Unfortunately Under-Reported

29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in in Somalia the past 90 days. That should be front page news for every newspaper in the world. Another 640,000 small children are acutely malnourished. That should be enough to call everyone to action. You can help stop babies from dying! At Oxfam, your $100 donation will feed a family of six more than two weeks!

It's easy to feel like you never have quite enough money coming in for all the things you want, or even the things you need. But if you're well-off enough to be reading this blog -- you have access to a computer with internet -- I'm betting (and hoping) you will never truly know what it means be truly starving. While Americans are busy struggling with chronic overeating and obesity, throwing away tons of spoiled or leftover food, and holding eating contests; 13 million people in the Horn of Africa are experiencing the horrific effects of famine. Every day, 1,600 starving Somali refugees pour into Kenya, and another 200 into Ethiopia.

CNN says The United Nations needs $2.5 billion to cope with the crisis. But so far, it has only received 48 percent of that figure. And the health sector is also an area of concern. During famine, people die of epidemic diseases like measles and malaria. If relief organizations don't also have the resources to support health-promotion and disease-prevention activities, then a lot of lives will be unnecessarily lost.

Charles Kenny calls this disaster a crime against humanity. In Foreign Policy he says:

Deprived of food long enough, the bodies of starving people break down muscle tissue to keep vital organs functioning. Diarrhea and skin rashes are common, as are fungal and other infections. As the stomach wastes away, the perception of hunger is reduced and lethargy sets in. Movement becomes immensely painful. Often it is dehydration that finally causes death, because the perception of thirst and a starving person's ability to get water are both radically diminished.

Make a difference! Organizations and funds you can donate to (If you're worried about your money making it to where it will really matter, most of these organization's websites have information about the breakdown of where your donation money goes.):

The World Food Programme is appealing for $342 million to feed 11.3 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. The organization plans to airlift high energy biscuits and nutritious supplementary foods to those most in need.

UNHCR has asked for $136.3 million and suggests donations such as $7, which provides therapeutic food for a malnourished child.

The British Red Cross and The Kenya Red Cross are both accepting funds online or through mail to first mitigate the crisis and then help people in the region restore their livelihoods.

Mercy Corps has helped deliver water to 16 Kenyan villages in the last few days, providing relief to almost 120,000 people. The organization is accepting donations to continue expanding its work.

Oxfam, in conjunction with Save The Children, is appealing for $144 million. Any amount is welcome, but the Oxfam site suggests $50 to provide 200 people a day's supply of clean water or $100 to feed a family of six more than two weeks.

The International Rescue Committee is accepting donations that will provide medical screenings, expand water-supply systems and offer help for pregnant women, among other efforts.

The ELCA World Hunger Relief is accepting donations to provide immediate aid to refugee camps in the Horn of Africa. 100 percent of donations used for regional relief, including filling a food distribution gap by providing enriched porridge to children/elderly who are too weak to eat dry food.

A donation to Action Aid will help deliver emergency supplies of food and water, and provide support, ensuring people don't become reliant on food aid.

The U.N. Children's Fund asks for help in assisting the more than 2 million children who are malnourished.

International Medical Corps' is accepting donations as it ships food and oil to four refugee camps. The Corps will also construct additional latrines and bathing areas.
--(Organization list taken from the Huffington Post's Impact section)

Finally -- preventative care for women!

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tasked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) with identifying critical gaps in preventive services for women and recommending measures that will ensure women's health and well-being. Basically the government asked them to decide which women's preventative health services they should require insurance plans to cover under the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). The results of that report should for all intents and purposes be a non-issue -- an incontestable and universally lauded revelation in American health care history. Seriously, who could argue with coverage for PREVENTATIVE medicine? Apparently, lots of people (mostly hyper-conservative people, and even some WOMEN!)

