Mom News
Two pre-teens deliver their mom’s baby
– From the San Francisco Chronicle
Faith and Jabari Sanders are but 11 and 9 years old. But with their mother screaming in pain, they calmly helped her deliver a baby brother.
They called their father and 911, talked things over with a dispatcher, got towels and even tied the snapped umbilical cord – which could have otherwise hurt their brother.
Both kids are still coming to terms with the events of March 9.
“I never thought that something like this could happen,” said Faith, 11, a fifth-grader at Brier Elementary in Fremont. “Usually, nothing happens every day. It’s the same-old, same-old. But this time something new and exciting happened.”
Jabari, 9, thought the birth was interesting for different reasons.
“I thought it was kind of cool and weird because he was born in a bathroom,” said Jabari, a third-grader.
Alana Sanders, 36, had given birth to three children, including her other daughter, Janelle, 2. She is known for having fast labors, said her husband, Geoffrey, 35. But even she was surprised by how rapidly things moved.
After he left for work at 1:30 a.m., she soon began having pains, Geoffrey said.
“She thought it was a bowel movement,” he said. “She sat down and nothing was happening as far as that was concerned.”
Soon it became clear the baby was about to come.
Alana Sanders told her son to call 911, so Jabari did. She told Faith to call her father to tell him to come back from Livermore, where he was delivering newspapers.
But things moved fast. Alana was still standing by the toilet. After only one push, 9 pounds and 4 ounces of baby Joseph came out and fell onto the floor.
A 911 recording obtained by KRON4 TV reveals that both children, particularly Faith, calmly worked between the dispatcher and her mother.
The dispatcher checked the condition of the baby and his mother, giving directions on how to clean newborn Joseph and urging Mom to lie down. When the dispatcher heard that the umbilical cord had snapped, she gave directions to Faith to carefully tie off the cord, which she did with knitting yarn.
“You did a great job,” the dispatcher said.
Alana Sanders was sleeping and unavailable for comment Wednesday. But Geoffrey Sanders said the events made him proud.
“As a husband, you always want to be superman in your family,” he said. “I wasn’t able to do that. But my kids were the superheroes this time around, and that’s fine with me.”
– To hear the 911 call, visit links.sfgate.com/ZJJZ.
Graco high chair recall
(AP) – 3 hours ago
Faulty screws can cause falls
WASHINGTON — The government is announcing a recall of some 1.2 million high chairs, saying they pose a fall hazard to children.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the voluntary recall Thursday involving the product made by Graco Children’s Products Inc., of Atlanta.
The regulatory agency said “screws holding the front legs of the high chair can loosen and fall out” and said cracking plastic brackets can cause the high chair to “tip over unexpectedly.” These tip-overs resulted in 24 reports of injuries including bumps and bruises to the head, a hairline fracture to the arm and cuts, bumps and bruises and scratches to the body.”
The CPSC said consumers should stop using the high chairs immediately and identified the recall product as “all Harmony-TM high chairs.” It said the product is no longer in production and said the model number can be located on the underside of the foot rest.
Graco issued a statement saying safety is the company’s top priority.
“We take great pride in the quality and safety of our products, and as such, we are disappointed with the performance of the Harmony High Chair,” the statement said.
“In the case of Harmony, we have worked closely with the CPSC to identify and provide an appropriate fix. We are confident that we have come up with a solution that will improve the performance of this chair.”
Look who’s talking! Rielle.
John Edward’s mistress agrees to a lengthy interview with GQ. Below are a few excerpts. For the interview in its entirety, go here.
I feel comfortable talking now, because Johnny went public and made a statement admitting paternity. I didn’t feel like I could ever speak until he did that. Because had I spoken, I would have emasculated him. And I could not emasculate him. Also, it is not my desire to teach my daughter that when Mommy’s upset with Daddy, you take matters into your own hands and fix Daddy’s mistakes. Which I view as one of the biggest problems in all female-and-male relationships.
I know he loves me. I have never had any doubt at all about that. We love each other very much. And that hasn’t changed, and I believe that will be till death do us part. The love doesn’t go away. It’s unconditional. It’s unconditional on my part, but our connection is profound. There’s a lot of passion there.
