Author: A Mama's Blog

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Cole Mothering Parenting

Parenting Mistakes

My sister wrote a blog post about a parenting mistake that she had recently made with her 17-month old daughter.  My sister was trying to get her to eat, and she wouldn’t.  She started throwing a fit, so they put her in time-out.  Turns out, my little niece was only throwing the fit because she didn’t like the tuna fish, my sister was trying to get her to eat.

My sister is a first-time mom, and of course, we all make mistakes like this.  I’ll even let you in on a little secret, little sister…we keep making mistakes even with our second and subsequent children too.

My parenting mistake was on Tuesday night.  I was having a hard time falling asleep, and I had to be up before dawn- like at six for work on Wednesday.  The last time I looked at the clock before falling asleep, it was 2am. 

I woke up at 4:30am, and heard Cole crying a bit.  Sometimes he does this in his sleep, and I usually wait a minute or so, and nine times out of ten, he just goes back to sleep.  Since I had only been sleeping about two and a half hours, I was sooo tired.  I tuned out his cry, and figured he would be back asleep in a minute or so.

As I felt myself falling back to sleep, I could still hear him fussing around.  The next time I woke up, it was a full half-an-hour later, and now Cole was crying out, “Mommy, Mommy!” He was really loud, and upset.  He had not gone back to sleep, and I really resented having to get up to see what the problem was.

When I got to his room, he was standing up in his crib, just sobbing, and saying, “Mommy, Mommy,”  It broke my heart.  I thought he had, had a bad dream.  I picked him up, and he was SOAKED.  He was wet from the top of his shirt, to the bottom of his pants.

Clearly he had, had a bed wetting accident.  To top that off, it was a bit cool in the room, and his blanket was wet too.  I felt awful.  My little boy was soaked from top to bottom in pee, and I couldn’t be bothered to get up to check on him.

I cleaned him up, changed his sheets, and he was eager to get back to sleep.  Before I put him back in his bed, he put his arms around my neck, kissed me and said, “Love me Mommy.”  He says ‘love me’ instead of ‘love you,’ but that just made me feel worse.  He wasn’t trying to interrupt my sleep- he just wanted out of his wet pajamas.

Parenting is like driving to someplace without a map.  Sometimes you nail it right on, and sometimes you hit a bump or two, or three, or more, along the way.  Sometimes you just end up, flat-out lost.  I think about episodes like this, and wonder if this will seem like child’s play, when my boys are teenagers, and we are dealing with very complex issues.

Eventually, even if you are lost for a while, you figure it out, and get going again- ready for the next trip down the parenting road.

Categories
Breastfeeding Current Events

Breastmilk in Ice Cream?

A news station out of Vermont, claims that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) sent a letter to Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, asking them to use breastmilk in their ice cream, instead of cow’s milk. 

Evidently PETA decided to make this request because of a Swiss restaurant owner, who will be purchasing breastmilk from nursing mothers, and using it place of cow’s milk in 75% of items.

When I first read this, I chuckled.  Obviously PETA’s angle is using human milk would be better for the cows.  On one hand, there is a saying, human milk for human babies, cow’s milk for baby cows.  In theory, isn’t human milk better for humans?  After all, we are the only species who drink another species milk.

It is a given that breastmilk contains antibodies to protect babies from countless diseases and illnesses.  However, in recent years there have been reports that donor breastmilk has helped adults with some illnesses. 

From a Mothering Magazine article, discussing the benefits to adults:

Besides healing common minor afflictions, breastmilk has recently been in the news for helping to treat more serious illnesses. Adult cancer patients have been drinking breastmilk in an attempt to boost their immune systems and cope better with the side effects of chemotherapy.2 While this is not a common practice, a milk bank in California has supplied a group of pioneering patients with breastmilk for the past few years. One lucky recipient of this donor milk, Howard Cohen of Palo Alto, California, strongly believes that ingesting breastmilk daily has helped his prostate cancer go into remission.3

Donor milk is used to treat a variety of health problems. I spoke with Pauline Sakamoto, RN, MS, executive director of the Mothers’ Milk Bank in San Jose, California, about some of the other ways breastmilk benefits people. “Historically, human milk has been used for diseases and health conditions of adults and children and as a superior food for babies. These folk cures have been tested throughout time. Currently, there has been more interest in the scientific community to test the components of human milk’s effect on different health problems that plague us today. Hopefully, in the near future, we will validate the incredible power that our body has to promote growth, heal itself, and preserve its integrity via human milk.

