Love Your Mother

...and hold off on the mammograms under 50, too

2009-11-17T23:13:54Z

Last year I posted a surprising Cochrane review which found that breast self-exams led to absolutely no benefit in breast cancer survival, while doubling the rate of biopsies (which contain their own set of risks) - and now a government panel of doctors and scientists are telling us that mammograms for younger women are equally unnecessary.

The new recommendation from the panel is no mammograms till 50, then only every two years - a distinct change from "every year starting at 40." While the panel noted that the more aggressive mammography schedule carries no substantial benefit in breast cancer survival and increases the often underestimated stress of false positives and the real risks of unnecessary biopsies, the article did not mention whether they addressed the more serious risks of frequent x-rays.

Remember when pregnant women were routinely x-rayed to determine whether their pelvises were large enough to give birth to the children they carried? It stopped when we realized that it was causing a serious increase in leukemia in the children. X-ray exposure is cumulative - each one builds on the exposure you've previously had - and too much of it over a lifetime can lead to cancer. We are so serious about this that we don't even x-ray pregnant women's teeth anymore, even with a lead apron over their bellies. Pregnant or not, we cover all parts near the x-rayed part with lead aprons; we especially protect reproductive organs. So why is there so little willingness to discuss the implications of yearly x-rays on a part of the body that is already proving cancerous in 1 out of 8 American women?

With any procedure, drug, or intervention outside the natural course, we must ask not only what is the benefit, but what is the cost? A reasoned decision can only be made when we know the risk both of acting and not acting - a one-sided discussion benefitts no one.

Will more school hours improve DOE problem-solving skills?

2009-09-29T22:46:25Z

President Obama sees a problem, and he sees a solution. The problem? American students don't seem to be able to compete internationally. The solution? More hours and more days in school. More years, in fact, as he has long been a proponent of universal preschool, promoting it even as studies continue to show little or no benefit.

In the AP article hosted at Yahoo that I linked above, we learn that in many of the Asian nations we often compare ourselves to, children actually spend fewer hours per year in school than American kids. This is very much in line with a report from the National Education Association finding that only 2 of every 9 hours spent in the classroom are spent "on task." Another NEA report reveals that American middle school teachers actually spend more than twice as many hours teaching as, for example, Japan, yet 1/5 of our middle school students still cannot pass even the basic level on skills assessments, and 1/4 lack even fundamental reading skills.

The AP article discusses improved math scores when schools add more math minutes to the day, yet kids in schools are already spending far more time each day on math than most homeschoolers, who consistently produce equal or better results with far less time actually spent on traditional school work each day or year.

Is the solution really more hours in the classroom - or more efficient use of the hours already spent there?

And aren't schools supposed to be locally controlled, not bribed into compliance through federal tax monies? (Yeah, I know, I'm in dreamland; that disappeared when the DOE was formed.)

Finally, from the US Secretary of Education: "Those hours from 3 o'clock to 7 o'clock are times of high anxiety for parents," Duncan said. "They want their children safe." At last, we get to the bottom of what this issue is all about - taxpayer-paid daycare.

This is a real problem for many low-income families, especially in single-parent households. Is the solution more government nannying, or can we be more creative, encouraging and easing the establishment of community-based, privately-operated, drop-in centers with enrichment & tutoring provided? The YMCA offers just such a program on site at many public elementary schools. Offering these programs only where needed, and funding only those who can't afford the already low cost, would be a much more efficient solution.

Or we could go even deeper - what else is at the heart of this issue? Why are the typical 7 hours in the classroom and 2 hours of homework not enough? The President's proposed plan only patches the symptoms; addressing inefficiency and unsupervised children begin to hammer at the root; is there more? Red Cardigan hits on another issue in this blog post.

"[One of the underlying problems] won't be solved with more classroom hours and longer school years. That problem is cultural. Currently, children from two-parent, married, stable homes do better, not only in education, but in many other areas of life. Yet we've decided that the two-parent, stable, married household is an irrelevant lifestyle choice, no better and no worse than serial divorce and remarriage, single parenthood, or any other combination of adults and children living together.... [Many] single parents work very hard to make sure that their children don't fail. But we can't deny that it's much harder for them to be involved in their children's education than it is for the two-parent family."

This is surely part of the issue. I've witnessed it with Tanisha and the families around her, and the strange models of education at their public schools. But there's no simple, "throw money at the problem" solution.

A few more well-written excerpts:

[Among reasons for the "daycare model of education":] "the notion that professional educators are much better than parents at raising and educating children"

"I can't think of any other business--and, yes, education is a business--in which a failing model which consistently did not produce the required measurable objectives would essentially claim that all they needed was a lot more time and a lot more money, and that this claim would be taken seriously."

Clearly, there are many levels on which to work to begin improving the situation. Let's start with the roots, though, and not just band-aid the symptoms with more of the same.

Obesity & Brain Rot

2009-08-25T22:04:59Z

I was walking through the woods this weekend with DH, thinking about how my brain has changed.

What, you don't do that? I do tend towards the uh ... "introspective" side. ;)

Anyway, I was remembering how I used to have trouble figuring out how to do stuff that wasn't intuitive - like the crazy lock on the cover for the truck bed, starting up the boat, tightening the wench straps to keep it on the trailer, backing up the trailer ... (Hmmm, seems like most of my life's confusion revolved around the boat!) - and also remembering how to do those things once I figured them out. I was so frustrated for a few years, thinking that Mommy Brain must have kicked in and I was doomed to be perplexed and constantly requiring re-instruction in difficult things for the rest of my life.

But last summer was different.

Suddenly, not just one, but all of these things were simple again. I could figure out not only the intuitive gadgets, but also non-intuitive ones with just a moment's inspection, and if I had done it once, I didn't have to start from scratch the next time. It didn't take long for either of us to figure out why - that was the year I gave up sugar (along with the nappy foods surrounding it).

It was scary at first, realizing what I had been doing to my brain. It's frightening to think what's happening not only to us & our children, but to our entire nation of sugar addicts. Where are our brains?

So we were discussing all this this weekend, and how the changes for the better seem to have stuck - and then, today LiveScience is reporting a new study which has found that obese people have "severe brain degeneration." Overweight people have less severe brain degeneration, defined as loss of brain mass & premature brain aging.

While this report falls into the trap of allowing readers to confuse correlation with causation (there's no proof obesity causes brain degeneration; it's more likely that both are caused by the same thing), there is some good news about the reporting here. Instead of laying the blame on fat or a vague reference to "too many sweets & junk foods" (which leaves too much room for haggling about what exactly is "too much"), they point at last to a long unnamed culprit: processed foods. It's not just the sugar that is causing obesity, heart disease, diabetes, & now brain degeneration, but also the highly processed oils, dry cereals, milk, canned this & pre-cooked packaged that, which are causing both obesity and most of the maladies linked to it.

The good news is, it's reversible! (At least in some measure.) My brain is back! (mostly ;) )

Life is Beautiful

2009-01-20T14:36:31Z

God bless & strengthen our new President

Surprise! Drug Studies Favor the Drug Companies

2008-11-13T00:55:37Z

I just have a second to post this one. The Washington Post reports a major study finding that when a pharmaceutical company funds a study, over 90% of the time, the study comes out in their favor. When drugs go head-to-head, the winner is nearly always whoever funded the study.