The ACA requires plans to cover (at no cost to patients) the services on the HHS's comprehensive list of preventive services. The IOM report -- released July 18 -- recommends eight preventive health services for women be added to that list:

· screening for gestational diabetes

· human papillomavirus (HPV) testing as part of cervical cancer screening for women over 30

· counseling on sexually transmitted infections

· counseling and screening for HIV

· contraceptive methods and counseling to prevent unintended pregnancies

· lactation counseling and equipment to promote breast-feeding

· screening and counseling to detect and prevent interpersonal and domestic violence

· yearly well-woman preventive care visits to obtain recommended preventive services

The recommendations were based on existing guidelines and an assessment of the effectiveness of services. The committee identified diseases/conditions more common or serious in women, or for which women experience different outcomes or benefit from different interventions.

The press release also notes: "Although lactation counseling is already part of the HHS guidelines, the report recommends comprehensive support that includes coverage of breast pump rental fees as well as counseling by trained providers to help women initiate and continue breast-feeding. Evidence links breast-feeding to lower risk for breast and ovarian cancers; it also reduces children's risk for sudden infant death syndrome, asthma, gastrointestinal infections, respiratory diseases, leukemia, ear infections, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes.

To reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies, which accounted for almost half of pregnancies in the U.S. in 2001, the report urges that HHS consider adding the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods as well as patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity. Women with unintended pregnancies are more likely to receive delayed or no prenatal care and to smoke, consume alcohol, be depressed, and experience domestic violence during pregnancy. Unintended pregnancy also increases the risk of babies being born preterm or at a low birth weight, both of which raise their chances of health and developmental problems.

The report addresses concerns that the current guidelines on preventive services contain gaps when it comes to women's needs. Women suffer disproportionate rates of chronic disease and disability from some conditions. Because they need to use more preventive care than men on average due to reproductive and gender-specific conditions, they face higher out-of-pocket costs, the report notes."

Leave your colon alone!

This just in from the Tufts Health & Nutrition Newsletter:

No Proof of Colon-Cleansing Benefits - Just Risks
Does your system occasionally need a complete cleaning out? Despite the health claims for "colon cleansing" and similar procedures, a new review of the scientific evidence concludes there's no proof of any benefit - and there is a risk of pain, vomiting and fatal infections. The reviewers noted that practitioners may be certified by groups such as the International Association for Colon Hydrotherapy, but are not necessarily licensed healthcare providers and may have little more than a high-school diploma plus CPR training. The FDA, the report added, has issued numerous warning letters over unapproved use of colon-cleansing equipment. The review concluded that physicians should warn patients of possible adverse effects and that "colon cleansing is not medically advisable, particularly for patients who have had any gastrointestinal disorder or other health problems." - Journal of Family Practice

Why I Rarely Wear Makeup

When I was younger, I asked my mom why she wore makeup. She said when I was older I'd understand. Well now I'm older, but I still don't get it. The most I do on a daily basis, besides wash and moisturize my face, is wear organic powder and curl my eyelashes. I feel this makes me "vaguely presentable" for work. I'm not sure if it's my inherent laziness with a touch of feminism or what, but I know that I will never wear makeup every day.
Here are my reasons:
1. This is what my face looks like. Get used to it.
2. I am not looking to impress anyone or hide behind anything.
3. Makeup is expeeeeennnsive.
4. Makeup is generally full of yummy chemicals. As a rule, I like to keep crap like that off my face - especially around my eyes! (check out the Environmental Working Group's Myths on Cosmetic Safety)
5. I'm gonna wager a guess that since makeup is made in tiny containers and contains yummy chemicals (see above), the production and subsequent associated waste products are not all that great for the environment.
6. Raccoon eyes.
7. My skin breaks out less when I don't wear makeup.
8. One less thing to worry about. I get to skip over the makeup section of magazines!
9. Lighter bag on weekend trips.
10. On that rare "nice occasion" that I do decide to use organic mascara (Not really that great - sacrifice performance for organic I guess.), eyeshadow and blush, you can actually see a difference. "wow you look really nice" is the reaction I'm looking for - not "oh you look the same as you always do." This way, I don't have to try very hard to look extra-special.

Babies induced early at greater risk

Check out this crazy article: Doctors Reccommend Mothers Wait All 39 Weeks, which was featured on NPR's All Things Considered. It's about women who are choosing to be induced (to deliver their babies early) for no medically sound reason. Being born even a few weeks early can be dangerous for a child's health and development.

