Usually the first step comes from California

My random commentary on what should be obvious from this article.  Also for a bit of background to this article this is how those numbers were reached.

It’s Now More Dangerous to Give Birth in California Than It Is in Kuwait or Bosnia

…”In 1996, the maternal death rate in California was 5.6 per 100,000 live births, not far from the national goal of 4.3 per 100,000. Between 1998 and 1999, the World Health Organization changed its coding system, which may have increased reporting of deaths. The California rate was 6.7 in 1998 and 7.7 in 1999. Because the number of mothers who die is small, the rate tends to fluctuate from year to year.

In 2003, when California revised its death certificate, the rate jumped to 14.6. And in 2006, the last year for which data is available, the rate stood at 16.9……. “

Okay, so more women are dieing due to pregnancy related causes, but what about the ones that DON’T die?

“For every maternal death, there are 10 near misses; for every near miss, there are 10 severe morbidity cases (such as hysterectomy, hemorrhage, or infection), and for every severe morbidity case, there is another 10 morbidity cases related to childbirth,” Camacho wrote in an e-mail. “

Well, that is a broader picture, isn’t it?  There is more than just dead or healthy when it comes to every day life, so why not in the minds of the American Public when they think about this topic?  Many people do not take morbidity into consideration at all.

“So he set a rule: no elective inductions before 41 weeks of pregnancy, with only a few exceptions. As a result, Lagrew said, the operating room schedules opened up, and the hospital saw fewer babies admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit, fewer hemorrhages and fewer hysterectomies.

Wow, you mean like, healthy women were able to give birth to healthy babies if they weren’t rushed into “medically necessary” inductions or c-sections?!?!? No way!

All this, however, came at a cost: The hospital had to take a cut in revenue for reducing the procedures it performed. Lagrew doubts that any hospital has increased its C-section rate in pursuit of profit, but he does note that the first hospitals to adopt controls on early elective inductions have been nonprofits.

(Bolded is my emphasis)- So he DOUBTS that a hospital that is FOR PROFIT saw the potential for more $$ by adding on “medically necessary” c-sections and inductions?  Really?  Maybe this is the paranoid personality in me speaking, but I don’t believe that for a second.   Everything a hospital does whether it seems intentional or not, is designed for one purpose, MAKE MONEY.  It doesn’t matter if that hospital is for profit or not, this is the case.  I have worked in hospitals for a number of years, mostly non-profit’s, and even they have ways around the legalities.  They make deals with certian docs to provide unnecessary (yet $$ making) procedures in on-site clinics or procedure rooms.  The hospital gets the fee for use of the clinic and marketing (fliers in the cafeteria or walls) while the doc makes the $$ from the procedure.  One hand washes the other.

According to a report issued by the advocacy group Childbirth Connection, “Six of the 10 most common procedures billed to Medicaid and to private insurers in 2005 were maternity related.” On average, a C-section brings in twice the revenue of a vaginal birth. Today, the C-section is the single most common surgical procedure performed in the United States.

Can I guess what those procedures are?  According to this they are as follows:

1. fetal monitoring (I probably should touch on this)
2. artificial rupture of membranes to assist delivery (and this)
3. prophylactic vaccinations and inoculations (I started writing about this, but didn’t finish)
4. repair of obstetric laceration (aka, Episiotomy.  Oh, please don’t get me started on this)
   
5. Cesarean Section (Grrrr)
6. circumcision (I already wrote my feelings on this here)

“If all these guys were losing money on every C-section, well, what’s the old saying? Whenever they tell you it’s not about the money, it’s about the money,” Lagrew said.

You mean, like making money? Kinda like how all of those 6 up there are cash cows?  In general I have those procedures listed in order of  harm to the mother and or baby (least harm is #1) and necessity overall. With Miss G the first 5 were all billed for.  With Baby D we got out with only #4 amazingly (though I bet they charged for #1 even though I refused).  And I was only there for an hour before he was born.  Maternity in general is a HUGE revenue generator for a hospital.  Doing anything to the maternity machine that diminishes that revenue is going to be fought tooth and nail by both administration and most likely the department themselves.  Afterall, less $billed for= less $ in = less staff to take on the workload.