A former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine explains several ways of skewing the results: choosing placebos with high side effects to mask the drug's side effects (have you ever looked at what the placebos are for your vaccines or hormonal contraception?), studying young adults when the drug is for the elderly, present only the part of the date that benefits you, or outright suppressing negative results.

The article also discusses how the drug industry has its hands deep in the halls of academia, mentioning Columbia and Harvard by name.

I have some family and friends who are drug reps. I've learned from them that while they can't directly give doctors kickbacks for prescribing a certain quantity of their drugs, they can wine and dine them all they like before and after the prescription, as long as there is no direct reward. Of course, the drug rep CAN and does go to the pharmacies and find out which doctors prescribe how much of their drugs.

Just do your research. When you are prescribed a medicine, check the PDR, the major research available online by the NIH, and alternative, especially nutritional, changes. Be your own advocate - no one else will!

Update on Tanisha: We won!!

2008-11-04T15:03:40Z

Thanks be to God!

We went to the hearing yesterday, ready for DFCS to throw the book at her. Since they hadn't given her a petition beforehand, and there were no business hours between the removal and the hearing, we had no idea what the allegations were. We were ready for them to dredge up anything and everything.

After opening with, "This is a woman with a long history with us, so for the sake of the children to avoid what's an ongoing pattern of harm with her, we recommend they be taken under the protective custody of the state" (sorry if my legalese is off), here's what they had:
1) child with Cerebal Palsy is severely malnourished
2) children have been taken by DFACS before (once, when CP first began)
3) mother grew up in DFACS

They made a request to remove all children and move toward permanent termination of rights of all children.

The public defender didn't think we had any chance of getting the healthy children back today. He suggested taking the Child Advocate's offer of getting the older three back (who could speak for themselves and not only backed up everything Tanisha said, including the CP child's medical care, regular feeding, and safe & happy home, but also begged to go home to their mother and siblings (the boys and girls were in separate foster homes)). But my dh came up with a plan of defense that he related to the attorney, and also implemented himself in an amazing trip to the witness stand.

By the time he finished, it was clear that Tanisha has a support network of people who are both dedicated and able to help her, is a loving/attentive/nurturing/responsible mother with a full-time job, had the sick child under consistent medical care, and that although the child's condition is critical, her medical attendants were aware of and treating her condition. He talked about how she enrolled the child in GA's program for small special-needs children and got a speech therapist coming in weekly to work with her on helping her to swallow.

When the DFCS attorney tried to question his reliability as someone who could oversee the family's future wellbeing, since we didn't report the child's condition, he stated that he is not a medical expert on what is and isn't normal with CP, but knew that medical experts were regularly attending to the child and trusted that they knew whether her condition was expected or not, and were treating it.

You see, the therapist had just seen S last Tuesday, and they said, "if her condition worsens before we come back, take her to the doctor ASAP." It did, and after regular office hours, so Tanisha took her to the ER. The ER called DFCS without checking the child's medical history, and DFCS made no effort to check on her medical history and care before taking her into custody. They then took the rest of the children claiming they needed to give them a medical evaluation (they had just had one the previous Monday, and the older children were never, in fact, taken to a doctor over the weekend) - which they could have done with Tanisha standing by, and then returned them as soon as it as clear they were healthy and happy.

The judge was even and thoughtful - he weighed everything he heard, and stated his decision: The older children have spoken for themselves, and will be returned. The non-ill toddler and baby, although at greater risk for neglect (if risk exists) because of their age, are also at greater risk for harm from their mother, particularly the breastfed baby, because of that same age. He ordered all the healthy ones returned that day, and set a date for a hearing on the seriously ill child 3 months from now, in order to give time to subpoena medical professionals, etc.

Dh urged the attorney to mention that the baby is breastfeeding, but the attorney said it wouldn't matter. Dh mentioned it as part of the evidence of Tanisha's devoted mothering, and in the end, the judge cited it as very relevant. I think it was part of the picture that was being painted of her as not just doing the minimum to keep the kids alive, but truly devoted to their well-being, even when it cost her greatly.

DFCS, no doubt, does much good work, and hard, grueling work. But the protocol of taking children without first doing everything reasonably possible to see if it's necessary needs to be changed. The harm to children from taking them from their families is so great that they should only be removed, even if only for the 72 hr period before a hearing, when imminent harm exists, and reasonable efforts have been made to get the full story when things appear bad at first glance.

The emotional harm to these children is as if they'd been kidnapped. They hugged each other and their mother and wept at their reunification.

Thanks be to God! Thank you for your prayers and thoughts and offers of support. Please continue praying and thinking of the child with CP - she *is* seriously ill and remains in ICU. She is also all alone until Tanisha's visitation is restored. Pray for Tanisha's strength and discernment, give thanks for the fair-minded judge, and join me in working for a change working for a change in DFCS protocol.

I'm still raising money to buy a barebones, good-shape car. I have one available from a homeschool friend and need just $400 more to buy it. Tanisha can afford the insurance and gas, just can't put aside money to save for the car. For those who have emailed or commented offering support, if you'd like to help in this way, or with grocery cards or some of the other wonderful ideas you've had, you can PM me through TBW or MDC or email. If you came to this site another way and would like to help, leave a comment and I'll think of a way to get in touch. Right now I'm thinking that everyone came through one of those forums and should be able to contact me directly that way.

This has been a team effort from beginning to end. It was by no means just me & dh there with her yesterday. It was everyone of you who have supported us through your prayers, good wishes, goods, and means.

Thank you!!!

Escaping the Massa

2008-11-02T03:42:54Z

Well, crap. Remember Tanisha? You know, the young poor single black mother of six who's working hard, paying her bills, keeping her children fed, clothed, sheltered, schooled, medically cared for, & much loved?

Today I had to tell my four year old that Maliq can't come to his birthday party tomorrow because the government took him away and we don't know where he is.

I had to answer my 7yo, asking what they did for Halloween, "Nothing - they were taken away from their mother last night and put in the home of a stranger."

You see, Tanisha committed the grievous crime of taking her 2yo with cerebral palsy to the ER when it appeared she just wasn't eating enough after several days of trying. And the ER - well, they called DFCS. And DFCS came to the house, looked around, saw no beds, and carted off all the children - without regard for the sweet child with CP's medical records (which show consistent care and a history of feeding issues) or the fact that the children's words, bodies, & fridge showed they're eating fine. They even made the newborn's father & grandmother drive him over and took that breastfeeding baby away from its mother - for who knows how long?

I tell you, I have called and emailed everyone I can think of today, from friends to governors. WSB's investigative reporters tell me this horror story comes to them FREQUENTLY - DFCS taking children away without any evidence of harm, immediate or otherwise.

"It happens all the time" isn't good enough for me. This must stop.

When government gets too big for its britches, it says, "I know better than you do how to raise your children." When women like Tanisha try to throw off the chains of years of bondage to government services, pulling herself up by her proverbial bootstraps, they cut the bootstraps, reshackle the chains, and throw her to the corner to remind her just who's the Massa.

Well, folks, she's not alone. I'm here. You're here. Pray, friends. Pray.

11/3: Update!

