.

So, today I am 41 wks and 5 days along. I never, ever thought I'd make it this far. You know it's kind of ironic, as almost EVERYONE I know has had problematic pregnancies rife with problems, and early babies. It feels sometimes like it's contagious, and I honestly thought I'd wind up going early, vs. late! But here I am. Belly: tight as a drum! Cervix: tight as a drum too, but 80% effaced! Absolutely feels like nothing is happening except some practice pressure waves.

I have been sitting on my birthing ball, squatting, rolling my hips, doing hands and knees rocking, walking, vacuuming, squatting, eating pineapple, having sex, having orgasms, eating spicy curry, taking evening primrose oil, and doing nipple stimulation, and...

Baby is just HAPPY in there. So I make a good baby house! She is head down, and according to my midwife "RIGHT THERE," but just... nada, zip, zilch.

I am really getting nervous though. Going *too* far overdue *does* have an increased incidence of risk factors and I just don't want to go there. I don't even want to be pondering induction; I am. I don't want to ponder the potential results of induction; (ie: failure to progress, unhandleable birthing, epidural, c-section, etc) I am.

I guess I'll go do more birth ball stuff...

Posted by JoAnna at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I first started poking around the anti-vax issue, it was with the belief that vaccines are bad. Which is a very trendy thing to believe these days. Although, I had already been exposed to the skeptical side of myself via my research into SIDS and mattress fumes. So, I suppose I was feeling a bit skeptical when I started out.

However, what I've found is... more than a little bit scary. People who assert that vaccines cause everything from autism to allergies to SIDS and everything in between, and who do so in the face of all research which concludes the contrary. People who believe that every SIDS organization, autism organization, government health organization IN THE WORLD are in on a grand conspiracy to convince us all to vaccinate for monetary gain.

Someone close to me sent me to the Dr. Carly website, which was one of the first that I really made myself sit down and analyze... and found myself reading things like:

"However, the reverberating truth, “the shot heard round the world” which will lead to the evolution of consciousness necessary to stop the holocaust against humanity known as vaccinations, will be that not only are vaccinations not safe or effective, but that they are actually weapons of mass destruction being perpetrated upon humanity in the name of health, for the purpose of genocide and to bring in the New World Order. Part 2 of the genocidal plan could drop anytime with activation of the Model State Health Emergency Powers Act whenever the next fabricated terrorist attack using biological agents occurs. The “bird flu” is apparently going to be used as an excuse to inoculate the masses soon, as predictions of a pandemic are being made by the media almost every day." ~Dr.Carly

Yes... that's right, folks. Vaccines are part of an attempt at global genocide.

Of course there is no explanation as to who would benefit from said genocide nor what their motivation would be to do such a thing.

Not only that, but Dr. Carly is part of a group of people who believe that vaccines are part of some satanic ritual.

It doesn't bother me or scare me to see parents (like myself) doing more in-depth research as to what is in vaccines, why they are given, what they prevent against, and all the facts therein. It does bother me to see people taking advice from someone who believes a) vaccines are part of a global genocidal plot or b) vaccines are part of a satanic ritual. Either way, consider your source please!

Trying to have a coherent discussion with the most vehement anti-vax people usually goes something like:

Anti-vaxer: "Rotavirus is no big deal."
Skeptic: "My godson had rotavirus and spent a month at children's hospital. It was way more than "no big deal" for us. A vaccine could've saved a month of his life spent hooked up to IVs."
Anti-vaxer: "But if he'd died of a vaccine, you'd have a different perspective."

What???? I'm not sure how that is relevant, except for being able to say in response: "Yes, and if your child had almost died of rotavirus, maybe your perspective would be different as well."

I'm really doing this only for my own sanity and to sort out all the information I've been collecting about vaccinations, but I'll be going through and addressing some of their basic arguments and concerns about vaccines.

To clarify, I will just say that being concerned over vaccines is good. Researching them is good. Having a dose of *healthy* skepticism towards modern medicine can be good. But rejecting all medical science, all medical research, and every doctor on the face of the earth in the belief that sodium ascorbate can heal all the world's ills and vaccine preventable diseases are no big deal... sorry, that is not good.