Well, at least they are starting to see what i have been looking at for years now.  The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? *sigh*

Laundry Detergent

Basic recipe:

3 parts Borax

2 parts Arm & Hammer Washing Soda

2 parts Arm & Hammer Baking Soda

2 parts Ivory soap (the bar version, ground/ chopped very fine)

So here I am again, trying to make my life more complicated, by making what I can easily buy at any store.  Why laundry soap?  Well, why not?  It is really easy, I had all the ingredients in the house.  The original recipe called for a much larger batch (8 cups borax…..) but I was not willing to start that big.  Plus, that much soap will never get used in our house.  For all the ingredients it would cost around $13 and would make enough soap to do around 1300 loads of laundry (1 tablespoon of the mixture per load).  Even if you double the soap used per load, that is still 650 loads, way more than would get done in our house in a year.  My All small and mighty bottle (supposedly 96 loads if used to line 1 for every load, we go to 1.5-2) has lasted 2.5-3 months so far.

So anyways, I made a small batch.  I had one bar of ivory that had been sitting in the closet for over a year.  It was very dry which made it just perfect for this use.  I used a butter knife on it to chop it into chunks, then put the chunks in my handy dandy food chopper (mini food processor) and let it chop till there was just powder left (note; you may want to cover your nose and mouth so you don’t breath this crap in).  I am not sure how well it would work on a newer bar of soap.  I did read about putting the chopped pieces in the microwave for a bit to dry them out.  I measured out the amount of powder it produced and came up with 2/3 of a cup.  So that is what I used to measure  my “2 parts”.  Basically it was 2/3 c washing soda, 2/3 C baking soda, 1 cup Borax, and 1 bar ivory soap.   All that got put into a 1 gal Ziploc bag and mixed up.  I had some lavender oil on hand so I added 15 drops of that in as well for a little fragrance (note: that may be a little heavy on the lavender for such a small batch).

I attempted a true trial of the soap, but it didn’t work out so well.  My snow boots are supposed to be white.  They were looking pretty um, NOT white so I thought I’d wash one in the homemade soap, and one in the All S&M (haha, S&M…).  Washed the dirtiest one in the new soap, hoping for a pristine white boot to appear in the end.  Well, not so much.  It was cleaner, but by no means white as it was when new.  I sat it on the radiator vent to dry as the next load washed.  Had similar results with the All soap, cleaner, but not white.  There were still definite dirty areas.  They both dried overnight and I kinda forgot about them.  That is till I went to put them on and they  had nasty yellow stains all over them.  Ick.  Apparently vinyl (or whatever this material is) doesn’t wash well.  All this begs hte question: Why would you make WHITE boots that couldn’t be washed?

Anyways, the homemade soap did remove peanut butter (and the oils) from a rag and spaghetti sauce from D’s shirt sleeves.  I still want to do a true wash test, but I a unsure of how to proceed.  I hate to get 2 similar things dirty like they do on the detergent commercials just for my own personal gratification, but I may have to.  It just seems so bogus when it happens in adds….

Granola Bar recipe

i think I ma going ot try this recpie this week. Probably be good breakfast for the kiddos (and ME!)

From http://crunchydomesticgoddess.com/2009/01/11/peanut-butter-granola-squares-recipe/ .

Ingredients:

4 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup whole wheat flour (or another kind of flour if you prefer)
1/3 cup ground flaxseed
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt (optional)

1 cup butter*
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter (preferably organic PB with no sugar added)

Directions:
Combine oats through salt in a large bowl. Stir to combine.

Heat butter through peanut butter in a sauce pan until all are melted.  Add melted mixture to the dry ingredients in the bowl. Stir to make sure oats are completely covered.

Spread the mixture into a 13 x 9 baking pan. Bake at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes. Let cool and cut into squares. Enjoy!