Huckabee on weight loss

2008-10-20T03:59:24Z

I just flipped past Mike Huckabee & he was talking about how he lost 100 lbs. I decided to stay & listen a minute & he had some great, simple words. He said he was motivated by a type 2 diabetes diagnosis (caused by sugar & refined carb intake) to do two things for the first time in his life:

Eat well.
Exercise.

And in the first category, he had two principles:

If it comes through a car window, it's probably not food.
If it wasn't food 100 years ago, it's not food now.

He summed it up his "how to" with the statement that he had to give up everything Southerners eat: sugar & junk fried food.

Pretty good advice! This is his new way of eating, not a short-term diet. And yes, his diabetes is gone.

Encountering Hunger

2008-09-25T01:39:57Z

Solidarity. John Paul II made this a household word as he invited the world to stand in solidarity with the oppressed people of his native Poland.

I was given a lesson in solidarity last month. Meet Tanisha*.

She was walking on the side of a downtown highway that "people like me" never go on. With toddlers on both shoulders and two more little ones in tow, the 90 degree August sun beat on her. When I asked if I could take them where they were going, she wept - so did I.

It turned out she was going nearly 4 miles to bring some of her children - including an 18 month old and a two year old, who has cerebral palsy - home from their cousins' where they had stayed while she gave birth just a week before. (Typically, postpartum women are told not to lift anything heavier than their newborn.)

Never once did she complain. As I gave her one of my slings and started thinking about how to get her a stroller for the others, we drove to the grocery store and helped her fill up her refrigerator. The pain of seeing just three things in it was almost too much for me - especially looking around and seeing no furniture, not a single chair or lamp, and knowing that she didn't lack food because of spending it on frivolities.

The children had almost no clothes, the 3 youngest only in diapers & oversized t-shirts. Strictly prioritizing every penny, Tanisha works hard as a cook at a posh hotel & receives support from the baby's father, both financial & emotional - he's a very doting dad.

Stereotypes shattered. Assumptions dissolved. Here is a woman working hard, not even receiving food stamps or welfare, putting every penny into high quality medical insurance for her special needs child, leaving nothing, absolutely nothing for herself - not even "frills" like beds or decent shoes. The father of the youngest is involved, telling me how he grew up without a father and that yeah, he knows how very important he is to these children. The children are happy, respectful, & kind. My children love them! None of them ever complain, while Tanisha is the model of thankfulness, for everything. She breastfeeds them for nearly a year & also pays her bills every month, with no debt. In fact, when I asked what would it take to give her a little breathing room each month, she said, "Maybe $50?"

Tanisha herself grew up in foster care. She readily admits that she has made many mistakes, but I'm astounded at just how well she *is* doing. How anyone can grow up without a family and be such a caring, loving mother to her own is simply amazing. Her hardships are countless. In a city that has only a barebones mass transit system, she gets everyone where they need to go. She begged her doctor to let her go back to work at a week postpartum, but he wouldn't let her till 5 weeks or so, meaning no paycheck all that time.

In fact, one of my eye-opening experiences was realizing that in a 5 mile stretch of this major highway, there isn't a SINGLE grocery store. The closest one is in a college section of town that has long been populated with lower middle class, rather than "the poor." Or the black.

I pondered and prayed on how best I could help. No one wants to fall into the trap of "giving a man a fish" every day instead of "teaching him to fish to feed him for a lifetime." My husband and I discussed again and again "what would it take to move this family from scraping by to stability?" Not wealth, but stability. As I talked more with Tanisha, I realized that those "big ticket" items are impossible to get if every penny goes to food & bills.

Getting my homeschool group, Bible study ladies, family, & St. Vincent de Paul Society to the task, we furnished her home with our spare beds, high chairs, couches, clothes, fresh produce, & a freezer full of ground beef. Several families are pledging $10/month to get her that $50 breathing room. We're raising money to buy a barebones car with plenty of life in it that one of the homeschooling families has - Tanisha's able to pay the gas & insurance for her short, infrequent trips, but has no way to set aside a little each month to pay for something huge like a car. St. VdP is working on getting her in their Uplift program for long-term support with financial counseling & education.

She's still paying the same amounts for the same stuff, but now living in a home with furniture, clothes, & a little stock of food. Life's a little more comfortable. She's also signed them up for food stamps now, & WIC for the new baby.

One of my biggest lessons has been that a great way to help on a person-to-person level is to get those "big" items. If I struck it rich, I would love to start a foundation that helps person-to-person, case-by-case, with the small differences that make self-sufficiency possible. That first $200 to buy a bunch of whole chicken, for instance, so that the next few months can be spent saving for the next bunch of chicken that the person can buy on his/her own - in bulk, at a bulk discount. That initial investment would set that person up to be able to do it himself henceforth.

Another insight is just who is poor. The father is in IT at a startup. The mother looks like anybody you'd see in a mall, hotel, or salon (she's also licensed as a beautician). Who would ever look at his coworker and realize that she's living in an apartment with no furniture and nothing but hot dogs in her fridge.

Yet another lesson is just the difficulty of it all. I did nothing to be born into a loving, two-parent, financially stable home. She did nothing to be born into a life of being shuffled from house to institution to house. I can pat myself on the back about all I've done, but how much of that could have happened if I had been born in her circumstances instead of mine? Would I have been as tough and brought myself as far as she has? Or would I have wallowed in my misery, relying on government assistance more than myself?

Not everyone's a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps type. Not everyone should have to be.

It's a beautiful thing to see this family get so close to stability. I can't say who's gaining more, though - them or me.

*Name changed

Day 2 Hunger Challenge

2008-09-24T23:46:08Z

So, I know that this isn't exactly a dollar *per* meal. Because the dinner obviously costs way more than the breakfast & the lunch. But if I were on food stamps, there's nothing that says that I have to spend evenly on each meal. Of course, you also can't buy stuff the way I do on food stamps.

Therein lies our problem. It's a big one. It's faced by tens of thousands of people every day.

I love this inspiring story of how one family avoided the processed food trap on almost no money for food: beans, greens, & cornbread two meals a day, every day but Christmas. And in Nina Planck's great, fun book on Real Food, she reiterates something important - if you can't afford real, organic food, choose real over organic. Roast beef over organic canned beef stew. Green beans over "lowcarb" french fried onions. Just real food.

Well, here's day 2:

Breakfast (per person)
2 scrambled eggs w/ a dash of unrefined sea salt & pepper
half cup whole fresh milk

Lunch
leftover Puerto Rican stewed chicken
1 cup yogurt w/ 1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup kombucha

Snack
pear
persimmons found while hiking
DS had a pat of (grassfed) butter ;)

Dinner
Meatball soup (from an Emeril kids cookbook) (made w/ 1lb ground beef & 1/4 lb pureed beef liver)
Salad
Green beans (boiled 2 min, then sauteed in olive oil & garlic)
Yellow carrots, sauteed in butter
Slivered pickled (lacto-fermented) garlic
1/4 or 1/2 tsp of fermented unrefined cod liver oil in 1/4 cup orange juice

Of course, we are so, so lucky to be here in a nation where something like food stamps even exist. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who have nothing to eat, whether because of corrupt or incompetent governments, or trickle-down effects of bloated Big Ag subsidies that leave real farms to starve. Dirt cakes for dinner. Not the kind made of Oreos & whipped cream.

