New year, old resolutions

Happy New Year!

Did you stay up until midnight to greet 2012? I had a rare look into the future at 9am on January 31, 2011, when I helped my parents greet the New Year in Korea via Skype.

My family and I celebrated the eve of the new year with a road trip to a favorite vacation spot—my parents' cabin at Bright Star Ranch. Our family activity for the night involved introducing my son to s'mores, made with impressive Texas-sized marshmallows. Son settled on eating the ingredients separately, despite my repeated offers of completed s'mores "sandwiches."

I must admit that I didn't quite make it to midnight here in the US. Sadly, my night owl status has been slipping since the birth of my son. Instead of staying up until 3 or 4am on weekends, I tend to collapse into bed around 11pm. Hubby and I called it a night at 11:30pm. This time I blame an exhausting day that involved a road trip and a broken lock at our destination. (It took us an hour to get into the cabin, negating any chance we might have at a future as cat burglars.) However, it may be more accurate to pinpoint the energy drain as a certain adorable toddler with boundless energy.

In honor of 2012, and in order to take advantage of the motivational opportunity, I am actually going to make New Year's resolutions. The resolution that is cogent to this blog: Finish and publish my book. Sadly, this has taken back burner for a while (I'm a notorious procrastinator with a wonderfully full life), but I'm jumping back in with a veangence. I plan to finish re-writes by the end of February (happy birthday to me). In order to achieve this, blogging is being relegated to a once-weekly activity or shorter notes and updates. Then it's off to my editor, who has been waiting ever-so-patiently for the manuscript.

Did you make New Year's resolutions? Why or why not? If so, what were they? Please share in the comments section below.

Cocooning: A vaccine strategy to protect infants

Son after immunizations (4 months old)

I just learned a new way to use a familiar word. Cocooning is the strategy where close family members of infants are vaccinated to protect infants who are too young to get shots themselves. Babies have to be at least six weeks old to get vaccines like TDaP and six months old to get the flu shot.

My husband and I tried to institute a smaller version of cocooning when our son was born. We asked that all family members make sure that they were current on their vaccines, with particular note paid to more rare immunizations, like the one for pertussis (whooping cough). Our request was only partially successful.

Cocooning is backed by the CDC, as evidenced in many of their vaccine recommendations that adults who have close contact with infants should also get a dose of _____ (recommended vaccine). However, not much research has been done on the practice.

One barrier to the use of cocooning is the hefty price tag. Canadian government researchers estimated that preventing one infant death would require vaccination of at least one million parents. American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports on cocooning, released in the journal Pediatrics, do not directly recommend that pediatricians start offering shots to parents. "What it says is, if you choose to do it, this is OK," said the AAP's Dr. Herschel R. Lessin, who worked on the report.

"The goal here is to get everyone immunized," said Lessin. "As pediatricians, we think immunization is the greatest thing in the history of mankind."

Lessin acknowledged that there isn't much evidence on how effective cocooning really is. "It's a relatively new concept," he said. "I don't know that anyone has looked at whether it works." The Canadian study, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, takes a stab at that, although it's based on calculations instead of an actual experiment.
From past research, Skowronski and her colleagues estimated that whooping cough in infants could be blamed on parents passing the disease along some 35 percent of the time. (from "Cocooning: Doctors Divided on Vaccine Strategy to Protect Babies")

I think it's a simple enough thing to add myself and my family to the ranks of the well-vaccinated. Each person vaccinated creates a small but important measure of protection for themselves and those around them.

Son as blogger, hives, and story structure

Proud of his decorating

Son is sitting at the computer to the right of me in our small, home office. If he had a blog it would be all about his favorite things: trucks, elephants, books, outside, and (more recently) Christmas decorations.

As I write, son is imitating my typing and occasionally pausing to scribble an imaginary note. He keeps switching the pen from one hand to the other. Time will tell whether he is a left-handed like his daddy and Papa.

The past couple of days have been hard. We arrived at day care on Tuesday to find son covered in hives. Today included a trip to son's Pediatrician, who said it was one of the worst cases of hives he had seen (75% of son's body), but he also gave us a good prognosis (recovery in 3-5 days) and a prescription. Son already looks a bit better, just hours later. Still, our family photo session tomorrow is out.

In light of this and other holiday preparations still to come, I'm going to depart from my usual detailed thoughts on what I have been reading and just insert a link. This is an interview with Rebecca Skloot, the author of one of the real gems of my extensive reading experience. If you haven't read the book, I urge you pick up a copy.

How Rebecca Skloot built The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks