Archives for Awareness category
Posted on Nov 23rd, 09 at
12:56 pm under Alternative Parenting, Awareness, Medical Maladies
23
Nov
I listen to a local (Montreal) talk radio station on almost a daily basis… when I am cleaning or doing things around the kitchen or cooking…
The H1N1 coverage and all the hype has been really getting to me though so when I heard one of the hosts introducing her next guest to talk about vaccines I rolled my eyes but decided to listen in anyway… what I heard surprised me. Not what was being said of course, but that he was saying it on the air, on a show who’s host is completely vaccine crazy usually…
After hearing the interview, I needed to know more about this guy and I really want to get my hands on his book on of these days.
Dr. Shiv Chopra is a former Health Canada scientist and “whistleblower”. He has a M. Sc and PhD in Microbiology and a degree in veterinary medicine and has been the recipient of many academic rewards including a fellowship of the WHO…
The interview started as normal but then he took over explaining H1N1 and how not dangerous it is and then went on to talk about vaccination in general… pretty much stating how it is a 50-60 year human experiment, how they have never been proven safe or effective, how they cause autoimmune diseases and just don’t work…
Here is the interview… it is really worth the listen!
(I have to say that I love how she sets up the interview and then is completely blindsided… live radio at its finest) I wish I had the second part also but they didn’t put it up… but it was him answering questions from the host and callers…
If you are interested in hearing more of what he has to say, look around his website, there is a lot of great info, I especially like the interview video from the Pimento Report which explains a lot of what he has done and what happened with his career…
Since hearing him, I have definitely been keeping an eye on what he has been saying.
Possibly Related Posts:
|
Posted on May 17th, 09 at
9:34 am under Alternative Parenting, Awareness, Pregnancy and Birth
17
May
It has taken me so long to write about this but I guess it is better late than never…
On the 6th it was the “Orgasmic Birth” viewing here in Montreal. It was amazing!
The people, the atmosphere and of course the film…
I left home at about 2:45 with two of the local moms whom I had invited and we went out to eat before heading to the show… after eating and getting an ice cream we did one more errand and then headed to Vanier College where the film was being presented… We got there early and found a place to sit and by the time that film started the place was full… pregnant women, mothers, a few babies, doulas, midwives, midwife students, birth activists, dads and even a few doctors… the energy in the room was amazing.
While we were waiting, a woman sat down next to me… she was an older woman and we started talking and I asked her if she was in the birthing community, she said she wasn’t but that she had done her PhD in Birth many years ago and then talked about her birthing experiences, she had wanted natural births with her first daughter nearly 50 years ago she had been put into twilight sleep.. by her third child she was able to get the birth she wanted… she had taught in Vancouver and then retired back in Montreal and has not been part of the birthing scene in many years but had seen an editorial in the Montreal Gazette and wanted to check it out… The conversation we had was one that I will not soon forget.
The movie started, a few glitches of wrong subtitles and then started again… and about 1/3 of the way through there was a scene of a vacuum extraction and a c-section and the lights went up, a woman in the audience had fainted. I have to admit, seeing it that close up, on that big on screen was pretty pretty hard….
The movie started up again and when it was done it was time for the discussion panel. On the panel was Lysiane Gregoire, the president of the Groupe MAMAN, Nicole Pino, a mom that had an orgasmic birth, Debra Pascali-Bonaro, the filmmaker, Celine Lemay, a midwife from Quebec (the one that had come here after Khéna was born and whom I had called a few weeks ago when I was bleeding) Betty Anne Davis, the co-autor of the homebirth study and midwife in Ottawa and Jack Newman, Breastfeeding Guru and pediatrician in Toronto.
the questions for the panel started out slowly but picked up soon after and the responses from the panel were amazing… Some were about the lack of midwife care in quebec, some were more technical questions or in need of opinion….
like a mom who was scheduled for a C-section for a breech baby seen on an ultrasound at 20 weeks!!! which in response one of the panelist explained that the recomendations are changing with respect to breech births because of the fact the problems that may occur in breech birth disspear by the age of two but that the rise of c-sections mean that there are more maternal deaths…. the problem now is that doctors need to change thier practices….