A Day of a Dollar a Meal

2008-09-23T21:40:18Z

I'm taking up the SF Food Bank's Hunger Challenge: a dollar per person for each meal this week. Now, this is going to be hard to prove, b/c I add up my food budget yearly, not weekly or daily. I guess we're on the honesty policy here. :)

But here's today. All produce, meat, & grains are organic/pastured.

Breakfast - per person:
1/4C steel-cut oats (very cheap when bought in bulk or at Trader Joe's)
1/2C whole fresh milk
1/4tsp butter oil
1/4C raisins
1Tbsp cinnamon
1tsp unrefined sea salt

I soak the oats in a little milk overnight, then cook. Add everything else + the rest of the milk and serve.

Lunch -
leftover roast beef
slices of raw cheddar cheese
watermelon
some of us had a cup of whole, plain yogurt
water

Snack - per person
apple
1/2C kombucha

Dinner - per person
2 roasted meaty spareribs w/ homemade sauce & lots of onions
Sliced summer squash lightly sauteed in pastured butter
Sliced collard greens simmered in drippings & dashed w/ balsamic vinegar
Salad - romaine & spinach w/ sliced mushrooms & sunflower sprouts, dressed w/ balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, & Italian seasoning
1/4 cup of fermented sauerkraut
1/4 or 1/2 tsp of fermented unrefined cod liver oil in 1/4 cup orange juice
Dh usually has one good beer or glass of inexpensive wine (in the budget, but certainly bigger than anything else in the day!). The rest of us have water if thirsty.

This is pretty typical of most of our days: oatmeal or eggs for breakfast, leftovers for lunch, apple or yogurt for snack if we're hungry, and for dinner, a big hunk of meat (roasted, grilled, or sliced & sauteed w/ butter or olive oil, garlic, & salt & pepper) + fresh veggies (treated the same way as the meat) + something fermented + salad. We rarely eat grains, even whole ones, b/c we find that the more we eat of them, the more we want.

I sometimes have a twinge of hunger in the last hour before a meal, but I consider that a good thing. Better than walking around bloated all day like I used to. :S

Father of the poor, help us to love your children who are hungry day & night. Help us to see them with the eyes of love with which you see them, and to lessen the gap between them & us each day out of our own free choice, & out of love.

Eating Local - in my yard!

2008-09-15T18:00:42Z

When we played in the field during recess in elementary school, sometimes we would pull up a clump of taller, greener, more perfect looking grass. And at the bottom of the grass, we discovered a cute little surprise - onions! Little, tiny, baby wild onions. I love the idea that something I could eat would grow wild in a random place. (Of course, I dutifully hated onions...)

Then I grew up, got a big girl house, and lo! and behold! there were wild onions growing in my yard.
I didn't give too much thought to it (still hated onions) until the day I ran over a weed (er, no weeds here! I mean, er, plant!) growing by the driveway. When I got out of the car, there was a wonderful aroma of mint in the air. Wild mint! So began my quest.

I found wild strawberries down the property line, a beautiful hickory tree putting out nearly-impossible-to-crack but delicately-banana-walnut flavored nuts by the barrel, wild blackberry stalks (that stubbornly refuse to fruit), & dandelions (their spring greens are great in salad & the roots make a coffee-like beverage). (We also have sugar maples, but live so far south it would take a billion years to get any decent amount of syrup out of it.)

In a subdivision!

Then, last weekend, I was wandering down the path at my IL's lake house and I found a plum-sized green fruit hanging from a vine that was clinging to the wild blackberries there (they fruited! Mmmmmmmmm), near where a crazy looking flower had recently been. I pulled a leaf off, ran to the laptop, and googled for an hour until I narrowed it down to ... passionfruit? In Georgia?? Indeed! Apparently, a nontropical variety grows here, so much so that a river (well-known to white water rafters in the southeast) is named after it - the Ocoee. I can't wait till next month when it's ripe!

We also noted a walnut tree there, tons & tons of wild muscadine grapes, forgotten junipers (and their berries), and then, googling around, I found out the redbud trees that overhang my yard and want to take it over with their spawn actually produce edible pea pods! I hate the look of those pods in the early fall, and I'm so glad to realize we can pluck them and cook them like snow peas (& maybe cause the redbud to propagate a little less). You can also eat the buds & flowers, pickled or in a salad. Totally cool. I also learned that acorns, of all things, can be dried, ground, and used like cornmeal. ?!! Apparently, you can even eat the common greenbrier that is all through the woods there.

The caveats are, of course, look over the whole plant to be sure you've ID'd the right one (not a mimic) and don't get plants that may have been pesticided. It's really not that hard, though ... or I wouldn't be doing it. I'm all about easy. :)

I've only just begun to learn about medicinal plants - so far I know that the hydrangea in my yard is good for kidney stones, Virginia creeper root is for diarrhea, and white oak bark is good for the gums.

With all the grape leaves we have everywhere, both at home & at the IL's, I am SO making stuffed grape leaves. Mmmmmm.

Now THIS is eating local!

School Lunches for Success

2008-09-12T12:58:21Z

Years ago, a teacher in Wisconsin conducted an experiment with her class (p. 31). They took 6 normal mice, put half in each of two cages, and fed them different diets for 3 months. One set ate whole, natural food - you know, stuff you can imagine growing, like fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, whole rice or oats - and the other ate the stuff from the cafeteria. The article doesn't specify, but I can imagine they mean pizza, American "cheese", Coke, hot dogs, candy, cookies, fries, mac & "cheese", white rice/noodles/buns, "riblets," waffles, canned fruit in heavy syrup, chicken patties, tater tots ...

Those mice went berserk. While the "real food" mice continued to sleep & play normally,

"[The junk food mice] destroyed their cardboard tube, were no longer nocturnal, stopped playing with each other, fought often, and two mice eventually killed the third and ate it."

At the end of the experiment, they were able to rehabilitate the mice with a return to real food. It took three weeks.

Another Wisconsin teacher, Sister Luigi Frigo, was inspired to do this experiment with her class - every year. Every year, the result is the same. One year, they tried to repeat the experiment a few weeks later, but the junk-food-turned-real-food mice refused to eat the junk the second time around.

Students in Holland performed the experiment, this time with real corn and soy vs. GM (genetically modified) corn and soy. (Most processed foods contain corn & soy, two of the most frequently GM foods on the market.) Similar results ensued.

How did the first high school respond? They changed over their school lunch menu to salads, meats prepared with old fashioned recipes, whole grain breads, & fresh fruits and vegetables. The students drink water. A school once described as "out-of-control" with students who were "rude, obnoxious, and ill mannered," with so many weapons violations & student disruptions that they hired a cop to be on duty full-time, underwent a total transformation.

"After the change in school meals, the students were calm, focused, and orderly. There were no more weapons violations, and no suicides, expulsions, dropouts, or drug violations."

The improvements have lasted seven years so far, and other schools are changing their meal programs with similar results.

This is exactly consistent with another school lunch program offered over 70 years ago by Cleveland dentist Weston A. Price. While traveling around the world to study cultures still unchanged by "modern" commerce and foods, he learned that no matter what they ate, from fish, insects, & berries to meat, milk & blood (no vegetable matter at all), they were all in perfect health as long as they ate no processed foods. No cavities, no orthodontic needs, no heart disease, diabetes, depression, obesity, or tuberculosis (the killer of the day).

