21st century stepdad August 31, 2007
Check out my friend R.’s wonderful new blog about what it’s like to be a brand new stepfather to a great 4th grade boy. You can read it RIGHT HERE.
on depression and addiction
Two Tennessee bloggers are ruminating on depression and addiction this week. Newscoma writes about how Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt HAS BEEN ON HER MIND, and Left Of Dial IS SHARING a really sad and thought provoking story about some family members’ fall into serious, hardcore drug addiction.
As a mother, I think I would rather see my child suffer from a purely physical ailment than be faced with serious mental illness or addictions. Our culture still has so little understanding, empathy or available care for those who are burdened with these terrible afflictions.
We live in an urban neighborhood with lots of homeless people - most mentally ill or addicted. The kids and I are always talking about these issues, because we can’t avoid looking at these poor and sick people in the same way we could if we lived in the ‘burbs of West Knoxville. These folks are often literally right in our faces. It’s painful to see on a daily basis, and can be a nuisance, but in some ways I think it’s good for the children to see how serious the problem is, and also what addiction looks like in its most serious stages.
Formula Industry Tactics In The Spotlight
The Washington Post TODAY REPORTS on how the pharma (infant formula) industry strongarmed the federal government to significantly change a pro-breastfeeding public service ad campaign.
I previously reported on this exact same story A WHILE BACK, but there are lots of important new details in the WP story, including the fact that the toned-down ad campaign seems to have had little to no impact on the nation’s relatively low breastfeeding rates.
From the WP story:
In an attempt to raise the nation’s historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter, the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were “grateful” for his staff’s intervention to stop health officials from “scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding,” and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads.
The formula industry’s intervention — which did not block the ads but helped change their content — is being scrutinized by Congress in the wake of last month’s testimony by former surgeon general Richard H. Carmona that the Bush administration repeatedly allowed political considerations to interfere with his efforts to promote public health.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating allegations from former officials that Carmona was blocked from participating in the breast-feeding advocacy effort and that those designing the ad campaign were overruled by superiors at the formula industry’s insistence.
“This is a credible allegation of political interference that might have had serious public health consequences,” said Waxman, a California Democrat.
The milder campaign HHS eventually used had no discernible impact on the nation’s breast-feeding rate, which lags behind the rate in many European countries.
…………………………………….
The breast-feeding ad campaign originated in a formal “Blueprint for Action on Breastfeeding” released in 2000 by David Satcher, who had been appointed surgeon general by President Bill Clinton. The Office on Women’s Health convinced the nonprofit Ad Council to donate $30 million in media time, and it hired an ad agency to work alongside scientists from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and elsewhere.
Officials met with dozens of focus groups before concluding that the best way to influence mothers was to delineate in graphic terms the risks of not breast-feeding, an approach in keeping with edgy Ad Council campaigns on smoking, seat belts and drunken driving. For example, an ad portraying a nipple-tipped insulin bottle said, “Babies who aren’t breastfed are 40% more likely to suffer Type 1 diabetes.”
Gina Ciagne, the office’s public affairs specialist for the campaign, said, “We were ready to go with our risk-based campaign — making breast-feeding a real public health issue — when the formula companies learned about it and came in to complain. Before long, we were told we had to water things down, get rid of the hard-hitting ads and generally make sure we didn’t somehow offend.”
Ciagne and others involved in the campaign said the pushback coincided with a high-level lobbying campaign by formula makers, which are mostly divisions of large pharmaceutical companies that are among the most generous campaign donors in the nation.
ben folds - practically perfect pop song o’ the day
I love this song. There aren’t many pop songs about parenting (and that’s Ben Folds’ real son, Louis, in the video).
I met Ben Folds at Bonnaroo in 2006. I got his autograph for my daughter, J. It was all she wanted from Bonnaroo that year, and I hit him up for it after a press conference. He couldn’t have been nicer.
For some reason, this song always makes me think of my brother, Robert, and his relationship with my nephew, Jones.
pushedbirth.com
Check out Jennifer Block’s NEW SITE on the state of maternity care in the United States. Lots of good info there.
One thing she links to is the new study warning that codeine use by new mothers (primarily after c-sections) may be dangerous for babies. I took a codeine pain reliever for a week after my c-section, and I think the fact that it helped me stay pretty comfortable greatly aided my speedy and easy recovery overall. But I wondered at the time if the codeine, on top of the two epidurals (one for the external version and one four days later for the c-section) and the other drugs I had during my looooong labor were a big part of why Charlotte was so incredibly lethargic and sleepy during her first two weeks. Her sleepiness made breastfeeding really challenging.
My niece, born a few days ago, was the product of a drug-free birth and her very alert state was a marked contrast to Charlotte’s drugged-up sleepiness. She is so alert that all the nurses at the hospital commented on it to my sister (they see very few drug-free births/babies, apparently).
But it’s hard to say what the answer is, since I really think I needed the narcotic pain relief after my c-section.
jay leno on larry craig August 30, 2007
“A lot of people are calling Senator Craig a hypocrite because he was a very vocal opponent of same-sex marriages. … But to be fair, he has never come out publicly against anonymous gay bathroom sex.” –Jay Leno
in the mothering groove
I am getting the hang of this mothering four kids thing. It helps that Jon is a very, very equal-in-every-way dad, but sometimes baby C. just wants to nurse. Period. The end. That’s all that will do. So when that is the case, he handles other important tasks, like cleaning the kitchen or helping E. with homework. We are on our game together, and it feels good. The other kids are very helpful with the baby, too. They hold her while I get dressed or whatever. Things are going relatively smoothly, and everyone seems to have gotten into the new baby/back to school pattern.