Breastmilk may even kill cancer cells. In 1995 physician and immunologist Catharina Svanborg and a team of research biologists at Sweden’s Lund University discovered in breastmilk a protein compound, alpha-lactalbumin (they gave it the acronym HAMLET), that selectively induces apoptosis in tumor cells.4 In other words, HAMLET makes cancer cells commit suicide. In fact, it has killed every type of cancer the researchers have tested it against. HAMLET has also been used to successfully treat virally infected warts, which were reduced by 75 percent in volunteers who received daily treatments with an ointment containing the protein. The same viruses that cause warts are also linked to cervical cancer, genital warts, and some types of skin cancer.

Kellymom.com also has a page called Healing with Breastmilk, which has links to several articles and studies of medicinal uses of breastmilk. 

Just like cow milk, human milk has to be sterilized for safety when being used as donor milk.  Personally, I don’t think there would be any more risk from human milk than cows milk, if proper sterilization processes occurred.  But from a practical standpoint, I think this is a idea that would never fly.

Currently, it is illegal for women to sell their breastmilk, so any milk given to Ben & Jerry’s (or any other food establishment) would have to be done as a donation.  Furthermore, in order to replace all cow’s milk with breastmilk, there would have to be a lot of donors.  It is hard enough at times to make enough milk for your own baby, let alone for donation.

I know some mothers who have donated their surplus of breastmilk to milk banks, for babies who need it for medical emergencies.  This is a very loving gift they give, and the mothers who do this are not paid.  I would like to think that mothers who donate their milk, would be more likely to donate it to a milk bank for critically sick babies, than to Ben and Jerry’s so they can make ice cream.   

Suppose the industry could find enough women to donate their milk.  Sadly, I think most people are grossed out by consuming human breastmilk.  In this society, we are used to consuming animal products, but we are not used to consuming a human product like breastmilk. 

While PETA is thinking out of the box on this one, I think it will be a very, very, long time before we start seeing breastmilk replacing cow’s milk in dairy products.

What do you think?  If human milk was pasteurized/sterilized, would you buy a dairy product with breastmilk in it?

Categories
Activities Household

Under Contract

If you remember a few months back in our house hunting,  we had found the one, but the sellers weren’t interested in selling it, so we were not able to get it under contract.

Since then, we have looked, looked, and looked some more at houses in the town we are currently living in, and also in nearby surrounding towns. We were coming up empty.  Either the houses were too small, needed major remodeling, or we just couldn’t find what we were looking for. 

I had an idea that house shopping would be like wedding dress shopping- you just know the minute you spot that perfect wedding dress.  I would see pictures of houses for sale on the Internet, and from the pictures they looked promising.  I knew the minute we drove up to a house, it would be the one. 

Uh, not really.  After two months, we were not finding what we wanted: a house that had- at least three bedrooms, a back yard on the bigger side, and room in the house to grow: translation- a basement, oh yeah, in our price range, in a neighborhood that we liked.

Evidently this is harder than I thought.  We found a house in August, that was almost the one.  It was in a nearby smaller town.  It was a few years old, but had only been lived in for a year.  It looked almost brand new.  We were really close to making an offer on it, but we hesitated.  It would have been fine for us now, but as the boys grew, it really didn’t have any more room to grow.  We both felt like we would outgrow it in five years, and it felt like we were settling for something we knew wasn’t right, but hoping it was.  

So we passed on it.  The evening we decided to pass on the house, I was checking the listings again, and a brand new listing caught my eye.  It was in the same neighborhood (that was our first choice) where we had tried to buy the first house.  We set up a showing right away.

While looking through the house, we both just knew it was the one.  It had everything we were looking for, with a few extras.  However, nothing is perfect.  The house was getting ready to be foreclosed, so it needed some work.  It needed to be cleaned, painted, new floors and carpet.  It needed a little more work than what we were hoping for, but that was the only negative.   

We made an offer a day later, which turned the deal into a short sale. This was in the middle of August, and we had to wait for the banks holding the mortgages on the house to approve our offer.  As of last week, we were still waiting.  We technically didn’t have a contract, because we didn’t want to start spending money on the inspection, mortgage application fees, etc., until we were sure the banks would approve the offer.

Last week, we were still waiting on the final bank holding the first mortgage, which is the no-brainer, because they would be paid in full.  We didn’t understand what was holding up their approval.  Turns out, they needed a signed contract to assure them, that the sellers really would be selling the house.  So as of last Thursday, we were officially under contract!