As soon as they started adding in the refined grains, dry cereals, processed vegetable oils, pasteurized milk, or canned foods of the industrialized peoples around them, they started adding in the maladies, in proportion to the amount of "modern foods" they added to their diets.

So Dr. Price began a program (under Fig. 97) to feed poor children a good, solid lunch each day, even as their other meals continued to be "highly sweetened strong coffee and white bread, vegetable fat, pancakes made of white flour and eaten with syrup, and doughnuts fried in vegetable fat." He gave them orange juice, cod liver oil, grassfed butter on fresh whole grain bread, stews of pastured meat & real broth, whole raw milk, and fresh fruits & vegetables.

Their cavities (he was a dentist, after all) stopped progressing immediately and an unexpected side benefit resulted - some of the worse students became some of the best.

We know what we have to do.

Outsourcing Your Toddler: Is universal preschool a bane or a boon?

2008-09-02T16:16:42Z

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last month, Dalmia & Snell implore us to protect our kids from preschool. They overview the findings that lasting benefits have only been seen in children who are both low IQ and impoverished. Even Head Start showed no lasting gain, and for middle & upper class children, preschool offers no benefits that last beyond first grade.

We're pushing for all 5 year olds to read, kicking and screaming, yet with no long term results.

Most of us went to maybe one year of preschool, while our parents had none. Did it give us an advantage in math & language skills that they didn't have? What is your experience?

Most of our children are going to PK4, PK3, and sometimes Mother's Morning Out - a 1 or 2 year old preschool program. When my 2 year old was home during the day, my neighbors began asking, "Aren't you worried she won't be socialized?"

No, I'm not. I trust nature, which put small children with a mother, not a passle of peers under the care of an institution. My little ones learn from life going on around them.

Sen. Obama is pushing for universal, government-paid preschool, claiming that every dollar spent on it will reap $10 in less delinquency & welfare, and increased economic & tax contributions. I don't know his source, but the one study showing any long-term benefit to preschool (the one studying the severely disadvantaged children) found only a $.16 gain on every dollar. (Other studies have found no benefits for any African-American children at all.)

Meanwhile, Finland doesn't start school until 7 - and they consistently outperform the rest of the world in reading, math, & science. (Without hours of homework, Smart Boards, or laptops for every student.)

The WSJ article poignantly postulates, "Why don't preschool gains stick? Possibly because the K-12 system is too dysfunctional to maintain them." Possibly. Or possibly because when it comes to taking children from home and giving them a full-time job (school), it's better late than early.

Prince Charles: Frankenfoods spell disaster

2008-08-14T17:54:45Z

HRH the PoW is right! He says that genetically modified foods (or GMOs) bode poorly for future generations. While the companies behind GM foods (foremost of which is Monsanto) claim that they are crucial to help us feed "an ever-increasing global population," the crown prince is correct in saying that relying on "global corporations" for food would result in "absolute disaster."

(Put aside for a moment that hunger in our world is nearly always a result of corruption & incompetence - not insufficient food. And that GM crops are not necessarily higher yield.)

It works like this. Traditionally, farmers cross-pollinate or graft different varieties of a plant to combine desirable (for them) features (like withstanding trucking across the nation, or big & pretty, or pest-resistant). These features are often undesirable for consumers (b/c they're at the expense of nutrition, which goes hand-in-hand with taste, as well). This wasn't enough for Monsanto.

Rather than hybridizing traditional foods, biotech companies began to alter them at the genetic level by introducing genes from other species, such as splicing fish or fruit fly genes into tomatoes. Corn, soy, canola, & cottonseed (Crisco) are the most commonly GM foods in the US.

Here's the catch: when you grow these plants, Monsanto holds a patent on the seeds. That means you can't save seeds from your current crop and use them next year - you must buy more seeds, or pay a royalty for re-use. (Farmers have been sued out of business for saving seeds from GM canola that blew into their fields from nearby.) Monsanto has even patented seeds that have been GM'd so that they *won't reproduce at all.*

In a GM world, no farmer can be self-reliant. As a serf to Monsanto, he must pay yearly for the privilege of growing his crops. THIS Is the big problem that supports Prince Charles' argument. It is wholly unsustainable & will bankrupt small family farmers the world over, even w/o considering the health effects of genetically engineered food. Only corporations can sustain this kind of business model.

When government or businesses are mismanaging all the supplies, only locally based, individual farmers have any chance to feed those around them. How can they do it if every seed belongs to Monsanto?

And what happens when that GM variety encounters an insurmountable obstacle? Like the great boll weevil catastrophe of the American South, relying on only one variety of crop creates serious problems. If all seeds, or even most, are GM, natural checks and balances and backups aren't there. Biodiversity is dealt a death blow.

Another problem is that GM plants aren't confined to GM fields. They blow, just like other seeds. So if an organic farmer has a GM farmer move nearby, he must constantly fight GM contamination.

Guess what else Monsanto makes? Round-Up. So they ingeniously created Roundup Ready crops - you can nuke the whole field with Roundup, but the corn & soy survives! Wow, feed me some of *that* corn! Yum!

What unintended consequences can that bring? How about throwing the entire local ecology off as all weeds, natural seeds, & quite probably soil bacteria & small animals are obliterated by the Roundup poison? The thought of a biotech company flying over & roundup-ing a farmer's crops, leaving only GM crops, thus forcing him to pay royalties for new GM seeds is a little conspiratorially far-fetched for me, but it has occurred to others.

Monsanto intends to apply its seed monopoly techniques to animal breeding - they do the cloning, you pay for the resulting embryo and every succeeding generation. The cow you breed contains Monsanto's patented genes and you do NOT have permission to breed it w/o paying again. Since artificial insemination is already so prevalent in animal breeding, the door is wide open for them. Greenpeace claims they have already claimed ownership of all pigs bred with a certain technique they have patented.

I'm not anti-corporation or anti-capitalism or anything of the sort. That does not, however, prevent me from honestly evaluating Monsanto as perhaps one of the most corrupt businesses on the planet. They create products that cause disease & death, create dependencies on them for more of the same, & are audaciously dishonest, putting up front groups like American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology. If you care to learn more, check out Seeds of Deception & Seeds of Destruction. Or view the video The World According to Monsanto & decide for yourself.

Some of the products Monsanto has invented or manufactured: saccharine, vanillin, Agent Orange, aspartame (Nutrasweet), bovine growth hormone, Celebrex, rBST (milk hormones), Roundup. They also own the largest vegetable seed producer in the world.

When you read the arguments of the "Agricultural Biotechnology Council" (which admits it is a group of biotech corporations), keep all this in mind: Monsanto's actions imply that they intend to make sure that no food is grown that they don't own. Plants, animals, all of it.

Regular Breast Self-Exams Useless

2008-08-08T00:41:26Z

Well, this one surprised me. It seems that a strict self-exam routine (same day every month, same pattern, same position, note your findings...) had absolutely no improvement in breast cancer mortality over those who did nothing at all. It also led to twice as many biopsies - meaning all those biopsies, with their own risks, were unnecessary.

So now, rather than promoting self-exams, they're promoting "relaxed breast awareness." Rather than a strict routine, just "know yourself & what is normal for you." I didn't see that in the science (since there was no improvement over those who did NOTHING), but sure. It seems to make sense.

Said the researchers, "At present, screening by breast self-examination or physical examination cannot be recommended."