Article author Gretchen Cuda Kroen writes:

"From 1990 to 2006 the percentage of women who induced labor more than doubled, and nearly a third of women were having cesareans. The increase wasn't because of emergencies, says Jay Iams, a specialist in maternal fetal medicine at Ohio State University, but rather because women and doctors began scheduling deliveries for convenience.

... when it comes to the arrival date of your bundle of joy, experts now say that planning too far ahead can do more harm than good. A full-term pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, but elective deliveries are often planned for two or three weeks earlier. And even though 37 weeks is also still considered full term, studies show that babies born even a few weeks too early are at greater risk for health problems than those who are born later. That has some doctors campaigning to curb the trend of scheduled labor and delivery."

A healthy example

This week I have renewed my efforts to lose weight. I am very sick of being a few pounds overweight, and as a health writer, I feel a certain obligation to be an example of health. I like to think I eat pretty well, but I must be eating too much of it. Since getting a part-time desk job almost a year ago, I've gained about seven pounds. Not to mention that I was already about 15 pounds heavier than was healthy for my height. I was down to a great weight at the height of my son's breastfeeding at around 18 months. But as he weaned, I started slowly gaining it all back. By the time he was done nursing at 2 1/2 I was back to the same weight as when I got pregnant. So here's my goal: Lose 2 pounds a week until I've lost 30 pounds. The addition of two gym trips a week a few months ago have yet to have an impact, so I either need to go more frequently or step up my workouts. I'd love to start dancing again, but until I lose the first few pounds I'm too embarrassed to go anywhere near a studio. Finding time to get exercise as a parent can be tricky, and I'm thankful to have a hubby who doesn't mind that I run to the gym in the evenings. I just need to find some fun exercise we can all do as a family (that doesn't involve too much outdoor time since I'm at increased risk of skin cancer) so I can help my hubby get healthier too. Any suggestions? 

Dangers of Diet Soda

I rarely drink soda. When I do, it's never diet. I cringe at the flavor of artificial sweetener. Now, I'm even more glad I do. At the recent American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions conference, researchers from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio warned that diet sodas might be free of calories but not of consequences. Their research points to artificial sweeteners being linked to increased waist size and increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.

They presented two studies: The first looked at diet-soda consumption among 474 older adults in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging (or SALSA) over a period of 10 years. The results were rather startling: Diet-soda drinkers experienced 70 percent greater increases in waist circumference than non-drinkers. Those downing the most diet sodas (2 or more a day) saw 500 percent greater increases in waist circumference than non-consumers. Researchers adjusted their results for factors such as diabetes, physical activity level, and age.


The report didn't explain why diet soda plays a role in weight gain. It could be that people feel like they are allowed to eat more because their drink is calorie-free. Other research has shown that your brain expects you to be taking in a lot of calories when foods taste sweet or fatty, so when diet foods don't fulfill that promise, your brain gets confused, which can lead to your body storing more calories as fat or eating more to finally feel satisfied.

The second study the researchers presented found that diabetes-prone mice given aspartame and a high-fat diet for 3 months had higher fasting-glucose levels (an indication of a pre-diabetic or diabetic condition) than mice on the same diet high-fat diet not given artificial sweetener. 

Personally, I drink a lot of water, home-brewed green or herbal tea, coffee, and unsweetened seltzer water. I don't feel like I'm missing anything without soda. Except maybe a few more extra pounds.  

As hippie as I want to be

Photo my son took of me being domestic

I’m not, that is, as hippie as I want to be. In my daydreams I am in an old cabin in the woods, tending my large garden of vegetables and fruits, writing books about health, tending my chickens, hanging out my laundry, and having a grand ole time with my family (in this parallel world we rarely watch TV and I am 30 pounds lighter, of course). But this is not the reality I’ve created for myself – at least not yet. Instead I am renting a condo outside DC, enjoying a well-paying part-time job in the mornings, and afternoons with my preschooler. Evenings and weekends are for homework, going to class or the gym, or catching a moment with my husband. This leaves me with little time to devote to all the homemade/from scratch/money-saving/environmentally friendly/non-screen-based activities/crafts/cooking/baking, etc. If I make dinner from scratch two days a week I’m lucky. It’s not like we’re ordering out, we just have leftovers or quick meals like a Newman’s Own pizza or microwave steam-able veggies and rice. I love sewing and baking – when I was a stay-at-home mom I baked fresh oatmeal bread every Sunday and dinner from scratch nearly every night. I had a veggie garden (that was unfortunately too shady to produce much more than tons of sugar snap peas.) But I was also depressed, unfulfilled, and resentful. I know I need to work, for everyone’s sake. I am a much nicer person to be around if I have time to converse with adults and feel like I’m contributing something to society.

