May 29, 2009
Our round-up of some of the week's most intriguing posts from our favorite blogs:
How to Find a Babysitter While Out of Town -- LilSugar
How to Identify Poisonous Plants -- CafeMom
Fathers-to-Be Pile on the Pounds -- ParentDish
The Difference Between a "Reward" and a "Bribe" -- AlphaMom
Online Groups Help Parents Weigh Tough Treatment Choices -- On Parenting
The Associated Press"It's safe to say the best is yet to come for the new national spelling champion. She's only just become a teenager. She'll probably keep her competitive juices flowing by entering the International Brain Bee, the perfect contest for an aspiring neurosurgeon.
"But I don't think anything can replace spelling," Kavya Shivashankar said. "Spelling has been such a big part of my life."
On her fourth and final try, the Kansas girl who flashed a sweet smile with every word won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, outlasting 10 other finalists to take home more than $40,000 in cash and prizes and, of course, the huge champion's trophy.
"The competitiveness is in her, but she doesn't show that," said her father, Mirle Shivashankar. "She still has that smile. That's her quality."
Kavya became the seventh Indian-American in 11 years to claim the title, including back-to-back winners who want to be neurosurgeons. Her role model is the one who started the run: 1999 winner Nupur Lala, who was featured in the documentary "Spellbound" and is now a research assistant in the brain and cognitive sciences lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kavya, from Olathe, Kan., was an obvious favorite, having finished 10th, eighth and fourth in her three previous appearances. Her winning word was the proper adjective "Laodicean," which means lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. As with all her words, Kavya wrote the letters in the palm of her hand with her finger as she called them out."
Time
May 29, 2009
"The Institute of Medicine (IOM), the nation's most influential medical
advisory group, has updated its guidelines for weight gain during
pregnancy for the first time since 1990.
The revised recommendations, released May 28, which also include the first advice regarding exercise during pregnancy, reflect new data on prenatal health as well as several recent shifts in the obstetric landscape -- pregnant women in the U.S. are now older, more likely to deliver multiple births and ethnically more diverse than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But far and away, the IOM's greatest new concern is the increased population of overweight and obese mothers-to-be.
For centuries, one of the greatest dangers pregnant women faced was not gaining enough weight to adequately nourish a healthy baby. To protect against malnutrition and, in some cases, a strong societal pressure to stay thin, doctors -- and grandmothers -- everywhere routinely urged expecting mothers to eat, eat, eat.
Times have changed. Today, nearly two-thirds of American women of childbearing age are overweight, and one-third qualify as obese. An abundance of research suggests that weight gain before and during pregnancy increases the risk of several serious health complications for both mother and child, including diabetes, hypertension and birth defects."
The New York Times
May 29, 2009
"The Ferrells have cut back on dance lessons for their twin daughters.
Vaccinations for the family's two cats and two dogs are out. Haircuts
have become a luxury.
And before heading out recently to the discount grocery store that has become the family's new lifeline, Sharon Ferrell checked her bank account balance one more time, dialing the toll-free number from memory.
"Your available balance for withdrawal is, $490.40," the disembodied electronic voice informed her.
At the store, with that number firmly in mind, she punched the price of each item into a calculator as she dropped it into her cart, making sure she stayed under her limit. It was all part of a new regimen of fiscal restraint for the Ferrells, begun in January, when state workers, including Mrs. Ferrell's husband, Jeff, were forced to accept two-day-a-month furloughs.
For millions of families, this is the recession: not a layoff, or a drastic reduction in income, but a pay cut that has forced them to thrash through daily calculations similar to the Ferrells'. Even if workers have managed to avoid being laid off, many employers have cut back in other ways, reducing employees' hours, imposing furloughs and even sometimes trimming salaries"
BBC News
May 29, 2009
"Learning relaxation and breathing techniques does not reduce the need for an epidural in labour, a study shows.
More than 1,000 mothers-to-be took part in the Swedish trial, thought to be the first major analysis of the efficacy of such preparation for childbirth.
They attended one of two classes: the first taught natural coping methods, the other emphasised pain relief.
But the BJOG study found no difference in the use of epidurals between the women when they went into labour.
Just over half the women in each group ultimately opted for the spinal analgesia which reduces or eliminates the pain of contractions.
Some 70% of the women who had attended the natural childbirth class said they employed the psychoprophylaxis techniques they had learned, which included breathing and relaxation methods as well as ways of coping with pain such as positive imaging."
Kiplinger.com
May 28, 2009
"What a difference a year makes. Last summer, the energy and finance sectors of the economy seemed to be thriving, and manufacturing was going strong.
