According to this study eating lots, eating varied foods and eating breakfast during pregnancy makes women more likely to have boys. No wonder I had a boy.
Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
My Pants Fell Off!
We’ve been eating "low carb" since Thanksgiving. The first month or so I lost 10 pounds and then nothing happened even though I continued to be good. Whenever anybody asked me how it was going, I’d say we’re being good and it’s working really well for Frank (my boyfriend.) And I’d go on to explain that I’m eating a lot less because I’m not as hungry as I used to be. I think eating less is a good thing as I used to eat continuously.
Last week I put on a suit in my hotel room getting ready for my keynote presentation and I looked down and thought "who let my pant hems out??" My pants were so long I was standing on them! So I grabbed the waist and pulled up and discovered I had a good 4 or 5 extra inches! With a bit of work and creative use of my belt – on the smallest hole, I managed to come up with a solution that looked decent. When the guy that put the mic on me suggested I take off my jacket, I looked at him just horrified. "Well, you see, but, I’ve lost some weight … NO!"
So it’s going good.
P.S. This post is my entry for a free trip to BlogHer. It’s also a true story. The conference was SCALE and my keynote was "Would you do it again for free?"
Strange diets
We’ve been trying to eat low carb and while that means lots of veggies, it means not much fruit. So it’s been strange to see all the pictures of Steve Pavlina’s raw food diet. He’s trying to eat healthy and eating only fruits and vegetables (that look yummy but very unsatisfying) and we are trying to eat healthy and eating lots of (very yummy) chicken, pork, cheese, elk, deer, asparagus, lobster, green beans, steak, …
It just goes to show you not only are their different tastes for different people but we also have no idea what the healthiest diet for a human being is! (I do assume there is more than one type of healthy diet. People have survived in many different places in the world.)
Sperm power for robots
Cornell University Researchers aim to harness sperm power for nano-robots.
Talk Review: Good Calories, Bad Calories
If you didn’t read Good Calories, Bad Calories
- It’s an undisputed fact that it takes insulin to store fat. No insulin, no fat. That’s why undiagnosed diabetics lose weight.
- Another undisputed fat: carbohydrates cause insulin, not fat or protein.
- In many poor societies, the women are obese and the kids are undernourished. (He gave almost 20 examples.) Either the women are starving their kids (unlikely) or it doesn’t take a lot of calories to be fat. Those women are fat because they are eating the wrong foods not because they are eating too much.
- Lack of will power, gluttony and sloth are not the causes of obesity.
- Kids eat because they are growing. They don’t grow because they eat. Vertical and horizontal growth are not so different. People eat because something is telling them to grow horizontally. They don’t grow because they eat.
Gary Taubes’ talk is well worth listening to.
Does your doctor take your concerns seriously?
As I said in my last post about choosing a new doctor, we’ve seen a lot – like really a lot – of medical people this year. I’ve really come to appreciate medical people that take my concerns seriously (all of those visits but one were very necessary) and I’ve become really annoyed at people who don’t take me seriously or don’t believe me.
Today, before the doctor even looked at Caleb she was already trying to tell me there was not much chance of him having an ear infection because he didn’t have a fever and he wasn’t fussing with his ears. I felt myself getting defensive – and a bit worried that she might not even look at his ears! I think I stayed civil and calm. The minute she peeked in his ear, she said, "Oh, that’s definitely infected!" and I didn’t even say "I told you so!"
In contrast, I took Caleb to the ER a couple of weeks ago and they made me feel believed, trusted, knowledgeable, … When all of Caleb’s terrible choking sounds stopped when we got there, I was so worried they wouldn’t believe me! But they went out of their way to listen to me and to check him. They even took xrays! (Turns out he had a throat infection and his throat was swollen so much that when he cried his vocal cords would hit the sides of his throat and it sounded terrible! It got Frank and I out of bed faster than I think we’ve ever moved before!)
Does your doctor believe you? Or do they take a "I’ll be the judge of that" attitude with you?
When do you need a new doctor?
When do you decide you need a new doctor? In the past year we’ve been to the hospital once, the ER three times, urgent care twice and the doctor’s office countless times! That’s a lot of medical care – and all of the visits except one justified some type of medical treatment. So today when I called the doctor’s office to ask a nurse a question – to see if we needed to see a doctor – and she told me there were no doctors or nurses on staff and I should go to urgent care … well, I decided we needed a new plan. So I called a pediatrician who works in an office of pediatricians. Because of their large staff of doctors they were able to fit Caleb in right away. We had to jump in the car to make it in time. (Instead of half a mile away, they are 15 miles away.)
So while I really liked Caleb’s small town family doctor – he always took the time to sit down and answer all my questions and he had a very matter of fact, no worrying way of looking at things – I really needed a doctor we could see on short notice. One that wouldn’t constantly refer me to urgent care and the emergency room. When your kid has an ear infection, you can’t wait till next Tuesday.
