Interesting story today on how more states are extending jury exemptions to mothers of nursing babies.

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Apparently, McCain’s VP pick knows one of the most important rules for mothering a large brood of children (I have four myself): pick your battles.

And one battle Sarah Palin apparently decided to avoid because it wasn’t worth worrying about was the one where her preschool-age daughter announced that she wanted to wear her sparkly, plastic tiara to her mother’s gubernatorial inauguration. That’s pretty darn adorable.

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Apparently, cases of measles in children are sharply up in the last year, and officials are blaming parents’ fear of the potential link between autism and vaccinations.

Most of those who were sickened were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status. Sixteen were younger than a year old, too young to have been vaccinated. But two-thirds of the rest — or 63 people — were unvaccinated because of their or their parents’ philosophical or religious beliefs.

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Filed under: sundry — katie allison granju @ 10:01 am Edit This
So my several-day breastfeeding interruption is over. I have finished the baby-teeth-rotting antibiotics, and I am apparently no longer toxic to my babygurl. My sister asked whether I thought she would just wean altogether if I stopped nursing for 4 days. After all, I am already away from her (at my job) many hours each week, and she already drinks from a cup and bottle, and she eats lots of solids. Plus, during the several day hiatus, she really never asked to nurse.

But I know my kidlet, and I knew she would pick right back up where she left off once I was done with the drugs. And she did. And she nursed ALL NIGHT last night, which was exhausting, but also sorta lovely, after the break.

I will say that four days without nursing her gave me a real sense of what it must feel like to live with a botched, over-inflated set of implants. Yowza, I was ready to feed that baby

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Go congratulate my friend H. on her successful VBAC with no induction!

H. is nearly 40 years old, and had her first c-section (first baby) only about 18 months ago. She was 41 weeks pregnant when she gave birth yesterday. Not many woman nowadays would have even tried a VBAC with that set of variables, and H. was under extra pressure because her doctor was giving her grief about submitting to an induction this week.

Go Ms. H.! And welcome baby L.!

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I have developed a serious infection that requires me to take an antibiotic that is apparently incompatible with nursing. My very pro-breastfeeding doctor says the med could cause my 12 month old daughter’s teeth to become discolored. So he says I can’t nurse for a few days.

AGH! How in the world do you explain to a 12 month old that she cannot nurse for “a few days?” This is going to be just awful

Any tips from any of you who have been through this? SHe is eating plenty of solids, and drinks fine from cup and bottle. But she loves to nurse, especially at night…

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One mother has donated 100 GALLONS of her pumped breastmilk to a Texas milk bank in memory of her infant daughter. Wow.

I’ve never donated milk, and I have to admit that as much as I like breastfeeding my babies, I hatehatehate pumping. So I am in awe of this supermama.

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A major new study says that kids actually NEED risky play:

Voce argued that it was becoming a ’social norm’ for younger children to be allowed out only when accompanied by an adult. ‘Logistically that is very difficult for parents to manage because of the time pressures on normal family life,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want your children to play out alone and you have not got the time to take them out then they will spend more time on the computer.’

Voce pointed out how irrational some of these decisions were. Last year, almost three times as many children were admitted to hospital after falling out of bed as those who had fallen from a tree.

The tendency to wrap children in cotton wool has transformed how they experience childhood. According to the research, 70 per cent of adults had their biggest childhood adventures in outdoor spaces among trees, rivers and woods, compared with only 29 per cent of children today. The majority of young people questioned said that their biggest adventures took place in playgrounds.

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There’s a good article at ABC News today about “cross nursing” (I’ve actually never heard it called that), where women share nursing duties for one child.

According to experts, however, there is a growing trend of cross-nursing, in which a mother will allow another woman to breast-feed her baby.

“I think that it’s just not been our social norm,” said Morgan McFarland, who has been breast-feeding her friend Sarah Griffith’s son since he was just 3 months old. “In some cultures, it is, and you would think nothing of, you know, nursing your neighbor’s child if something happened, or nursing your sister’s baby if she has to go to work.”

To Lisa Moran, editor in chief of Babytalk magazine, the rising trend is not surprising.

“Cross-nursing is the logical extension to the rise in breast-feeding rates that we’ve seen in the past 15 years,” she told “Good Morning America.” “Moms are really committed to breast-feeding exclusively and finding new ways to do that. Cross-feeding, cross-nursing is one of those.”

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I have an essay at Babble today about why I like having a big family. Give it a read and let me know whatcha think.

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