momsRising.org on health, healthcare

Insurance Company: Rape Survivor? Nope, We Won’t Take Her

Childbirth as a Pre-Existing Condition

Rub a Dub Dub: Watch out for chemical-induced rashes in the tub (A's got that sensitivity)

Save Our Mac & Cheese

Why Is There a Weed Killer in Your Drinking Water?

Followers

Leadership this, leadership that. It seems Americans want to make leaders even out of their preschoolers.

Oftentimes the US has singled out the leader of a country in the global South, disregarding real flaws, and given him/her its full support only to have this bite it in the behind eventually.

I wonder if, being so concerned with growing and finding and supporting leaders (incidentally a word which lacks a good translation in several languages), the US has not developed a certain blind spot.

I wonder if, any country, Afghanistan included, can stand on its own without legions of participants -- women and men, hard-working and full of integrity who go about their (civil servant or not) jobs and their lives and taking care of their families, being the cement of the nation, and never shining in any spot light.

The generators being unreliable and all.

a hop and a skip

The area's under much construction to reduce congestion. Reading up on public transit options and literature brings up an interesting line.

On average, Americans are willing to walk 1100 feet for mass transit - this is not Europe.

Indeed, it isn't.

provocateur

"Anti-Abortion Provocateur Takes Aim at Obama" ran a story from Women's eNews.

A minister caused a firestorm last month by calling on followers to pray to God to kill the president.

WHAT?

Besides being completely immoral, unchristian, and as far as I can tell, stupid. Is that even legal? Even if it may not be intent to kill, it's clearly intent to have someone be killed.

And why is the national media giving soapboxes to this nutcase?

DTaP

I cannot believe we do this to infants (at 2, 4 and 6 months typically per CDC guidelines).

Just got my booster shot in the shoulder for Tetanos, Diphtheria and Pertussis. I'm so sore I can't even lift my left upper-arm.

YOUCH.

Finally! Maternity Health Benefits Make Dollar Sense (not to mention moral sense)

Gender discrimination is rampant in the individual insurance market and the treatment of pregnant women is the leading example.

In most states individual-market insurers are allowed to deny coverage to pregnant applicants. Even in states where companies must issue a policy, they are allowed to consider pregnancy a pre-existing condition and impose a waiting period for maternity services, which denies vital pre-natal care.

"I wouldn't qualify for an individual policy because I am an ovarian cancer survivor," DeLaurio said in an interview. "Women who have had a previous Caesarean section also may be excluded. Nine states allow individual insurance companies to deny coverage to survivors of domestic violence."

In most states, women pay more than men for identical coverage in individual market insurance plans, even for plans that don't cover maternity care.

in Women's eNews Reformers Say Maternity Benefits Make Dollar Sense.

The Elders' view of the Middle-East

An interesting organization, The Elders, definitely one that I want to be inspired by.

Latest statement is an article by "elder" Jimmy Carter on their View on the Middle-East, a preferred two-state solution, and the massive ghetto that Gaza has become.

the hygiene hypothesis

An interesting article from ParentMap on the exponential rise of food allergies in children (peanut allergies doubled in five years).

Two leading hypotheses to explain the rise of food allergies, particularly in American children:
- the hygiene hypothesis: Kids used to grow up around more germs from playing in the dirt, and from no Purell. Their bodies now are insufficiently exposed to fairly harmless germs, and they overreact to what should be harmless, namely certain foods.
- the American diet hypothesis: Kids in the US are exposed to too much processed food and genetically modified foods, which their bodies don't recognize as positive things, and try to fight off. Their conclusion: if your grandmother wouldn't have put it on the table, don't.

Makes me feel vindicated in my laid-back (European?) approach to cleanliness; yet additionally concerned that I'm raising them here...

Flix

Netflix tells me I like dramas "featuring a strong female lead" - who knew this was even a category? but more importantly, do you think they keep track of and recommend "dramas with weak female characters only" ? ;)

I've taken an unexpected stumble down the path of getting more acquainted with period films based on nineteenth century British novels. And I find I can't stand Dickens. The stories make me feel as though I'm watching some old version of the silly day time soaps where everyone has a secret twin brother abducted at birth, develops a bizarre and rare medical condition, lands a humongous inheritance unexpectedly, falls in love with their half-sibling unknowingly, or all of the above in any chronology. Too contrived, too over-the-top for my taste.

misc

NPR story on new machine which can republish out-of-print books - I suppose I admit to geeky bookishness when I say it sounds very exciting.