While one may ask how a woman should be "aware" of any changes without conducting self-exams, one may also ask how the stress of false positives & unnecessary biopsies affects them, particularly since overwhelmingly stressful events are associated with cancer development.

The findings of these two very large studies on BSE's are also summarized here:
http://www.library.nhs.uk/Cancer/ViewResource.aspx?resID=66289
http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/testing/new_research/20080716.jsp
http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20080715/breast-self-exam-no-survival-benefit
http://bcaction.org/index.php?page=breast-cancer-screening-policy
The American Cancer Society has downgraded BSE from a "requirement" to an "option.

Really thought-provoking website I found while searching on BSE efficacy: www.thinkbeforeyoupink.com

Major review of studies finds antidepressants are no better than placebo.

2008-08-06T23:34:33Z

"The antidepressant Prozac and related drugs are no better than placebo in treating all but the most severely depressed patients" reports a science news service. Says the UK's The Guardian, "When all the data was pulled together, [including studies suppressed by the manufacturer,] it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs."

That means that yes, they may work - but no better than a sugar pill. Since they're chemicals with many side effects, many current users may now prefer to be treated with a placebo of no adverse effects.

A British psychiatrist specializing in the the use of SSRIs such as Prozac says the drugs are "routinely being given to people who would get better without them."

And in those who were most severely depressed, they say that it is not that the antidepressants were effective, but that in people so seriously ill, the placebo response isn't there. That one actually has me scratching my head. I have no idea what that means!

Eli Lilly's response was, more or less, "Does too work!!" They did remind us that more than 50 million people have taken Prozac since its inception.

If you're on an antidepressant, I strongly recommend reading the two articles linked in my first paragraph in full, then consulting your doctor to understand how this affects you & further details such as managing dependency & withdrawal.

Low-Fat is Dead.

2008-08-05T22:29:55Z

Good riddance.

Six years ago, the first blow was dealt: A New York Times piece dared to ask, What if it's all been a big Fat lie? It came after more than a decade of banning all fat, including those now recognized as "heart-healthy," like almonds, avocados, & olives. Gradually, we began to realize that *some* fats were okay: namely, unsaturated ones. Then, they started to tell us that butter was better than margarine. Now, the truth is coming out that it's trans fats & partially hydrogenated oils that are killing us. We're even realizing that saturated fats are not the devil - Crisco & margarine are. After decades of trial, most fats - the natural ones (butter, lard, coconut oil...) - are finally exonerated.

Did I just say lard? You bet I did!

Anyway, it's starting to be seen everywhere: the low-fat fad is ending. The most recent nail in the coffin is an article in the New England Journal of Medicine detailing a carefully controlled study which found that when comparing a lowfat, Mediterranean, & low-carb diet, the low-fat was the big loser. Or not, actually - the low-fat folks lost the *least* weight. The folks eating the fewest grains & sugars, on the other hand, dropped 20% off their cholesterol ratio.

The problem is, w/o fat, you feel you're starving, and worst of all, you are eating far more carbohydrates, typically the sugars & refined grains which cause heart disease, high triglycerides, obesity, diabetes, & even Alzheimer's & nearsightedness.

How did we get here? First there were the famous Ancel Keyes studies. He reported that of 7 countries, those with the highest saturated fat consumption had the highest rate of heart disease. Trouble is, he studied 22 countries, and threw out the ones which disproved his theory.

Then, over the next half-century, most studies which purported to study cholesterol & disease actually lumped natural sat fats in with disease-causing unnatural ones, or, as in these two more recent studies, with "processed meats, processed grains, snack foods, & sugared drinks." When this group turned up with more skin cancer in one study and more diabetes in the other, it was blamed on their "meat and fat" intake rather than the "processed meats, sweets and desserts, french fries, and refined grains" they were eating.

Once again, incompetent science & journalism are to blame.

I'm moving away from the fads. Away from the nutrient chasing (counting carbs, fat, antioxidants, ...). Toward the tried & true.

80 years ago, a doctor traveled the world studying primitive peoples and found that no matter what they ate, from Sweden to Africa, from fish/nuts/berries to milk/meat/blood, they were all healthy - no heart disease, diabetes, cavities, obesity, tuberculosis (the killer of the day), or depression - as long as they ate nothing processed. No processed grains (like dry cereal & refined grains), processed oils (corn, soy, canola, safflower), or processed meats, veggies, or milk. As soon as those began to be introduced, their health began to deteriorate. The more they ate of it, the worse it got, even when nothing else (such as work or living habits) changed.

I'm gonna eat Real Food. That's all.

(It is rather unfortunate that the anti-sat-fat bias persuaded these researchers in the NEJM article to insist on encouraging "low-carb" participants to choose "vegetarian sources of fat and protein." It would be most educational if they follow this up with a study comparing the AHA recommended diet, which is even more lowfat than this one, with a Real Food diet - one that allows plenty of grassfed meat & dairy, but no processed anything.)

ETA 8/06/08: Today's Washington Post on real food ...

Even Knee Surgery No Better than a Placebo?

2008-08-04T21:05:22Z

"A popular operation for arthritis of the knee worked no better than a sham procedure in which patients were sedated while surgeons pretended to operate," reported the New York Times a few years ago. The procedure in question is arthroscopic surgery performed with the intent to benefit osteoarthritis.

Under a double-blind study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors did the surgery on one group of patients, and for the other group, put them under general anesthesia, cut open the knee, swished water & clinked instruments, and sewed them back up. "Tests of knee functions revealed that the operation had not helped, and those who got the placebo surgery reported feeling just as good as those who had had the real operation."

"'Here we are doing all this surgery on people and it's all a sham,' said Dr. Baruch Brody, an ethicist at Baylor who helped design the study." Prior to this study, over 225,000 people a year had received the surgery.

Says the Times, "Placebo studies of surgery are almost never done. Many doctors consider them unethical because patients could undergo risks with no benefits."

How ethical is it to subject millions of people to a surgery that has never been tested to see if it actually has any benefits?

This is actually common, though - many medicines, vaccines, & procedures have never been tested on particular types of people (such as small children, babies, or pregnant women) because it is often considered unethical to conduct tests on them. What that means is that if you use these medicines, vaccines, & procedures, you are the test subject.

Will the surgery continue? In answer to that question, a Boston University rheumatologist reports, ''It constitutes a good part of the livelihood of some orthopedic surgeons. That is a reality.'' Amazingly, some doctors are still trying to defend the practice, despite continued similar results in studies with sham surgeries.

What should we take away from this? IMO, this: Do your research. Search & search again for evidence. Look at package inserts, PDR, online studies & medical journal articles. There are many, many common drugs & procedures that have no evidence to back them up. They are no more scientific than leeches & bloodletting. Only research will tell you the difference between popular remedies that are tested & popular remedies that are just conjecture.

Circumcision Rates Continue to Drop

2008-07-21T18:14:17Z

The most common cosmetic surgery in America continues to decline. Down from close to 85% in the 60's, only 56% of Southerners - the same as the national rate - are circumcising their baby boys. By the time our boys are grown, the numbers will be low enough (perhaps rivaling Europe, where only Jews & Muslims circumcise, same as America 150 years ago) that those circumcised young men will be asking some difficult questions of their parents.

