Posts from April, 2009
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True or False: Cosleeping risks your infant’s life
BBC recently published an article entitled: Bed Sharing ‘Risks Babies’ Lives.’ And I hope to debunk this article in the following post:
The article claims that bed sharing is the cause for about half of “cot deaths.”Here are the statistics they use:
Data from Dr Marta Cohen, pediatric pathologist at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, showed that of the 50 cases she investigated between 2004 and 2007, 31 were found to have been sharing a bed or sofa with a parent.
First, the reason I’m going to discard the first and third statistic is because it uses the word OR. You could say (and still be grammatically correct) that 31 infants died having been found sharing a bed or sofa with parent if 30 of those deaths happened on a sofa. It’s bad logic.Dr Chris Wright, consultant perinatal pathologist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, examined 15 cases of unexpected death in infants between 2008 and 2009 – seven were found in the parental bed and two had died on a sofa.
In the London area between 2005 and 2008, 173 babies died suddenly and unexpectedly. And 85 of these infants were found dead after falling asleep in bed with an adult or on a sofa.
Secondly, there needs to be more information about these statistics. We don’t know the education level of these individuals, if they live in a poorer neighborhood, etc. Would you trust a study done on the schools systems in Philadelphia if they only conducted research in the city’s ghettos? I think not.
Thirdly, how many parents in the UK cosleep? What if the number of cosleeping families was 50% in the UK? Then the fact that about half of these babies were found to be dead would say to me that WHERE they died doesn’t have anything to do with it; because doesn’t that make sense? Half of them were in beds (OR on a sofa), and half of them were in a separate cot.
This article also makes it extremely poignant that if you smoke, or have been drinking or are “very tired” the chances of an infant death are much greater. That should be obvious but it still happens. I really want a study done where they track the amount of infant deaths when the parents were not drunk, not on drugs, not smoking, and not on a sofa. It pains me to see that healthy co-sleeping families, who are trying to do the best for their child by co-sleeping are grouped in with possibly negligent parents.
Let me tell you why it is safter to sleep with your babe:
- A mother’s body knows how to regulate the rate at which her baby breaths even while she sleeps. If something happens to the child that causes the breathing to change, the mom will wake. This is proven.
- The infant is held throughout the night. It’s common knowledge that infants (as in days and weeks old) should be held. I’m not going to go into the studies. If they should be held throughout the day, then they should be held throughout the night. It doesn’t make sense to hold the babe half of a 24 hour day (or even less with naps) if you think that fresh babies should be held. Transitioning from the womb is very difficult and sleeping with your child eases the transition since they have some constant variables that were present in the womb: mom’s breathing and mom’s heart rate (and maybe even dad’s snoring). Thus the child’s body can focus on growing and developing and doesn’t have to be sent into a state of emergency.
- It further strengthens the bond between parents and child. This is done through touch. The more you are with your baby the stronger the bond is. This is how mothers know what their child’s cry means, or what they’re going to do before anyone else does. The sooner this happens the better the child thrives.
Let me say this though: some parents are very nervous about sleeping with their child and I’m not trying to condemn them. I would just highly recommend a sleeper that sits next to the bed.
And when co-sleeping please do the research to find out how to make it at safe as possible.
Conclusion: this article was very biased. I feel like it’s pretty obvious that if the parent is not in a right state of mind (like due to drugs or alcohol) or is sleeping on something like a sofa, then it puts the child at risk. I think they stretched the implications of such a fact (for whateve reason) and thus put together some rough statistics in order to scare individuals.
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Dear Fiery,
I’m sorry for all the times I made you out more difficult than you are, so I can feel like a martyr and elicit sympathy from other people.I’m sorry for all the times I made you to be easier than you are, so I can better advertise my style of parenting.
I just want you to be you.
Love,
Your Mom
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The Problem of Freeware.
I’ll come right out and say it: “I’m a hypocrite here. A big one.” Here’s the thing: I have this big belief in the power of making something free. Anything. I believe that when someone makes what they make available to as wide an audience as possible, they’re saying that they believe their product is valuable enough that everyone who can use it should use it because it would improve their lives that much. Something in me just screams, “Yes! That’s the way to do it! Nothing else makes a lick of sense!”. After all, if the idea or product is so important, why would you make it impossible for the vast majority of people on the earth to obtain it (as in, most products made for consumption in the U.S.)?
