I had a week of meals all planned out and groceries bought on Monday, but my newfound organization was about to be sidetracked, as usual, though this time by outside forces...or should I say inside forces... Tuesday afternoon lo and behold I started having contractions every 5...4...3 minutes. I was resting but they were gaining momentum, so my husband drove me off to the hospital as fast as the traffic would allow.

They tried hydrating me, like last time, while running the tests, but that didn't help. I'd been drinking plenty of water and taking it easy all day, so that didn't surprise me. I had just started to dialate a tiny bit, so on with the drugs. I can't tell you how happy I am to not have asthma, because the asthma drug they gave me was awful, but it worked after 2 shots. I tell you, I had my finger on the nurse button the whole time, afraid the side-effects would keep getting worse, but I survived.

So, they stopped the labor and sent me home with another Rx to keep it calm. This one is a blood pressure med, but not strong enough to lower my always-low-enough bp. I've checked it a couple times to be sure. At least I know the symptoms of low bp from experience. I feel like I'm now deeply entrenched in conventional medicine once again, I was quite comfortable sitting on the fence.

The drawback is that labor may not start up again when it's time, which isn't the birth experience I was hoping for. I'll hit the raspberry tea big time, in a few weeks. In the meantime I'll keep worrying about the baby coming too early. That's when you're glad for modern medicine. My husband's grandma called me yesterday to say hello, and told me about her brother who was born at 7 months. They didn't even have incubators, they had to take him home and try to keep him warm...of course he didn't have a chance. Now they have much better odds, though 8 weeks early is still frightening. I'm on bedrest, but getting very good at asking for help.

It's been a stressful couple of weeks for me, and at times I traded compliance for convenience. Granted, as the unique non-secreting O that I am, I can't verge off the path too much. Gluten and milk are way off limits...but sometimes I revert to a see-food diet on other points.

I can tell you it's not worth it, but it happens. The heartburn has kept me up some nights, especially if I indulge in my son's gluten-free cookies. They are very tempting, but I think I'm ready to get past that temptation now.

My son had some extensive dental work done yesterday, and it's such a relief to have it done and past us. I didn't feel good about it for a long time, until I realized much of my trepidation was because I felt regret for being the cause of the dental problem. Since I didn't get tested for celiac disease and get seriously Gluten Free until after he was born and weaned, he didn't get the minerals he needed to build strong tooth enamel. It could have been much worse I'm sure, if I hadn't been wheat free, and there's no guarantee my next son won't have similar problems because it can take a few years for an adult celiac to regain all their absorption abilities, but I'll see it coming and do things differently to take immaculate care of his teeth. And, we caught my son's celiac disease early enough that we are taking good care of his adult teeth, and they should be fine. He's still an A, probably non-secretor, so cavities will always be something to work at preventing, and all I've learned in the past few weeks about nutrition and supplementation for teeth will benefit both my little ones. I felt like starting it now, and hoping to stop the trouble, when his teeth already had multiple cavities and extensive wear to the chewing surfaces, was like throwing buckets of water at a housefire, but it will help future teeth. And fortunately it was early enough that he had no root canals or lost teeth.

I could have done better, but I will from now on, and I could have done a lot worse. Like I said though, there's no more room for regret. He's a happy, brave boy, and fully recovered already. We didn't need the prescription pain medicine at all, he's totally fine and apparently pain-free.

Just got the results...my husband is a Secretor! That is good news, though I was kind of hoping for the opposite to simplify life. He never would have given up wheat anyway, and he really doesn't want to eat much meat at all, so I guess this is best. Now I'll need to test each child as they get old enough to spit; if he were a non-secretor, then we'd know they'll all be non-secretors too. At least they have a chance now of being secretors, and all the lower risks that implies...so it's good. I was just so prepared for the opposite.

All I hear now is how much so-and-so and who-and-such messed up in responding to Katrina. But blaming anyone is not productive. We need to just help, learn, show compassion in every way possible, and move forward. (If you didn't hear the Dalai Lama address this recently, find it!) It's silly that hearings and commissions are already being discussed. Those things take time, money and resources that should be going to the victims, and no doubt, they'll all undoubtably turn into power/money grabs in the end.

Watching 9/11 coverage on Sunday and everything about Katrina, an unnecessary family break-up in my extended family, and some reading I've done recently has really changed my perspective on life. Life is too short to do anything but love each other, from those we are close to and commited to love, to those we've never met. Without love, we are left with nothing.

I make too much room in my life for regret and worry, mostly about little things, or things I can do nothing about. Regret is just worry that looks backwards, and worry is just misdirected creativity. When I let go of those two things, and just focus on loving others, my life really makes more sense, and I make better decisions.

I've been to New Orleans twice, and I loved the city and its food. I'm far from there now, a mile above sea level, and I've never really seen a destructive storm. Yet I feel like part of me has been ripped out from what has been going on there, and I feel a vulnerability that I don't know if I'll be able to ever come to terms with.

I've got to stop projecting this on myself, but that's hard to do when something like this happens in your own country in a way that you never thought it could happen. I feel so terribly sad for the children involved, and their mothers. If I were in that situation, I don't know how we could all possibly make it out of it. It's nice to see food finally getting to the people who have been without it, yet from my perspective those MRE's would be worse than continuing to go without food. From all I can find out, the primary source of protein in them is wheat and wheat gluten. Trust me, you don't want to be without plumbing or diapers if my son or I were to take a bite of that stuff...

Is there any option in a situation like that for somebody with our health condition? Are there any organizations that can bring gluten-free aid when it is needed? I'm pretty darn sure the answer is no, nothing. Even in hospitals, who should know what they're doing, often they don't know gluten from glucose. What then, could I do for my son? He is certainly better off without food than with gluten. He got hold of a tiny pretzel stick while the babysitters were here, over a week ago, and he's still sick, probably lost at least a pound. He's been keeping me up at night with diarrhea and gas, and the cold virus that almost always follows it, due to celiac disease diverting his immune system from it's proper function. But tonight I'm up while he sleeps...

I can't sleep. I only want to take action. I only want to make absolute sure that we never get into any situation remotely resembling that. I've been searching all day for food storage options and advice, but find nothing in regard to gluten-free disaster preparedness. A 72-hour kit is the first step of course, but I may make a couple extra to extend that timeframe a bit...considering that the first food we'd get access to in a disaster situation would most likely not be gluten free. Then there's long term food storage... so hard to adapt those recommendations to gluten free. I still have plenty-o-buckets-o-wheat from my food storage efforts before diagnosis...ha. No good.

I'll post up what I come up with and discover over the next few days. The good news is, I actually do have a manual grain mill and know how to work with such things, thanks to cooking so much of our own food from scratch, so I can actually use the food in rotation. So far I can't even find information on shelf life of alternative grains, but I'll get there...

It's so easy to be critical of the lack of disaster planning for something that really was forseeable, everyone knew that if a hurricane hit New Orleans it would be a huge disaster, but nobody knew what to do when it happened. Yet...I don't have my own disaster plan for my own little family, so I need to take action where it's needed and stop wringing my hands over something I have little control over.