I made this recipe again, but this time used only 1/2 cup of butter and added 3/4 cup of mashed ripe bananas. This worked really well. It cut down the fat and the squares held together a lot better and were a lot less crumbly. And they are delicious!

I think I can substitute oil for hte butter and we have a banana that is just begging to be baked with at home

Milk substitute for the (new) allergy babe

I have been mulling over an idea for baby D for milk.  He can not have cow milk.  I am not comfortable enough with soy milk to have him drink it in any quantity either.  Also, we tried G on soy for 2 weeks and it had much the same reaction as dairy in her, so it probably isn’t a good idea anyways.  Miss G drank rice milk for a year till I found a store that carried Hemp milk in the area.  Rice milk is like really sweet, diluted skim milk.  There is very little in it nutritionally so while there is nothing BAD about it, it is not something I would choose as his only milk source I guess.  The store that carried hemp milk jacked the price up drastically and $5 a quart is just ridiculous.

Coconut Milk

"Whole" Cow Milk

So I have been mentally working on a combo recipe for him.  I know it will have full fat coconut milk in it.  I do need to test him on it first, but I am confident that it will be fine.  1 oz of coconut milk has 55-70 calories and 6-8g of fat, 5mg of calcium, and about 1 mg iron (depending on brand).  Calcium and Vit D are lacking in the coconut milk in comparison to cow milk, so that will have to be supplemented (good thing we have liquid vitamins).  I am thinking using a ratio of 6 oz rice milk (enriched version for the vitamins and such) and 2 oz coconut milk plus his daily serving of liquid vits (multi, calcium, vit D) will make up any liquids he may want/ need at day care.

The reason I have been musing on this subject is a simple one: I am not able to keep up with his demand at day care any longer.  It is sad, but it is true.  When D was around 7 months old I dropped from 2 pumpings a  day to one.  I went from getting 15 oz a day to 12 or so.  Not bad still.  I had a decent freezer stash, mom had some  at her house, and DC lady had a good amount as well.   He was taking 10-12 oz a day (2-3 bottles), but obviously some days he had more than normal. As time has gone on our freezer stash has disappeared.  I think I may have a few bags left at my house and mom has a few as well, but really, that is a pure emergency stash only, not the overflow that I had been confident in.  At work in my one pumping I am now getting only 8-10 oz a day.  It is just a little short for his needs.  Then if we leave the kids with a sitter I have to pump right before we go so that I don’t use up the next days day care milk.

I believe I stopped pumping all together at work for G when she was around 14 months old.  She was only taking like 5 oz a day of milk at DC by that time (though still getting PLENTY at night from the tap) so I tapered off over a 2 months period and was able to stop w/o much engorgement issues.  I still BF’ed her at night and all day on weekends till she was 23 months old (and I was 5 months pregnant with D) so it didn’t affect the duration of her nursing either.

In the last 2 weeks I have not pumped at work 2 times.  Once i was wrapped up in work and pretty much forgot till I was going home.  I did pump in the car that time. The second time was right on the heels of hte first.  I forgot the pump and horns at home, so it was impossible.  That time I went home, ate dinner, bathed the kids then pumped before putting D to bed.

So I have to go buy some rice milk (and hide it from Miss G who still occasionally asks about her milk) and do a trial run of hte coconut milk, then i iwll work up all the numbers and see if there is anything else i should be adding to this.  Truly, this is just a liquid substitute, not so much a mama milk substitute.  He nurses a lot, he is just thirsty.  I could have DC lady give him water, but that just seems so, urrm, lacking I guess……

Busy

Been very busy at work this last week +.  Trying to get a new system up and we are very behind.  Not only our faults, the vendor has a large part in the delay also.  But that just means we are crackin now.

I went out with T this weekend (and actually had a girls night out for the first time in like 4 years!  C and I went to a  surprise b-day party for C’s guitarist’s GF.  It was fun being an adult for a night.  Sunday was pretty lazy, just way too much laundry.  Hopefully noting is planned this next weekend.