Because I had never experienced anything like what was flowing between us. I sat on the other side of the room. I wouldn’t go near him. And he kept saying [she mimics his southern drawl], “What are you doin’ over there? Come over here. I can’t even see you. Come closer. I won’t bite you.” I was just—there was sooo much attraction and sooo much… I want to say love, but it wasn’t love at that point. You know, it was just this, this magnetic force field like I had never experienced. It terrified me. Absolutely terrified me. And, um, I eventually walked over to his side of the room. [laughs] He was pretty relentless. And that’s all I’m gonna say on that! Now fade to black!
Vaccinating kids against flu protects entire communities
From Strollerderby:
A lot of people might look at the anti-vax folks and wonder why it matters if those folks don’t get their kids vaccinated. If their kids get sick because they aren’t protected, it’s no skin off anyone else’s nose, right? Wrong. A new study shows exactly the opposite: vaccinating kids protects the entire community.
Almost fifty Hutterite communities in Canada took part in a study that has pretty much proven the “herd immunity” theory in which vaccinating a portion of community (or herd) protects the unvaccinated members as well. “This is quite a definitive study, and it took a Herculean effort,” said Dr. Carolyn B. Bridges, a flu expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “My hat’s off to them.”
The Hutterites, like the Amish and Mennonites, mostly keep to themselves in close-knit farming communities in western Canada. This makes them ideal test subjects for studies like this. In half the colonies, children ages 3 to 15 were given flu shots; in the other half they were given a hepatitis A vaccine as a placebo. Less than 5 percent of adults and children in the colonies that received the flu vaccine caught the flu, but more than 10 percent did in the communities that received the placebo.
This translates into a 60% “protective effect” for the community at large, according to the study. Furthermore, although no responsible doctor or scientist would ever suggest such a thing, Dr. Bridges noted that the implications of the study are that administering flu shots just to children would protect the elderly as well as giving the flu shots to the elderly themselves.
So the next time someone asks why you care if they don’t get their kids a flu shot, just tell them you don’t want to get sick.
NIH to hospitals: Quit banning VBACs
From Medpage Today:
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BETHESDA, Md. — A National Institutes of Health consensus panel has recommended that pregnant women and their care providers use evidence-based decision-making to determine whether a trial of labor and possible vaginal birth after cesarean section (VBAC) would be appropriate. The panel also urged the medical community to reduce barriers to women who want to try a VBAC. “We are concerned about the barriers that women face in accessing clinicians and facilities that are able and willing to offer a trial of labor,” the panel noted in its draft consensus report. “We are concerned that medico-legal considerations exacerbate these barriers. We strongly recommend that policymakers and providers collaborate in the development and implementation of appropriate strategies to mitigate this problem.” The NIH convened the panel to address a 15-year decline in the number of VBACs. The issue gained prominence in 1980, when another NIH consensus panel issued a report debunking the common wisdom that women who deliver by cesarean must have cesareans for all subsequent children. The 1980 panel listed situations in which VBAC could be considered, and the number of VBACs rose through the early 1990s. But VBACs have steadily decreased since 1996, while cesarean deliveries have increased. In 1981, the VBAC rate was about 3%. It peaked at 23% in 1996 but declined to 8.5% by 2006. The 15-member consensus panel was asked to consider six questions:
The panel urged women and their providers to “use the responses to the six questions — especially questions 3 and 4, to incorporate an evidence-based approach into the decision-making process.” The panel noted that despite the decline in the number of patients with trials of labor, the vaginal delivery rate after a trial of labor has remained constant at approximately 74%. Race and ethnicity are the strongest demographic predictors of vaginal delivery after a trial of labor, they said. Although Hispanic and African-American women were more likely to have a trial of labor, they were less likely to have VBAC than non-Hispanic and white women, according to conference documents. Greater maternal height and body mass index below 30 kg/m2 are also associated with an increased likelihood of VBAC. The panel found varying degrees of evidence of harm to the mother or fetus following a trial of labor. For example, they found moderate evidence for a “clear increased risk of uterine rupture in trial of labor