We ♥ Baby!

Babycenter.com is a website I check every so often for updates on our little Bean’s development. Today, I came across this article about controversy over Ricky Lake’s movie about home birthing. Dan and I watched her documentary several weeks ago and thought it was great. Check out the trailer here:

If it weren’t for the medical industry being controlled by insurance companies, I would opt for a home birth. Alas, in order save money we’re going to be having the baby at the hospital. Luckily, the practice we chose has several midwives on staff. We’ve elected to get care from the midwives, which means that one of them will attend the birth, not an OB. At least we had that choice, as many do not.

But I digress! Not surprisingly, the AMA has come out and released an official statement about how the safest place for a woman to give birth is in the hospital and how when a woman chooses home birth, it increases her risk of hemorrhage, etc. I say HOGWASH! Of all developed countries, the US has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates, and as Ms. Lake so clearly points out, this is precisely because of hospital intervention. The countries with the lowest rates are the countries in which home births are standard. What’s more dangerous to women are unnecessary C-sections, episiotomies, etc. I was so pleased to see that the majority of the comments under the article on Babycenter.com supported this viewpoint! Score one for the little folk!

This video, while old, is still totally relevant today. It shows how natural it is for children to mimic everything they see adults do, even the stuff we wish they wouldn’t.

For me, this is probably the most poignant example of why our society is so bass ackwards in that violence is so commonplace in the media, whereas there are strict limitations on showing sex, or even naked bodies. Even cartoons and other shows geared toward children are super violent. And people wonder why teenage boys, like those at Columbine High School, see violence as an option to solve their problems. Aggression as a conflict resolution tactic is modeled in almost every facet of our society. What a tragedy.

Hey parents of toddlers, check out this new kid’s site for video sharing, Totlol. Totlol’s website has an interface where parent volunteers can search through YouTube and approve content that is appropriate for youngsters. This community moderation weeds out the bad stuff and let’s in the good stuff like this:

via NewTeeVee.com

What are they thinking? One is thinking about dinner, I’m sure.

Image found here.