Sleep is so important and so many of us crave it…makes me wonder if it doesn’t start right at the beginning of our lives when we are infants. After all it is one of the topics so hotly discussed among parenting experts.

So how do we manage to get our newborns to sleep thus giving ourselves much needed time to sleep?

 

Nothing can prepare you for the changes in your sleep when you welcome a newborn baby into your family. Experienced parents will issue dire warnings and tell you to sleep while you can during the last few weeks of pregnancy. (And you will think, yeah right, there’s a large boulder resting on my bladder, and sometimes it kicks for good measure.)

 

• 6 Tips for Sweet Newborn Sleep | Science of Mom.

If you breast feed do you have less of a chance of developing PPD (Postpartum Depression)? Here is some interesting facts from FFF (Fearless Formula Feeder) that questions this premise.

The same question holds for the connection between breastfeeding and postpartum depression. Some researchers have found a correlation between lack of breastfeeding and higher incidence of depression; however, the majority of these studies don’t factor in why the mother isn’t breastfeeding in the first place. A 2009 study found that women who exhibited pregnancy-related anxiety or prenatal depressive symptoms were roughly two times more likely than women without these mood disorders to plan to formula feed. (12) “Prenatal mood disorders may affect a woman’s plans to breastfeed and may be early risk factors for failure to breastfeed,” the researchers point out. And even if the intention to breastfeed is there, multiple factors inform infant-feeding choices once a woman leaves the hospital.

Feeling like a failure, dealing with pain, frustration, and exhaustion, and having a baby who screams at the sight of her, could make any mother feel overwhelmed, let alone one who’s already on the brink of actual PPD. Maybe for those of us more prone to anxiety or depression, the stress of breastfeeding struggles is just the camel’s dreaded straw.

 

• May 2013 – Fearless Formula Feeder.

Are there allergies in your family, if so, there is a community online for Moms of Allergic Children.  I have also included a link to a mom’s story of her son who has asthma.

 

Moms of kids with allergies have to do double duty to keep their bundles of joy safe, happy, and healthy. In the Moms of Allergic Children community, moms are sharing their concerns and questions about allergies. Here are some quick tips from Dr. Oz for them and others on how to treat — and prevent — some common allergies.

 

• Tips For Families With Allergies.
• Mommas Gone City- Dealing with Asthma

Cancer experts said Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a preventive double mastectomy because of a heightened genetic risk for breast cancer should encourage women to look into their family history for the disease.

via Experts Weigh In on Angelina Jolie’s Double Mastectomy – WSJ.com.

Many people, especially women are weighing in with their opinions about Angelina Jolie’s preventative double mastectomy.

Personally, I have had several friends die from breast cancer. My best friend from my college years died at 41 years old…way too soon. She left a three year old daughter to wonder what her risks were for developing this horrible disease.

In the years since my friend died, many advances have been made in the early detection of breast cancer. There are now reliable predictors of who might be at higher risk for breast cancer.

Angelina and many others carry a gene that makes them at higher risk for developing breast cancer. The determining test of whether you carry the “breast cancer genetic predisposition” is fairly simple. The decision as to what to do if you find you are at higher risk is not so easy.

What Angelina has done by revealing her personal choice after finding out that she was at higher risk for breast cancer is this:

• She has opened a public discussion that just might save some women’s lives.
• At the very least it will educate women about the choices that are available to them with regard to their personal health.
• It will hopefully help today’s woman to advocate for herself when it comes to her risk and prevention of developing breast cancer.

I would definitely want to know if I had a gene that made me at high risk for breast cancer and I would probably consider a drastic approach such as Angelina Jolie’s double mastectomy with reconstruction.

What would you do?

Has this discussion in the news made you more aware of how you can be proactive about breast cancer prevention?

I am really not interested if you think whether or not Angelina should be discussing her personal choice or if you think she made the right choice….the question is…

Would you do something drastic to keep yourself alive longer?

Resources:

My Medical Choice

Bright Pink

Related stories:

CNN anchor cancer diagnosis announced; former Chicago anchor Zoraida Sambolin, formerly of NBC5 Chicago, has breast cancer, will undergo double mastectomy, revealed during Angelina Jolie story | abc7chicago.com.

When your child’s pacifier falls on the floor are you guilty of cleaning it by sucking on it yourself?

Well, no more guilt if this report in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics is correct.

A small study was done to see if sucking on your child’s pacifier may have benefits and the conclusions were somewhat positive.

Recently, it has been published that vaginal deliveries expose the newborn to certain beneficial bacteria that helps their immune system. Now this new evidence that exposure to parent’s saliva may actually be a positive thing should make “germophobes” pause and rethink their position on depriving their babies from developing a certain tolerance to trivial bacteria.

