Green Options

Every 21 minutes a baby is stillborn in the US; 70 babies each day.

Scared? Get a medical device to track your baby’s kicks. This piece of electronic junk product records the number of kicks per day. And if your baby sometimes kicks noticeably less, you can totally freak out and head to the OB for an unnecessary appointment. Whee!

With marketing like

Help Mothers protect their unborn babies!

what’s not to love about the kickTrak?! I mean, besides using scare tactics to sell more useless stuff?

North Dakota officials prosecuted a new mother, 26-year-old Stacey Anvarinia, for breastfeeding while intoxicated.

Police charged the Grand Forks mother after receiving a domestic disturbance call and witnessing her nursing her 6-week-old daughter. Officers say she appeared drunk, but there’s no report of her blood alcohol content. They booked her on child neglect charges.

And for some reason, she has pleaded guilty to the felony charge. But don’t worry. She won’t have to register as an offender against children.

But she now faces 5 years in jail.

So what’s worse: separating an infant from her mother for half a decade, or making the mistake of BFWD?

A health organization is criticizing celebrity mothers who come out weeks after baby is born looking fabulous. Such dramatic weight loss is unrealistic and even unnecessary, said the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care. The German group is warning new moms not to hold themselves to these hot-bod standards.

Very strenuous exercise programmes soon after childbirth did not lead to extra weight loss. This means that women do not need to have a bad conscience if they take it easy in the busy weeks after giving birth.

Of course, he also stresses the point that women should not “eat for two” during pregnancy.

But here’s the problem with the images in the media:

The Endocrine Society, a medical group representing the research of hormones, issued an intake warning at their annual meeting earlier this month.

The group is concerned over bisphenol-A and similar hormone-disrupting chemicals, found in plastics, pesticides, and other products. It said in a statement that bisphenol-A is a

’significant concern for public health’ and that it’s important for consumers to take a ‘precautionary approach’ to limit their exposure.

This follows on the heels of a few more studies regarding BPA. First–and most worrisome–is the recent study that showed that human exposure to BPA is likely much higher than previously thought and much higher than deemed “safe” by the FDA. That study’s author, Dr. Frederick vom Saal, who presented his study’s findings at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, said of the chemical:

BPA is now known to be a potent estrogen.

Human and animal studies indicate it could be related to diabetes, heart disease, liver abnormalities, miscarriage and other reproductive abnormalities, as well as prostate and breast cancer

Other recent studies should have us all cutting out the polycarbonate plastic.

This post was originally posted at Nature’s Child, the site for sassy & sage natural parenting advice. And don’t forget to enter the Summer Essentials Contest while you’re there!

We all know someone who was thrilled when they learned they were pregnant. Yes, because they were bringing life into this world. But also because they could finally “eat for two” and let their diet go.

All of us with sense know that this is a pregnancy myth. You can’t actually eat for two and expect to lose the baby weight anytime in the next decade.

The eating “extra” may not be the best choice for every pregnant woman.

Pregnancy is not a time to eat twice as much, but twice as well.

Women who are already obese when they become pregnant may not need to gain “baby weight” as long as they and their care provider focus on a healthy diet.

This just proves it: Canadians are smarter than Americans, at least when it comes to birth.

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada has announced that c-sections are no longer recommended for breech babies!

This is contrary to common practice in North America, in which very few doctors or midwives will attempt a vaginal delivery on a breech baby.  A c-section is automatically dictated for these babies who want to come out feet first.  Canada plans to train doctors in breech vaginal delivery following the new recommendation.  Carla Wintersgill writes for Globe and Mail:

Since 2000, C-sections have been the preferred method of delivery in breech births. Studies suggested that breached births were associated with an increased rate of complication when performed vaginally.  As a result, many medical schools have stopped training their physicians in breech vaginal delivery…With the release of the new guidelines, the SOGC will launch a nationwide training program to ensure that doctors will be adequately prepared to offer vaginal breech births..The new approach was prompted by a reassessment of earlier trials. It now appears that there is no difference in complication rates between vaginal and cesarean section deliveries in the case of breech births…Cesarean sections, in which incisions are made through a mother’s abdomen and uterus to deliver the baby, can lead to increased chance of bleeding and infections and can cause further complications for pregnancies later on.

I gained a lot of weight with both of my pregnancies, and one thing I did religiously was drink lots of water and apply essential oils to my belly. The result:  I have very few stretchmarks that are not noticeable. Belli Elasticity Belly Oil is the perfect natural product for preventing stretchmarks during pregnancy.

Belli Pregnancy is concerned about the products women put on their skin while pregnant.

Most pregnant women know that what they put - or don’t put - in their bodies is important to the health of their baby…Most of us slather on layers of lotions and creams every day, but we don’t think about what might be being absorbed into our bodies through our skin. With a growing baby in your belly, this is a necessary concern.  There are many considerations one should take into account for pregnancy skin care products…Some products may contain ingredients that can potentially cause birth defects or fetal abnormalities…Belli is the only company in the world to perform teratology screening of our ingredients to help guard against birth defects.

Think a romantic meal of beef tenderloin with a side of potatoes sounds delicious? Maybe with a nice Bordeaux?  Perhaps it does (especially if it’s grass-fed beef!), but it may decrease your chances of conception.

A new study shows that men who want to be fathers should increase their intake of fruits and veggies and decrease their consumption of fatty foods like red meat and creamy dishes.

Men who ate healthy diets not only had faster sperm, they had more sperm in their semen. It was both a quality and quantity effect.

Dr. Jaime Mendiola of the University of Murcia, Spain said of his research:

In this study, we have found that people who consume more fruits and vegetables are ingesting more anti-oxidants and this is the important point.

We saw that, among the couples with fertility problems coming to the clinic, the men with good semen quality ate more vegetables and fruit than those men with low seminal quality.

There are obviously many factors that influence fertility, and this is only one.

Thomas Beatie was born a woman. “She” turned to “he” through sex-reassignment surgery and hormone treatment, but kept the uterus. Good thing for his family, too, as his wife Nancy was unable to give birth.

The family made news last year when they went on Oprah and in the LGBT magazine The Advocate to announce his pregnancy with the couple’s first child, a girl. They said they made the pregnancy public because,

Hiding a pregnant man is like hiding an 800-pound gorilla. Nancy and I wanted to tell our story from our own mouths before it got out.

Early morning on June 9, the family welcomed a baby boy through natural childbirth. His wife Nancy will breastfeed the child, as she did with their daughter. (Because natural birthing is so fabulous, even men want to do it!)

So how did they do it?

Dioxin exposure during pregnancy impairs the development of mammary glands during pregnancy and may cause women to not produce enough milk for their newborns, a new study finds.

Breast milk is an amazing food for babies, and breastfeeding has many benefits for both mother and child, including reducing the risk of heart attacks for mothers, reducing asthma risks for babies, and reducing anxiety in children. But up to 6 million women either can’t breastfeed, or don’t produce enough milk for their child, and dioxin in our food chain may be to blame.

In another odd study where correlation and causation seem very distantly related, researchers in Canada found that women who experienced morning sickness had children with higher IQs.

Researchers at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children say that these nausea-inducing bundles of joy later score higher on IQ tests.

And seriously, they say that the sicker the moms got, the higher the IQs.

It’s just one of life’s many tests, apparently.