Mass Media Childbirth vs. The Real Thing

A documentary by childbirth anthropologist Vicki Elson. Please visit www.birth-media.com for more info, ordering, etc. ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Gd7pqeESE

Get Me Out: Making Babies Through The Ages : NPR

Terry Gross interviews investigative author who wrote a book on the history of childbirth (15 minutes).

'Get Me Out': Making Babies Through The Ages : NPR

Randi Hutter Epstein's book Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank is full of delightful — and sometimes disturbing — anecdotes like this one. The author explores the medical and cultural history of pregnancy and childbirth, from folk remedies and old wives' tales to ultrasound images and fertility drugs.

KQED Radio: Pregnancy-Related Deaths on the Rise?

KQED Radio: Pregnancy-Related Deaths on the Rise?

Points to call out:

This was a breaking story that uncovers a study held at the state level which is not being released. The word cover-up was mentioned.

Maternal death rates have tripled in California over the last 10 years study finds.

Cesareans are one of the big reasons for this increase.

OBs not telling patients about the real risk of cesareans. For example, repeat cesareans are not as safe as vaginal birth but vaginal births after cesareans are being banned around the country.

CPMC seems to want to only increase technology to avoid hemorrhages, prevention of blood clots from prolong bed rest, cardiovascular problems but Elliot Main, chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the California Pacific Medical Center, doesn't mention pulling back on the cesareans performed or other interventions.

Death certificates now have a check box since 2003 to indicate if the deceaced was pregnant within a year or her death.

Better reporting may have contributed to a 30% increase that just wasn't reported before but that still leaves the other 70%.

African women across all economic levels are 4% more likely to die during childbirth. Why? No one knows.

Obesity is a new and added risk to pregnancy and labor.

Maternal Death Rate in California is the same as US.

CDC cautious to release numbers. Yeah! because it's a HUGE public health issue that no one is dealing with.

when you pass 15% cesarean rate things start going south.

Aaron Caughey, associate professor at UCSF and director of the Center for Clinical and Policy Perinatal Research within the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology says that we need to improve care of women in labor. YEAH!!!

Young healthy women are dying, people around the death call it a death before its time, the only reason why these women are dying is because they had a cesarean.

There's a lot of people who get hurt that don't die...that's me.

Dr. Aaron Caughey says that women pregnant now should spend early labor at home! stay healthy during pregnancy, a lot about taking care yourself

Another study: Are we really safe giving birth in hospitals today?

The San Francisco Chronicle just reported on a new study that once again says that we are not keeping our women and children safe in hospitals. The study says that the last time they saw a spike this high was in the 1930s. Are all those machines, drugs, and cesareans really making us safer? Why is it safer to give birth in Kuwait or Bosnia than in California?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/03/MNER1BRFT4.DTL&tsp=1

Take Action, educated yourself, ask questions, and demand better care for our pregnant mamas and their babies.

Baby Food: 7 months

The most reassuring message that I give myself is that solids are fun but not necessary because I breastfeed and I eat well. I know that West is getting the nutrition that he needs from my milk. If I was giving him formula, I would pay attention to balancing his diet. As long as I am breastfeeding, solids are more about including him in our family meals and letting him explore food, which I still love to do.

When he turned six months, he still wasn't too interested in food. Now, at seven months, he sees me cooking and pulls on my pant leg. When he is in his chair, he pounds his hand on his tray to ask for more food.

I feed him our weekly soups and spoonfuls of sauces in our meals. I make him smoothies with banana, strawberries, and blackberries and a little water, which he devours from a straw cup. I puree my stir fries for him. He loves avocado still. I give him soft black beans, which I am going to expand to lentils. I am also excited to start giving him Strauss whole milk yogurt and raw, unprocessed cheese. I also want to start crumbling up grass-fed ground beef on his tray. I'm excited about soft corn and peas. Pasta too..Boy! That puree phase went by fast.

I ran into a friend today who soaked pancake pieces in breast milk, and then put them on her seven-month-old's tray. Wet with Sierra Nevada organic cultured butter and Jam made from endangered Blenheim apricots from Santa Clara, I gave West some bites. He loved it! Who doesn't like toast? I am thinking that most everything goes right now.

I am excited for finger foods. I was disappointed when he turned down my homemade apple sauce, but maybe he'll like softened apple bites.

He is growing up too fast. Did I mention that he is standing up without holding onto anything? I think that he'll be walking at eight months. I can't believe that it has already been that long since his birth.

Sleeplessness

I'm having this reoccurring dream where I am in an elevator with no doors. I am looking at myself going down into a hole with black dirt on all sides like a bucket being lowered down into a well. The elevator reaches the bottom of this long narrow hole and I curl up into a ball on the floor of the elevator without any pillows or blankets and sleep. The hole is quiet and dark. It's impossible to wake me. I sleep until my eyes open on their own. A big red button is there to press when I want to go back up to the surface. I imagine myself there for days sleeping.

Circumcision

In the wake of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) taking a position on circumcision, I am compelled to tell a personal anecdote.

Here's the Washington Post article on the happenings:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011503106.html?hpid=topnews

I know a physician assistant who works at a San Francisco hospital now in year 2010. Her job is to ready baby boys for circumcision. She straps their arms and legs to a board. I try to make them as comfortable as possible, she says. The room is cold. The babies turn their heads away from the bright florescent lights shining above them. Multiple babies are lined up in a row. They are naked and crying. Then, the doctor comes by and snip, snip, snip, one baby after another. They are left crying until she can get to them. She unstraps them one at a time. She soothes one baby while the rest are left screaming waiting their turn. When the baby that she is holding stops crying, she delivers him back to his smiling parents in the waiting room.

If they knew what their baby had just been through, I don't think they'd be too happy, she says. It's better to request to be with your baby for the circumcision. I don't see those babies and that's a good thing.