A long time coming

Friday night my aunt S, cousin T and her kids D and J came for the night.  This is the first time T’s kids have meet G and baby D (her son is Big D for this post…). T was supposed to be off work Friday so we had figured on her meeting me on my way home from work then driving home with me so it would be easier for her to find our house.  Well, she ended up getting called in to work for another manager and didn’t get off till 7pm.  By the time they arrived (with a few bad turns along the way) it was after 11 pm.  Gianna was helping me get the house ready, so she was wide awake and wired.  Once we introduced everyone and got settled down, it was midnight.  Gianna finally went to sleep (more like passed out) and woke with the sun at 6:30 am like normal.  The kids and I made breakfast for everyone (sausage and spinach quiche and watermelon slices) and our guests woke about an hour later.  We had set up an air mattress in D’s room since he is only in there for 1/2 the night anyways.  So 2 adults and 2 kids on a queen size air mattress and a crib, it must have been tight though there were no complaints.

Everyone ate, and complimented the recipe.  Baby D ate a whole piece of the quiche himself, little piggy!  We talked and drank tea for a while.  I love that I have fellow tea drinkers.  A huge pot of coffee only had a few cups missing from C, while we drained a full tea pot of water.  T wanted a small tattoo (or 2) on her hands between her thumb and first finger with the kids initials.  c did that for her before he packed his stuff up for his tattoo party.  T was impressed that he didn’t charge her, but for something that small and family too, of course it was free.

J on Left, G on Right

We got the kids all dressed up in their winter wear and they went outside to play in the snow for a while.  G is used to playing outside by herself so having playmates was new for her.  Miss G showed T around her play area.  She showed her how to dig like a dog in the snow, attempted to climb a tree and the retaining wall, then they had a snow feast (white snow only, Miss G knows yellow snow is pee!)  T was nervous about them being outside by themselves, but with a retaining wall behind us and houses on the other 3 sides  (only our drive way sticks out really) they were pretty boxed in.  I did have to go retrieve Big D because he removed a glove and got cold, but as soon as he warmed up, he wanted to go back out.  They played till their cheeks were rosy red and their noses ran freely.  Even then it was a fight to get them back inside.  They could have stayed out there another hour I bet.

Snack time

Once they came back inside they wanted a snack.   So water (in Mickey M0use cups) and Cheddar bunnies it was.  Baby D kept trying to get in on the Cheddar Bunnies action, but with his recent (and still current) allergy eyes issues, we were not going to allow that.  Only a few made it to his mouth and I hopefully was able to remove them before full ingestion occurred.

Mom and Grandma arrived around 11 am. I think it is the first time she had meet T’s kids.  T has wanted to get down here to see the family, but something always seems to come up.  In true great Grandma style, she even brought a belated Christmas present for each of the littles.  Each kid got a beannie baby of some sort. Baby D promptly started sucking on his little snowman’s (er, woman’s?  It is wearing a skirt) face and hand.

The 3 older kids took off and started playing together really well in the play room. Miss G wanted G. GamMa to see her D@ra Guitar she got for Christmas. G. GamMa even rocked out a tune for everyone, much to our surprise!

Rockin' G.Grama

Cute baby Crack

Big D

So the adults and baby D got to sit around and talk and joke like we haven’t ever really.  It was a lot of fun.  C took the car to his tattoo party and removed she car seats in the process.  T gave me an excellent teaching opportunity when she mentioned moving J to a booster seat soon.  She is only 3.5 and less than 30 lbs, there is no way she is ready for a booster seat.  She can be harnessed till 5-6 y/o easily.  So our seats came inside and I did a show and tell/ brain dump of the info I have acquired on car seat safety.  I showed her how to tell if the harness is tight enough (not able to pinch the webbing horizontally) and why it is a bad idea to put kids in a car seat with their coats on and why we still have Gianna rear facing in the car.  While I don’t think I changed her mind on the coat front,  I did show her how to fasten the harness under the coat w/o removing it, then zip the coat over the harness.  I was able to pull the harness tighter by about 3″ once we did that.

Eventually it started to wind down.  We did take the opportunity to do a few group pictures of everyone.