compared to an elective repeat cesarean delivery.” The panel noted that uterine rupture “can be catastrophic and remains the most dreaded short-term complication of a trial of labor.” On the other hand, they found a low level of evidence regarding the factors that increase the risk of uterine rupture, such as “classical” and low vertical uterine scars or a history of two or more prior cesareans. In terms of benefits of a trial of labor, the panel found moderate evidence of a decreased risk of abnormal placental position in women who underwent a successful trial of labor. The panel also found only low-grade evidence of harm accruing from a trial of labor, such as an increased risk of pelvic floor disorders. As for risks to the baby with a trial of labor, the panel found moderate evidence of increased perinatal mortality and low-grade evidence of increased fetal mortality, as well as insufficient data on the incidence of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy in cases of VBAC versus repeat cesarean sections. The panel also looked at the effect of professional association practice guidelines on the rate of VBACs. In 1999, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) released a practice guideline changing its earlier recommendation from “encouraging” VBAC to a recommendation that women should be “offered” a trial of labor if there are no contraindications. The guideline also said a trial of labor should be done only in institutions equipped to respond to emergencies and in settings where physicians capable of performing a cesarean are “immediately available” to provide emergency care. “Two recent surveys of hospital administrators found that 30% of hospitals stopped providing trial of labor services because they could not provide immediate surgical and anesthesia services,” the panel said. It urged ACOG to “reassess this requirement relative to other obstetrical complications of comparable risk and in light of limited physician and nursing resources.” One audience member said that some pregnant women are unfairly denied access to VBACs because their Ob-Gyns are discouraging the idea. “We’re not studying the problem because obstetricians are [obstructionist] in this process,” said Shannon Mitchell, director of BirthAction, a Tampa, Fla.-based organization that helps women obtain VBACs. “There is nothing in this document that reiterates I have the right to say No to a repeat cesarean section.” In an interview, Mitchell said that she was repeatedly told last year that she could not attempt a VBAC with her current pregnancy because she had had a cesarean section 22 years before, even though she had had three vaginal births in between. ACOG representatives who attended the panel meeting seemed generally pleased with the results. “The report in general is very good,” ACOG president Gerald F. Joseph, Jr., MD, said during public discussion of the draft report. His only suggestion was to strengthen the report’s comments on liability issues. Hal Lawrence, MD, vice president of practice activities at ACOG, said during the discussion that the panel did an “excellent job.” He defended ACOG’s 1999 guideline revision suggesting hospitals allow trials of labor only if physicians were “immediately available.” “We all realize the incidence of uterine rupture is rare, but the outcome is catastrophic,” he said. “If you want to save a child, you have to be much quicker” than required by a “reasonably available” standard, in which physicians need to be within 30 minutes’ transportation time to the hospital. Cathy Spong, MD, chief of the pregnancy and perinatology branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at NIH, urged the panel to explicitly state that VBAC is a reasonable option for women, noting that the draft report implied that conclusion in several places but did not state it outright. |
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Enough with the excessive sanitizing! It’s not effective, researchers say
How To Sell Germ Warfare
Can hand sanitizers like Purell really stop people from getting the flu?
By Darshak Sanghavi, from Slate
Our homes and workplaces, we’re told, are trying to kill us. Recently, a University of Arizona microbiologist named Charles Gerba, author of hundreds of scientific papers about household microbes, gave a terrifying lecture at the offices of the Food and Drug Administration. Gerba—who, incidentally, has a child with the middle name Escherichia—that’s what the “E” in E. coli stands for—explained that a kitchen sponge and sink are home to thousands of times more bacteria than a toilet seat. Plus, 10 percent of household dishrags contain salmonella. After playing with other children, toddlers have more fecal bacteria on their hands than does a person exiting a public toilet stall. Those toilets, by the way, aerosolize so many droplets with each flush that Gerba compares their dispersion to “the Fourth of July.” And every public swimming pool he’s ever tested has contained disease-causing viruses.