I see a lot of this in Christian organizations especially. It really bothers me that people will put copyrights on Bible translations and charge licensing fees for worship music and sue for plagiarism for books on theology. What bothers me so much is not that they’re getting paid, but quite simply that their attitude seems to infer a sense of ownership over this stuff. I’m a pretty firm believer in the doctrine of Total Depravity and an outworking of that doctrine would indicate that nothing good can come of us. “Every good and perfect gift comes from above” (James 1:17) is one way that I might choose to prove this. In other words, in a very real sense, works of theology and doctrine and works of glorifying God (such as a worship song) are not of us. I don’t like the idea of getting ultra-possesive about something that was given to us that we could never have hoped to produce on our own. Also, it’s a little self-defeating. The point of God giving us gifts is so that the wider body of Christ can benefit, not so that we can have a better experience or be a little bit more admired (1 Corinthians 12). If that’s the case you should make the gifts that God has given you available to as much of the body of Christ as is possible.
However, that gets somewhat rantingly off the topic. Maybe one day I’ll finally write my book, “Christ Was Free: What Christians Have to Learn from the Open Source Movement.” Till then, moving on…
Back to that issue of power. See, the power of giving something away because of the belief you have in its value comes down to this: The very fact that I know someone is sacrificing to give me something because they believe it’s worth that much to me makes me desire to give something back to them! The feeling is completely different than the feeling I get when I look at that 320 GB hard drive that I want so badly for my laptop. Seagate’s charging money for that. They’ve made a business decision that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t need it and thus they show their disinterest in making the world a better place (Honestly, who can fault them? We used to get buy just fine on MBs of static storage and KBs of RAM. Sheesh, what do I possibly need 320 GBs of internal space for?) through gregarious giving. Thus, I wouldn’t feel a bit of regret if sometime down the road they realized, aghast, that they had been undercharging for their product. It’s a business transaction at that point. They’ve fixed their price point and that’s what they’re sticking to. If they go belly up because of it, tut tut on them.
But someone who believes so much in their product that even though they’d like to get paid for it, they’re willing to put selfless time into it and give it away to people because they believe it will make their life better… Well, that person deserves something in return, don’t they? At least, that’s what I believe.
Really… I do.
Now comes the problem, though, because I’m a dirty, rotten, no-good, inconsistent hypocrite. You see, even though I say that… Even though I believe that someone who gives their stuff away will be rewarded for it in the end because when they ask for money or to be supported in what their doing, they’ll receive it from people who are grateful for their generosity (i.e. me), I don’t actually, usually, in reality… buy software that I can get for free. Ugh. Now my dirty laundry’s out there.
I’m not a liar. Don’t misunderstand me here. I do desire to give back to a person who has given to me much more than I desire to give anything to someone who expected something of me before they’d do anything in return. The problem then comes down to action. I’ve bought plenty of software that I could obtain in no other way than to buy it (because I don’t do illegal software, right. You don’t either, do you?). I don’t think I’ve ever even donated a dollar to a project that I could obtain for free (like OpenOffice.org or GNU Emacs). However, in my heart, I believe that I would.
I know I don’t, but I still think I would!
I can chalk it up to all sorts of lame excuses… “If I had more money I’d give something”, “If I used it more I’d give something”, “If the project made it easier to donate I’d give something”.
Lame!
But that’s the problem with Freeware (As in beer and as in freedom) isn’t it? The problem is that once you make something available for free, people that could have paid for it begin to feel like they can defer it. “Maybe it’s not so valuable after all.” “I’ll just give it a trial period before I decide what it’s worth.” “Thank God I don’t have to pay for this now, I need to upgrade OS X!” And suddenly you’ve been using a product for a decade that’s being developed by an army of volunteers working on their own time and all they’ve ever asked you for is to donate a few bucks via paypal and the only excuse you can come up with is that you haven’t gotten around to it yet.
If I truly believe in this stuff, I need to get off my butt and start paying for the software that I use or contributing in some other meaningful way. And I do. I truly believe that this is the way to go, not just for software but for everything. Worship leaders shouldn’t let their record company copyright their stuff. Christian writers should allow pastors and people from around the world free access to the material. We should stop believing in the myth of ownership when it comes to these things and instead focus on helping people. But that requires that people are then generous in return.
I hope they’re not all like me…
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This just became a whole lot easier!
Having a naked baby makes this ECing thing so much easier. She wakes up, I put on her on the potty to go pee, she goes pee, I strip her down (now that I know she won’t have to go for a bit). I then let her hang out on her rug naked with some of her toys and when I “feel” like she might have to go again I place her on her potty, sound her cue, and she goes! And she’s placed back on her rug (or in a high chair, depending on how hungry I am at that point). Soon she gets nursed down for a nap and pees when she wakes up!
Or, like yesterday, she’s lying on the ground and I hear her make a fart that normally is a fart before she has to poop so I quickly scoop her up and plop her on her potty and she immediately goes poop! I’m so proud of her!
Don’t get me wrong: we have plenty of misses and times where she has to be in a diaper (if we’re out) and plenty of laziness on my part but not having to undress her AND take off a diaper makes me so much more willing.