Posted by JoAnna at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently noticed and became involved in a discussion on a message board about the Gates Foundation; the consensus was that Bill Gates wants to kill babies to make money, which is why he is sending millions of dollars of vaccines to Third World countries.

I'm still a little unsure how GIVING medicine to needy people makes him money, but...

If you are one of the very few people in the universe who are unaware of the vaccine debate raging on the 'net these days, you may want to google it... the following won't make much sense otherwise. Anyways, it's funny to me to see people posting on the internet about vaccines, and their signature says "Vaccines are not natural," while they are typing on their plastic computer connected to electricity and a network of wires that is the Internet!

Regardless, I wanted to repost my posts about Bill here. Never, ever in a million years would or could I have thought I'd find myself defending Bill Gates to anyone, anytime! But, here it is...

Continue reading "Bill Gates: Baby Killing Monster??? " »

Posted by JoAnna at 07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My post about SIDS, which I posted on Mothering.com's boards, generated lots of discussion... mostly grateful to know this is BS science that is trying to scare parents, for which I'm glad. But I was a little surprised at how many wrote, "But I will still buy an organic mattress, because of the toxic fumes!"

The theory behind this is that mattresses which have been treated to be inflammable must give off fumes which are toxic for humans to breathe.

Personally, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I have a hard time believing that just about every industrialized country treats mattresses to make them less flammable, and adults sleep on them 8 hours a night every night for years and years, without a marked affect from the treatment. I think we'd definitely see some changes in rates of allergy/asthma problems from the times when mattresses began to be regularly treated. Maybe even other symptoms... headaches, for one, all kinds of sleep disorders, I can think of a million things that breathing toxic fumes would cause.

Regardless, *everyone* knows this is true. Googling "toxic mattress fumes," will pull up thousands of results confirming that mattresses are toxic. Of course, almost unanimously these are sites which are selling organic mattresses. Some are selling other things. Some just say it to say it. NONE have any proof whatsoever, that I've been able to find, that mattresses emit toxic fumes.

I'm not saying proof is not out there. I'm simply saying that it seems it would be easier to find. If this were really such a big problem, I cannot imagine that the CDC and similar organizations for other countries around the world, would not have researched it and made public their findings.

I did find this, from the National SIDS Council of Australia...
http://www.sidsandkids.org/documents/September2005_000.doc

Also check out their FAQ on safe sleeping. This is a PDF file.
http://svc021.wic005tp.server-web.com/documents/FAQOctober2006.pdf
They restate their position that the claim about gases from mattresses contributing to SIDS is patently false.

Here's a news article about mattress toxicity; please note that the person suggesting that mattresses are toxic is SELLING MATTRESSES!

Here's a press release about flammability regulations for mattresses with some very dramatic photos.
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml06/06091.html

There are so many things in this universe to be legitmately worried about, I hate to think of so many people jumping at the shadow that is mattress fumes. On the other hand, if anyone has PROOF... real live scientific studies (which, IMO, it would be very very easy to conduct!) which prove that mattresses are toxic, please do let me know!

Posted by JoAnna at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There have been post after post on Mothering and other mama message boards about the dangers of placing baby on an unwrapped mattress. This issue has been confusing the heck out of me, soooo...

Ok, so I bit my fear bullet and went on a search to find out what the deal was with the New Zealand studies about SIDS. Turns out that NZ previously had pretty high rates of SIDS and thus they initiated a big campaign to go after it.

Unfortunately the only sources I can find which cite mattress wrapping as a factor in reducing SIDS deaths are secondhand. The site usually referred to in disucssions about mattress-wrapping is cotdeath2000.co.nz. (Sorry, I'm deliberately not linking to it directly.) Cotdeath2000 is not affiliated with a medical organization. It's "someones" website. I tried to track it down, but the New Zealand domain registry service doesn't provide much in the way of information. I'd be interested to know what other domains these people own, but I do know they own both cotlife2000.co.nz and cotlife2000.com.

First thing I found, dated 2006, is an article about a scientist castigating Auckland University for releasing this study about cot death for publication; claims are made that the study is both biased and invalid.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE0610/S00025.htm

The end of the article states:

The nationwide cot death rate has fallen by 70% since mattress-wrapping began and the Pakeha rate has fallen by around 85%. These reductions in cot death rates cannot be attributed to orthodox cot death prevention advice (e.g. face-up sleeping). There has been no material change to that advice in New Zealand since 1992.

