NY Times Article on the ridiculously high rate of Csections

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/health/24birth.html?ref=health

I love this quote:

“We should do inductions for good solid medical reasons, not for convenience or the day of the week,” Dr. Macones said. “Sometimes patients push you.”

He's suggesting that it's the consumer asking for this! As if. I'm sure there are some pockets of people who want to schedule their birth, but I cannot believe that it's very much.

This is just one of many reasons why midwives should get more acceptance in mainstream medical practices. This is why midwives should attend all low risk births. It would be safer for everybody involved and they would be cheaper for health insurance companies. And most of them agree that higher risk cases should be attended by a Dr.

First Tooth for Maddie

Maddie apparently broke her first tooth last night. Her night was quite a bit rougher (for me) than her usual sleeping basically 11 or 12 hours in a row. She kept waking up and I would say what I always say "It's not time to get up yet, go back to sleep Maddie." Then she'd go back to sleep for a couple hours and the whole thing would happen again.

Since the time change we don't get her up until 7am earliest. Of course later is she sleeps in later. Today, though, she was pretty adamant about getting up starting around 6am. Usually she's kind of like "ok, I'll just scrape my sheet or play with my blanket and body" and she'll not make any fuss when I tell her it's too early. Today, she wasn't having it. So we got up a bit earlier.

I noticed she was playing with her new tooth a lot by scrapping her tongue over it constantly. And she wasn't the ridiculously happy, cheery baby this morning that she usually is. This is what made me look. And she won't really let us look. Usually she wouldn't care if we would inspect her mouth but not anymore.

I'm very excited for her. I'm also really glad that this is what teething is like. Her being sick is way worst than this. I think I was pretty afraid of what teething would be like.

Day Light Savings Time/Mouth Noises

In general, I think this whole day light savings thing is a big waste of everything. How many people either get more tired than normal or miss important meetings due to this clock change? And for what, exactly? For farmers, I guess. I hope for them it's something that is useful.

There is an upside that I recently discovered. It pushed Maddie's schedule back an hour. So now instead of her getting up at 6am, she's getting up at 7am. And she has no idea. Of course we "moved" her bedtime back an hour too. It's nice because it's that much more time I get to hang out with her after work (1 hour). And it might even cause her morning nap to occur after she gets to the house of the Nanny share. (We were having some issues with her going down to nap and napping through when her child care was supposed to start. I'm against waking her up when she's napping, so we would just wait until she woke up to take her over there. Certainly not a big deal, but it's easier to not have that happen.)

Maddie has pretty consistently been sleeping through from going to bed, around 7pm or later now, until the morning, which is around 7am now. And it's been really nice to not have my sleep interrupted by her anymore. Though it still gets interrupted by other things. I was also worried about night weaning her, but she's been fine with it.

She is so amazing and cute. She's becoming more and more a kid, instead of a baby. Don't get me wrong, she's still very much a baby, but how she plays with the world is becoming so much more interactive. She can crack me up and she's so fun to crack up too. I'm amazed at what she notices. She's growing up!

A while ago she discovered that if she has her mouth on a toy and moves her head side to side while making noise she'd get a cycling sound. Try it with your hand if you want to see what I'm talking about. Well, a couple days ago, I showed her how to do that with my finger going up and down on my lips. She was so excited. So then I started doing it to her, with my finger on her lips and she got it right away. It's so cute because pretty much right away she knows if my finger goes there, she'll start making sound.

On the Verge of Crawling

Maddie so close to crawling. It's pretty fun to watch her progress and sometimes sad to watch her frustration. She's so close!

She reaches forward from sitting pivoting on her still somewhat folded legs pretty consistently but usually either ends up on her belly, or just comes back to sitting. Yesterday I saw her end off the ground with her arms and legs under her. Like a cat. She didn't really know what to do with herself and got really frustrated.

She can also hold herself up standing on her own relatively solidly. I think the biggest thing keeping her from doing that for very long is that she needs both hands to hold herself up and then she doesn't have any entertainment.

I'm really excited to see how her world just opens up when she can get to where she wants to go on her own. It's hard to watch her be frustrated. I wonder if she'll walk or crawl first. I'm guessing crawling, but only time will tell.

This box is full of empty Altoids containers. I was collecting them at work for a while. It's amazing how much of this stuff folks consume. I was thinking it would be an interesting starting point for a crafty project. I started making a mobile by covering these things, but havn't made too much progress on it all.

Rubber Ducky

For the past couple of months I've played the rubber ducky song to Maddie while she takes a bath. I play it on my cell phone.

It's so cute because she gets so excited about it and we always sing along. She uses her voice and it seems like her pitch is getting better, though she's got quite some time to go to match the words. :)

The past couple times I've given her a bath her grabs have had to be diverted. She's getting really fast and really observant of things around her that she doesn't know yet. She has gotten lots of things off the window sill and counter. Most of it really isn't anything to worry about.

It's pretty much time to start bathing her in the bathtub because of what happened tonight though. Tonight she grabbed the hot water handle and turned it on. The faucet wasn't pouring into her tub or anything, but all she would have had to do was put her curious arm out to touch the hot water. The water was hot because I had just filled her tub. Not a good situation.

Maternal Death Rates on Rise in CA

In 1996 the maternal death rate in CA was 5.6 per 100,000.
In 2006 it's 16.9.

That's a huge increase. It's a scary increase actually. One article I read said

"it’s more dangerous to give birth in California than it is in Kuwait or Bosnia"

I still get so fired up at the wrongness of hospitals pushing C-sections and inductions on patients that simply don't have any indications that anything is wrong. Dilating at 1 cm an hour, as is the currently accepted rate of progress of a hospital delivery, is ridiculous. If that rate had been applied to me, I would have had a c-section too. (I had a very normal first time birth of 20 hours.)

Although having a c-section with your first birth is slightly more dangerous than giving birth naturally (assuming you don't have any reasons to be categorized as higher risk). It's the following births that are much more dangerous. For one, many hospitals won't even let you have a natural birth after having a c-section - so that's more surgery whether you need it/want it, or not.

The main issue is that you will have scars from the previous c-sections. If you're unlucky enough to have the placenta on those scars, your body can't cap off the placenta after the child is born and you can bleed to death. Imagine having many c-sections. Your chances of having the placenta on those scars just get higher and higher.

Here's some good articles about this newly issued report that is showing that the maternal death rate is drastically on the rise here in good 'ole CA. (And here's the chart.)

I wish I could get this data for the Bay Area Counties.