Sherry and I have both been tagged (heads up, Sherry!) by Marijke at Womb Within to answer some pregnancy questions. Here are mine!

1. How did you find out you were pregnant?
During my first pregnancy I was working at an ob/gyn office as a receptionist. I was only a few days late but at the urging of my two coworkers (who were teasing more than anything) I went over to the lab during a break and took a test. I really had no other indications that I was pregnant and was really shocked when I found out I was! For my second pregnancy we had been trying and I was a week late. I went back to the same clinic (I had quit just after I had my first) and ta-da!

2. How did you tell your partner (if you have/had one)?
After I got the results for my first test I didn’t go back out to the desk because I wanted my husband to be the first to know (because my coworkers would have wanted to know), so I was able to use one of the doctors’ phones in their office to call him at work. He was at lunch and thankfully already sitting down. He was with me when I went back the second time around.

3. Did you secretly hope for a girl or a boy?
I did kind of hope for girls, mostly because I helped raise my baby sisters and that’s what I was used to.

4. Did you feel ready to have a child?
The first time around I didn’t because it was such a surprise, and by the time we were ready for round two the universe surprised us again with the twins, which I don’t think anyone’s ever ready for!

5. What bit of advice did you get that you hated?
The only advice that really sticks out was after I had had the twins and was so sleep deprived and depressed that I didn’t know what to do with myself: People like to tell you to sleep when the baby(ies) sleeps, but that was impossible because twins don’t sync up, and even when they did I still had an 18-month-old to take care of.

6. What bit of advice did you get that you appreciated?
To let the housework go to hell after the newborns came home! I was getting myself so worked up about making sure dishes were done and laundry was folded and put away that I was stressing way too much. My husband helped where he could but he was working full-time too, so it got to the point where we realized that the babies really didn’t care if I had to pull their onesies out of a basket or out of a drawer, as long as they were clean!

Now I’m supposed to tag a few blogs to play! I tag:

~ Jennifer at Declutter It
~ Gayla and Kadi at Supernanny Rules
~ Linette at Mother Earth’s Garden
~ Charlene and Christine at Weary Parent
~ Deb at Simply Thrifty

If you’re not tagged please feel free to swipe the questions and answer anyway, and leave a comment with your URL so we can come read too!

[image: sxc]

Post from: Blisstree

Pregnancy Q&A

It’s an interesting look at education, from every which way. Go have a peek at what your favorite bloggers are saying… and thanks to Char for putting it together.

***

We had dinner with friends tonight. It reminded me of the early days of parenting, when my husband and I would get together with another young couple whose baby was just a month younger than ours. We’d share baby wrangling and dinner preparations, watch a movie, and feel a bit more sane for knowing that we weren’t the only ones going through this transition and thinking we were going insane.

Who’s your buddy?

Post from: Blisstree

Server difficulties make for a delayed carnival announcement

I would urge you to read Babylune’s post about checking yourself for post partum depression, and then exploring all the great advice in her related posts.

Post from: Blisstree

Rain stop play.

Until the baby decided she only wanted to drink half the bottle. I watched a silent, unnecessary battle unfold. The mother pushed the bottle into her babe’s mouth, and the child arched, and fussed, and pushed at the bottle with her hands. Mom didn’t take the hint, and tried again. And again. And again. Until finally, mom had her kid against her knees, and was sighing and rolling her eyes and frowning, all the while trying to convince her daughter to eat.

No baby ever willingly starved herself to death. Forcing a child to drink a bottle when she’s already full only teaches how to ignore our body’s own common sense, and sets the child up for a lifetime of bad eating habits.

If you are not, for whatever reason, nursing your child, please don’t force him or her to finish a bottle. Let the child decide when that little tummy is full, and respect it. Your kid will grow up healthier and happier because of it.

Post from: Blisstree

how not to bottle feed

My friend Kat and I were talking about the articles circulating the Web that try to cast this, that, or the other as the Next Dangerous Thing, to the exclusion of all rational thought or well-informed conversation. The lastest doozy? Vaginal birth causes babies’ heads to bleed internally!
First off, whose brilliant idea was it to inflict an MRI on newborns not yet ten minutes old? Cause I’m here to tell you, sister, I’d rather have that babe nestled on my skin for those first ten minutes, thank you very much.

A properly prepared, vaginal birth is by far the best way to come into the world, pointy skull or not. And Kat will expound upon the many reasons WHY in other articles. You see, Kat just received her douala certification and is studying to become a midwife. I did the whole, go to the hospital as soon as the contractions start, have your water break in the rest room before you sign in, get hooked up to IV’s and walk the halls for a couple of hours, have a nice nurse tell you that after eight hours you still haven’t progressed, get the pictocin drip, get the epidural, and have a baby whose shoulders get stuck routine. Kat has birthed at home with her second after a C-section with her first.