Other links of interest:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=46066

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/male-circumcision-and-the_b_249728.html.

Elimination Communication at Six Months: An Update

At first, I liked diaper-free better than elimination communication (EC) because elimination communication is a mouth full. I even named my folder Diaper Free. However lately, I like elimination communication better because I'm realizing that it really isn't about diapers at all. It's about communicating.

At six months, West can mostly hold in his pee until he is over a potty. I went for a half-hour walk with him in the Ergo without a diaper because I trusted that he wouldn't pee on me. When I got home, I put him over the potty and he peed. Smile. (Can you see the pee in the picture? Thanks Abigail for a great action shot!)

I am so glad that I stuck it out through the hard times when it seemed like he never went in the potty. Those frustrating times when I put him over the potty, he didn't go, and then he went on the floor two seconds later. So annoying. Willow warned me about these down times at her diaper-free workshop, and so I stuck with it.

Zack doesn't like the dirty potties around the house. I agree that I could be a little more sanitary. But with two kids at home all day every day, it's a wonder that everyone is still alive. And I am not joking! It's amazing to me that we all survived early childhood. I can't believe the number of life and death situations that I deal with day to day. So at this point, I don't care too much about a couple of dirty potties around the house.

The other day, West sat up in his crib before his nap and called out. I had already put him over the potty moments before. But his cry wasn't a "I don't want to take my nap cry." (This is where sleep books need to be ignored. They don't cover ECing your child.) I took him out of the crib and held him over his potty. He pooped. Sighed. (So cute) I wiped his butt, put his diaper back on, and laid him back down in his crib. He fell right to sleep. Success!

He has potty preferences. His favorite potty isn't an official potty at all. It is a pink sitz bath that I used once for my hemorrhoids after his birth (I recommend a bath in a bathtub instead). He likes the guest bathroom toilet at his grandparents. He doesn't like public restrooms.

We have gone four weeks without a poop in a diaper. I use diapers more like underwear. I am constantly taking them on and off. And since he is so wiggly lately, I am keeping them off a lot more just because I can't get the darn things on anymore.

Sometimes, he communicates well by tugging at my pants and grunting. Other times, I figure that it has been awhile since his last pee, and so I put him over the potty. It really isn't that much different from telling Nate to go pee before we get in the car, or before he goes to bed.

If West doesn't have a pee, he arches his back. If he has to go or if he hasn't finished yet, he sits calmly in my arms. And then, sometimes, he pees in his diaper. He doesn't seem to care when it happens, I don't care and we move on. And then, there are the times when he pees on the floor.

At six months I can avoid a lot of the out-of-diaper messes by putting him in a diaper if I have guests over or if I need to make dinner. And, he mostly wears a diaper when we are out of the house.

Accidents happen when I am not listening attentively to him or when he doesn't communicate well with me. From the first night that I tried EC, four months ago, I knew that I couldn't turn back. It's like all those times when my first son cried, he could have been trying his hardest to say, "I have to poop and I don't really want to do it on myself." Who does?

Sticking him over a toilet wasn't on my radar at that time, and so I trained him to go in his diaper. Even still, Nate potty trained himself when he could walk. All I had to do was provide one potty in the house and one in the back of the car. He was fully day-time potty trained at 18 months.

It will be interesting to see what happens with West. How will this all evolve as he grows? We shall see.

Other EC Posts of Mine:
http://www.spinachandhoney.com/2009/07/diaper-free-baby-well-not-yet.html

First Foods: Avocado and Banana

First it starts with fake oxytocin in labor, and then fake breast milk postpartum, and then fake food. After boxed rice cereal is jarred baby food. And then, it's Gold Fish and Cheez-its. Until finally my child is a sugar addict and doesn't even recognize the taste of a baked sweet potato or steamed broccoli. He recognizes food brands and thinks that he can only eat "kid food" in packages. And then, soon, he won't eat anything that isn't puffed, artificially colored, or contain less than 12g of sugar per half a cup.

I bought a box of rice cereal three years ago for Nate when he was four months old because I didn't know any better. I later realized that making my own rice cereal was cheaper and healthier. And this time around with baby number two, I don't even think rice cereal needs to be a first food.

West's first foods are banana and avocado. I take a ripe banana, peel down the sides, and scrape out a small amount. I cut the avocado in half and scrape out small bites for him straight from the avocado. He started out eating about a 1/2 teaspoon and then slowly increased his appetite to a tablespoon, which is where he is now. He is five months old.

Now this isn't rocket science, but I knew nothing about babies when I had my first. I looked outward toward the baby food aisle for answers.

Should we really be diving right into the billion dollar market of boxed processed cereals for our babies? My pediatrician recommends it and most moms do it. What do you do?

Adding Protein to Toddler Dinners

Nate doesn't want anything mixed into his pasta like chicken or bacon bits. I'm always looking for ways to feed him protein. Sometimes I use nutritional yeast. But lately, I have been mixing in an egg.

I started off cooking the egg over low heat in the cooked and drained pasta, but it didn't turn out creamy. The egg looked like scrambled eggs.

"What's that?" Nate asked peering into his bowl of pasta.

Now I use the best eggs that I can find, and I just use the hot pasta to cook it, no flame!

Pasta
1 egg to 2 cups of dry pasta
Cook pasta
Drain water
Put pasta back into pot
Crack egg into hot pasta and stir vigorously to mix
Add any sauce to pasta and egg
Salt
------------

In rice, I like the scrambled egg texture, and so I think cooking it over heat works.

Rice
1 egg to 1 cup cooked rice
Cook rice
Scoop rice into a fry pan over low heat
Crack egg over rice
Stir until cooked into the rice, 3-5 minutes
Salt