Maybe it’s also that I wasn’t very good at some of the hippie things I tried while I stayed at home. My attempts to make homemade yogurt, freezer jam, and Indian cheese cubes all failed miserably. My garden didn’t have enough sun, and my hanging strawberry baskets were all cleaned out by critters before we ever got to them. I did make some darn good fresh pesto with the herbs I grew, though. My sewing machine is glitchy, so I avoid sewing as much as possible. I sometimes feel bad that I’m not the hippie of my dreams, that apparently I’m interested in modern homesteading as a hobby or appreciate it as an ideal, not as a way of life. It’s something to live up to, like when after my husband leafs through Mother Earth News he’s convinced he can build us our very own dream cottage from found wood, stone and packed earth insulation. That would be awesome, but it’s not going to happen.

No matter what my situation, I always aim to live simply, eat organic as much as I can afford, reuse things or extend their lifespan, and frequent the thrift store. So I occasionally “think outside the bun” and enjoy watching TV – I’m going to try not to beat myself up over it. I’ll be a better hippie one day. For now, I’m as hippie as I can be.

The slow packing on of pounds

A new Harvard study focuses on small diet and lifestyle changes that make a big difference to weight gain over the years: http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/weight-gain-caused-by-small-habits

Doing the best you can with what you have

In an effort to make friends and find things to fill my long stay-home days, I joined a local  online parents forum. After spending some time on the various boards and debating whether or not to attend their events, I realized that simply being a parent is not really enough in common. So I joined the natural and attachment-parenting forum, and confidently headed out to my first group playdate. When that didn’t go well I gave up. The host’s house seemed normal enough. Almost too normal. I don’t know why I was somehow expecting a yurt in a field with clotheslines and chickens. I wanted it to be more than just a little different, not just a rather large, new suburban two-story colonial with a large backyard. There were about six or seven moms there, and it was nice that they were all oohing and ahhing that my son was already walking at nine months, and refreshing to be around a group of women who were all freely breastfeeding their babies and preschoolers (without those stupid blankets over their heads).

But oh, the stares and gasps when I mentioned I bought disposable diapers for my son’s first month because I didn’t want to be overwhelmed with washing diapers on top of getting used to being a mom. You’d have thought I said I spent my free time pushing over baby penguins. The fact is, yes it would have been better for the environment if I’d used only cloth ever, but my own sanity had been tried enough. This nouveau-riche natural living movement is great and all if it means more cloth diapers, more breastfeeding, and more demand for local and organic goods; but if it also promotes a sense of judgment and moral superiority towards those who make different choices, then I’m not sure it’s being all it can be as a movement. Promoting breastfeeding is awesome, and really important, but if it means women feel like utter failures when they can’t, it’s gone too far. Plus I’m not sure all these well-to-do new-found environmentalists are really getting the point, or doing the best they could. But far be it from me to pass judgment.

One is silver, the other gold

College: the pinnacle of your social life. Yay for Girls Nights!

Many recent studies show having supportive friends and spending quality time with them (in-person) on a regular basis can improve your chance of living longer by 50 percent, keeps your brain sharper for longer, doubles your odds of surviving cancer, reduces your chance of catching colds, and reduces your stress level (thus lessening the ill effects of stress on your health). Not having close friends can be as detrimental to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day!

