“There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather" A Review

By Contributing Writer Alyssa Queen of Texas

If you read only one book this season, it should absolutely be “There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom's Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids (from Friluftsliv to Hygge)” by Linda Åkeson McGurk. This book is equal parts anecdotal narrative and non-fictional facts as the author navigates starting and raising a family as a Swedish transplant in the United States and then later, taking her American kids to Sweden for half a year. It gives you a completely different view of our own culture that is so ingrained in us and will inspire you to make little changes every day. It’s absolutely changed my entire perspective on raising children and made a huge difference in our lives!

It’s an easy-to-read, enjoyable story that at the heart examines the importance of outdoor play and letting kids learn to navigate risk throughout their life. It’s our job as parents to nurture and guide our children throughout life’s challenges, but equally as important for them to learn to face adversity on their own. Play, especially outdoor play, is the opportune time for them to push boundaries, learn how to carefully evaluate and take risks when they are ready, and manage the (both negative and positive) consequences that result. Other lovely side-effects of this include improvement in the overall health of our children, as well as teaching and inspiring them to be good stewards of this beautiful planet of ours. It also talks pretty in-depth about the Swedish versus American school systems that was both enlightening and alarming as my 3 year old will begin school faster than I can imagine. 

Two little bears playing at Free Forest School in Texas

This book isn’t just a personal story, or philosophical look at many parenting topics- it even dives into truly usable tips and information for putting these thoughts into action with our children. After you read it and are bursting at the seams to talk about it with someone like I was, message me and we can totally go to town! Also, full disclosure: I listened to it on my Audible app instead of actually, physically reading it the first time and the audiobook is really terrific! Though I loved it so much, I ended up buying the physical copy also and read it all over again. If I didn’t listen to books, I’d never get to “read” anything! #MomLife

I hope you get a chance to “read” it and it inspires you as much as it did me!

The horrors of IVs and littles.

Most mom's who have had their littlest, littles have an IV or extensive blood draw usually also has a traumatic story to share along with it. We are no exception. When my son was one and a half he got two viruses back to back at the tail end of the cold and flu season. The first virus has him running a fever for about a week, but nothing too high or dramatic. This of course resulted in decrease appetite, lethargy and a resistance to fluids... but we tried our best. By day 7, our Little Bear had contracted his second virus and started spiking high fevers of 104 and greater.

Our fourth trip to the doctor's resulted in a direct hospital admit for suspected dehydration.

Dehydration means IV.

April 2017

Up to this point, my son had had two blood draws for food allergy testing in his life. They of course hurt him, but he didn't even cry during the draws. They were short and performed on healthy hydrated veins. This IV stick however, was a different story. We had a cranky-sick baby, in a new hospital environment, with nurses dressed for quarantine, trying to stick an IV line into little dehydrated veins. It was a disaster.

The nurses began by wrapping (swaddling) my son in a blanket and allowing me to stand at his head to comfort him and control his upper body movements. Meanwhile, the two pediatric nurses attempted for the longest 45 minutes of me, my partners and I'm confident my son's life to get an IV line in.  Mommy mode had kicked in so I was calm and comforting but the moment he was returned back to the room with his other parent, I had to go for a walk so I could break down and cry. It was horrible. He was so scared and mad and miserable.

Two days later his IV fell out... I was not doing that to him again. I remember hesitating to even tell the nurse the IV fell out. But, at this point I knew my son had spiked some even higher fevers and it just needed to be done.

I went to the head nurse and stated that I wanted the most specialized and experienced nurse to perform the IV line. The head nurse with no hesitation stated, no problem. She called down to the NICU and a NICU nurse came up to perform the line.

This time was different from the start. The NICU nurse came with a vein viewer light. She shined it on my sons arm, which illuminated a clear view of his veins. Within a few tearless seconds his line was in and we were back in our room.

Photo source: https://www.christiemed.com/PublishingImages/Pages/pediatrics/veinviewer-tertiary20.png

My point in this story was not to disparage those hard working pediatric nurses who got my son's first line in. They had many challenges and throughout the process stayed calm and professional. My point is THERE IS A VEIN VIEWER! Ask for it. Require a NICU nurse who is accustomed to smaller and harder veins to put in your child's line. It was a completely different experience. I would love to save a mom and baby from having a scary, emotional IV story.

My son of course made a full recover and was up playing and home in no time. I caught the same virus upon our return home, but it was so minor on my adult body compared to my son's baby body. My ideal wish is that your little does not get sick enough to require an IV, but with cold and flu season here again, I wanted to pass on this info and hopefully save someone some heartache.
 

Donor Conceived. What does that mean?

My son was donor conceived. He has two mom's and we were able to make a beautiful baby using a generous donation from a sperm donor and a little help from the doctor. For some families, this may be new. Your child may have some questions about this and you may struggle with knowing how to answer these questions. I admit as the parent, I too didn't know all of the "right" things to say, but I was able to get some great advise from a PhD leading in the field. I thought it would be helpful, to go ahead and just lay out a list of helpful points.

- Donors are not parents. They do not see themselves as parents when providing their donation. They see sperm or egg donation how you might see blood or bone marrow donation. As a result, we should always refer to them as the donor and not as the biological mother or father.

- Acknowledge that nature and nurture both take a strong role in developing a child. So the non-bio parent is 100% the parent. This is the same for a step-father who has stepped up for an absent biological father, or for adoptive parents who raise a child as their own. This means, we don't need to search for answers to questions past the parent's we see right in front of us. Let the child lead the way and not be placed in a position to answer circumstances complicated by adults.

- Donor conceived children may very likely have donor siblings. Each child and family view these relationships differently and this discussion should be led by the child and not by curious adults.

- Its okay to acknowledge a donor has been used. The word donor is generally not taboo in a family with a donor conceived child. Its okay to even ask the parent's about how it works or even ask for advice on how to talk to their own children about this family dynamic. Donor recipients have been trained usually by their fertility clinic on how to assist in these interactions. However, be prepared to sometimes get a response like, "we are choosing to keep those details personal." That's an okay response too.

- When talking to your own children, try to be inclusive of all of the different types of families that can exist. That is really half of the battle. They are much more open to these concepts and find little question in them compared to adults.

I hope this was helpful and interesting!