The newest Grandma’s on the block

Baby D, G, Mom "Grandma", Aunt S, Big D, T

All the kids piled on their Great Grandma

G- 3 years, Baby D- 10 months, G.GamMa, J- 3.5 years, and Big D- 19 months

The 2 D’s being ever so sweet to eachother.

Sweet boys

Rememberance

I googled my maiden name and the 5th thing that came up was my grandfathers obituary.  It was 6 years ago on the 13th that he passed away.

Frank H. Somename (Obituaries)

Frank H. Somename resident of Glendale Heights for 44 years. Private services for Frank H. Somename, 78, have already been held. Mr. Somename was a Coast Guard veteran and one of the first trustees of Glendale Heights. He was the beloved husband of the late Kathleen; loving father of Paul “Peppi” (Judith) Somename; dearest grandfather of Wendie, Victoria (Dean) W@yne, David (Jill) YQung, Jean (Roy) Mr@z and Lori (Adam) Freide1; great-grandfather of seven; and uncle of many nieces and nephews.

He was preceded in death by his brothers and sisters. Arrangements were made by Cypress Funeral Home, Glendale Heights.

He did not have a service, he didn’t want one.  He was cremated and his ashes were spread over my step-moms garden  and at their boat launch at their Wisconsin house. He apparently had a heart attack in the shower or something similar.  My Great Aunt Marilyn has diabetes.  Every morning for as long as I can remember, they called each other to be sure the other was awake and functional, see what the days plans were and take it from there.  Well that morning Auntie Marilyn called, and called, and called.  No answer.  I don’t remember who, but she sent someone over to look in on him and found him in the shower.  That couldn’t have been a good sight.

It happened just before my 21st birthday.  I had surgery on my right wrist on the 14th to repair a TFCC tear caused by a patient falling on me when I was in school (internship actually).  All these completely random memories are twined with this time period.  I unfortunately did not value my relationship with my granddad enough to keep in contact with him after my Nama passed away.  I think it was just too painful for me.  But that was selfish, he didn’t have anyone around really and I was too self absorbed during those years to put forth the effort that I should have.  And now I can’t and that sucks.

My grandma (Nana) passed away when I was 13.  I am attempting ot find her obituary now, but that was really before the time of mass computer usage, so I am not sure how successful I will be.  So far I have found the date of her birth (May 10, 1928) and death (October 27th 1996).  She was 68 when she passed.  She had a strange array of symptoms that they never diagnosed.  It started with a lump on her back (like behind where the stomach is) that she was sent to physical therapy for.  Then they found growths of some kind in her stomach, liver, and spine.  Never diagnosed as cancer, though really, what else could it have been?  Whatever “it” was quickly spread to her brain.  From first problems to death was just over 9 months.  She was a wonderful little lady.  She had osteoporosis that gave her a dowagers hump something awful and I am sure it caused her pain, though she never complained about it.  At her tallest she had been 5′7″, but at death she was around 4′ 10″ or so.   I can’t even explain how much  I love(d) my Nana.  She was the connection to my Dad that was constant.  He may have been in my life technically, but his physical presence was spotty.  Hers wasn’t.  She was always there.  When I was sick and mom couldn’t be off work, I went to Nana’s house.  Every Christmas she would drop off garbage bags of carefully wrapped (in tissue paper no less) presents for me.  Once my sister was born (and even though she was actually of no blood relation) there was an extra bag for her as well.  She smoked till the last year of her life when she decided it would be a good idea to quit (then she got that undiagnosed illness).  She had a full set of dentures as long as i can remember and the first time I convinced her to remove them and let me see, she was really nervous I’d freak out.  I didn’t, they were interesting.

Midnight PAR-TAY!!!

Miss G had a party last night. Okay so, actually more like 1:30 am. How do I know it was at 1:30 am? Well, there were calls placed from my phone to C’s, and from his to mine. Good thing we were the last people we spoke to. My mom would have freaked out if we had called her at that time thinking someone was dead.