or a question about IV fluids in labour and how there is no standard and women are given Litres of fluid and how it effects birth weight and weight loss in babies (losing more than 10% of their weight after birth) because of excess water and then the breastfeeding relationship being threatened with supplements etc…
The questions and the discussion just kept on going until we were literally being told to leave by the campus security…
If you have the chance to get your hands on the movie, do it… it is really a great movie, well made and beautiful… and what is amazing about it is that it is being shown more and more to the birth “professionals” who have never seen a normal birth and for many it is changing their views… I ordered a copy and I can’t wait to share it also…
Possibly Related Posts:
|
Posted on Mar 26th, 09 at
9:15 am under Alternative Parenting, Awareness
26
Mar
In the time that I have been a parent I have come to realize that most of the problems that we have come out of the way that perceive things and what we expect from our kids..
With babies, the largest of the expectations are around sleeping and nursing habits and the need to be held… Not only do things work against parents that try to take control of these needs, but the more they try the more they disrupt the natural patterns and needs are just not being met which will cause further problems…
I wrote this a few years ago in a post about sleep issues and CIO (cry-it-out)…
If so many children have “sleep issues” and have to be trained out of “desperation” then it is clear that the “sleep issues” are a norm. If they are the norm then it is clear that the real “sleep issues” lie within the parents expectations of the child and not what is physically and physiologically normal for the child. If people would stop fighting their children over when and where their children sleep, then sleep would not be such an issue.
After three kids now, I believe this to be true even more than I did then… In our family, Xavier being the first got the raw end of the deal at times… he was a great sleeper, but I remember a rough patch we all went through when he was about 9 months and like most babies, he didn’t sleep much (and had a nursing strike) because his brain was so busy processing all his new skills… the more we expected from him, the more resistance we were met with and the more stress that we had which led to us to want to have more control… Luckily we decided to listen to him more and go with the flow and no longer have expectations of what he “should” be doing… and the “problems” quickly went away… I realized that the less expectations I have, the less stress I have and the better things are in the end… but I truly believe that his view of sleep was and has been affected by that…
Looking at the problems that we have in our household now, I still can see that it is what we perceive and expect is what often gets in the way of solving the conflicts we encounter… this is something that I have believed for a long time, but as I said, learning about NVC has filled in the gaps for me and has made it more clear…
Something that happened recently was a fight between Colin and Xavier (not a rare occurrence btw)… The situation was that Khéna was already outside and Xavier was dressed and ready to go when Colin wanted something out of the fridge…Xavier told him he couldn’t have it and a fight ensued… in the moment what I perceived was Xavier being bossy and telling Colin what he can’t have and Colin fighting back…
If I didn’t know what I know now or wasn’t putting it in practice, I would most likely try to fix the problem by over talking… or by punishing him because I expect him to be nice to his brother and expect him to not to be bossy and “mean” and have to empathy…. I might have even made him say sorry to his brother for hurting his feelings…
but what would any of that have accomplished?
I looked at the situation and tried to find out what Xavier was needing…
so I asked him… “what is it that you want right now?” he responded by directing the attention back to not wanting Colin to have the chocolate milk…
so I asked him… “is it because you would like some too?” he said yes and I just saw all the tension leaving…So, I said “no problem, you can have some too… you really didn’t want to left out did you? next time though, it would be easier if you just said that… ok?”