Babies’ heads are designed to squash, to a certain extent, during birth. Medical theory has come to recognize that all human babies are born prematurely. Have you ever heard of, “Nine months in, nine months out?” Humans should have evolved as marsupials, but, having thumbs, we’ve solved that bit of trickery with tools (aka, baby-wearing). Consider that women birthing big-headed babies died, and evolution is going to find some pretty creative ways of getting around that detail, like birthing babies prematurely (before they can walk) and that ingenious fontanel, the ’soft spot’, if you will, that allows a baby’s skull bones to overlap in the birth canal (did you know, there are actually six fontanel spots?). If some picture-happy doc with more curiousity than sense (sorry, Doc, I’m not really poking at you… not too hard) hadn’t done the MRI, babies’ heads would have continued this harmless practice of squishing a little, bleeding a little, and going back to normal during the first year outside the womb. No one would have been the wiser. No one would have been able to write such a sensational headline that implies that vaginal birth is somehow more dangerous to the babe than anything else a human being will go through in the course of his or her lifetime.

Come on, people. Read the articles and do the research. If you’re not a well-informed consumer, you’re just being led around by the nose. I’ve seen that done in a couple of movies, and it looks like it hurts!

Here is Kat’s take on the issue. I’ll only say one more thing about Kat… she is a woman who has principles, and beliefs, and stands by them while loving anyone who doesn’t agree with her world-view. Kat taught me that if you give love freely, it goes out and gathers up more love to bring back home.

Who’s Balanced?

A fellow mom recently emailed the article, “Vaginal birth boosts risk of baby brain haemorrhage”, taken from the online edition of NewScientist. The mom thought the media’s slant on a recent study (“Intracranial Hemorrhage in Asymptomatic Neonates”) might bring some balance to my ‘extreme’ views about vaginal birth. Here we go again. It isn’t easy, being the only mom on a listserv of more then 1500 neighborhood families who constantly carries the torch for vaginal birth. It IS the safest option. The media and our culture are my greatest enemies, and every time a mom posts a story about a 70 hour labor ending with a tear the size of a grapefruit and not being able to walk properly for a year, there is a pregnant mom out there who starts to wonder if she is doing the right thing by birthing vaginally. And when the media apparently corroborates this misguided notion of the dangers of birthing babies the same way they have been birthed for thousands of years, the damage is greater.

Poor pregnant moms, ever susceptible to what the “experts say”, fret about whether to choose vaginal birth—and apparently, let their babies suffer brain hemorrhage—or opt for a cesarean and inflict probable harm. Quoting from another not so balanced article by Ben Wassermen in Foodconsumer.org on the same study: “C-section has its own problems as well. Other than probably harming (italics mine) the infants, the mothers are more likely to experience a series of physical problems including severe bleeding, blood clots and emergency hysterectomy, longer-lasting and more severe pain and infection compared to a vaginal birth”. Ouch! The cesarean, as a rescue operation, is a necessary tool in a birthing expert’s set, and does less harm then the alternative to the baby who could not be born vaginally safely (think placenta previa).

What’s a pregnant mom to do? Thankfully, in the original study, the authors note that those babies with bleeding brains were completely fine: this bleeding has been happening throughout all of history and is part of evolution. Michel Odent notes that there has always been conflict between bi-pedal and big brains. Of course there are going to be some difficulties getting the skull through those narrow hips that make walking upright possible. But the soft, shiftable skull at birth seems to have managed that evolutionary risk pretty well. There are almost 7 billion people in the world, and the vast majority of them were birthed through vaginas in less privileged conditions than ours.

Hopefully more moms read this more balanced article, “Baby brain bleeding linked to vaginal births: Study authors say surprising findings not an endorsement of C-sections”, which affirms the normalcy of the bleeding. But come on! Do we have to call it baby brain bleeding… how sensational. While the title, “Intracranial Hemorrhage in Asymptomatic (read no symptoms, totally fine babies!) Neonates” is a bit heady, it doesn’t send pregnant moms into a tizzy about birthing vaginally.

Post from: Blisstree

The horror! Vaginal birth causes internal bleeding… in baby’s head!

There are adorable, customized baby shirts and onesies, and Barefoot Books, too.

Did you wear  your baby? I had to… I had what Dr. Sears lovingly refers to as a ‘high needs baby’. AKA, Oh. My. God. He wouldn’t be put down, had to be in my arms. Colic-y. Woke up fifteen bazillion times a night. I was a wreck for the first year of his life.

It was worth it though. Now, I’ve got a smart, funny, sweet, well-attached little guy who is my endless delight and pain in the ass (why why why why why why). I don’t think either of us would have survived those first 12 months without a sling, though. I could throw him on my back or in a hip carry and do things like cook dinner or vacuum the living room.

