Shots Stink

Bright went for his first year checkup on Tuesday. He was in the 50th percentile for head circumference, 75th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight- which I don't believe to be too accurate since he wouldn't sit nicely for the weighing. (He really detests being weighed there for some reason...) His checkup went fine. He is doing all of the things that an 18 month old should be doing which is really cool. Things here have been really pretty amazing. He had been sleeping from 8pm until 6 am without a wake-up for several days in a row, then came the shots. I really hate the shots, probably as much as he does, but for other reasons. I have maintained since his first set of shots that they change my boy for a good solid week. I think when he was really little I said that they used to rob me of my boy. His personality would change and it seemed like skills he was working on were a bit off from what they had been, he was more clingy and would cry much more so than usual, and would really throw off his naps and sleep. Then came the 9 months visit where apparently he wasn't supposed to get shots but got them anyway due to the doctor not reading his chart appropriately and seeing that he had had some shots already from Oregon.. That was just a fiasco and while the doc apologized for it it didn't seem to bother her as much as it did me. The only thing I really recall from all of that mess was her saying, "Make sure he doesn't get a tetanus shot again before he turns two becuase he could have quite a bad reaction from it." So this time around I double checked and asked her to double check his charts before getting any shots and he got the MMR and chickenpox shots. Now I would have said no to the chickenpox shot- I guess I don't see the fuss about that, but here it doesn't appear to be an option, or they don't tell you that it is. Then I read some not so pleasant things about the MMR vaccine and now really wish that I had asked for that one to be given in separate visits. Dr. Sears has a book out on vaccines and gives an alternate schedule for vaccines and I think I need to buy it and look into doing the next round differently. The past two days since his shots he has not been sleeping well or napping well. He has been super fussy at times during the day and bitey. Yes, it could be teething, but he had been doing so well before his visit on Tuesday. There is always the same behavior right after them- crying and then the blank stare in the car on the way home, followed by sleep. Poor guy.

The other thing I have been thinking about is if many children that have been given the educational eligibility of Autism might actually have lead poisoning instead? I saw on the internet that cases of autism were up 11% in Oregon since just last year. I don't know that that issue had ever come up as a possibility during any school evaluations. I know that it causes many of the similar behaviors. Just a thought. One school here in Rochester, NY said that 41% of the students were coming to school with lead poisoning. That just blows me away. This topic is of interest with me since we found that Bright has low levels of lead- still well within the normal range though- and have lead dust in our apartment, but no lead paint. Where is it coming from? It's a nearly impossible task to figure out.

Other crappy news is they will be raising our rent to almost $700 dollars when our lease is up for renewal. And we got a nice NYSEG (electric) bill for $245. I called to find out how that was possible since our other bills were 40, 70 and 100 dollars. They said they are only required to come out and read the meter once a year so the other figures had been estimates and now they were getting caught up on our real energy usage for the past few months. Great.