Here’s my opinion for what it’s worth. I think home births are not the solution to what has shaped up to be a genuine crisis in maternal care in America. But the fact remains that home births are entirely appropriate for some people and there is no question that the thousands of excellent, experienced midwives who work tirelessly in support of women and babies would not be doing home births if they had women and babies dying on them! Here’s the deal: home birth is really only advisable given certain factors, including a low risk pregnancy and ready access to a back-up hospital. Please believe me when I tell you that home birth midwives and women who want to live and have their babies live, know this! So it’s not at all a question of what all women should be doing. And sadly, though Ricki Lake says she’s all about “choice,” her documentary—most of which I really loved—did go over the edge in terms of making home birth seem the only way a thinking person would go. It’s a great movie, so there’s no reason to alienate people who might support the idea but for so many possible reasons cannot have a home birth of their own.

Home birth isn’t safest for everyone. There’s no doubt. But does that mean the hospital “the safest” place for everyone to give birth?

But this is not it.

(found this bottle via the new Dwell magazine kitchen blog, which I'm reading even though I'm feeling somewhat disillusioned with their evolving brand message.)

Tests of tuna from twenty purveyors (high end restaurants and stores) produced such high mercury ratings that a good 1/3 of the fish could have been seized by the FDA. According to the readings, a single plate of tuna sashimi could exceed your maximum recommended mercury intake for a week. And that's not counting the yellowtail app or the toro scallion hand roll that finishes up the meal.

Mercury quotas are calculated for adults. My four year old is crazy for tuna sushi. I've been letting him have a piece or two every month or so, thinking how much mercury could be in one little piece? So much for that. Even a bite seems questionable when you're thirty-seven pounds.

I've been pretty tuna-avoidant for the past five years since I've been pregnant or nursing most of the time. Even when we went to Masa, I only got a half portion of the toro parfait. But we're a sushi-loving family... I can't just blow the whole thing off. I try to consult the NRDC's incredibly useful mercury in sushi chart when I can, often while sitting at the table (thank you, iphone).

And Sara Kate of The Kitchen (a fellow recent gestator herself) just wrote about Kona Kampachi, Hawaiian yellowtail that's supposedly toxin-free. I've got high hopes... and a lot of post-post-pregnancy cravings that need sating.

I learned about this website from Jennifer Block's Pushedbirth.com. Blocks' book, Pushed, was one of my favorite reads of the summer. She does an incredible job explaining how and why maternity care in the US is such a huge mess. It's actually a page-turner, which is pretty amazing for a book in which every other line has a footnote. Rebecca and I were happy to have met Jennifer in person last Friday night when we all appeared on the Joey Reynolds overnight radio show. It aired at 3 AM. Lucky for us it was taped.

How about this: From now on ALL HIGHSCHOOL STUDENTS are taught how breastfeeding works in either sex education or ninth grade biology. Take your pick. But make it mandatory. It's too exhausting for us to have a debate with a public that just doesn't know the facts.

Bill Maher on public breastfeeding, from YouTube (skip to middle at 2:59):

We’re a generation of over-coached parents. How can we trust our instincts when we are bombarded with so many opinions and conflicting data? Getting just the right amount of information in the age of information might just be the key to success. Federer is not without coaching. He has had the best training. But then at a certain point he walked away. And let himself be the authority. When you trust yourself you’re less likely to screw up. Or second guess. And you’re more likely to feel great about what you’ve accomplished. So if we are to apply to the Fed Factor to parenting it would go like this:

• Information and opinions should be in service of your instincts. Read the basic spread of info and walk away. Your ability to adapt and think on your feet will be undermined if there are too many voices in your head.

• Never be smug about success. Accept that as a mother you are never “done.”
You won the Grand Slam today (the baby slept through the night), but there are other Grand Slams (nights) to come.

• Acknowledge your work. Fed is not afraid to say “I played really well.” There’s no false modesty. There’s no, gee wiz. You are working hard. Own it!

• Wear clothes that fit. You are busy (playing the US Open/raising kids), you should not have to deal with a wedgie.

Ahh...  the skateboarding, the hipster kids, the basement in the 3 million dollar brownstone are all so easy to mock and, well, envy. But come on! I listened to "Kids in America" as a pre-teen and wore new wave boatnecks. And I performed. It was Annie Get Your Gun rather than the Gun Club,  but still the 8th graders I partied with were all about putting on a show. Aw shucks, it's such an innocent time- right before the other (adolescent and crushingly self-conscious) shoe drops! Makes perfect sense and frankly the Care Bears are WAY sweeter to these ears than The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow. AND music is marketed to kids! Why not let them in on the action? OK,that's my defense. Somehow I felt I needed to mount it even though the kid rock trend is doing just fine without me.

... I found myself drawn to other "attractions."

via Living in Andyland

2. Burt's Bees peppermint foot lotion. My relaxing Good Wife Foot Massage backfired into a group gag session. What the hell do they put in that stuff?

It was strange to return home from this groovy wonderworld to the (very minor and possibly contrived) controversy of Babble's pot mom story . The Three Martini Playdate is a well-marketed parenting ethos, complete with a sequel. But one toke, and the pot mom gets, gotta say it, stoned by the villagers. I'm not suggesting that piece would have been any better received had she said she was taking swigs of vodka out of a flask…or maybe I am. Cocktails are the acceptable freedom of autonomous adults. Pot is for the young and irresponsible. A glass of wine or two? Of course, mommy's gotta unwind. But no one's going to say that being high around your kids is ok. We just don't live in that kind of world. But we don't live in the kind of world that people who chastise mothers who smoke talk about either, where everyone sits in lifeguard chairs waiting at the ready for a threat.

In this world, parents wouldn't be impaired or distracted in any way. No phone calls, no checking email, no cooking dinner. True, these things don't affect your nervous system. but they certainly affect your attention. And don't they affect your response time? Many of the angry mobsters railed at the idea that as a parent, you need to be ready to act at any instant. What if that instant happens while you're finally on the phone with the insurance company after twenty minutes on hold? Or while the UPS guy's buzzing, or your office suddenly needs a file that you swear was right here on your desktop yesterday? Pot may impair your reflexes, but from what I can remember from my own wild oats, whenever something scary happened while I was impaired, the buzz vanished instantly.

Although my parents were less hippies than "hippie style", there was some passing of joints around the Passover seder. Oral history has me arbitrating the order of smokers at a Tanglewood concert circa 1973.* I have not repurposed my son's preschool bossiness in such a manner and have no intention of making pot smoking part of his family experience...especially not after my just-say-no-fueled confrontation of my mom, at the aforementioned seder table.) Using drugs of any kind to "get through" something (parenting or otherwise) is a semi-questionable situation. While neither of us here at thenewmom has personally smoked pot in quite awhile, we do have a deep respect for its benefits (from a purely hypothetical/historical standpoint). There must be a reason that stoned people and children have a shared appreciation of things. Could shared appreciation lead to more attention, rather than less? They recently discovered that driving while talking on the phone is actually more dangerous than driving drunk.

So who knows?

*my mother would like you to know that she "hardly ever smoked pot". Also, she says, it was the time.