Choosing Home

Home birth, home schooling, and now .... home mumification?

Hospital Infection Rates Rarely Disclosed Despite Thousands of Deaths

ABC News reports on hospital infection rates:

Millions of patients contract an infectious disease while they are being treated in a hospital, but most hospitals do not release detailed data on the problem.

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, is spearheading a nationwide campaign to require hospitals to disclose their infection rates.

Nearly 90,000 people die annually from hospital-acquired infections.

More information at StopHospitalInfections.org.

Bottles vs. Breast milk...no contest

Via Free Money Finance's Festival of Frugality, Money Talks gives a humorous take on cost savings in Bottles vs. Breast milk...no contest:

I am not going to look up the actual costs because I have no idea how much a container of formula powder lasts!

Let us analyze the costs of nursing vs. bottles. My Brother's wife bottle fed, My wife nurses. My wife's breasts are not only visually appealing, but God gave them to her for free!

And so forth.

Meme of Fours

Doulicia (my favorite doula-lawyer) tagged me with this meme. I see that a similar one has been making the rounds of the lawyer-blogs - most notably Ernie the Attorney and Monica Bay and you can follow the links for the rest. So here it is:

Four Jobs I Have Had:

1. Dry Cleaning counter girl (I love the smell of perchlorethylene in the morning.).
2. Pre-treating carbon samples in a radiocarbon lab.
3. Law firm receptionist.
4. Attorney.

Four Movies I could watch over and over:
(there are probably others, these are just the top four that popped into my mind.)

1. Groundhog Day
2. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (but not in front of the kids… oy, the language is awful)
3. Star Wars
4. Cool Runnings ("I am feeling very Olympic today")

Four places I have lived:

1. Dallas Metro area, including at least 4 suburbs:

a. Oak Cliff
b. Addison
c. Carrollton
d. University Park (ok, so not technically a suburb)

2. Austin, Texas (7 years)
3. Novosibirsk, Russia (2 months)
4. Moscow, Russia (1 month)

Four places I have vacationed:

1. Monticello, Iowa
2. Playa del Carmen, Mexico
3. New York City
4. Redondo Beach, California

Four TV shows I watch:

1. Lost
2. Invasion
3. West Wing
4. The evening (national) news

Four Websites I visit daily:

1. my.yahoo.com (where I get my news and blog feeds)
2. my.ebay.com
3. www.blogger.com

Four favorite foods

1. My mother’s homemade mac & cheese
2. Twizzlers (both red and licorice)
3. Artichokes
4. Avocados

Four Places I would rather be:

1. Sleeping.
2. On the beach, with an umbrella drink, watching the sun set .
3. Eating out … anywhere.
4. Sleeping.

Four people I am tagging with this meme:

1. The Gonzo Muckraker (my little younger brother)
2. Mother In Law (who has even less time than me to do stuff like this)
3. Greasy Joan
4. John Stanko

Four charities I wish I could give thousands (millions?) of dollars to:
1. Angel Tree Project
2. MPD Foundation
3. Operation Special Delivery
4. Dress for Success

Shackling of Female Inmates Part II

Giving Birth With Confidence hits the nail on the head with its commentary on the NYT article about the restraining of inmates during labor and after childbirth:

Doesn’t the NY Times know that almost all women in the US are shackled in labor? The poignant picture of a young mother holding her baby shackled to her bed looked very much like the typical laboring women tethered to electronic fetal monitoring (over 90%) and intravenous lines (almost 90% ) and unable to move freely (71%). In most US hospitals women are confined to bed and unable to walk or change positions easily. Corrections officers say they must "strike a balance between security and the well-being of the pregnant woman and her child". That sounds shockingly like what we hear over and over again from hospital administrators and physicians when women want to give birth normally free from routine interventions and restrictions — the wishes of the mother have to be balanced with the need for "safety".

The same thought had occured to me, too.

Shackling of Female Inmates Part I

Breast Feeding Battles

Baby Babble discusses Breast feeding battles around the country.

Blawgy Stuff

Blawgr is a new "Legal Community Weblog."

Blawg Review has started a collaborative blawgroll.

Via Bag and Baggage, Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?. I'm Rule 11:

You were designed to make sure that attorneys in federal cases make reasonable inquiries into fact and law before submitting pleadings, motions, or other papers. You were a real hardass in 1983, when you snuffed out all legal creativity from federal proceedings and embarassed well-meaning but overzealous attorneys. You loosened up a bit in 1993, when you began allowing plaintiffs to make allegations in their complaints that are likely to have evidenciary support after discovery, and when you allowed a 21 day period for the erring attorney to withdraw the errant motion. Sure, you certainly won't get any brownie points for being outgoing, but you keep things on the up and up. It's pretty clear that the whole operation would fall apart without you around.

Yep, that's me alright.

Shackling of Female Inmates During Childbirth

After the Appleton Post-Crescent ran a series of articles which focused on the shackling of female inmates during labor and immediately after childbirth, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections changed it's policy. Thank God for the free press! Amnesty International USA just released a report, "Abuse of Women in Custody: Sexual Misconduct and Shackling of Pregnant Women" criticizing the practice and mentioning the Wisconsin decision.

Amnesty considers the routine use of restraints on pregnant and inmates in labor "a cruel, inhumane and degrading practice that seldom has any justification in terms of security concerns.

"Amnesty International believes that there is no sound reason for authorities to routinely shackle women in labor or who have just given birth, particularly as most are already under armed guard," the report reads.

Amnesty urges state legislatures to pass laws that ban the use of restraints on pregnant and laboring inmates. Only Illinois and California have passed such legislation.

Wisconsin now joins the five state departments of corrections that have policies banning the use of restraints on pregnant and laboring inmates.

(link)