I served two glasses and Xavier and Colin talked about what they would do outside… there were no hard feelings between anyone and everyone got what they wanted/needed… and since then both of them talk about what they need more… not, every time but life lessons like that take time to learn…
We might expect kids to behave a certain way but we must not expect them to know those behaviours automatically nor believe that they can be learned though punishments or by reacting to the actions we perceive… what we need to do is get to the reason why they do things and then teach them to reactdifferently in the future… it is a harder and longer process but it is so much more rewarding for all…
Does this mean that we should never expect things form our kids? I am not saying that at all… I am just saying that there are realistic and unrealistic expectations… I expect that my kids will tell me what they need, when they are hungry, when they are tired etc… I don’t expect them to magically do so on a schedule that comes from my expectations…. I expect them to explore and learn… but I know I can’t expect them to do so on a certain schedule in a certain manner…
One of the problems that I see is that in the last generations, parenting has been learned through books… limited texts that tell parents what to expect and when without leaving the place for individuality and furthermore making parenting all about the parent and not the child… the problem is that all kids are different and they have not read the books that we read… they don’t know what they are expected to do, they just do what comes naturally…
A quote I love..
“Children are the books… once you start reading them you will never want to put them down…”
Possibly Related Posts:
|
Posted on Mar 4th, 09 at
2:14 pm under Alternative Parenting, Awareness
4
Mar
Since reading Annie’s blog posts… and hearing more about NVC within other sources… I have been interested to learn more.
In some ways I find it strange that I haven’t looked into it before because it reflects so much of what I already believe in, but reading Annie’s posts I realized that though I agreed with her there were some things that I couldn’t explain why…
Looking around I found a DVD version of the “basics of nonviolent communication”… so I watched it last week… it was exactly what was missing… it was able to not only fill in the gaps but open up a whole new world … and since watching it I have been so much more conscious of my own mistakes when speaking to my family and friends and I have been making a conscious effort to change the way I communicate.
What I find hard is not only changing the way that speak, but the way I am heard. Though, I am not a viloent person, or didn’t use violent words I now see that like most I used words to manipulate, not as much consciously but just being part of the way I learned to interact with others… the way most people speak…
What is amazing about nonviolent communication is that it is not only fulfilling… but it is also the fact that it is so liberating. Though I am only at the beginning of my journey I see that it will be pretty life-changing in the very small details.
Here is a part of a great summary of the goal of nonviolent communication on the NVC site…
“The process of NVC encourages us to focus on what we and others are observing separate from our interpretations and judgments, to connect our thoughts and feelings to underlying human needs/values (e.g. protection, support, love), and to be clear about what we would like towards meeting those needs. These skills give the ability to translate from a language of criticism, blame, and demand into a language of human needs — a language of life that consciously connects us to the universal qualities “alive in us” that sustain and enrich our well being, and focuses our attention on what actions we could take to manifest these qualities.”
Just after learning a bit… I was able to see the errors I was making and with slight changes of language I was able to put my parenting views in practice in a way that in the past was harder to do. I wish I would have looked into it before…
It is such a great tool and I can’t wait to learn more…
Possibly Related Posts:
|
Posted on Feb 4th, 09 at
12:58 pm under Alternative Parenting, Awareness
4
Feb
A news story that I have been hearing on the radio all morning…
Dangers of infants sleeping upright in carseats
The death of an infant in West Island Pointe Claire almost a year ago is prompting a Quebec coroner to warn against the risks of putting little babies to sleep in car seats.
A two month old boy in Pointe Claire died last February 23 after his mother put him to sleep in a carseat placed in his bassinette, hoping that would calm the crying colicky infant. An autopsy revealed that the baby died of asphyxiation. Quebec coroner Dr. Jacques Robinson says putting an infant in such an upright position to sleep is dangerous, since the baby’s head tends to fall forward.
“The upper airways are obstructed.”
Robinson says about 17 such deaths have happened over the past ten years and they could have been prevented.
“It’s not frequent, but when it happens, it’s very dramatic.”
He warns that car seats should be used only in the car since they help prevent deaths in accidents.
“We recommend to go with this but not for sleeping or using the carseat as a bed.”
And Robinson advises parents should take care to check on their babies in the car seat if they’re sleeping, to make frequent stops on long trips and to take them out at rest stops.
Read here…
The carseat along with so many other devices (the swing, bouncy chair, bumbo seat) are so overused… parents use the carseats in the car then clip the carseat from the car into the stroller, then back in the car…. many times I have seen babies being bottle fed with the bottle propped up so the baby is not even taken out to be fed….