But as many other young couples out there know, finding fellow parent friends can be tricky. I read a blog post once that said making playdate friends was harder than finding a husband. I’d tend to agree. As someone who makes friends slowly anyway, adding a kid into the mix makes it nearly impossible. When my son was a few months old, and I was lonely, bored, and depressed sitting at home with him. I had just finished college - that amazing time of life when friends seem to be waiting around every corner, a time when I bonded with many strong female friends who have played key roles in my life. But now, all of a sudden, I only had one friend who also had a kid. My old friends just couldn't really relate to what I was going through, and I didn't really have time to hang out anymore.

In my new role as mom, I tried to reach out and make connections by attending a weekly women's morning church group. But every week, the ladies in the nursery had to come get me before the class was even halfway through because my son was screaming so much. I occasionally hung out with my one friend who had also a baby. I went back to work at the florist on an occasional basis and met another new friend there. The friends I’ve made through my most recent job are great, kids or no kids, and in moving we’ve been able to hang our with some college friends more often (but since they don’t have kids, it’s not as often as it could be). What is it that drives us to keep up with the friends we once had? Are old friends really better or is it just that hard to make new ones? Has social networking caused us to want to reconnect with old friends more than be out in the world actively seeking new connections?

Preterm Delivery Prevention Drug's Price Reduced Amid Controversy

KV Pharmaceutical announced Friday that they will reduce the price of the drug Makena from $1,500 a dose to $690. Makena reduces the risk that a woman will give birth prematurely. The company also said it was improving its program that helps women receive the drug who can't afford it. But if you need Makena, you're not just going to need one dose, you're going to be given a dose a week for 20 weeks, which at its original cost would've totaled about $30,000 (now reduced to about $13,800). The St. Louis pharmaceutical company came under scrutiny recently for charging such a high price for such a lifesaving drug. The new price still seems a bit steep.

The drug is a form of progesterone called 17P, and has been used in a generic form for years since no company had previously marketed it. At-risk moms-to-be could get it from pharmacies cheaply and easily, but doctors were concerned about the purity and consistency of the drug. So initially it seemed like a victory when KV won FDA approval and 7-year exclusive rights to the drug formulation in February. Now despite that promise, the FDA says it will not stop pharmacies from continuing to make the $10 - $20 a dose versions of the drug.

Colin Phillips, Linguistic Illusionist

Colin Phillips is a master linguistic illusionist. Take this sentence he offers up: “More people have been to Russia than I have.” Now try to explain what it means. In fact, that sentences means absolutely nothing. Yet when you first read it, it seems like it should really mean something because the words sound ok together. This is the linguistic illusion, the conundrum Phillips has been investigating.
 
A British professor of Linguistics, Neuroscience, and Cognitive Science at the University of Maryland, Phillips has dedicated himself to studying how our brains make sense of language. With proper English voice and bumbling mannerisms, the Hugh Grant-like Phillips excitedly sped through the results of his recent research in his presentation at the 2011 American Academy for the Advancement of Science Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.
 
Using humor and audio-visual aids, Phillips makes it easy to see how our brain interprets language and can be easily fooled. The illusions he speaks of are the language equivalent of optical illusions – sentences that “sound right” but are grammatically incorrect or in some cases, meaningless.
 
The process of language comprehension is twofold: proactive and reactive. Phillips likens it to cooking shows: Julia Child has all her dishes prepared in advance, but on Iron Chef the cooks must make all the dishes from scratch in the allotted time. Our brain has but a few nanoseconds to comprehend words as they are fed to us, so they have to do a bit of preparation too.

As we read or hear a sentence, our brain is prepared ahead of time with its bank of words to fill in blanks, so we don’t have to hear/read all the letters of a word or words in a sentence to understand it. This is predictive processing: we are accustomed to how sentences are generally formed, so our brain expects certain words to follow others, or at least certain types of words. 

Next our brain works retrospectively, thinking back to all the words you’ve heard and stringing them together to make sure it can make collective sense of them. While proactive processing is quite robust, reactive processing is prone to interference. Most linguistic illusions are the result of faulty memory retrieval.
 
Research into many different languages – English, Japanese, and Spanish, among others – has shown that there are certain specific elements of a sentence that you can and cannot play with to make it grammatically incorrect, yet still sound right. Called a “syntax illusion” changing some parts can make a sentence incorrect, but sound ok to us; if you change other parts of the sentence to make it incorrect, it does not sound ok anymore.

