Parent Extremis

Wine! I highly suggest keeping a good bottle of cheap wine in the house at all times. It’s very nice to have a calming glass of wine after the kids go to bed each night. There are nights when that little treat renews me and lulls me into a ready-for-sleeping calm that I haven’t been able to channel sans alcohol since well before I had a baby.

I’m not at all advocating alcoholism or drinking as a means of managing the stresses of parenthood, however, it is a good coping tool! But, if you would rather consume a more benign substance, try an herbal tea or warm milk which is proven to help you sleep, and gives you a good dose of calcium and protein. Milk contains very small doses of melatonin and tryptophan that tend to have a sleepy calming effect on the body and mind.

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy is not recommended, however if you are breastfeeding it can be safe, in moderation. Alcohol can be found in breast milk but the amounts are small, however, it is recommended that you have only one and no more than two drinks per day while nursing. Although, two drinks each day and every day isn’t suggested, so, you know, be smart about it. Alcohol doesn’t stay in breast milk, it does get metabolized by the body so you don’t necessarily need to pump and throw away the milk. For more information about alcohol consumption while breast-feeding, visit Bella Online.

A good nighttime tea to try is Celestial Seasonings Sweet Apple Chamomile. It is all natural, free of calories and caffeine. If you prefer an organic tea, try Sweet Clementine Chamomile Organic Herb Tea, also by Celestial Seasonings.

Julia wrote about vaccinations awhile back and she basically said everything that I felt. So perhaps you can just go read her posting and then we’ll be done? Oh… you actually want me to put actual words here? In this space? Oh. Alrighty then.

Wow. I never should have attempted such an often times controversial subject this early on a Monday, but my goal isn’t to say what I feel is right or even try to sway anyone to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. Ultimately, it is a personal decision. I will say that the arguments are in favor of vaccines as they are overwhelmingly safe. The public health defense being is at the top of PRO list, as is personal health. It is much better to let your child get a short-run, controlled fever than say, a case of the Mumps. There was an outbreak of the Mumps in 2006 which was a real reminder that we have let our guard down in terms of diseases once thought to be eradicated, or at least, totally off of our radar.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have a very extensive web page detailing recommended vaccine schedules and a chart that suggests how to catch up when vaccines have been missed or skipped for whatever reason.

The biggest vaccine controversy today is a concern that vaccines have contributed to the rise in Autism rates. However, there is no proven link. In the past two decades the number of available vaccines has grown quite a bit, and coincidentally, so have the rates in diagnosed Autism. At this point, this is really is a coincidence, there is no proven scientific research demonstrating any link.

It is difficult to watch your babies getting shots but it is ultimately better to have the sting of the shot than the disease it is preventing. Some pediatricians recommend a delayed vaccine schedule for babies who were born prematurely or who have stronger reactions to the shots. This option should be discussed with your pediatrician if you think it would benefit your child.

Does your kid use a pacifier? If so, when did you first give it to him?

Pacifiers do serve and actual purpose. We have all seen the over-stressed and perhaps ill-equipped mother shove a pacifier in the mouth of her seven year old in the middle of Target, but it is not a silencing device really. Infants have a need to suckle. It calms them. They are able to breastfeed with different amounts of sucking depending on their level of hunger. As long as all of their other needs are met, I see nothing wrong with the modern day pacifier to help stretch out a nap-time or make a car ride more pleasant. Pacifiers nowadays are made much better than several decades ago and do not, contrary to what you may hear, cause any orthodontic or speech problems.

Personally, I was a thumb-sucking kid. I started as a newborn and stopped, for good, sometime in my I-am-not-kidding teen years. It was clearly a self-soothing thing and if I hadn’t screwed up my teeth to all hell, I’d still do it today. My mother was vehemently against pacifiers. Go ahead … psycho-analyze the shit out that one.

When I was pregnant and preparing for Noah to be born I was very certain that I wanted him to have a self-soothing method, whatever it may be. So far, his only soothing tool is my boob, much to the chagrin of my nipples and my ability to get much sleep. Alas, he is young, seven weeks, he has no coordination and couldn’t suck his own thumb if he tried. I digress …

I am all in favor of the pacifier. For one thing, you can take it away. You cannot take a thumb away. Know what I’m sayin? So I bought pacifiers. I bought several different kinds, just in case one was shaped better than another kind. I boiled them and was all ready to hand him a pacifier the moment he got a little fussy. Ha! Haa! Hahahahah!!! The parenting gods laugh in my face.

Noah will not, under any circumstances, take a pacifier, of any brand or sort or color or shape.

Another mother told me she gave her son a pacifier in the hospital and he uses it for sleeping only now nine months later. I chose to wait until he was securely breastfeeding to avoid the dreaded and often hotly debated issue of nipple confusion. For now, we are not a pacifier family. Perhaps when he gets older he will take one, but for now I suppose I should count my blessings and not worry about saving for braces.

To read about other nap-time issues, click here.

Greetings!

I’m the new writer for Parent Extremis. I’m no more qualified to write for this site than I am to care for my own seven week old baby. So it should be a fun ride! No, really, I plan to use this site to evaluate and discuss a variety of parenting issues. I hope you will stay tuned for some potentially riveting, or at least mildly interesting discussions of all the issues I can dream up including breast versus bottle feeding, sleep issues (co-sleeping vs. crying it out), the effect of pregnancy on the family, dealing with pediatrician visits and vaccination controversy, dealing with toddlers, heading back to work, discipline methods and much more.

I recently became a stay at home mom, or a work at home mom who does some freelance writing, to Noah, born December 21, 2007. He is almost eight weeks old and I love him more than life itself. We live with my hardworking and devoted husband, Marc, four cats and a yappy little dog.