It is not in the printed version of the article but the coroner says something like this… “use the car seat in the car and then pick them up” and that babies should be not be in carseats for more than 1 hour…
Great advice!
_________
update… here is a new article that just came up on the CBC with more details…
Parents should not leave young infants sleeping in car seats for long periods of time, said a Quebec coroner who looked into the death of a two-month-old boy who suffocated when his mom placed him in a car seat after a restless night.
The recommendation comes two years after Montreal researchers warned very young babies are vulnerable to sudden infant death syndrome if they spend too much time in a seated position.
“The car seat is for the car. It is not for the bed or sleeping. It is for a car,” said coroner Dr. Jacques Robinson on Wednesday.
‘The head of the baby is heavier than the body. The neck muscle is not straight enough to let the neck rise. So, it falls.’—Dr. Jacques Robinson, Quebec coronerThe case that prompted the coroner’s recommendation happened in February 2008 in Pointe-Claire on Montreal’s west island.
A mother woke at 3 a.m. to feed her baby who was crying. She put the baby back to sleep in his crib. At 6 a.m., the baby started crying again.
The mother used a trick she had used before: she placed the baby in his car seat and then put the car seat in the crib.
An hour later, the mother checked in on the baby and found that he wasn’t breathing. His eyes were glassy and his skin had a white, waxy appearance.
The mother called 911, and the parents started CPR on the baby. The baby was pronounced dead in hospital.
Robinson determined the baby died of asphyxiation due to an obstruction of his upper airway and blamed the baby’s cramped posture in the seat for reducing his ability to breathe.
“The head of the baby is heavier than the body. The neck muscle is not straight enough to let the neck rise so it falls,” said Robinson.
In his report, Robinson notes there are risks to leaving a child sleeping in any seated position. He encourages parents to put their children to sleep horizontally at all times, preferably in a crib.
He also advises parents to move their babies frequently when they are in a car seat in a vehicle. He recommends parents take their children out of the seat every hour while on a long trip.
read here…
Possibly Related Posts:
|
Posted on Dec 12th, 08 at
2:35 pm under Alternative Parenting, Awareness
12
Dec
I came across this article while looking for articles against time-outs that would appeal to a more mainstream audience… and I was quite happy to find it…
Though it was mostly repeating things that I have already know (time-outs are detrimental to attachment, do not work the way parents think they work, do not solve the problem but only focus on behaviour etc… ) something that was said really hit home with me…
“Sending a child away when they’re distressed is essentially saying to them, “I can’t handle you when you show this side of yourself. Come back when you can be the manageable Susie or Johnny that I can handle.” Not only are we telling the child that we only find the good, compliant version of themselves acceptable, we’re also declaring our inability to cope with all of who they are…..When a parent sends a child away because they can’t handle their misbehavior, they’re effectively telling them that they (the child) have the power to render them (the parent) incompetent and helpless.”
This is something that I really hadn’t thought about before… and it makes so much sense.
As parents we need to be guides to our children, we are their leaders and their teachers. If our children are taught that they can render us “incompetent and helpless” by behaving in ways that we do not like, we are entering into a power struggle that we are sure to lose. How can we teach children to deal with stressful situations if we cannot deal with them ourselves.
I have to admit that this is something that I have and will most likely again struggle with also (not time-outs per say, but power struggles and dealing with stress in impulsive ways) and I know that it is something that I can and will work on… and in the last months things have been getting easier…
Food for thought isn’t it?
Possibly Related Posts:
|
Posted on Nov 27th, 08 at
8:28 pm under Awareness, Food
27
Nov
The other day I was looking around for some articles and found this one… I think that it is a great one that explains well what the additives are and what they do… and then he goes on to talk about alternatives… The only think that is not mentioned are that artificial flavours including Vanillin (fake vanilla) come from the same sources and have the same effects…
Here is part of it… and you can read the rest on the author’s site…
Replace Artificial Food Colors with Natural food Colors
by Pete Maletto
Jan 25, 2007 – It was not long ago when I was conducting my daily ritual of research on the internet and stumbled upon consumers growing concerns about artificial food colors. While it didn’t surprise me because I have the same concerns, I noticed that many consumers are complaining about side effects with artificial colors. Most consumers are concerned about yellow dye consumption and its side effects such as headaches, vomiting, hives, asthma and a possible cause of ADD and ADHD.