Britian's Oldest Brain Discovered

2,500-year-old preserved human brain discovered in an Iron Age pit in York, England. The well-preserved brain belongs to a man who was most likely hanged and then decapitated. Read the story here: 

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/2500-year-old-preserved-human-brain-discovered?src=st

Vitamin D vs. Diabetes

Yes, apparently the more we study vitamin D, the more amazing things we find out it does. It is apparently, rather important indeed. In this most recent study in the April American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, daily consumption of a vitamin D-fortified yogurt drink improved glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes in a randomized clinical trial. 

Ninety diabetic subjects were assigned to consume plain yogurt drink, vitamin D–fortified yogurt drink, or vitamin D + calcium–fortified yogurt drink twice a day for 12 weeks. Fasting serum glucose, glycated hemoglobin, homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance, serum lipid profile, and percentage fat mass were assessed. 

In both the vitamin D and D+calcium groups, serum levels improved, waist circumference, and body mass index decreased significantly more than in the plain yogurt group. 

"Our finding on the effect of the daily intake of a vitamin D–fortified yogurt drink (with or without added calcium) on body weight, fat mass, and waist circumference is noteworthy. Few previous studies have reported the effect of vitamin D supplementation on weight, and the results are contradictory. The weight-lowering effect of vitamin D could be indirectly due to its suppressing effect on parathyroid hormone, which is known to promote fat accumulation by increasing intracellular calcium concentrations," the study authors wrote. 

Fat Broke

So apparently, it's not enough that women earn less (about 77% of a man's salary), we also make even less if we're heavier. According to new research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, skinny women earn an average of $16,000 more a year than their average-size counterparts. For men, being muscular was more important than being skinny. Skinny men earn around $8,000 less than their fit coworkers. It's sad that our societal ideals have been carried to such a subconscious extreme. Thin women and muscle men are literally given more due simply for their physique. I guess bosses see two candidates to promote, both with equally impressive track records, and then look at the person and on some level think -- "This girl is thin and pretty, she must be more successful, more put-together, more in control. She looks like a winner, so she will be." Kinda puts a new spin on "dress for success." Now we have to eat for success too. Of course it's good to be healthy, and on one hand maybe this could be a powerful motivator for people to get in shape -- you could make more money. But we also don't want people developing eating disorders to earn promotions either. Maybe if larger women were making more money they could afford to work less and go to the gym more, or pay for a personal trainer, or buy healthier foods.

10 Ways to Green Your Children

Growing babies in our raised-bed garden.

As I read Reproduce, Recycle, Reuse on Slate, I couldn't help thinking that greening your baby is easy. It's not so different from greening yourself -- buying used or borrowing (unless its unsafe), using less, figuring out what you can live without -- to me, the real question is how to green your older children. The best gift you can give to the planet -- and your child - is to teach them to be environmentally friendly. Green babies are easy*: cloth diapers, hand-me-down clothes, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, borrowed gear, nursery decor that will last longer than two years. It gets trickier as they get older. I am trying my best to teach my son environmental awareness. I was so happy when my he exclaimed "No mommy! Don't flush - it's just pee-pee!" That's right, we practice the yellow=mellow.

Here are some easy ways to teach your kids environmental stewardship:
1. Be green yourself. Live by example.
2. Enjoy the outdoors: frequent parks, playgrounds, nature centers. Stargaze, picnic, fly a kite -- whatever. These things strengthen your family and show the value of nature (and they're free).
3. Promote no-power toys. They save money, promote creativity, and are less annoying to adults.
4. Serve good food. Cook from scratch using local, whole foods as much as possible. Try to limit single-serving food items, which is particularly hard with kids.
5. Start your own garden; whether its a few containers on your deck, some herbs in your window, or a large plot in your yard -- it's important to teach kids where their food comes from.
6. Prioritize experiences over things. This is also a great way to create family traditions: going to the pumpkin patch every year, the library every Wednesday, the children's museum every month.
7. Teach your kids how to use money wisely.
8. Set clear rules about cell phones and social media - at what age they are allowed, how many minutes of use are appropriate, etc. -- thereby promoting in-person relationships.
9. Give together. Get your kids involved in donating their used things to charity, volunteering with you at a community garden, or shopping for the local food pantry.
10. Keep your kids commercial-free as long as possible.

