Night light recall
“Have you got a night light in your child’s room or the bathroom? Check it. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and American Tack & Hardware Company are recalling 261,000 LED night lights. An electrical short circuit in the night light can cause it to overheat and smolder or melt, which can burn consumers or result in fire.”
Messages for Moms….
We’re used to hearing about public initiatives that get mired in politics or entangled in bureaucracy, but we rarely hear about programs that exceed expectations. So here’s one: last week marked the one-year anniversary of a program called text4baby, a service that sends free text messages to women who are pregnant or whose babies are less than a year old, providing them with information, and reminders, to improve their health and the health of their babies.
BABIES, MEDICINE AND HEALTH, PARENTING,PREGNANCY AND OBSTETRICS, TEXT MESSAGING, WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS,WOMEN AND GIRLS
Here is a fairly new service for mothers-to-be and moms with babies under one year old. It is so important to try to reach as many women as possible with valuable healthcare information. Many families still do not have access to the internet and thus this text messaging service is the next best thing.
Hopefully social workers and nurses who work with families are aware of this service and recommend it to their clients.
Now we will have to work on services for those who do not have text messaging available to them.
Noteworthy Wednesday!!
Parents these days seem in such a hurry to move their kids through the milestones of development.
But moving kids from formula to solid food is one change parents may want to take their time making. Trying solid food with formula-fed kids before they hit four months of age raises the odds they’ll be overweight as preschoolers, according to research findings just published online by the journal Pediatrics.
via Weighty Issue: Keep Junior Off Solid Food During His First 4 Months : Shots – Health News Blog : NPR.
Obesity in children is a serious problem and there seems to be many reasons for it. Good nutrition has always been important from day one of a baby’s life.
Whether formula or breastfeeding the information in this recent report indicates that there seems to be a connection between when babies are started on solids and their developing obesity.
Many parents are encouraged by others to feed solids to their baby at an early age with the hopes that the infant will in fact sleep better. This of course is fallacy.
I can remember being told by a well-meaning relative that my baby was hungry and I definitely needed to give her some rice cereal to quiet her down and have her sleep longer. I was anxious to do the right thing so I tried the cereal.
Oh…but when I watched my tiny darling struggling with it I soon abandoned the effort and low and behold my daughter slept through the night at 6 weeks just as the all the books predicted she would.
So…my feeling is stick to breast or formula feeding your infant. Do not be in a hurry to introduce solids into their diet. And when you do begin feeding solids make sure that they are nutritional ones. There are many wonderful infant food resources available. Please take advantage of them.
Do not be fooled by the advertisers of convenient baby food products that we have all grown up with. Many of them are not nutritionally sound and have large amounts of sodium in them despite what we know about too much sodium. So read, read, read and become an advocate for your families eating habits right from the start.
Pregnant women…check out Amy’s Facebook Page for a Great Giveaway for Valentine’s Day.
Attachment Parenting International
“If you bungle raising your children…nothing else matters much.” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Preteen girls…do they really need make-up???
“It starts with flavored lip gloss, maybe strawberry or bubble gum, then shimmery blush and before long, a mascara wand.
Well before they hit their teens, American girls are wearing makeup. As much as this may elicit groans, it’s also probably not a terrible surprise to anyone with preteenage girls in the house.”
via Wal-Mart’s geoGirl, Target’s Hello Kitty Cosmetics Bring Preteens and Makeup to Mainstream – WSJ.com.
Marketing make-up to young girls, (pre) pre-teen is here with lip gloss, blush, and even mascara.
Is this what little girls need? I remember “Little Lady” which was marketed to little girls in the ’50s so this really is nothing new.
http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1950s-little-lady-bubble-bath-w-box-helene
“Up for auction “Every little girl should have her very own cosmetics” and back in the 50’s little girls loved to play grown up like t mommy with the make up toiletries designed by Helene Pessl, Inc. Fifth Ave. New York. In orginal box with product information insert. The 40z. bottle is full with lid securely in place. Very nice vintage collectable”
From the looks of the products available in the 50’s the focus was more on little girl bubble bath, cologne, and bath powder rather than lipstick, rouge and eye make-up.
I have no objection to flavored lip gloss with sunscreen, and perhaps some sunscreens marketed to the pre-teenage or younger girls as this may influence their use of these products as they get older and have more sun exposure but blush and especially mascara is another story.
Blush and mascara are product that need to be applied carefully. Blush applicators should be kept clean and not shared for the obvious reasons…skin bacteria can cause havoc with young skin. Mascara also can be problematic…it should be replaced at regular intervals so that bacteria does not contaminate the wand and get into the eye. It should be applied very carefully so as not to get in the eye and it should never be shared. Eye infections can cause extremely serious problems including loss of eyesight. Lip gloss is less problematic in my opinion but of course it should not be shared either.
It is my feeling the pre-teen group is being targeted by these particular companies for their own financial gain. Girls are concerned enough with their looks and weight and now they are being pushed to use mascara and blush which can be well be left for the teenagers which is way early enough.
The only way these companies will get the message is for us as parents to refuse to buy age inappropriate cosmetics for our girls and to let our girls know that it is okay to be themselves for just a little while longer.
More “Tiger Mom” Reactions
In a effort to post the most interesting comments generated by the “Tiger Mom” piece in the Wall Street Journal here is another well written article.