While I found that yellow dye has quite a laundry list of possible side effects, I also found that red dye has its share as well. One that really amuses me is that this artificial food color can actually dye our own internal systems red color (they do this with salmon to make the pink color).
While side effects are not as documented as it should be, there also seems to be some people that have allergic reactions to most artificial colors. Just ask any doctor that performs colonoscopies and you’ll hear him tell you about artificial blue color and red color showing up and coloring the colon for days. This has lead many consumers to believe that artificial colors are bad for you and that they are another cancer causing agent found in foods today. Now the media is piling on and consumers are starting to avoid artificial food colors.
And as an experienced food technologist, I tend to agree…..
The FDA manages the Adverse Reaction Monitoring System (ARMS) as an added safety check on color additives to food, with a computerized database to track potential public health hazards. FDA’s Advisory Committee on hypersensitivity to food constituents concluded in 1986 that FD&C Yellow No. 5 may cause hives in fewer than one out of 10,000 people, but found no evidence that it provokes asthma attacks as some reports had indicated. You would think a system as sophisticated as this would catch the problems but they decided to permit the usage of Yellow No. 5 to continue, with product labeling allowing those with hypersensitivity to avoid it.
Yellow dye is basically a hidden term for tartrazine, a coal tar derivitive which has proven side effects on the central nervous system. For example, in a study published in 1978, 122 patients who had a variety of diagnosed allergic reactions were given 50 milligrams of tartrazine.
This dose elicited reactions such as palpitations, weakness, hives and itching in these susceptible individuals; 50 milligrams is a large dose, but could be consumed by someone drinking a few bottles of soda during the day. Or a serving of Mac and Cheese to your kids (get the hyperactive hint here?) which has close to 50 mg per box and at a childs body weight, that’s a lot of tartrazine. It is also important to note that there is a connection between people allergic to aspirin and allergic reactions to tartrazine.
Usage of Red No. 3 was voluntarily terminated in 1990 after animal testing indicated an association with thyroid tumors. Although it still remains on the list, the FDA is proposing to remove it. A panel from the National Institutes of Health determined in 1982 that coloring additives were not related to claims of hyperactivity (look at the kids today and it makes you think twice). Although approved by the FDA, some people may still have allergic reactions.
Currently, any blue or green food on the U.S. market gets its hues from certifiable colors FD&C Blue No. 1 (Brilliant Blue), Blue No. 2 (Indigotine), or Green No. 3 (Fast Green). Blue No. 1 and Green No. 3 are both petroleum-derived triphenylmethanes–that is, they have three aromatic rings attached to a central carbon atom. Blue No. 2 is a disodium sulfonate of a naturally occurring compound called indigo.
However, the indigo used to create Blue No. 2 is synthesized by fusing N-phenylglycine in a molten mix of sodamide and sodium and potassium hydroxides. And we are feeding these chemicals to our kids!
Lets face it, there is no way you could tell me that something that can stain the cells of our body and come from chemicals such as coal tar/tartrazine, triphenylmethane, and other chemicals would not cause some type of mutagenic effect in the body over a period of time.
None the less, it’s seems obvious to me that consuming artificial colors can definitely cause side effects with some people (some side effects that they may not even notice) and they are quite possibly “cancer causing chemicals” that we do not need in our food supply, especially when healthy alternatives exist.
Read more about the alternatives….
Possibly Related Posts:
|
Posted on Nov 12th, 08 at
6:42 pm under Alternative Parenting, Awareness
12
Nov
I just want to point you toward a great post on Annie’s blog…
Possibly Related Posts:
|