*The most environmentally friendly baby is an adopted one in my opinion. It's the only way to have a child without increasing the need for the earth's resources.

Why All the Birthing Guilt?

My son, 1 day old.

Call me new-fashioned, but I'll have my babies in the hospital thank you. Yes, it surprised many of my friends that I wouldn't be pursuing a homebirth, but I wanted to know that there were doctors and nurses available at a moment's notice should anything go horribly wrong. Ok, so this isn't very "hippie" of me. Crunchy granola be damned - I'll take the nurses please.
I didn't plan on having an epidural, but I also didn't rule it out. I waited many many hours. I tried to go natural. But it was going so slowly that at a certain point I couldn't take it anymore.
So my birth story didn't go exactly how I envisioned. Did I let that weigh me down as a new mom? Did I feel horrible and guilty that I didn't give my son the best possible start to life? Surprisingly, no. I had plenty of other things to worry about. I was thankful I didn't have a C-section.
But the sad thing is many new moms do let an birth story with unplanned interventions make them feel like a failure, sometimes even leading postpartum depression. Why? Did they truly have that much control over it? Not that you let medical practitioners do what they please to you, just that at a certain point you have to accept that your body can do only as much as it can do. Your body can't control if you have a placental abruption, or if your baby is sunnyside-up, or if their shoulders get stuck, or they swallow meconium and have to be rushed to intensive care, or myriad other complications that most birthing classes can't possible prepare you for. These are the things that scared me into the hospital. Would I have had a safe homebirth? Probably. I didn't really want to find out.
It's great that people are beginning to lash back against needless interventions in favor of homebirth. If that's what you want, great. The rising number of C-sections is pretty terrifying to be sure - counted at 32.9 percent of all births in 2009.

"C-sections are now at an all time high. Nearly one in three babies were delivered via cesarean in 2009. Since 1996, the C-section rate has increased nearly 60%." - CNN Health, Dec. 21, 2010. Reporting information from the CDC's "Births: Preliminary Data for 2009" (pdf).

The women who really should be feeling guilty - the ones who chose to have a planned c-section out of convenience, or who asked for drugs the second their feet passed the hospital door - are the ones who don't feel guilty. The women who try so hard for a natural birth should be proud that at least they tried, that they educated themselves and were their own best advocate in the process.
So much emphasis is placed on birth. Yes it is awesome and spectacular and draining and all-consuming and incomparable. But it's just the beginning. I feel that I would have been far better served by taking a parenting class than a birthing class. Birth is just one (or two) days - parenting is forever.
Women need to stop envisioning perfectly natural, blissful births. Yes these are possible, something to strive for, but not something to feel guilty about not achieving. Generally the truth is much messier and entirely more unpredictable. Save your guilt and shame for choosing not to breastfeed.

Or Does Formula Make You Stupid?

A study published in the January issue of Pediatrics finally confirms what many have long suspected, but other studies have had trouble proving (given all the confounding factors): that is, that babies breastfed for for at least six months turn out smarter than their formula-fed counterparts. The Australian study looked at the test results of 1038 children in mathematics, reading, writing, and spelling at age 10. Associations between breastfeeding duration and educational outcomes were adjusted for gender, family income, maternal factors, and early stimulation at home (through reading).

"Predominant breastfeeding for 6 months or longer was associated with significantly higher scores for mathematics, reading, and spelling in 10-year-old children when adjusted for the sociodemographic characteristics of the mother and family and early stimulation of the child. However, significant interaction effects were shown between gender and breastfeeding. ... Our results suggest that breastfeeding duration is independently associated with better educational outcomes in middle childhood, especially for boys."

For us extended breastfeeding enthusiasts, this is simply further proof that our instincts are right. As the parent of a boy, I am especially glad that I breastfed for two and a half years. For anyone wondering if breastfeeding is worth it, maybe this could be the tipping point. There are enough reasons to choose breastfeeding - less risk of obesity and cancers for mom and baby for starters - which one will convince you?