BPA Found in GLASS Baby Jars

You stopped buying plastic toys and all your plastic water bottles are BPA free. You finally feel like you have gotten a grip on that nasty estrogen-mimicking chemical when this study comes out of Canada saying that traces of BPA have been found in baby food in glass jars. Apparently, the plastic lining on the lids leaks bisphenol-A. Sorry mamas, but toxins are lurking everywhere. Stop buying baby food in jars. Invest in a food processor and take advantage of summer’s farmers markets. Good luck!

Vaccines?

Choosing whether or not to vaccinate my baby was one of the most difficult parenting decisions I had to make. Back in the day, people were happy just to have vaccines, but nowadays, there is so much controversy around them, you can’t take it lightly. When it was time to take my daughter to her first doctor appointment, I knew that I had to go equipped with the necessary knowledge or be bulldozed by an M.D. Read more »

Free Range Kids

I just read a great excerpt from the book Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy, a New York mom infamous for letting her nine-year-old ride the subway alone. What I found most fascinating was all the hupla surrounding this scenerio. Does it matter whether the kid was nine or eighteen? As the saying goes, age is just a number. It is the maturity of the child that is most important. In this case, her son, Izzy, was asking to be allowed to ride the subway alone and only after much deliberation and precautions taken did they allow him to.

This enters into a whole discussion about today’s standards of safety as Skenazy goes into in her book. Read more »

Acupuncture after Pregnancy

I started seeing an acupuncturist for my shoulder. I don’t know what is wrong with it, but it hurts. I can imagine straining it while lifting a baby several times a day, carrying a baby on my back or simply nursing hunched over. While I thought I was getting treatments solely for my shoulder, I actually learned that I needed much more as a woman recovering from childbirth and pregnancy. Read more »

Co-sleeping: Safe or Dangerous?

Our Co-sleeping Set-up

According to the BBC World News, the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths (FSID) just released a study that says co-sleeping or bed sharing with your child, has been implicated in about half of SIDS cases. According to this study, the risk is greatest if either parent smokes, has been drinking, has taken sedatives or is “very tired,” and that small babies, such as preemies are particularly at risk.

According to Dr. Sears, attachment parenting guru who has written two books on the topic and done extensive research on the risks of SIDS when co-sleeping, there is nothing to worry about. In fact, he believes that co-sleeping can actually reduce the risk of SIDS.

The best advice is to do as you would with all things parenting and follow your instincts. As for my husband and I, we knew we wanted to co-sleep, but did not think we would be comfortable with a baby in bed with us. Read more »

Alert: Baby Beauty Products!

I try my best (as in, most of the time, whenever possible) to feed my daughter organic food, provide her with non-toxic toys and clean my house with natural ingredients, so it would be reasonable that I would also make sure that all her soaps and shampoos and lotions were also safe. Many years back, my good friend, Rachel, told me not to put anything on my skin that I wouldn’t eat. This made instant sense to me as our skin is our biggest organ, and everything on it eventually enters the bloodstream and other vital organs. However, I always thought it was enough to buy my products at natural food stores and never took the time to check the labels. You can imagine my shock when I read the April 2009 issue of Taste For Life; you know, the free magazine that they put in your grocery bag at the co-op., and learned how many chemical are in my favorite “natural” products. Read more »

No Sick Days for Mom

My mother likes to tell this story as if I may forget it, but I never have: I was in elementary school, maybe 4th grade, and it was my mother’s turn to drive the carpool. On this particular morning, she had a terrible stomach flu. It was too late to find someone else to drive us kids to school, so she got in her car and proceeded in her duties as mom. Unfortunately, and most embarrassing to me, she would intermittently pull over the car, open the door, and vomit in the road.

It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that the significance of her actions became apparent to me. Moms don’t get a sick day. Read more »