Today, many cities are relying on government programs, universities and stalwart industries, such as health care, to bolster employment in a weak economy. Those factors appeared frequently when we assembled candidates for our 2009 Best Cities list, which focuses on places that have stable employment plus the talent to create new, well-paying positions. A robust job market makes these cities safe havens during the recession and will give them a head start toward growth when the recovery takes off. ...
No. 2: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Details.com
May 28, 2009
"Our man-style experts explain how to feed your baby's body and how to nourish its soul--with henna face tattoos and a glow-stick binky!"
The New York Times
May 28, 2009
"THE perilous question came from an earnest schoolboy, who posed this doozy of a query to the new first lady: "Do you like cooking for your family, even though you have cooks and all of that?"
In the rarefied world of presidential spouses, this has long been treacherous territory. Other first ladies have parsed their comments carefully to avoid suggesting that they had cheerfully relinquished kitchen duty. (Hillary Rodham Clinton and Laura Bush both touted their homemade cookies at times though neither cooked much at all in the White House.)
But Michelle Obama did not mince words.
"I don't miss cooking," Mrs. Obama said, laughing, as she took questions from students visiting the White House. "I'm just fine with other people cooking. Their food is really good."
Mrs. Obama has long been known as frank and down to earth. Now, as first lady, she is bringing some of that sensibility into the Executive Mansion, particularly when it comes to laying out the day-to-day thrills and challenges of her domestic life.
It is a candor that may well be carefully considered. Like most political wives, Mrs. Obama still avoids the controversial. She does not talk much about her keen interest in influencing public policy or about whether she misses her own paycheck.
But since she arrived in the White House four months ago, she has told People magazine that her marriage isn't perfect. She has told young women that she wonders whether she is doing what's best for her children as she balances her work and motherhood."
The Daily Beast
May 28, 2009
"Millions of Americans will tune to ABC tonight to witness the coronation of a new National Spelling Bee champion. The attraction is undeniable. We're biologically drawn to children doing the extraordinary because 1) they're not supposed to and 2) they look so darn cute doing it. When those kids are performing feats of linguistic jujitsu that would amaze Steven Pinker, so much the better.
But watching the Bee should be a guilty pleasure. The obvious complaint is that it's irresponsible to make children do lexicographic party tricks on live, prime-time, broadcast television. And it probably is, in the same way that airing the Little League World Series can also be hazardous to children's health. "Adolescent sports aren't meant to be entertainment for adults," Boston sports psychologist Richard Ginsburg says in my friend Mark Hyman's new book, Until It Hurts, about America’s unhealthy obsession with youth sports.
Nowhere is that performance more naked than at the Bee in Washington, D.C. The 293 competitors have to stand on a stage in the ballroom of a fancy hotel, in front of a large audience, at a microphone, before a table of adult judges, with television cameras rolling and reporters recording their screw-ups. All face the possibility of national airtime. Wednesday's preliminary rounds were streamed on ESPN360.com and this morning's semifinal rounds went live on ESPN starting at 10 a.m. Eastern."
Newsweek
May 28, 2009
"Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll weren't looking to start a controversy. They're both pediatricians at Indiana University who, as a side project to their day jobs, put together a study on a few medical myths that many doctors believe. The results weren't exactly earth-shattering: they revealed that you don't actually need to drink eight glasses of water and nails do not continue to grow after death. And the research definitely wasn't new. "We looked through old research and basically put it all together," explains Vreeman.
But from the reactions that Vreeman and Carroll got, you'd think they were questioning the very flatness of the earth. They received hundreds of e-mails from strangers and dozens of media requests. One particularly disquieted man repeatedly called their office, irate over their discrediting of the eight-glass myth. He was so threatening and abusive that their administrative staff filed a restraining order. "A lot of people were incredibly upset to think that we would question the fact that you need eight glasses of water," says Vreeman. "Nine studies from the physiology literature have suggested we get enough water from other things we drink, yet many people feel very strongly about water."
Now, the authors are back with Don't Swallow Your Gum! (Griffin Original), a book of medical myths and half-truths that will be published next week. Among the 66 myths, there's something to surprise everyone: that, despite what Mom told us, vitamin C does not cure a cold and even the highest SPF sunscreen will not prevent all sunburns. But what's more surprising than the myths they debunk, is how strongly their friends, colleagues and readers protested their research. Both Vreeman and Carroll have been repeatedly told they're incorrect, misinformed or flat-out wrong, that these are medical facts they're messing with. "It's not like we discovered something new, we just reviewed the literature," says Carroll. "But people still won't take it, it's like nothing would be enough to convince them otherwise.""