If you’re pregnant and considering modes of transportation, I can’t recommend a sling highly enough. I got rid of our stroller for anything but a long stroll through the city. For going places and getting things done, I just popped the kid in his Maya Wrap and we were off. It’s a lifesaver for older kids, too. Once the boy learned to walk, I didn’t have to worry about him in crowded malls or on busy streets. I just put him in the sling.

I’m about to loan mine to a friend of mine. I hope he appreciates them!

Post from: Blisstree

a great place to shop for baby

It’s that good. Sex bomb. At just under $5 a pop, these sexy, not-so-little numbers will wash away your troubles and are much less expensive than a shrink’s couch.

Go on. Get two. You’ll want to take another bath immediately after letting this amazing goodness wash down the drain.

I’m saving mine for another rainy day. I’m hoping it rains tomorrow.

Post from: Blisstree

Therapy? We don’t need no stinking therapy. SEX BOMB!

A mom in Oregon underwent almost a week in the hospital, Acute Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome , 4 blood transfusions and 8 plasmapherisis exchanges after eating tainted spinach, at least her lawyer alleges that it’s the source of the eColi.

My oldest daughter got Salmonella when she was 8 mos old from a Wendy’s bag. Yep, sounds bizarre, but that was the decision of the City’s Board of Health, as odd as it seems. She was breastfed-only at the time and all we can figure is that the bag I let her hold and gum (stupid me) while we were at the food court in the mall, had been contaminated by Salmonella.

She was in the hospital for a week and there were times when we certainly feared for her life. It was one of the saddest things I have ever witnessed.

I certainly empathize with the mother involved. Normally I would say that we all take a risk when we buy food and food bourne ilnesses are a fear. However, as this is one in hundreds of complaints against the prepackaged salad dealers, and dozens against Dole in particular, I hope she sees some compensation. When are they going to wake up and protect their consumers?

Post from: Blisstree

Mom Sues Dole For eColi on Spinach

A study presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference by the University of Arizona tracked 486 children from birth and recorded how many cats and dogs were in the house, following up a year later to see which children had developed eczema.

Of the 134 children with cats in the household, 27.6% had eczema by one year of age, compared with 17.8% of 286 children without cats. While exposure to cats increased a child’s risk of eczema whether or not their mother had asthma, the effect was more pronounced in children whose mothers did not have asthma.

Dogs, however, seem to have a slight edge over cats in the allergies department. The study found that children exposed to two or more dogs at home may enjoy a little more protection from the skin condition.

We know that cats should be handled with care by pregnant women, but it looks like the caution must continue even after the baby is born. I know several children with eczema and those who have it severely do find the condition quite debilitating. If you have cats, perhaps it’s time to think about options, painful though it may be.

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Time to rethink Kitty.

Passive smoking may harm infants from birth
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday May 12, 2006
Guardian

Significant levels of nicotine and carcinogenic compounds have been found in babies as young as three months, raising fears that some children are being harmed by passive cigarette smoking from birth.
The team that conducted the study of the youngest infants ever to be tested for signs of inhaling smoke said such exposure to nicotine could increase the chances of a child becoming addicted later in life. Other compounds raised the risk of the child developing smoking-related cancers, including lung, bladder, mouth, liver, kidney and pancreas.

“The take-home message is that parents should not smoke around their children, because they will suffer from the exposure,” said Stephen Hecht of the University of Minnesota cancer centre.

The team measured exposure by testing urine samples from 144 children aged three months to a year in smoking families. Their mothers were aged 18 to 48 and 82% were daily smokers.

Tests showed that 98% of the babies had nicotine in their urine, with 93% testing positive for cotinine, a breakdown product produced when nicotine enters the body. The tests also revealed that 47% had significant levels of a chemical called NNAL, a cancer-causing compound produced when the body processes NNK, a chemical specific to cigarette smoke.

Babies tested positive for NNAL when family members smoked an average of 76 cigarettes a week when the child was present. The levels were typically between 1% and 5% of those found in smokers, although one child in the study had NNAL levels comparable to a smoker’s.

“Persistent exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in childhood could be related to cancer later in life,” said Dr Hecht, whose study appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention today. Aggressive advertising campaigns and tougher taxation were needed to encourage smokers to quit.

According to a study in the British Medical Journal last year, passive smoking may kill 30 people every day in the UK. The report added that passive smoking at home might account for 2,700 deaths among 20 to 64-year-olds each year and 8,000 among the over-65s. A child born into a home shared with smokers has a 25% greater risk of developing lung cancer.

John Britton, chairman of the tobacco advisory group at the Royal College of Physicians, said that even though the levels of carcinogens detected in the infants were low, they were still a concern.

“There are no safe levels for carcinogens – the greater your exposure, the higher your risk of developing cancer. So someone born into a home where people smoke is going to have a higher risk of developing all the cancers smokers are at risk from,” he said. “Most passive smoking happens in the home and we need ways of addressing that, and the best way is to strongly encourage people to quit.”

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Post from: Blisstree

No smoking please, I’m a baby.