In response to these kinds of data, more than 700 products promise to help consumers kill bacteria, molds, and viruses in their homes and workplaces, from ultraviolet lights meant to kill toothbrush bacteria, to dishwashers that superheat silverware, to specially treated doormats. Three-quarters of all Americans use six or more antimicrobial products each day.
Even before the H1N1 outbreak, alcohol-based sanitizers like Purell enjoyed 53 percent annual sales growth, and Americans spent $117 million per year on them. With the advent of the H1N1 influenza pandemic last year, national germ-phobia kicked into even higher gear. The Centers for Disease Control’s flu information Web site recommends regularly disinfecting kitchen counters, bedroom furniture, toys, and any other “surfaces.” (In marketing terms, consumers were asked to increase their daily number of wiping events.) Public-health authorities advised exhaustive, frequent hand-washing with hand sanitizers to fight flu. Soap and sanitizer manufacturers targeted massive ad campaigns to encourage more frequent hand-washing. Such products, their makers promise, can help families stay safe from the filth around them. Purell’s slogan wistfully calls upon us germ-phobes, presumably paralyzed by fear, to “imagine a touchable world.”
Yet the data tell a less compelling story about sanitizers like Purell. In 2005, Boston-based doctors published the very first clinical trial of alcohol-based hand sanitizers in homes and enrolled about 300 families with young children in day care. For five months, half the families got free hand sanitizer and a “vigorous hand-hygiene” curriculum. But the spread of respiratory infections in homes didn’t budge, a result that “somewhat surprised” the researchers. A Columbia University study also found no reduction in common infections among inner-city families given free antibacterial hand soap, detergent, and cleaning supplies. The same year, University of Michigan epidemiologist Allison Aiello summarized data on hand hygiene for the FDA and pointed out that three out of four studies showed that alcohol-based hand sanitizers didn’t prevent respiratory infections. Then, in 2008, the Boston group repeated the study — this time in elementary schools—and threw in free Clorox disinfecting wipes for classrooms. Again, the rate of respiratory infections remained unchanged, though the rate of gastrointestinal infections, which are less common than respiratory infections, did fall slightly. Finally, last October, a report ordered by the Public Health Agency of Canada concluded that there is no good evidence that vigorous hand hygiene practices prevent flu transmission.
Why, then, do so many people think widespread use of hand sanitizers like Purell are the cornerstone of flu prevention? To be sure, hand-washing can save lives in medical settings. In 1847, Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that washing one’s hands with chlorine between deliveries practically eliminated fatal infections among laboring women. (His colleagues ignored him and later committed him to a mental hospital, where he was beaten to death by guards.) Today, numerous modern studies show that in randomized trials, meticulous hand-washing, when coupled with other infection control measures like surgical draping and universal gloving, reduce the rate of life-threatening infections during surgery and intensive care unit stays.
But in hospitals, outside of these clinical trials, just half of doctors and nurses regularly clean their hands before patient care, despite widespread publicity. More worrisome: In hospitals where massive educational efforts have increased hand-washing rates from 40 percent up to 70 percent, there has been no overall reduction in infection rates. Even in highly regulated places like hospitals, the promising benefits of hand-washing remain largely unrealized.
Now, that doesn’t mean we should give up on hospitals. But we need to be realistic about what Purell can do to fight flu in the home and in public. To begin, the influenza virus mostly spreads via tiny droplets in the air (for example, from sneezes)—not by dirty hands or surfaces—which limits the role of Purell. It probably wouldn’t matter even if flu transferred though hand contact, which is how most cold viruses spread. Though Purell kills them in the lab, hand sanitizers don’t stop their spread in the real world. The average child touches his or her mouth and nose every three minutes, and both adults and children come in contact with as many as 30 different objects every minute. Even hospitals can’t get staff to use Purell before seeing patients; it’s impossible for day care staff, parents, or teachers to wash a child’s hands 20 times each hour.