These findings are interesting ones …and the human immune system is truly complex.

I will probably be rethinking the need to boil pacifiers and simply recommend running  them through the dishwasher or washing them with dish soap and hot water. I might even suggest to parents that every once in awhile they should expose their baby to their germs by sucking on their infant’s pacifiers.

My personal approach to hygiene is to try to keep things relatively clean and not to expose my family to bacteria and microbes unnecessarily…I use Lysol and Purell but not to extremes. I know that Lysol is full of chemicals but I do not drink or inhale it so I think I am pretty safe.

Now the questions…what if your baby does not use a pacifier? ….and what if your baby sitter decides to suck on your baby’s pacifier?

Well, there is no evidence to show that pacifiers should be sucked by anyone except the parents to provide any positive benefits so I would keep “pacies” away from other well meaning people and or pets.

And just maybe I would recommend a pacifier for all babies.

RESULTS: Children whose parents “cleaned” their pacifier by sucking it (n = 65) were less likely to have asthma (odds ratio [OR] 0.12; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.01–0.99), eczema (OR 0.37; 95% CI 0.15–0.91), and sensitization (OR 0.37; 95% CI 0.10–1.27) at 18 months of age than children whose parents did not use this cleaning technique (n = 58). Protection against eczema remained at age 36 months (hazard ratio 0.51; P = .04). Vaginal delivery and parental pacifier sucking yielded independent and additive protective effects against eczema development. The salivary microbiota differed between children whose parents cleaned their pacifier by sucking it and children whose parents did not use this practice.

CONCLUSIONS: Parental sucking of their infant’s pacifier may reduce the risk of allergy development, possibly via immune stimulation by microbes transferred to the infant via the parent’s saliva.

via Pacifier Cleaning Practices and Risk of Allergy Development.

Sucking Your Child’s Pacifier Clean May Have Benefits – NYTimes.com.

Happy Mother’s Day!

In honor of Mother’s Day, I am posting something about labor and delivery and Ina May Gaskin.

Midwifery and deliveries outside hospitals are controversial to some…each mother has to make her own choices.

Ina May Gaskin has definite opinions worthy of reading…the history of birthing in the “Birth Story” is also worth a view, in my opinion.

If you are interested, view my comment expressing my concerns about childbirth on the following Huffington Post site.

To say that I am thrilled about the Mother’s Day release of Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives would be the Understatement of the Year. I’m referring to the 90-minute documentary about the work of our midwifery team that filmmakers Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore and colleagues have just made available. It has been a three-year “pregnancy” with this documentary, and the labor to bring it into being is finally over. At last, we can give the world a look at four different births that took place at various birth cottages in our rural Tennessee community over a span of 30 years.

via Ina May Gaskin: Birth Story: A ‘Pregnancy’ 30 Years in the Making.

 

Happy Mother’s Day!

For Mother’s Day, I would like it if McDonalds’ Corporation would stop targeting children in their marketing campaigns.

I know that I have a choice about whether or not to support McDonalds and to tell the truth,  on occasion, I do patronize our local McDonalds’ drive thru.

In addition, we are shareholders.

We also live in the heart of corporate McDonalds’ land and benefit from the corporate taxes that McDonalds pays in Oak Brook IL.

I also work at a medical center that has a Ronald McDonalds House, which comforts many suffering families.

All of this being said, I continue to wonder, why on one hand, McDonalds Corporation continues to market to children and then turns around and funds children’s healthcare with their mobile services and family care with their Ronald McDonald Houses?

Obviously, their bottom line is profit.

Parents are encouraged by McDonalds marketing campaigns to view McDonalds as inherently good, when it is not.

Perhaps, McDonalds should look at this current generation of parents, who have been exposed to fast food most of their lives, many of whom suffer the ravages of morbid obesity with all of its’ sequelae, diabetes, heart disease, kidney and liver failure.

Maybe McDonalds  should now fund healthcare for these adults or perhaps childcare for the children that these parents will leave behind, when they die prematurely from the effects of being obese most of their lives. I am just saying…

If McDonalds did begin such a healthcare initiative for today’s obese parents, it just might be an acknowledgement of their part, along with other fast food markets, in the cause of this widespread health crisis.

There is really no simple answer here…

One thing for sure is, if McDonalds stops marketing to children, this could be a good thing.

If they continue to develop ways to make healthier choices on their menu, this could also be a good thing.

What could even be better is…

If they decrease their unhealthy menu choices, continue their healthcare initiatives and develop new ones.

Then and only then, we just might see this new generation increase their longevity and the chances that they will outlive their parents.

McDonalds, children should not die before their parents…please stop marketing to kids…

I am a #MomsNotLovinIt and a #GrandmaNotLovinIt

If you want to help…join the movement at MomsNotLovinIt.org