This blog post is from my own personal blog
Stories Of A First Generation Farm Wife
. I am posting here because I talk a little bit about our last few months and antibiotic usage in cattle. Also, in case you are interested I am doing a give away on that blog later this week and I would love for you to stop over!
I definitely feel like at least once a year I have a post that seems to be titled 'It's Been A Minute' and it really has. Well, maybe more than a minute. The truth is my life has been super busy. Amazing enough. I have been blogging, just not on my own personal blog. Doesn't it seem like when life gets busy that our own commitments to ourselves take a back seat?
The truth is the last four months have been full of very hard decisions for our family. Decisions I definitely plan on talking about. I have already been working on a few blog posts that are taking every part of my heart to write. But, I am going to because from the beginning this blog has been about my life. And leaving out these big decisions in mine and my husband's life wouldn't be fair. Not to mention that we have literally been sick since December. It started after Christmas and I swear it has yet to leave our home. It seems my husband and I finally kicked our sinus infections galore out the door to only now have a sick little girl nonstop for four months. And I am not exaggerating. Even my friends and family are astonished that our little girl has been so sick. I mean the kid doesn't go to daycare everyday. We only hang out with the same kids on a weekly basis. And I am a clean freak. Like Clorox every part of our home clean freak. I even went as far as opening every window when it was just barely 45 degrees outside to try and kill every single germ that had found its way into our home. And it still didn't work. As I type I have just given my third dose of Tylenol for the day to try and battle down a temperature of 102. Because of the constant battle of fevers in our house instead of filling my days with my giggly little girl and her nap times blogging and catching up on computer work, my days have been filled with cuddling nonstop and watching every single episode of Mickey Mouse, Paw Patrol, and Princess Sofia on our DVR. And the kid has a serious obsession with Monsters, Inc. Weird right?
Not to mention at least one doctor's visit every single week. I wouldn't call myself a go-to-the-doctor-with-every-sniffle kind of mom, but after battling raging high temperatures for a solid three weeks I decided it was time. And they give me an antibiotic. But, after 6 days of being on the 10 day bottle she was getting worse. I then go back to be given a second antibiotic that I give for it's entire dosage for her to only get a virus from being on two strong antibiotics. That they treat with guess what?? An antibiotic. After being on our third round of antibiotics in one month we then clear up the last virus to only wake up on Elliette's second birthday to yet another raging fever. Now, I can't help but start comparing this to cattle. Lots of times the comment is made to me at various events that because of treating our livestock with antibiotics we are causing humans to build a resistance to antibiotics. It really got me thinking even more so because I just gave my daughter three antibiotics in a month time period. Three. Did I make a bad choice as Elliette's Mom? Should I have put my foot down and immediately sought out a second opinion? A more naturalist approach? The truth is I did what I thought was best. We did what we thought was best for our child. And I will be honest, as frustrated as I was at times, I trust her doctor. I trust all of our doctors. If I didn't I wouldn't be able to even follow their advice, no matter how many years they have been practicing.
The same goes for livestock. We trust our veterinarians to give us what they think is best. They are educated and we trust them. Just like with our daughter, we give the proper dosage amounts for the right amount of time. We monitor their temperature and their symptoms to make sure they are feeling better. And we only give them what they need. This post didn't really start out being about antibiotic usage in livestock. It just kind of happened. It is about my life on our beef farm after all. The truth is I am really exhausted. Our whole house is. Staying up night after night to console our child who is miserable is hard. It's even harder during calving season when you are already up checking cows in the middle of the night. It makes days even longer and everything goes on the back burner. Add in all the decisions we have been making in our house and it pretty much consumes me.
On a happier note....I am planning on doing a give away later this week. The big give away will be for all you local followers, the ones here in South Dakota. But, because I feel really bad about my last give away being only for local followers I am doing another one too. A "goodie bag" we will call it. One that I really want to give to myself, but I am forcing myself to give to one of you! More on that Thursday!