I just ask, please do your research thoroughly. :) The AAP is against routine infant circumcision. The Catholic Church banned it explicitly for centuries and its principles continue the implicit ban* today. If there is no medical & no religious indication for routine infant circumcision, what reason remains?

As a final thought, the Jewish circumcision of Jesus' time was nothing like the modern medical procedure - only the tip was removed.

My response to common questions:

Should you cut off your eyelids to prevent infection (from, e.g., poor contact lens hygiene), or learn better prevention & treatment?
Would you cut off your baby girl's breasts at birth b/c it decreases the chance of breast cancer?
Can Junior "look like" great-grandpa instead of dad?
Ever thought how unfair it is that breastfeeding makes a woman dry, often painfully so? Ever wondered why nature didn't balance that w/ moisture from both man & wife? It did.

* "Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against moral law" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2297).

"[T]he term 'non-therapeutic' is synonymous with elective circumcisions that are still commonly performed on newborn males in the United States" (American Medical Association Report 10 of the Council on Scientific Affairs).

Mama, I'm all stupped up

2008-07-16T20:43:47Z

Last fall, the FDA came out saying that cough medicine usually doesn't work for kids, and when it does, its risks do not outweigh its benefits (covering up annoying symptoms of a respiratory illness). In the articles above, we find out that Benedryl, cough suppressants, cold meds, don't work any better than placebos.

We're blessed to have very few colds, one ear infection (the only child ever in group care - "Mother's Morning Out"), and no strep throat in our 11 years of family life. Hardly anyone gets sick. I attribute it to years of nursing each child, no group care (including school) exposure, avoiding junk, and a LOT of luck.

But when we do, here's what we do:

Vitamin C: dosage depends on age and how ill the person is, anywhere from 1000mg to 6000mg per hour. You can't overdose on it, you stop when you get loose bowels (a sign that your body can't make use of any more). We use emergen-C, or if we need a lot, sodium ascorbate powder + bioflavenoids (a nutrient that is naturally present with C in nature at the ratio of 5:1, so C needs to be taken with it). Or a whole source, like acerola or camu-camu (tropical fruits).
Garlic. Kills a cold dead in its tracks. Normally a cold lasts me a week. Garlic gets it out in 24 hrs flat. I take it at night (so no one has to smell me!): 4 raw fresh cloves run through a garlic press into a glass of OJ or V8. I can hardly tell it's there as I chug the whole glass.
Cool washcloths, open windows for humid night air, natural camphor preparations (like Mentholatum but w/o the chemicals), REST (one of the biggest problem w/ covering up symptoms is it allows you to ignore your body's commands to rest).
Offer up the remaining discomfort as a sacrifice united to Christ's sacrifice on the cross, for the good of others.

More recently, doctors are saying that cough & cold medicines don't do any more than placebos for adults, either.

Waffles & Rosaries

2008-07-11T12:51:36Z

It's Linkie Day!

From my hometown - Scattered, Smothered, Covered, & Hitched: A Waffle House Wedding. Do NOT miss the slideshow!

From my archdiocese - To Radical Feminism and Back

And last - Columbians attribute hostage rescue to the Rosary

So the appendix has a function after all...

2008-07-09T16:01:48Z

Long thought to be a vestigial organ b/c they couldn't figure it out, the appendix is being rehabilitated. It appears likely to be a tiny safe harbor of beneficial bacteria waiting to spring into action to repopulate our guts should they be wiped out through infection.

80% of our immune system is the bacteria in our gut. They can get out of balance by being wiped out by antibiotics or severe diarrhea, normally good ones (like e. coli) overpopulating b/c of a current weakness letting in an excess of them (e.g., via contaminated water or food), and certain other ways. It's amazing to know that God working through nature has provided a way for us to replenish our guts in times of hardship.

Sadly, the researchers have decided it's not worth it to study whether the hypothesis is true. They claim it can "cure no disease" - really? Our gut flora don't get unbalanced or wiped out anymore?

Perhaps there's another factor - appendectomie$ are a large source of income, often done "while we're in there" during unrelated abdominal surgery. Would people still go for this if they knew the appendix served a useful function?

The article itself also claims that appendectomies have no negative side effects. This is a bizarre conclusion, given that it's known they're associated with an increased incidence of Crohn's disease - a debilitating disorder of the gut - years, even decades, after the surgery.

Most strangely, they claim that today's world no longer needs this reserve of good bacteria. Yes, cholera & dysentery are gone, but did they forget to consider antibiotics, salmonella & e. coli outbreaks, and rampant antibacterial products that prevent us from the regular, natural replenishing of bacteria we are supposed to get from our natural environment? Other regular disrupters of gut flora are hormonal contraception, heavy metal contamination (in water, vaccines, fish, fillings,...), water chlorination (intended to kill bacteria), sugar, & processed food.

This is a good example of how to glean facts from mainstream articles - the facts about the appendix are priceless; the conclusions are ... well, you decide.

Further items to ponder:

If this is the appendix's role, and given that the appendicitis rate has fallen in the last hundred years, then perhaps we can prevent appendicitis by the same good habits that promote good intestinal flora? That is, eating only real food (nothing processed) and avoiding sugar (and artificial sweeteners) like the plague.
Ah, fascinating, this article says appendicitis is usually caused by blockage of the appendix's outlet - by fecal matter or lymph nodes enlarged by viral infection. So normal good health practices should dramatically reduce the likelihood - see above point. Also, this means that perhaps there are other steps that would be more appropriate than cutting it off now that we know it has a function - like removing the mass, or medical/nutritional steps to remove the viral infection?
We should probably be extra cautious when advised to remove it - double check the big three (confirmed here, as well as the link in the bullet above): pain that starts in the belly button but moves to the lower right, total loss of appetite (even favorite foods), and massive pain if you jump hard. Women, especially, benefit from pre-operative CT or ultrasound scans to determine if it's really appendicitis. (Is that b/c of confusing reproductive pain for appendix pain?)
What other surgeries are not always necessary; what other body parts aren't really "useless?" Tonsillectomies and adenoidectomies are already just a fraction of what they used to be; what about our wanton removal of gall bladders, uteruses, postmenopausal ovaries, & wisdom teeth? Ought we maybe to consider they serve a purpose and try methods that solve the root problem w/o extracting them, first? Prevention, even?

I'm much indebted to Dr. Mercola's article for the links that spurred this blog post! According to some commenters on the article, this Anatomy book stated 10 years ago that the appendix "plays an important role in bodily immunity," and Ayurvedic medicine has long recognized the appendix as a reservoir for beneficial bacteria. Why does it always seem to take at least a decade for real findings to make the headlines?

How wise are we really, when we assume that if we don't understand it, it must not be?

Maria Lactans for Purity

2008-07-01T17:52:17Z

Thought-provoking article on a tactic for addressing the root cause of impurity. Postulating that images of Mary breastfeeding the Divine Infant teach us that the body is for giving, not taking, he gives Maria Lactans as the patron of those struggling with lust (which is, at its heart, wanting someone else's body to satisfy our own desires).

Wow!

Decluttering my diaper bag

2008-06-29T06:46:21Z

Ten years ago, there were no hip diaper bags. No backpack or incognito options. You got what Wal-Mart or Babies R Us offered, and that was usually big, frilly, and pastel. Even the "free" formula bags were pastel. I searched long & hard for something that Daddy could carry, forewent lace, and didn't scream I Have Lost All My Taste! Navy, burgundy, & ecru, my gender-neutral Noah's Ark bag was still big & dumpy.