Purveyors of antimicrobial products are happy to indulge our worries about germs surrounding us. During the H1N1 pandemic, public-health agencies encouraged their marketing pitches despite evidence the products do little to help. It’s likely that hand-sanitizer users falsely believed they were protected from flu and thus deferred vaccination, which is by far the more effective way to prevent its spread. According to the Centers for Disease Control, only one in five Americans was vaccinated by early 2010—and just one in four health care workers and high-risk patients got the shot.
So you can believe all the germ hype and end up like the obsessive-compulsive billionaire Howard Hughes. Or you can follow the data and get a flu shot, wash your hands sensibly after using the bathroom and around meals, and stop wasting money on hand sanitizers.
Unless, of course, you work in a hospital.
Wanted: Dino Dash team leaders
Do you love the Museum of Discovery? Do you love Dino Dash?
Then sign up to be a team leader!
Find out more about how to be a team leader for Dino Dash Thursday, March 18, 5:30 p.m. at the Museum of Discovery!
Dino Dash and Discovery Fest is a family-friendly event whose proceeds benefit educational programs at the Museum of Discovery.
You don’t have to be a runner to help this event to be successful! Find out how to become a team leader on March 18, 2010 5:30pm at the Museum of Discovery Meet winning team leaders from past events. Meet Lilo the Dino Dash mascot. Learn about new team prizes.
Enjoy light refreshments
Know someone else who is interested in forming a team? Bring him/her!
Questions/RSVP to marketing@amod.org
More steps may be needed to treat asthma in children
Washington University in St. Louis reports on the results of a new study. Here’s an excerpt:
Children with asthma who continue to have symptoms while using low-dose inhaled corticosteroids could benefit from increasing the dosage or adding one of two asthma drugs, a new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions finds.
Results of the study, called BADGER (Best ADd-on therapy Giving Effective Responses), also may allow physicians to better predict which of the three options will help a patient the most.
Heart disease linked to number of births; two ideal
Reuters story via MSNBC
“Women having two births had the lowest risk of future cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Erik Ingelsson, at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, noted in an email to Reuters Health, while women having five or more births had the highest risk.
Prior studies looking at ties between number of births and women’s later risk of heart disease have yielded conflicting results. Most of these studies were small. Ingelsson and his colleagues looked for an association between number of births and heart disease risk in 1.3 million Swedish women after they turned 50.
The investigators found similar risks when analyzing a subset of nearly 600,000 women with complete pregnancy and birth records and at least one birth between 1973 and 2005. Taking into account pregnancy complications such as high blood pressure and pregnancy-related diabetes, and birth-related complications did not explain the link between number of births and later heart disease and stroke risk.
Pregnancy leads to marked changes in how blood flows in and through blood vessels, which can alter risk for heart disease and stroke. Ingelsson and colleagues say a better understanding of these changes may lead to a better understanding of heart disease and stroke in women.
During follow up lasting up to 23 years (average of 9.5 years), more than 65,000 heart disease-related events such as heart attack or stroke occurred, the researchers report in American Heart Journal.
Compared with women who gave birth twice (the lowest risk group), women with no, one, or three births had about 10 percent greater risk of future heart disease. The risk was 30 percent higher in women with four births and nearly 60 percent higher in women with five or more births.
The investigators found similar risks when analyzing a subset of nearly 600,000 women with complete pregnancy and birth records and at least one birth between 1973 and 2005. Taking into account pregnancy complications such as high blood pressure and pregnancy-related diabetes, and birth-related complications did not explain the link between number of births and later heart disease and stroke risk.
Pregnancy leads to marked changes in how blood flows in and through blood vessels, which can alter risk for heart disease and stroke. Ingelsson and colleagues say a better understanding of these changes may lead to a better understanding of heart disease and stroke in women.
Girl Scout cookie recall
Did those Lemon Chalet cookies smell or taste funny? Go to Strollerderby for the full story.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Girl Scouts won’t call it a recall, but if you bought a box of Lemon Chalet Cremes, you might want to call your local Girl Scout (or your daughter).
Little Brownie Bakers, one of the manufacturers for Girl Scout cookies, has reported costumers complained of an “off taste and smell from certain packages of Lemon Chalet Crème cookies,” so they’re giving you all refunds.