Hopefully the bank will get the approval processed- they already said they would, once we had a contract, and once they do that, we will close within 30 days.  But in the meantime, no one else can come along and make another offer on the house, while we wait for the bank. 

We are trying not to get too excited until we close (because you never know what can happen between now and then), but we definitely just got one step closer to moving.

Categories
Current Events

Political Bumper Stickers & Signs- Yes or No?

(Cross-posted on BlogHer)

It must be election season, because I see more and more political bumper stickers popping up on cars, and signs in yards.

I am uncomfortable pasting a sticker on the back of my car, announcing who I am going to vote for, or whom I am supporting in this (or any) election.  On one hand, I understand why people do it- they are excited about their candidate(s), and want to make a statement. 

But on the other hand, I realize that some people take elections very seriously, and it kind of scares me if I would happen to come in contact with someone who, let’s just say wasn’t supporting the candidate I was.   

There is that old saying, never to discuss politics or religion, and I understand why.  Politics is one area, where people just have strong feelings, and a lot of times it is in black and white- no middle ground.  The attitudes I have found more likely than not, have been if you are voting for X, you are “right,” but if you would even consider voting for Y, you are “wrong.”   

I have had very few political conversations with people who support their candidates strongly, but can understand why someone else would want to vote for the other person, or the other side.  It doesn’t matter if we are talking Democrat or Republican, Independent, or Libertarian- it happens in every political party.

If I put a bumper sticker on my car for the candidate I believed in, there are going to be people who don’t think that is the “right” choice.   Would my car be vandalized in a parking lot?  I have had my car keyed a few times, for a lot less than having a political bumper sticker on my car.  Would I be subjected to road rage?  I don’t know.

Another issue for me, I don’t want to have my political beliefs become a barrier between the people I know.  I am guilty too, of doing what I just wrote about above.  I met a really nice lady the other day, and we happened to be pulling out of the same place, at the same time, and I saw her political bumper sticker on the back of her car.   Five minutes before that, the thought of which presidential candidate she was supporting, hadn’t even crossed my mind, but now I found myself thinking about it.  If I had, had the opposite candidate’s sticker on my car, what would she had thought about me?  Would it, present a barrier in us becoming friends?  I don’t know. 

If feel this way about bumper stickers, then you can probably imagine that I would never in a million years, put a political sign in my front yard!  What if none of the neighbors supported my candidate?  Would I be the neighborhood outcast?  Would my house be vandalized?  What if the candidate someone was supporting didn’t win?  Would they remember my house displayed the “wrong” candidate’s sign?  Would I be compromising my family’s safety?

I live in mid-size town, and every election year, there are reports that political signs get stolen and vandalized.  It happens to signs from both political parties.  Unless it is just a bunch of kids, not knowing what they are doing, obviously some Republicans are damaging and removing signs from yards supporting the Democratic candidate, and vice-versa.  What would it take, for this to go one step further?  I don’t know. It just isn’t a risk I want to take with my family, my house, or my car.

Finally, call me old-fashioned, but if you have read this far, you have probably noticed that I haven’t said which candidate at this point, I believe I will vote for.  And I’m not going to.  Not in this post, or in any post.  I firmly believe that everyone has a right to decide for themselves, and they are capable of making that decision, on whom they are going to vote for.  I don’t think it is anyone else’s business, whom I am going to vote for.  That is the whole reasoning behind casting a secret ballot- you don’t have to tell if you don’t want to.

Chances are, you know or have a pretty good idea who you are going to vote for.  I doubt revealing who I am probably going to vote for, will change your mind, and I don’t really see any great things coming from telling someone who I am going to vote for, only to find out they are going to vote for the opposite person.  Awkward at best.

So now you know that I am a definite No, on sporting political bumper stickers and signs, what do you think?  Do you have an Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin bumper sticker on your car, or a sign in your yard?  Or are you like me, and would never do this?

Categories
Activities Cole Ryan

Wordless Wednesday- One Last Sprinkler Day

Today it was in the mid-80’s, and after Ryan and Cole had been playing outside for most of the morning, they were hot.  They asked if they could play with their sprinkler ring.  Since days like this are fading fast, I thought it would be one last time this year they could play in the sprinkler.  I’ll let you decide if they had fun:

      

(You can click on the first two pictures to see them larger).  Now go to Wordless Wednesday, to see all the other pictures.