I use the word “feel” because I’ve realized a lot of this is based on intuition. A lot of times I’ll have the thought “she might go poop right now” and then common sense kicks in and says there’s no way I could know that, so I let her be and miss a poop :-( It’s amazing how the mother-baby bond works!
On a side note she’s gotten over her fear of peeing while Tim’s in the room and even peed for him when he put her on the potty Saturday morning (first time for Daddy!).
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Moving Backwards in Women’s Rights
Our country prides itself on how much we as women have achieved independence. Most of us have the opportunity to enjoy these freedoms: we’re not property, we can vote, we go to college (and more women than men do) and we can even sue if we feel a certain company or employer is discriminating against us. These are all fine and good and I am personally grateful for these rights and freedoms.
What this country doesn’t know is how many freedoms we as women have lost in the name of equality. When the emphasis of women’s rights was placed on having equal rights with men, it came at the expense of our rights as mothers. Did you know that out of 168 countries 163 of them have PAID maternity leave? (the US is among the 5 countries that don’t) And it’s normally 14-20 weeks long? We as women are lucky if we KEEP OUR JOB after we’ve had a baby! Pssh, paid maternity leave. Not to mention a horrible system of pressure-inducing (no pun intended) obstetricians and pediatrians (most of whom are male) who makes us feel horrible if our child doesn’t fit in a growth and milestone chart. I’m not against a male doctor but why are they allowed to tell us how to parent when most of them are unexperienced or feel like children should be like pets: good and predictable.
Does America have ANY idea how important our jobs are? WE made the Hitlers, the Martin Luthers Kings, the Barak Obamas, the man who mugged you, the Jesus who saved you and your pastor’s wife who encourages you. Do you have any idea how different those individuals would be with a different mother?!
Oh, God! And we wonder why the ADD, ADHD, and mind disorders galore are so rampant in our country (and pretty much only our country). Is it because motherhood is so devauled in the U.S.? Is it because our society’s life style can’t afford one income and thus puts pressure on undeserving mothers that they need to put their kids in daycare so they can keep up with the pace? So your child who is just highly gifted, or, hell, just a two year old has to be put on medications that dull them so they’re more managable because we as mothers are stressed out under all of this lack of support?
The biggest thing that hit me as I newly ventured into motherhood was how hard it was. I had no idea. Up until that point I had been given constant messages that I could still maintain “a life” and teach a child life. This is a hard job. It’s a round-the-clock job that never.lets.up. And what do we get for it? “Someday when our kids go to college we can go back to school and actually do something with our lives.” Like teaching a totally dependent being how to be independent and impact the world for good isn’t doing something.
My point is this: the very job that builds up a nation’s foundation is being compeletely neglected. Society is make our job much harder than it already is. Most women are ashamed to say “I’m a stay-at-home-mom” when someone asks “what do you do?” I shudder to think what this country will look like 50 years from now. We’ll all be bemoaning the state of this country’s leadership while our agressive, untouched, suped up on meds, children run it.
This makes me SO ANGRY.
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I want it to be rich
On Sunday we went to see our friend’s babies get dedicated (three babies all with the same set of grandparents!). The preacher at their church is an older man (80s?) and has been saved for a long time. What hit me so much was not really the message that he gave but how rich his relationship with God was (or is rather).
It pains me how much of that I lack. I know I’m making progress. In fact, I could not be happier with my progress (by God’s grace). I feel constantly stretched and tried and it feels good, even if I don’t respond well to the trying.
I don’t know what a rich relationship with Jesus looks like. I think a key to experiencing that is getting into the Bible more. I have a daily reading plan but I don’t feel like I’m “eating the scroll.” I feel like I need to be meditating on Scripture (a.k.a memorizing, but not mindlessly). If Jesus IS the actual Word than I feel like an idiot for not doing it sooner because how obvious is that?!
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Crazy Poop Story #1
I found an unscathed leaf over an inch long in her poop today. It actually looked more like a weed. Then I remembered the conversation I had with Tim yesterday. He was sitting with Fiery on a blanket on our front lawn while I gardened:
Upon hearing gagging sound I asked, “is she o.k?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. Just ate some grass.”
“Why did you let her eat grass?”
“Because she wanted to.”
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Cloth Diapering
From April 22, 2009 @ 10:04 am
So after finding a wonderful and encouraging resource at the Maternal Wellness Center (MWC) where we took a class on the subject, Timmy and I decided to cloth diaper. Cloth diapering has come a long way from safety pins and cloth (that’s what my mommy used on me!)
I highly recommend cloth diapering. In fact, I think it’s downright silly not to.
Here are some reasons:
- Your impact on the environment will be significantly less. The average child uses about 600 diapers. That means you will have contributed 600 diapers to some landfill and because they’re made from the same material as menstrual pads, they will either take a VERY long time (not in your life time, or your child’s life time) to disintegrate or they will never break down because they’re in a closed landfill.