Of course, the house is DIRTY, and my freelance work is behind, and I am not getting enough milk pumped for when I go back to work on October 1, but the good news is that we are all fed ,and clothes are clean (if not always put away) and everyone is getting to school and back. Every week we are doing a bit better with things, and Jon and I have pretty much accepted that during this brief period of infancy, we may not get everything done we need to get done. I do think I may splurge at some point soon and pay someone to do one really thorough house cleaning and help me get caught up. The house feels really chaotically messy at the moment, and that’s hard. I should clean when she sleeps, but somehow I get nothing done when she sleeps, including getting any sleep myself….
Have I mentioned that I have not slept more than 3 hours in a row in over a month? And probably not more than 7 hours total in any 24 hour period (and that’s a generous estimate). Jon’s mother is coming over in a little while to take care of the baby so I can sleep for an hour or two. Oh joy! She’s one awesome mother in law. I actually think she is possibly the nicest person I’ve ever met, and a great grandmother to boot. She looooooves being a grandmother.
More later.
(And Betsy and Nancy Catherine get to go home today. Yeehaw.)
cops need something better to do August 29, 2007
It’s possible, even likely, that Republican Senator Larry Craig is a homophobic hypocrite. If he actually was looking for some manlove in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, he won’t be the first or last lawmaker or man-of-the-cloth to be hiding the fact that he’s a frightened and closeted gay man behind an aggressively right wing, “pro-family” agenda.
But really, whether he’s gay or not isn’t the issue, as I see it. How is it possibly against the law to tap your feet and waggle your hand in a public bathroom? This is rather frightening to me. Maybe it was some secret “I want sex” code, or maybe the guy just dropped something on the floor. Either way, I don’t care. It’s crazy - and scary - that you can be arrested in a bathroom simply for moving your feet and hands in a certain way without touching anyone, saying anything, or exposing your privates.
Let’s say Craig was hitting on the cop (and I am not convinced he was). Why is it against the law to hit on someone, as long as you don’t touch them or verbally harass them? Heterosexual people probably hit on each other in that airport’s bar/lounge every day and they aren’t arrested.
If I dance suggestively at a club, hoping to attract the attention of a guy who will then chat me up and maybe go home with me, should I be arrested for conduct known to be a type of “soliciting?”
my beautiful niece has arrived! August 28, 2007
My sister went in to be induced last night, and they gave her some medicine to soften up her cervix, with the plan that they would begin the actual induction (with pitocin) in a few hours. Well, they never had to. She went into labor on her own, and baby Nancy Catherine arrived at 10:18 am this morning. Things went pretty slowly during the night, but Betsy dilated from 4 to 8 centimeters in 30 minutes. At 8 centimeters, she started hollering that she was going to have the baby, and the nurse tried to reassure her that she was only at 8, so the baby wasn’t coming just yet.
Wrong.
Within 20 seconds of telling Betsy this, the baby came, well, flying out onto the bed, doing an actual, complete flip before landing. I am not making this up or exaggerating. It was quite remarkable. Amazing, actually. Betsy didn’t even have to push.
And as with her other two births, she did it with no pain meds. She’s a total stud.
Baby and mama are doing great, and Nancy Catherine is sooooo adorable! She has real dimples and a head full of dark hair.
nancy catherine! August 27, 2007
My sister has had a tough pregnancy and has been having some significant medical complications here right at the end. Today her doctor decided it’s necessary to go ahead and get that baby on out, so he is admitting her to the hospital and they will be inducing labor. That means my niece, Nancy Catherine will be born in the next 24 hours! I can’t wait to meet her. And if she’s born tomorrow, she and her cousin Charlotte will be exactly one month apart in age.
the heat August 26, 2007
Even if you accept that global warming is real (and I do), this recent heat wave isn’t any more extreme than heat waves I experienced as a kid, when we lived in an old farmhouse that lacked any air conditioning (or heat, but that’s another story). I routinely lived thru periods of 95 plus degree heat in that house. Lots of times, my little brother and sister and I would sleep out on the front porch, with the bugs and the dogs crawling all over us, because it was just too damn hot inside the house. I remember those nights as very, very hot, but also a lot of fun.
Now, however, when it gets really hot, like it has been the past two weeks, I am not only uncomfortably warm, but also bothered by a vague, yet overweening sense of worry that it isn’t just hot, but hot because of some terrible environmental crisis. It makes it seem hotter…and more sinister and unpleasant.
the milk memos August 25, 2007
I am currently reading THIS BOOK and it’s definitely the best book on the market for practical advice/info and “you can do it!” support for women who have to combine breastfeeding with a full time job. Highly recommended.
how soon we forget
Each time I’ve had a baby, I decide in the last month or so of pregnancy that I never, ever, ever want to do this again. I am giant and uncomfortable and can’t breathe and anxious.
Then, after a few weeks, when things settle down and the baby is smelling so sweet and feeling so perfectly wonderful in my arms, I think to myself, “Yeah, I could maybe do this again.”
Yeah.
