of Nell’s uncertain condition and the horrific animal mutilations that have plagued the Sweetzer family home some uncomfortable conclusions are raised: is the derangement the result of an otherworldly intervention or is the cause of Nell’s distress and unconscious acts of violence a little closer to home?

The Last Exorcism is a well executed entry to the found footage movement although it does side-step the sub-genre framework a little. At certain points, non-diagetic sounds enter the frame and the editorial perspective shifts reveal that there must have been two cameras present to capture the foreboding events. The film builds a slyly tense, faintly frantic

atmosphere during its opening half as the key question of whether Nell is actually possessed or merely psychologically deranged due to some terrible, all too tangible abuse colliding with her strict religious upbringing is left ambiguous, a crafty design that should keep the audience engaged and intrigued with the consequent revelations to come. Patrick Fabian convinces as the magnetic Marcus, but the real star of the film is the polysemous Nell, through a genuinely eerie and unsettling performance from relative new-comer Bell provides the requisite creeping terror through her bodily contortions and delivery of diabolical dialogue. The film comments simultaneously on the nature of ‘reality’ television and documentary cinema with all its inherent subterfuges and mis-directions – witness the original exorcism scene where we see Reverend Marcus cunningly conceal the tricks of his trade including the hidden microphones and electronic props to convince his audience of a maleficent presence being exiled – mirroring the inherent manipulations of a format that purports to be ‘real’ despite the conventions of editorial selection, of narrative crafting manipulation and time conscious appeasement that must be obeyed to deliver a coherent tale. Where the film will ultimately succeed or fail depends on individual reaction to the plot fractures of its final ten minutes; judging by the response to the conclusion (which this reviewer quite enjoyed for its unexpected twists, quite a rare achievement in the contemporary horror scene) fans either found the developments utterly ludicrous and unsatisfying or refreshing and rejuvenating. Given the film’s financial achievement – approaching $35 million against a $1.8 million production budget in the US alone – one can expect The Penultimate Exorcism hitting cinema screens sometime soon.