- You will save thousands of dollars.. that’s right, thousands. You can comfortably cloth diaper your child for about $500-$1000. If you buy disposables and your child is in diapers for the diaper average (2.5 years) you’ll be spending about $2000 if you buy a relatively-medium priced diaper.
AND your cloth diapers, if you take good care of them, can last through 2 kids, meaning you’ll save about $3000 even with the added cost of the cloth diapers.
- It’s easier to potty train your child. Disposables are “great” because the child can not feel that their wet. That isn’t so with cloth which gives your child a good reason to stay dry.
- You don’t want to do more wash: We bought a total of 32 diapers and I have to do wash 6 times a month. That’s it.
- I don’t want to scrap poop into a toilet: You don’t have to! They have something called “rice paper” which is essentially thick toilet paper and you can “catch” a poop and then dispose of it in a toilet (did you know it’s actually illegal to throw out excrement? Obviously a law that’s not enforced).
It’s something you can ask for at your baby shower (to lower cost even more). We use Growing Greens (we got hemp instead of cotton because hemp absorbs more) with Imse Vimse Wool Covers (we have 24 of those) and then we have 8 Bum Geniuses which we use for going out because they’re one piece. I have heard great things about Mother-ease also.
And here’s a picture of me at 5 months pregnant about to go to the class:
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Bad EC Day
Yesterday was fantastic. I caught almost all of her pees and I didn’t have to change her diaper until 4 or 5 PM… after that Tim gets home and well, I get kinda lazy :-) We still only went through 3 diapers- yay!
She didn’t poop all day so I really want to make sure I catch a possible poop because I know it’s going to be big. I just wish she would poop already! I keep hovering around her listening for her cues, waiting, waiting, waiting.
She woke up at 10:30 AM- which is later for her so that’s probably what contributed to a 5 minute nap after a 45 minute struggle, followed by a 25 minute nap hours later- after a 30 minute struggle- and now that it’s 5 o’clock she is finally asleep- no struggle.
So I think this has thrown off her eliminating schedule as I have spent a lot of time watching her amuse herself with her feet on her potty. That or she thinks it’s fun to roll herself off (which is kind of cute).
And since I hate being frustrated with my daughter, because it’s not her fault she doesn’t understand here’s a list of really cute things that she does that makes me smile:
- She MUST sleep with her top arm (if she’s on her side) on top of the covers.
- When she’s super tired in bed she’ll make her legs straight and do a wheel barrow and ram her head into the pillow. It looks funny.
- Has started to scream “ba, ba,” “da, da,” and “ma, ma” when she’s tired.
- She thinks it’s the funniest thing when I sing (and it probably is).
- Just being her.
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We have some new alcohol habits
Tim and I recently thought it’d be cool to become “wine and beer connoisseurs.” How things have changed! If you met me or Tim 6-12 months ago and told us you drink wine or beer for leisure we would have bitten off your head and told you how unChristian you are. That being said we have some unfortunate apologies to make to a lot of people.
I am still against drinking for the “experience.” Although I don’t think you can argue biblically that drinking in and of itself is a sin, I think it is very easy to argue biblically that drinking with the point of getting drunk, or even just comfortably tipsy is wrong. As of right now I think I’m comfortably conscience-wise viewing wine or beer as cheese. I LOVE cheese. I love trying new kinds, learning about them, being able to tell the difference, etc. And I think its healthy to have that same appreciation for wine (and beer too… but I definietely think I’m more of a wine person). I feel like I am furthering my experience of God’s creation- although I’m not using that as an excuse to drink too much.
So on Friday night we bought a bottle of Sutter Home Red California Wine (like $7 or $8 a bottle) and it wasn’t that bad. I know that its an acquired taste so I think it’ll take a bit before I can really appreciate it and have it not taste like cough syrup. On Saturday night we tried some Dark and Tan and I liked it less than the wine (Tim liked it more than I did). Although it is WONDERFUL to cook with- espeically with a good stew. I want to try it my sloppy joe’s next.
I had no idea how my much wine my body could handle. I had a semi-empty stomach (we drank after dinner) and just after two or three sips I definitely felt more relaxed (I am still grokking my convictions on this). I don’t know why but I took a couple of sips more (I guess I was curious) and drank too much. That being said I have NO idea why people get drunk. I felt awful. I felt slow, stupid, lazy and in an all-around bad mood. I slowly got a head ache and I just wanted to sit around and wallow in self pity. Not a fun drunk; and I don’t even think I could have classified myself as “drunk.” It wasn’t even half of a glass. I’m sure I could have more fun/be more fun with practice but it’s totally not worth desensitizing my conscience in order to do so.
Now that I’m trying to do book and movie reviews, I’ll add wine and beer reviews to the mix :-)
EDIT: It’s “Black & Tan” not “Dark & Tan” I … feel like an idiot.
