Wow time flies....

How time flies. I can't believe that Jack is now 3 months old. He is growing like a weed. For the first time the clothes that no longer fit out number those that do. He is starting to talk lots of baby-babble and grasp at objects. Jack is now over 16 pounds. And measures 25.75 inches long. He and I are recovering from our first mommy - baby cold. Poor little man got an ear infection too. Ouch! We are on the up. I haven't been blogging lately. I've not really wanted to talk much about CF. Perhaps it's been my way of coping with it. Ignore it and it'll go away. It was getting me down being approached with pity, while trying to maintain an attitude of optimism. Yesterday we went to clinic. And I wanted to share with you a conversation I had with one of the nurses. I was discussing the decision we were facing when my mat-leave is up, regarding whether to send Jack to day-care, a day-home or for me to stay at home. She asked me "Are you planning to send him to public school or home school?" We are planning to send him to school. "Then you could send him to day-care", she said. She reminded me that Cystic Fibrosis is NOT AN IMMUNE DISORDER. He has (as far as we know) a perfectly normal and healthy immune system. He will get colds just like every other child. A problem can present when he get's a VIRAL cold infection and BACTERIAL infection decides to take over when he is run down. A secondary bacterial infection on top of a viral infection. She said, "You can treat Jack just like any other kid. If you would send him to day-care if he didn't have CF, then send him to day-care". I asked, "I thought the doctor on our first visit told us to take extra precautions"? She said, "Either he mis-spoke or you mis-understood. You do not have to take EXTRA precautions per-say. But you do have to take normal precautions. (not everyone does this routinely)." Normal precautions to prevent the spread of germs. Such as regular hand washing and coughing into a sleeve. Avoiding unnecessary contact with someone that is really sick. So if we are planning to send him to school - wouldn't it be better to send him to day care as we intended and have him build an immune system in the first 3-4 years of life - rather be at home from school for the first 3-4 years of school? Yes. This is starting to make better sense to me now. And with some relief that I don't have to be quite so fearful of the germs he'll come into contact with. So I suppose this means that we don't have to run and wash our hands everytime we touch him - but exercise normal precautions and wash if we have not washed recently. I have been avoiding touching his hands and asking others to do the same. His hands go in his mouth a lot and it would be the equivilent of walking up and putting our fingers in his mouth - yuck. We don't have to avoid people that have the sniffles - but it is a good idea for us to avoid contact with people that have coughs. Thank you all for your support, we appreciate you.