“Tiger Moms and the Parenting Debate
by Don Burton | Child Development | giggle GURUS
The debate on parenting and educational best practices has been brought to a fevered pitch with Amy Chua’s views in Tiger Mother and documentary film hits Race to Nowhere and Waiting for Superman filling parent discussions. The problem is that the proposed solutions in these various media couldn’t be more diametrically opposed. Race to Nowhere condemns the “dark side of America’s achievement culture” calling for no more homework while Amy Chua claims America does not have an achievement culture at all but a lax and loose culture that indulges kids and enables them to waste time. A strict demanding Chinese style Tiger Mom is her solution. Waiting for Superman confirms the mess in our public schools and then seems to side with Amy Chua by elevating KIPS and SEEDS charter schools as solutions, which expect a lot more from every student and insist on more classroom time, more one-on-one tutoring and more homework to achieve results. With all the mixed messages, what are parents to think?”
via Tiger Moms and the Parenting Debate | Child Development | giggle Blogs.
Noteworthy Wednesday!
I follow many parenting blogs and commentaries. Over the past few weeks there has been much chatter about “home births”
“No surprises here. ACOG looked over the scientific evidence once again and found that it still shows that homebirth increases the risk of neonatal death.
The ACOG practice bulletin, Committee Opinion No. 476: Planned Home Birth appears in the February issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The Committee notes that many of the existing scientific papers are of poor quality, and almost all are observational:”
via The Skeptical OB: New ACOG opinion on planned homebirth.
As a masters prepared mother baby nurse and a licensed clinical social worker, I have shared in many of these discussions over the years and I have definite opinions.
It was my fortune to work with very competent obstetricians during my work in Labor and Delivery. They were willing to teach me what they knew and helped to make me a skilled practitioner. I relied on them for their expertise and they relied on me for mine. Of course many times our experience overlapped and that was expected and respected. I was not a physician and they were not nurses.
My early practice was mainly in New York City in the 70’s and La Maze was a popular childbirth preparation…it was even taught by Elizabeth Bing herself. She was the guru of “natural childbirth” in those days. Elizabeth was a physical therapist by practice and she was extremely enthusiastic about her practice and adamant that women should be able to be in control of their labor and delivery. I took classes with her become a La Maze instructor. There were no prerequisites to becoming an instructor except desire. What I noticed was most of the women in the class had delivered successfully with the La Maze method. It was a very skewed population who were learning to be instructors…these were women whose only experience with childbirth was their own. For me, this was not a good thing. Every childbirth that I have attended has been different and I have attended many. My feeling was that when I stopped seeing each birth as an individual unique event that was the time for me to retire from what I was doing.
At the time home births were somewhat popular in NYC but there was a birthing center available…”Maternity Center Association” where women could deliver in a more homey atmosphere. Maternity Center had a hospital connection and guidelines for the patients that delivered there. No high risk were accepted. I had no relationship with this birthing center and do not pretend to know any statistics of their outcomes.
“Maternity Center Association”
1975
Established The Childbearing Center, a project in New York City to demonstrate out-of-hospital, family-centered maternity care, which was approved by the New York State Department of Health and operated from September 1975 through June 1996.
“1979
Developed innovative classes to prepare children for the birth of a sibling.
1983
Established the National Association of Childbearing Centers, a professional association for out-of-hospital birth centers.
1985
Established the Commission for the Accreditation of Freestanding Birth Centers to ensure high standards of operation for out-of-hospital birth centers across the United States.
1988
Opened the Childbearing Center of Morris Heights, a neighborhood-based birth center in the South Bronx serving low-income families.
1989
Results of the 84-site National Birth Center Study of outcomes of care in out-of-hospital birth centers were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, with funding secured by Maternity Center Association; the study concluded that care in birth centers was safe, satisfying, and cost effective.”
Childbirth remains a “natural” occurrence but when complications set in they can occur very rapidly. These complications can have disasterous results. I am only one practitioner and have seen a maternal death and other extremely serious complications for mother and baby. I can surely say without reservation if these particular patients were not in a hospital they would not have survived. They needed expert care, and immediate intervention not available in the home.
Nurses and physicians are educated and trained extensively. Their goal is a healthy outcome for mother and baby. We are not in opposition to each other we are each others colleagues. If home birth is to continue and be as safe as it can be there must continue to be extensive training for the nurse-midwives and there must be a collegial partnership with the medical community.
Any one who is considering a home birth should discuss their wishes with a Board Certified Obstetrician and weigh the pros and cons of carefully. This is a decision that could seriously impact you and your family for the rest of your life. Your obstetrician should not be considered your enemy he/she is your advocate…if you do not feel this way find one that is.
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/debating-home-birth/?scp=10&sq=motherlode&st=cse
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/guest-blogger-a-birthing-story/
I so believe this one…
Now a survey in Britain has done the calculating for me. The Co-operative supermarket chain polled 3000 customers and found that after everything else was subtracted, working parents have 90 minutes a day “to themselves.”
Concerned about teething?
This is the article for you. Teething can be a difficult time for your little one and sometimes for you. Here are some tips to help you and your baby.
Teething and Baby Tooth Care – Teething symptoms and care for baby teeth – StumbleUpon.
“You’ve come to love your baby’s gummy smile, but if he seems to be making more grimaces than adorable grins lately, he may be teething. Though you can’t do anything to speed up the process of growing teeth, we’ve got some tips to soothe the pain and keep those baby teeth clean and healthy once they’re in.”