Wow! We’re fat! Lose weight for your friends!
A couple of blogs I read pointed me to this article. They focused on the fact that by 2015, 75% of Americans will be obese or overweight. What I noticed is that two thirds of us already are! 66% of Americans are overweight or obese. It’s already normal to be overweight. And since a recent study found that you are more likely to be overweight if your friends are overweight, the more of us that are overweight, the more of us that will become overweight. So not only are most of us fat, but if we’re not, we’re likely to be fat soon.
And fat’s not healthy, so let’s all work on reaching our ideal weight. If not for yourself, for your friends!
Drugs or no drugs when giving birth? And why all medical sensors should be wireless!
Here’s my post on how people do not agree on what "natural childbirth" is or should be and how all my problems could have been solved with two little wireless sensors.
I was firmly against drugs during labor unless I changed my mind during labor. (How’s that for a decision! But having never been in labor, I didn’t figure I could really decide till I was there.) You would not believe the number of people that acted like I was crazy and tried to talk me into drugs! I’m not a big fan of pain and I wasn’t going drugless to be natural or tough or to prove a point. If you could give me drugs during labor that would take away the pain and still let me walk around, I probably would have opted for them in the beginning. I believe that vaginal births work better if women can get up, walk around, use the birthing ball, or just find the sitting or standing position that works best for them. When I’m in pain, I don’t lie flat on my bed – when my stomach hurts I usually hold it and curl around it. Look at any kid with an injury – they don’t lie flat on their backs – they curl around the pain.
I knew the minute I accepted drugs I would be entering into a spiral that would end with me trapped in bed. And I was right. Once you get any drugs, you have an IV going into you and they want to keep you attached to the machine that monitors you and the baby. So at that point you have two machines/stands that have to go everywhere with you plus at least 3 cables and tubes coming out of you.
Here’s how it happened for me:
- My water broke,
- Caleb was in distress,
- They made me lie in bed while they figured out what was distressing him,
- I wasn’t allowed to move – not even sit up, until they figured it out,
- They attached a sensor to the top of Caleb’s head with a wire that came out and attached to a machine next to me,
- They put a balloon like thing in the uterus next to Caleb to time the contractions more accurately, with a wire that came out and attached to a machine next to me,
- Caleb had the cord wrapped around his neck and sometimes he wasn’t getting enough oxygen,
- They inserted a catheter into me with a tube that came out,
- At which point I gave up on any notions of "natural" and I asked for an epidural,
- The epidural doctor gave me a hard time about changing my mind from no drugs to an epidural,
- The epidural meant I had yet more tubes attached to more machines,
- I threw up because pain killers make me sick, so I got some anti-nausea medicine which I think meant another tube but I’m not sure,
- I fell asleep because the anti-nausea medicine makes you drowsy.
So I had a vaginal birth. Was it natural? Not really. Would I have had it any other way, i.e. less drugs or cables? Not with the cord wrapped around Caleb’s neck!
BUT, I think it would have all been different if the sensor they attached to Caleb’s head and the sensor that timed contractions had been wireless. Then I wouldn’t have been attached to any machines, and assuming Caleb reacted well, I could have still moved. Why don’t they make wireless sensors when we have wireless phones, wireless computers, wireless copiers, wireless garage door openers? I don’t know. My theory is that the people designing the sensors never bothered to interview the women in labor, the users, about them. The nurse tried to tell me they didn’t have wireless sensors because the heart is an electro-magnetic organ and that would some how interfere with the measurements. I pointed out that even my heart rate monitor is wireless!
So I wasn’t trying to be "natural," I was trying to have the easiest, quickest and healthiest birth. I think taking drugs and lying on your back makes it harder and longer. I think a C-section makes the recovery a lot harder. I think staying at home makes it more dangerous. (We wouldn’t have known Caleb was having difficulties.)
And I think medical device manufactures could help everybody by developing devices that take advantage of technology and deliver the best experience for their users.
Would you rather be dead?
My vet says my dog would rather be dead. Actually, he didn’t say it like that and he’s a great guy but he does really think I should euthenize her. I don’t agree. As of yesterday she was still walking around, following us everywhere, tail wagging. Not her usual self, but she still wanted to be a part of things. Today I’m not so sure. She slept most of the day and she had to be coaxed out to the car to see the vet. But he assures me she’s not in pain, she’s just extremely uncomfortable. So how do you decide whether she’s so uncomfortable that she’d rather be dead? Personally, I think she’d rather be alive. Am I making the right decision? Nobody can know.
As for what’s going on – Teddy was diagnosed with kidney failure last September. The vet gave her two months to two years to live and it looks like it’s going to be within the next week. She’s down to 35 pounds – from 75 pounds a year ago and she hasn’t eaten anything for the past week. I’m going to miss her!