I came into the living room this morning and see Miss G passed out on the couch. On the coffee table is the sugar bowl, with a crusty spoon in it. And a banana with one bite out of it. And an apple with one bite out of it. And the paper towel roll unrolled on the floor. And her diaper had been tossed on the recliner. Her face, shirt and baby doll were covered in dried on sugar (she was sharing maybe?). I tried waking her up to get ready for day care, and she just would not wake up for anything. I ended up dressing her while she was sleep. She did protest her shirt (the sugar-crusted one) being removed, so she wore that again today . I had her in her coat, boots on and was carrying her to the car before she became conscious of what was happening.

I may have to break my “no buying online” resolution and get that gate I found a few months ago. This is ridiculous.

Allergy eyes

My poor baby. Now it looks like we beat him. His left eye is all swollen and crusty looking. G used to get like this when she got a mock sinus infection (since babies do NOT have sinuses), or if I slipped up with the dairy-free diet. I have had to convince DC lady T that he does not have Pink Eye. Her response? “anytime I told the doc that they had discharge they put the kids on antibiotics” Um, like that is a good thing? He does not have an infection, antibiotics aren’t going to help.

Miss G, 3.5 months

I tried benadryl last night as the other eye was getting involved too. This morning his eyes looked much better than they had the last 2 days, but they are not normal yet. At least the redness surrounding the eye lid and cheek is diminished and the crusties aren’t gluing his eye shut today. I found a picture of Miss G during her allergy eyes phase, before I realized what the problem was, and sent it to DC lady T.  Notice the left eye?  (side note, this is one of her looks as a baby that made her look like Tweety bird.  Giant forehead and a tiny face, so cute!!)

I do need to get a picture of him at this stage, more for future referance than anything.  I am glad it seems to be clearing up.  I am now 3 days dairy free, which means he is on day 2 of clean milk at DC.  Why is it so hard to stick to this diet for him when I could do it so well with MissG?  I love cheese.  Poor baby, selfish mommy….

An unstopable force meets an immovable object

Probably the best description of my current parenting style with Miss G.  We are both stubborn, very stubborn.

She refuses to say “please” and I want her to have better manners and not demand things all the time.

Her ideal evening is eating cookie and cereal on the couch while watching episode after episode of Calliou or Dora.  Eating in the living room is not allowed and on nights when C isn’t home, the TV doesn’t get turned on at all, save for maybe one show as I am getting D to sleep.

She likes baths, but screams bloody murder when I am attempting to get her hair wet to wash it.  Her hair is 1/2 way down her back (and so pretty when washed and brushed) so it must be not only washed, but conditioned too, then sprayed with leave-in conditioner and brushed.  It is a process that she hates.

She is a “big girl” and doesn’t use a diaper, but she still wets it every night, so it is a must for bed time.  She claims it is only a little wet so she doesn’t need it any more.

It is super frustrating.  I hate battling with her.  She told me last night that she wanted daddy “becasue he is nice”.  I said, “no, daddy is a pushover.  I am not going to give you cookies when D goes to bed if you have been a crazy child all evening, they are treats for good behavior.”  She didn’t like that idea much at all.

If I take a step back and look at this objectively I can understand her POV.  I’d love to sit on my butt and zone into my favorite TV show and eat cookies for a few hours too.  And she is only home for a few hours a day (wake time anyways) and decompression is necessary even for a 3 y.o., right?  Aaahhh, if only it were that simple.

Miss G is also obsessed with hair.  It usually manifests in her pulling my hair which drives me absolutely nutty beyond belief.  Last night before bed,  I got her all calmed down and she was acting very sweet.  She asked if she could hold my hair.  Feeling sentimental and very happy she asked and didn’t just grab it,  I agreed and dangled my hair in her face.  She rubbed it all over her face, smelling it and just loving it, for a solid 2 mins.  As I got up to leave she yelled “hey!” you have to give me a biiiiiggg hug!”  I said “Oh, I do, huh?!”  We just removed the railings from her twin sized bed so I could actually climb in with her, so  I did and laid on top of her and squeezed really tight.  And she farted.  And we both giggled like maniacs for 10 mins.  Ah, fart humor, timeless.