Usually I’m afraid to read Celebrity Baby Blog. Celebrities aren’t known for their parenting skills, or their marriage skills for that matter, and I don’t want anything to wear off on me. But this time they’re just talking about exercise for expectant mothers. Well, they also managed to drop a couple names - Christina Aguilera and Marcia Cross - who I think I’ve heard of, even without a television.

Pregnant bellies are one of those great givens of life, aren’t they. So far, scientists haven’t figured out how to produce a little baby without producing a larger belly at the same time. Even a very little baby. That must make celebrities mad. I heard about a Beverly Hills doctor who specializes in doing pre-vacation abortions for wealthy patients who want their figure to look its best on the beach.

Don’t tell anybody, but I think exercise is one of the great givens of life too. Scientists haven’t figured out how to keep the human body moving without… well, without moving. That makes me think of my grandmother’s arthritic hip. It was an intriguing yet very common situation. Moving hurt her terribly, but not moving would have frozen the joint. The only alternative was drugs, and she attributed her advanced age to having avoided them.

Exercising together can be one of those fun bonding experiences for expectant mothers and expectant fathers. I wish my wife and I had done more of it. I’ve wondered if more exercise would have increased her stamina enough to have sped up her labor enough to have given birth at home with the midwife as we had planned. Doctors have figured out ways to deliver babies without requiring mothers to have stamina. Once the baby is born, however, mothers need to either gain stamina or sell the baby. There aren’t really any alternatives.

Of course, if exercise during pregnancy is is too hard, there’s always plastic surgery afterwards.

Parents who believe antibiotics are a sure-fire preventative for diseases should take note of a current article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study indicates that giving antibiotics to prevent urinary tract infections (UTI) do not prevent recurrent infections, and actually make it more likely that your child will contract an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria.

The study didn’t address whether antibiotic ointments for cuts and scrapes, or antibiotics for common earaches, have the same effect.

I’m particularly annoyed by advertisements that tell parents that injuries will heal faster with antibiotic creams. As far as I can tell, they heal faster because of everything in the creams except the antibiotics.

Even my old family doctor made the same error, which is why I have a new family doctor. The old one was so old that he was my new family doctor’s doctor when my new doctor was a boy. When I got a bloodshot eye during a bad case of dry heaves, he prescribed antibiotic ointment, even though there was obviously no woud. The problem is that antibiotics leave behind viruses (virii) and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Which is not what you want.

You have the right to be similarly suspicious when your doctor prescribes antibiotics for viral diseases. Antibiotics don’t help viral diseases. They help drug companies whenever you spend money on something that can’t work, in a pious hope that modern medicine can solve all problems.

Write From Karen’s tells of taking her sons to the doctor for shots before they could get back into school. She hated to do it when they were babies. The pain of betrayal.

But opponents of routine vaccinations have a point. They claim that some vaccines (for diseases I had as a child) are less effective than getting the disease itself. That is, the immunity goes away faster. Others note that several common vaccines were developed using tissue for babies aborted for their tissue.

You might well ask why it’s better to have germs injected into your body than to risk the fairly slight chance of getting them another way. Our childbirth instructor suggested there might be a reason why most SIDS deaths happen shortly after a DPT vaccination. I have trouble forgetting the child of a colleague whose brain swelled after his DPT shot. No, he was not the same after that.

I haven’t made my mind up about all this. But I want to think about it.

Noting that what makes household products clean so effectively is also what makes it kill living tissue, including our own, my wife and I tend to use natural cleaning agents such as baking soda and vinegar. My wife likes to mix the two together, because it seems more impressive. I think it neutralizes them, but oh well. Before we got pregnant, we cleaned fifty years of soot from our chimney with those products and a stiff brush. Amazing results. But we could have used a sandblaster, sulphuric acid, or nuclear fusion. It would have eliminated the stains. And the house.

The New Homemaker has the run down on Household Cleaners: The 3 Worst Poisons Under the Sink.

According to last month’s British medical journal The Lancet, premature babies are less likely to die of a common scourge of preemies, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), if they are given probiotics - good bacteria.

Most babies born naturally will soon develop bifidobacteria in their large intestines, including B. infantis, B. bifidum, B. longum, and B. breve. These vigorous micorganisms can fight off germs such as E. coli, Klebsiella, and even Salmonella. Such germs are suspected of helping to cause NEC.

Unfortunately, as soon as my son was born, they began pumping antibiotics into his bloodstream. The doctors weren’t familiar with long labors, and assumed that his high white blood cell count was caused by infection, when it was apparently caused by stress. So they proceeded to wipe out his good bacteria with the latest medical science, which was too far behind the times to know much about intestinal flora. Every subsequent test showed my son had had no infection. But once you start a course of antibiotics, you have to stay the course.

Several days later, when we asked our doctor why our healthy newborn son was still in the hospital, he replied with a principle: “We have to treat the hundred children who don’t need it in order to save the one who does.”

The same principle was used to explain why he was whisked away to the nursery as soon as he was born. If you believe, as many natural childbirth people do, that bonding in the first hour of life is critical, that means that one hundred children are needlessly damaged on the outside chance that one of them might not survived if he or she weren’t damaged.

And it meant that, when we finally got home, I had to squirt probiotics into my son’s mouth with a syringe, to cure him of a sort of diarrhea typical of people who have recently been dosed with antibiotics. He began to perk up in a couple of days.

It reminds me of what my grandmother told her physician as she was approaching 100: “What do I owe my long life to? Staying away from doctors.”