TOWEL AMNESTY DAY

Holiday Inn is having a towel amnesty day. Check it out!

GOT MILK?

Recently, a relative passed along a copy of the August, 2003 issue of RealSimple magazine. In general, I was not too impressed. For one thing, the magazine is filled with advertisements of more things to buy, as if that will make our lives simpler, not more cluttered (have too much clutter? Visit Flylady.net ). However, I was amazed (astonished, perplexed, aghast) by the article on p.137 which is heralded by the cover headline "20 time-wasting rules to break now." Among the time-wasting rules to break: Don't breast-feed your child.

So I was glad to see that Mothering Magazine included the RealSimple article as a recent Action Alert. There is even a boycott organized, and Promom is hosting a letter writing campaign.

There are some valid reasons to feed formula. There are good reasons, bad reasons, and sad reasons. But feeding formula is never simpler. Once, in a tent at an airshow, I saw a young woman with a crying baby trying to fix a bottle. She held the screaming baby with one hand while, with the other hand, opened a bottle of water, poured the water into the baby bottle, replaced the lid on the baby bottle, and shook it. All the while the baby was crying and she had the attention of the entire tent. She was sitting in the back corner and, had she been breastfeeding, she could have been feeding her baby before he had even worked up a fuss and no one would have even noticed.

Here are some good links as to why breastfeeding is better. And I could not end this blawg entry without mentioning my favorite breastfeeding site, Breastfeeding.com.

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME

While wasting my time doing vanity searches on Google, I found Mommies at Law, a similarly-themed website. In fact, I was going to write a bit about the woman in Ohio arrested for breastfeeding while driving, but mommiesesq2 (August 9) has covered the legal issues surrounding that incident more than adequately. You can read about the incident at Yahoo!/AP and MSNBC.

BIRTH CENTER CLOSES

The first free-standing birth center in the country, New York's Elizabeth Seton Birthing Center, announced that it will be closing September 1, 2003 as a result of the "current malpractice insurance crisis in the United States". Read the story at Midwifery Today or a related story at the New York Post Online.

TICK TOCK

On last night's 60 Minutes (“The Biological Clock”) Lesley Stahl reports that our biological clocks aren't ticking any more slowly. Despite advances in fertility medicine, "virtually no women over the age of 44 are able to have a baby using their own eggs." Unfortunately, many young women are concentrating on their careers and delaying childbearing, under the impression that they will be able to get pregnant when they are in their early 40's, then finding out too late that it is no longer possible (or is very, very difficult).

It’s time for us to wake up and realize that we can't have it all. I'm not saying that women can't have careers, shouldn't have careers, or shouldn't work while raising children. I am saying that you can give 100% to your career, or 100% to your family, but not both. You will have to make a compromise somewhere. What is most important to you?

NEWS FLASH: OVER-THE-COUNTER MEDICINES LINKED TO MISCARRIAGE

Today’s Daily Dose from Dr. Greeen reports that "Women who take aspirin, ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil, etc.), or naproxen (Alleve) during pregnancy or just before may have an 80% increased risk of miscarriage, according to a study in the Aug. 16, 2003 British Medical Journal."

WE'RE NUMBER ONE

Well, not really. But if you run a Google search on "mommy blawg", this site comes up first.

LIGHTS OUT

My sympathies with those who have no electrical power this evening. Although we don't know yet what caused the blackout, my money is on a computer virus or cyber terrorism. Check out this article from World Net Daily about INS computer problems.

Lehman's has a unique selection of non-electric products. And a website. Think about that for a minute.

OOHH, AREN'T WE SOMETHING NOW!

This blawg has been briefly mentioned on Inter Alia and the Internet Legal Research Weekly, to which I am gratuitously linking back. Also I received my first blawg-related email, which means that definitely somebody besides me has been reading this. Seriously, I don't even think my husband has been reading this. Honey?

I also updated the description of the Mommy Blawg in the first post to include "breastfeeding advocacy"... duh, how did I forget that one?

Enough drivel, let's go find some real news to talk about.

PERSONAL NOTE

It was a busy week in the life of my 6 1/2 month old son. He started crawling and cut his first tooth. He does an "army crawl" and is actually quite fast, considering it is a newly acquired skill.

A SHOT IN THE DARK

A couple of news stories popped up recently regarding vaccinations, with my comments:

CDC Focuses on Late-Vaccinated Toddlers

The CDC reports that about 75% of all toddlers are vaccinated on time, and is making efforts to improve that number to 80% by the year 2010. The report opens with a story about a pregnant woman who was exposed to Pertussis (whooping cough) by an unvaccinated toddler. She was sick when she gave birth, and her newborn baby became seriously ill and spent several days in PICU as a result. On the surface, the anecdote seems to make a good case for vaccinating children. But wait – let’s dig a little deeper.

First, the Toddler in question was unvaccinated because his parents had objections (religious or philosophical) to all vaccinations. However, this is not the group that the CDC is focusing on according to the article. It is aiming to improve vax rates of children whose parents forget or neglect to complete the vaccination schedule. Presumably the CDC is not going after the 10% or so of parents for whom vaccination goes against their sincerely held beliefs. So why was this particular incident chosen to introduce this particular news story?

Second, the toddler in question had an obvious whooping cough. So why were his parents taking him to a playgroup with other children, let alone a pregnant woman? Part of the decision not to vax is the realization that you will have to stay at home for a week or more with your chicken-poxed child, etc., and will be careful about not exposing others.

Third, how did the pregnant woman get pertussis? Hadn’t she been vaccinated against it? And if she was, did the protection of the vaccination wear off? If she had been allowed to be exposed naturally to pertussis as a child, she would have been fully immunized against the disease for the rest of her life, and would have passed on some immunity to her unborn child. Not so with the vaccination.

Mothers lose MMR battle: Two mothers have lost their fight to stop their daughters being compulsorily vaccinated with the MMR jab

Somewhat disturbing, the BBC reports that two women in Britain have lost a court battle to prevent their daughters from getting the MMR vaccination against their wishes. In both cases, the fathers of the children brought suit to force the vaccinations.

STATUS UPDATE

I've been added to the Lawblogs webring. You will notice the new little symbols at the bottom of the box on the upper right hand corner.

Maybe now someone besides myself will be reading this :).

A JURY OF OUR PEERS

There is a movement underway for states to rewrite jury instructions in “plain English” so as to make them clearer and more understandable. This does not seem like such a bad idea, as those jury instructions can be confusing even to me, and I went to law school for 3 years in order to understand legalese. But I am genuinely concerned when a jury believes that “malice aforethought” means that the murder was committed with a mallet. The low level of education of the general public in this country is truly astonishing. See related article at The National Law Journal.

Conventional wisdom (me) says: If you are not guilty, choose a bench trial. If you are guilty, let a jury decide. It is hard to get 12 people to agree on anything.