Also, thought-provoking: is the great increase in murder-suicides (the father kills the whole family variety) a sign of a culture's twisted notion of manliness?

strawberries

Do you say strôh-breez or straw-bay-reez? Or is it simply a UK vs. US thing?

Lysistrata

Did you know several women's rights movements have used sex boycotts - including to demand an end to war? read on...

Gamins

Europeans have a complicated relationship to Americans, riddled with jealousy - and contempt. And often what they reproach them is to be "des grands gamins" - big kids.

I think the analogy has a few parts:
- only living for the here and now - with no regard nor interest for past or future - no knowledge of history, no sense of historical perspective wrt American hegemony. But also, living for instant reward, and instant gratification (poor impulse control - consumeritis?); having no desire or will or ability to delay gratification for perhaps more interesting reward or outcome.
- no sense of humour. or at least no dark, no caustic, no second degree sense of humour. no appreciation for irony. In general of course with large caveats. Also, crass humor a la Beavis and Butthead, and below the belt or physical humor, doesn't count. (how different is that from thinking Americans are a little dumb?)
- no appreciation for nuances or moderation or balance. all is black and white.fabulous or awful. prozac or clinically depressed. overweight or eating disorder. evil or great. for or against us.

Thoughts?

The home lifecycle: laundry, cooking and cleaning

- doing the pie crusts and freezing the extras while brushing my teeth and checking on the eldest who's in the long process of falling asleep
- sweeping the upstairs while the chunky mini E is in the baby sling to try to get her to nap despite Awful Horrible teething
- menu planning on a scrap of paper on the fridge mess, based on current fridge contents and current cravings, to keep ahead when dinner time rolls around and not have to start staring at the contents of the crisper to find a source of inspiration
- meal cooking in the mornings so that at night when I am working from home and trying to hide from the youngsters who are under the care of the nanny no unfortunate encounter and total loss of productive time occurs
- putting the purple school library bag by the garage door on sunday nights, loaded with the school library books, and emptying the back of the car to make room for carpool boy and carseat
- running a laundry of diapers on the way out to school in the mornings
...

Whether it's labelled multi-tasking, domesticity or hard working, what I wonder is this

When did we forget that it's a learning process? Not only are we not born with the ability to know what laundry schedule works best in a given home (mostly Mondays and Friday here, plus washable diapers whenever), but we don't even learn it while growing up anymore - so busy are we with thrilling homework and busy afterschool activities and, well, tv.
We spend a bunch of years getting a degree in school; do we honestly expect to know how to run a home with any number of people and any amount of loss of sleep without trial and error?

I pompously declare the importance of relearning this. And being humbled by the experience.

visual dictionary

So very cool : a mosaic visualization of all nouns in the English language

endif

The news come in from around the world - 3 friends miscarry in the last month. The enormous grief, for them, for me also - for the past-, for the knowledge of the weight they'll carry forward.
And yet several others of my dear friends are happily expecting.

Reconciling that, holding both in my heart side by side, without making one count less or more because of or despite of the other.

Talk to me, Doc

Welcome back.

If you want to maintain your faith in medecine, I do not recommend moving to a different country. If doctors knew what they were doing, then how can their methods and treatments be entirely different from, and incompatible with those of their counterparts across an ocean? And how come the treatments in a country seamlessly integrate with the pharma industry's offerings in that country?

Simple case in point: no.1 most ingested drug by infants and children in the US? Tylenol. Readily available -- in every grocery store, in fact -- in the U.S. but not in France.
No.1 most ingested drug by infants and children in France? Doliprane (also a fever and pain reducer). Not available in the US.

And you'll also find yourself trying to arbitrate between recommendations and drug treatment A - prescribed in say, France, for 3 months to try to curb your child's endless bouts with ear infections - (nota bene: the definition for ear infections is actually not the same in both places); and treatment B, also known as nada, prescribed in say, the US.

Additionally, how can the list of supposed aggravating factors for, oh, ear infections, in the US have nothing in common with the list of aggravating factors in France, except for smoking, which is a non-issue because I gave that up years ago?

It'd be all ironic and I'd be able to laugh along with Alanis if my girls' ears and pains and sleepless nights (and my sleepless nights) and their ability to hear and speak properly weren't in the balance .

Can you sense the frustration? ;)