Big, strong, and proud

One day last week I was working on something around the house, while watching Layla out of the corner of my eye as she crawled around and played with her toys. When I wasn't looking, she yelled "eye-ya" to get my attention. She was STANDING on her own in the middle of the room with no support whatsoever, with this huge proud smile on her face. Since then, I've seen her do it many times... she gets up from a seated or crawling position on the floor, without using anything at all to pull herself up. She has even walked several steps unassisted after standing on her own. She is so big and strong!

Each day I count our blessings that she is not sick or has not suffered physically from being born and then raised in a third-world country for the first 15 months of her life. We have received most of her bloodwork back and all is well. However, she did have a positive PPD, which means that she was infected with tuberculosis but since she is healthy her body has prevented an "active" case of TB. It is not surprising she was exposed to TB considering where she lived. Many of us, including myself, have also been exposed to TB without even knowing it, and just having a positive PPD doesn't mean that the TB will ever become active. (Read about it here.) There is a medication (INH) you can take to prevent the TB infection from ever becoming active. I myself took INH for 9 months. (I remember that period well because I wasn't allowed to drink ANY alcohol while on the medication since it's hard on your liver.) Layla's pediatrician felt it would be best to treat her preventively, so she is now on INH for a full 6 months, during which time we have to monitor her liver functions (ugh, more needles). Unfortunately, INH isn't particularly easy on your stomach when you first start taking it, so she broke her vomitless streak last Friday, and several times since. This problem should decrease as her body adjusts to the medicine. Then I will just have to worry about getting 9ml of the stuff into her every day. That's a whole other issue!

But yes, I do count our blessings every day. I think about where she was born and how she may have lived for the first months of her life, then how she lived in at least a couple different orphanages where other orphaned or abandoned children with their own issues lived alongside her. The health issues she could have developed are without limit. As much as we all struggle with American healthcare, at least we have medicines for things that kill people in countries like Ethiopia. And we have food and clean water to keep us healthy. Little Layla could have ended up sick and dying in a "hospital" over there, or she could have been relegated to living (and probably dying) on the streets or in an institution. It breaks my heart to think: a) that this precious and completely innocent human being could have suffered a totally different fate, and b) that there are so many other precious and innocent children in the world who have to deal with the fate handed to them when born in a third world country. (According to UNICEF, in 2005 there were nearly 5 million orphans in Ethiopia alone. Click here to read more Ethiopia statistics from UNICEF.)

Considering how big and strong my little girl is, I thought it was time for her to graduate from a high chair to a booster seat. So here she is posing in her new seat on the first day that she used it. Doesn't she look BIG, STRONG, and PROUD???