But I went to the New Zealand Ministry of Health website (http://www.moh.govt.nz) and looked up SIDS and cot death, and was unable to find even a single mention there of mattress-wrapping. You'd think if it really made such a significant change, the MOH would discuss it on their site! So basically they make this claim about a reduction in the rate of SIDS with nothing to back it up, which seems very odd to me.

Here's some info from New Zealand's Ministry of Health for 2002 (the most recent year I could find).
http://www.nzhis.govt.nz/stats/fetal/sids.html
http://www.nzhis.govt.nz/stats/fetal/keyfacts.html

If you go to New Zealand's "HealthEd" database and search for SIDS, there are a series of articles discussing smoking, "back to sleep," safe bedsharing, and more on smoking. Nothing on mattress-wrapping. (Unfortunately these are not linkable).
http://www.healthed.govt.nz

Here's an article from NZ about (sad, sad) a SIDS case where the factor of smoking and bed sharing comes into play.
http://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/arti...iid=547&sud=27
(FWIW, NZ is not against bed sharing. But apparently smoking AND sharing a bed dramatically increases risks. Makes sense to me!)

Here's an article from Mothering magazine from 2002 in which no mention is made of mattress-wrapping...
http://www.mothering.com/articles/new_baby/sleep/taylor.html

Canada is not recommending mattress-wrapping...
http://www.dundasstarnews.com/dsn/news/news_629359.html

Nothing on the CDC website about it...
http://www.cdc.gov/SIDS/riskfactors.htm

Basically the only thing I have been able to find citing mattress wrapping are articles which refer back to the study listed at cotlife2000.co.nz. This link, which another poster posted (http://www.healthychild.com/cribdeathcause.htm) cites the man from the cotlife website (Sprott) as its source. So there are tons of websites talking about what they say on the cotlife website, but nothing else I can find. Not a single other source that I can find with any research or statistics to back it up. Plenty of sites selling mattress wrapping materials cite these statistics, though!

This article also says:

In spite of denial and opposition from orthodox SIDS organizations, no research has disproved this gaseous poisoning explanation for crib death.

Ok, someone please tell me why a SIDS organization would pooh pooh a possible cause for SIDS??? What would the motivation be? I don't understand that. Secondly, this is flawed logic. Disproved??? How would you "disprove" this??? So they say 800 people used mattress wrapping and not one had a case of SIDS. Who says there would've been a case of SIDS there ANYways????

This article goes on to say...

This logical finding explains every factor already known about crib death, and is backed by scientific research (Sprott 1996, 2000) and eight years of practical proof consisting of a crib death prevention campaign that continues in New Zealand.

Again their source is the same person, same thing, over and over again. Honestly, this seems like a pretty easy thing to track if ANY SIDS organization wanted to. I can't imagine that if the evidence were really so compelling, that Canada and the US government wouldn't have gotten on the bandwagon to see what effect it has.

Finally:

A 100% successful crib death prevention campaign has been going on in New Zealand for the past eight years. Midwives and other healthcare professionals throughout New Zealand have been actively advising parents to wrap mattresses. During this time, there has not been a single SIDS death reported among the over 100,000 New Zealand babies who have slept on mattresses wrapped in a specially formulated polyethylene cover. The number of crib deaths in New Zealand that have occurred since mattress-wrapping began in 1994 is about 550. The number of crib deaths that have occurred in New Zealand on a properly wrapped mattress is zero.

Gosh that sounds wonderful doesn't it? Except NOWHERE do they back it up. If this is true, why is it not on the New Zealand Ministry of Health website? Why is it not on ANY single solitary SIDS organization website? It just doesn't make any sense. Sure they have a list of references here; but most of those they are using to discuss general issues regarding SIDS. Not once do they actually attach a statistic to a valid source aside from this Sprott guy.

I would be grateful if anyone finds anything more than I have, if they'd post it... I've looked and looked! I just would like to be able to only be scared about things that really are a threat to my baby. It doesn't seem to me that mattresses are one of those things I should be too concerned about.

