Heart

Defective Yeti is just one of the blogs I read with smart, funny writers who have interesting perspectives on children and the world at large. For three days this week my husband asked me "Did you read Defective Yeti yet?" and I hadn't. Finally he sat me down and told me to read the most recent posting. It was about the recent discovery that their boy has "Autistic spectrum disorder" and the impact of this. The remarkable part is that even as he writes very personally he still manages to make it chock full of links to useful resources. They are the kind of parents we aspire to be- caring, thorough and balanced.

We know about the fear that grips you when something's wrong with your child. When Boyo was a month old the pediatrician heard a heart murmur. It turns out that he had patent ductus arteriosus , a condition where a duct that circulates fetal blood to the placenta doesn't close correctly after birth. Blood than recirculates between the lungs and the heart and the inefficient pumping causes the heart to work too hard.

After hoping that it would close on it's own he eventually had to have surgery to tie it off at three months. This was incredibly nervewracking but we felt very lucky that this would fix his condition, that it was a very routine operation for the surgeons (not open-heart surgery) and that we had health insurance.

Boyo is fine now but are constantly amazed by the new territory of parenthood. The nurse at the birth did tell me "This is not the most difficult thing you will do for your child."