My diaper bag has definitely seen some changes over the years. Especially in the last year! Here is what it looked like with my first child:

Typical day: bottle, bottle liners, baby food, snacks (for both of us), baby spoons, bib(s), burp cloths, "dirty duds bag," backup clothes, 6-8 diapers, travel wipes container, changing pad, blanket, rash cream, Purell, toys, mini-book(s), hat, spare grocery bags, nursing pads, & a bulb aspirator. Now, I traveled light, compared to some! No paci, lovey, sunblock, formula cans, extra shirt (mine), or first aid kit (bandaids, thermometer, Neosporin, ...). So wherever I went, I had my gigundo diaper bag and my purse and my baby lugged in a car seat.

With each child, my bag got smaller and emptier. As I became a full-time mother and started to see that I didn't need all the "things" the baby industry said I did, I pared down. Now I just carry a purse. Not a diaper-bag-that-looks-like-a-purse or a purse-that-doubles-as-a-diaper-bag. A purse. W/ my 15mo & 3yo, here's what it looks like:

Typical day: 2 small prefolds (cloth diapers), a really pretty matching changing pad & clean/dirty bag, 2 wash cloths (wet under the faucet), a reusable grocery bag that folds into itself, and a clip that turns anything rectangular into a bib. Depending on the age of the babe & the day, I might add a small wooden toy, board book, or apple. The purse has slots for cards & ID, so I only bring my wallet if I need checks or cash. Almost always, I take just my purse & my baby on my hip or back in a sling.

All of these reflect a lifestyle change, choices that I've made differently as I've gone along.

Bottle: I began to feel that my baby belonged with me. The nursing mother & child are a pair, and I began to let my need to nurse determine how long we were apart. Bottles and pumps were no longer needed - ever. I keep one of each in a closet in my house in case I am hospitalized without warning.
Baby food: After learning that most babies thrive on breast milk alone until well into the second year, I tossed out all the cereals, purees, and "Gerber Graduates," and began to let my baby decide what & how much to eat. Avocado & ripe banana start us off around 8-10 months, and we move on to other appropriate table food. Baby nurses, then chooses what he needs off my plate. We haven't played the airplane game in years. :)
Snacks: Why? Nursing for him, and I've stopped needing to nibble between meals since eating real food (especially more natural fats & protein).
Bibs: I can't say I know for sure why, but I've never had big spitters. My first baby spit-up the most. Since later coming to a decision to let my babies nurse absolutely unrestricted (removing "but you just ate!" from my philosophy), none of them have spit up more than 3-4 times, ever (outside of sickness), usually in the early months of nursing in bed (so babe sleeps on a small mattress pad and I keep an absorbent diaper on the nightstand in the early months). For food, most meals just aren't that messy (Kipiis + prefold = great bib!).
Burp cloths: See above. There's also the fact that I don't burp my babies anymore. I don't know if my first really needed it, but the rest (all exclusively breastfed w/o restriction) haven't.
"Dirty duds bag": Who came up with this name? Did Baby just come in from the ranch? Anyway, breastmilk spit-up is not the same vile smelling thing as its alternative. And with cloth diapers, blowouts don't happen anymore. Still, if needed, the Wonderbag will do fine.
Backup clothes for babe & me: See above. I still get messy; I'm a spaz; but it's nothing that can't wait for home, and it usually has nothing to do with the baby.
6-8 diapers: EC'ing means that I take him to a potty when he needs to go, so unless we're gone for a full 24 hrs, we won't need this many. I rarely use more than one, two if we're out all day.
Travel wipes container: yeah, I still have one, but it's a lot prettier, and with EC, ("elimination communication," fancy term for something billions of mothers & babies are doing right now), I haven't needed either of my two cloth "wipes" (baby washcloths) in probably 6 months. There are no poop-smeared heinies to wipe around here.
Changing pad: I actually rarely use it (the sling works in a pinch, and most of the time we're on the potty, not the changing table), but it's so pretty, how can I leave it out?!
Blanket: I've always had this philosophy that we dress for the indoors, and b/c we live where it's rarely freezing, we all just dash from car to door and don't worry about putting on 6 coats & blankets all around! Plus, the sling works wonderfully in a pinch. A blanket would be brought on one of those rare occasions when we'll be out in the cold (or sun) a long time and heavy clothes (or sling) aren't quite enough.
Rash cream: Between cloth diapers & EC, we've been blessed not to get rashes here anymore.
Purell: No way, Jose. Healthy immune systems do a fine job of filtering out the bad guys w/o also pulverizing the good.
Toys: IDK. It seems that w/ siblings always around, seeing everything Mommy does from my height (in a sling), and being allowed to nurse absolutely whenever he needs to, our babies have been very happy & content w/o much. Sometimes I carry one with us, but they always seem to throw those and go for the cell phones, anyway.
Mini-books: Nothing wrong with this in theory. Mine have never cared to look at them for more than 10 seconds, much to my dismay.
Hat: Unless we're gonna be out over half an hour in the summer (even longer the rest of the year), we want to get sun, not avoid it. For winter hats, see Blanket. I usually keep one in the car in the winter, but don't need it enough to keep it in the bag.
Spare grocery bags: We're no longer carrying around poop bombs encased in gel & plastic, rarely have poopy diapers, and when we do, they don't smell all that bad and can go in my cute dry/wet bag. And I'd rather have my Chico for a handy compact bag!
Nursing pads. Again, I don't know if this is related, but since I stopped working and started nursing absolutely all the time (my 15mo still nurses *at least* the amt recommended in "the books" for a newborn - 10-12 times a day), I haven't needed them.
Bulb aspirator, bandaids, thermometers, etc.: I no longer live in fear of illness. We're rarely sick, and when we are, I can tell how sick my baby is or clear his nose w/o a tool. (I could NOT with my first child!) If something were really needed quickly, pharmacies are everywhere.
Paci: I read What to Expect & when it said, "don't introduce a pacifier until bf'ing is well established (4-6 weeks)" and "pacifiers should be discarded by 3 months in order to avoid teeth damage" on different pages, I did the math and figured it wasn't worth the trouble. Since then, I've come to a place where I prefer my baby to pacify at the breast - the original.
Lovey: Somehow it dawned on me gradually that I wanted my child to be attached to people rather than things. So we never introduced a "lovey" and none of them have ever shown any desire to have something like that.
Sunblock: see Hat.
Formula cans: I am blessed to be able to breastfeed.

Of course, some days require special things, and on those days, I might break out my "real" diaper bag (black plastic freebie) that has a few bumGenius no-brainer dipes + a wipes bag, w/ room for some clothes or hat or olive oil (sunscreen) or such.

Here are the contents of my purse right now: (clockwise from upper left) wet/dry bag, kipiis, prefolds, wallet, chico bag, changing pad, keys, 2 washcloths.

And now, everything inside, then closed up:

I'm not sayin' this is the way you gotta be. It's just the way I've become, and I really like it!

Now when we pack for a long trip? Baby's suitcase gets 3-4 outfits, 6 flat diapers (rinse & dry in no time), 2 wool covers, sling, Ergo. Toy.