SIDS is a boogeyman to parents, IMO, and scares us to death. Scares me to death! I hate to think someone is preying on our desire to protect our children at any costs. So if there IS independant research about this and I'm not finding it, that is NOT sponsored by this Sprott guy or Baby Safe products, I'd be glad to hear it. I hate thinking people have unethical motivations for things like this.

Of course, everyone needs to make their own decisions for their family and their baby. Hopefully though, we can make decisions about things that are rooted in reality and not superstition or someone's desire to sell mattress-wrapping materials and "safer" mattresses.

Posted by JoAnna at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by JoAnna at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I took Tramp to the park for a walk last night, and while we are walking I notice a couple playing tennis on the tennis courts. They have a little girl (2-ish) wandering around the court while they play, and I see a stroller off to the side. As I get closer, I hear it.. a tiny, tiny baby, screaming with his whole little heart as hard as he can. And screaming, and screaming, and screaming. I see the mama walk towards the stroller and think, "Ah, she is going to get him!" But, nope. The tennis ball had come to rest right next to the stroller. She walked over, picked up the ball, and walked back to continue to play... completely ignoring her screaming infant.

When I say infant, I mean little; like newborn or maybe a few weeks old. You know how newborn babies have that very distinctive cry with no shape to it yet, just a desperate sound!

I found myself full of... sheer rage. I wanted to run over, punch that lady in the face, grab her little baby, and run. Really. I was steaming, my heart was hurting for this little guy, I thought I might cry.

Talk about hormonal!!!!! Research says that there are biological responses in a mama to her own babies cry. What about to other babies, though???

Anyways, as I continued to walk, I started making myself think of reasons *why* that mama could be so callous to her baby crying. Maybe she is just one of the "Cry It Out" crowd who believes that babies should self-comfort. (Total crap, in my opinion. Babies cry as a survival mechanism, not as manipulation!) Maybe. But even the CIO people usually don't advocate ignoring a baby crying until they are the ripe old age of four months, and this baby didn't sound anywhere near that old.

So, my next thought... amongst "JoAnna calm down!"'s over and over... was, maybe this baby has colic and is simply inconsolable and mama is going completely bonkers. Sometimes babies with colic simply won't calm no matter what you do, so I can see a mama at her wits end just winding up ignoring it.

But still, it was a little chilling to me to watch mama and daddy totally blase' about their babies screaming, and even the little two year old seemed to think it was perfectly normal to ignore a screaming baby. I wound up calming myself to the point of giving them the benefit of the doubt... I bet that baby has colic. I bet she is doing the very best she can. This is not the mommywars, and I am not on this earth to judge other mama's. But I wonder what most mama's do when dealing with colic... just ignore? Or something else?

Here's hoping I never REALLY need to know the answer to that!!!!!

Posted by JoAnna at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So there I was, about 18 weeks pregnant. I'd been feeling occassional flutters, but nothing where I *knew* it was the baby. Just those little flutters you think to yourself, *maybe* that is the baby! I was still able to lie on my tummy for short periods of time, and I would frequently go into my bedroom, lie on my belly on the bed, and lean over the edge to pet my dog. He likes to sleep with just his head under the bed there, the whole rest of his body sticks out!

So I was lying there petting him when all of a sudden I felt like... THWAP! I shrieked, jumped, and rolled over immediately. It was like baby was saying... "HEY!!!! Get offa my house!" :)

The next time I really felt the baby strongly was when we were en route to Vegas. This was the first week of August, 2006, so I was a little over five months pregnant. While the plane was accelerating, I suddenly felt baby start to go bonkers... flipping and whirling and pushing and kicking and squirming! It felt kind of like when you go over a sudden hill on a road in the car and as you come over the top, your stomach gives a jump... except with added pressure! Also feels all at the same time, like someone is whacking your bladder as hard as they can.

I was a bit anxious over that as I couldn't get up to pee! But all I could think was that baby did not enjoy the pressure as we rose into the air!

Ever since that fateful day, this little squirmer has not stopped. She squirms, flips, wiggles, giggles, pushes, and basically makes her presence known throughout the day. I can't wait to meet her! :)

Posted by JoAnna at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by JoAnna at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)