Unfortunately, our standards of “expertness” aren’t really up to par. We tend to believe any news anchor, medical reporter, or lifestyle columnist that comes along. No good can possibly come of this. That lack of attention to detail is how the fitness movement, the theory of global warming, and the scourge that is decaffeinated coffee all got a foothold on us.

Global warming. In the case of global warming I suspect that the entire “theory” was actually invented by a couple of bored scientists who wanted to pull a fast one on their lab partners. Chuckling maniacally, they circulated a memo claiming that hair-spray or some such nonsense was going to bring about the end of the world through a bizarre chain reaction involving icebergs, the rain forest, and Aqua Net - and then sat back for some belly laughs when the other scientists stumbled onto their practical joke.

Except, their bad luck, the Associated Press picked up the memo on a slow news day and to the scientists’ everlasting horror they now had to make it seem as if they were SERIOUS about this global warming thing.

To this day they devote every waking moment to convincing us that global warming is a “very real threat” and we are all only one aerosol spray away from becoming toast. This despite overwhelming evidence that the average American cares more passionately about gas prices than global warming. (Unless, of course, global warming will somehow impact gas prices).

Unpopular science. Meanwhile, these scientific scare mongers became addicted to their 15 minutes of fame, and increasingly sought to scare the beejeebies out of us.

Thus brought the brief and inexplicable lifesaving aspect of oat bran (which fortunately passed quickly, in more ways than one), carcinogenic lipstick, poisonous apples, and the dire threat posed by eggs, just to name a few.

Of course, after years of maligning eggs, they also came slinking back to tell us that eggs were incredible, edible, and not likely to kill us after all. Clearly, someone owes the nation’s chickens, and anyone who ever ingested a powdered egg substitute, a huge apology. Still, we did not learn.

After spending a decade nagging us about how we must consume eight, 8-ounce glasses of water daily in the pursuit of health, happiness, and world peace, it would appear that this particular “fact” has been an urban legend all along.

Much like the one about the guy disguised as an old lady who waits in your car at the mall to grab you, or wait, was that under your car to slash your Achilles tendon unless you are warned off by the choking Doberman? Whatever. The point being that all are accepted as fact and just as wholly unreliable.

Duped. Here we sat, dutifully consuming 64 ounces of water per day, never passing a rest room without stopping in, and floating through our lives with our legs crossed and a slightly pained look in our eyes for no darned good reason. We, my waterlogged friends, have been duped.

The greatest indignity here is that this wasn’t even science gone wrong. Instead, it appears that after spending years hearing from doctors, fitness experts, and other such shifty types that it is crucial to consume our body weight in water each day, no one can actually find a single scientific study that proves this theory. How did everyone manage to miss that?

Look, we expect this kind of free and easy way with facts from our friends. But shouldn’t we expect a little more substance from those who harp on our health?

Have I honestly been wandering around with my legs crossed all these years because so-and-so heard from her cousin, who was married to a mailman who had a neighbor who was a doctor that eight 8-ounce glasses was the gospel?

Now they’ve gone after first the tomatoes. After nearly dessimating the tomato industry with reports of the life threatening impacts of tainted tomatoes the FDA now says, oops, our bad. It was perhaps the jalapenos after all! So clearly, they are going for the salsa (a staple in my diet) and that is so not cool. Do they know or can they just guess? Do they just make this stuff up? What does it take to work for the FDA anyway?

Fine. Good. Two can play at this game. Starting today here’s a new “fact.” Ice cream is a health food, double cheeseburgers are low-cal, and aerobics will, in fact, kill you. Pass it on.

Bookmark to:
    

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence; the earth will continue to rotate around the sun, and I will not get even one iota smarter this summer over last.

Learned lesson. After three plus decades on this earth you would think that by now I would have learned just a little bit about sunscreen. You would be wrong. I have, however, recently learned quite a bit about aloe.

I sum it up thusly, on the first day God made the sun so the devil had no choice but to counter with sunburn.

For the record, I am much better at parenting then I am self-preservation.

Stupid mistake. Despite remembering to coat both children with a thick layer of sunblock, I still managed to believe it a fine idea to stand IN THE WATER under a blazing hot sun for more than four hours with nothing between me and the sun but my own stupidity. I know, just typing it I’m embarrassed all over again.

I honestly don’t know which hurt worse — the peeling or my pride.

What I really suffer from is a case of rampant optimism.

A little sun. Despite years of cause and effect training which would have trained even a gerbil to recognize “sun minus sunscreen = burn,” I continue to operate under the delusion that I, the whitest white girl in America — can get “just a little sun.” This is akin to believing you can get “just a little pregnant” or “just a little nuclear radiation exposure.”

I persist in this belief because in my teens I could — and did — tan.

Tanning goal. That was really my whole life goal back then. Study? Maybe. College? Yeah, whatever.

A nice golden copper toned glow — I’ll work on it day after day until I achieved my goal with only a backyard lawn chair, a couple hundred gallons of baby oil, and my ability to lie completely prostrate for hours at a time to guide me.

Brown baby. They also tell me I used to get “brown as a berry” as a baby. Apparently, I am supposed to take great solace in the fact that I was a real babe when I was FOUR.

Meanwhile back at the pool, well meaning friends tried to warn me. By late afternoon my back was starting to feel a wee bit warm and I thought about sunscreen for a nano-second, but my children blissfully sliding time and again down a waterslide and my need to be waiting at the bottom because, after all, how could I trust the no less than THREE lifeguards on duty, seemed the more pressing matter.

By the time we left the pool, my upper body was the approximate color of a ruby red grape. I radiated enough heat to toast a marshmallow and people just passing by clucked in sympathy and then, I don’t doubt, laughed uproariously when out of my earshot at how stupid some people can be.

Phase two. Now, a few days later, I am currently in phase two of the sunburn process, phase one being the getting burnt part.

Phase two is the back-slapping phase. In this phase people who have never shown even the slightest iota of interest in you previously, people who don’t even KNOW you, will suddenly be seized by the need to slap you on the back.

It’s as if there is a primordial siren call of seared skin. Seemingly unbidden they are moved to “slap!” you on the back with a hearty hail fellow well met even if they know not why.

As you cringe and slither to the floor in a heap of blinding red hot pain, they are left to state the obvious to soothe you, “little burnt huh?” “Little burnt huh?” is obviously code for “I hate you enormously and I wish to see you dead!,” that is the only possible explanation for this.

The only possible defense to back slapping is to make the universally recognized sunburn warning noise whereby you grit your teeth, pull back your lips, inhale briskly and spasm your body inward in the standing equivalent of the fetal position.

Sure, they’ll STILL slap you on the back, but with these motions you are slightly less likely to want to punch them. As if you could really lift your arms to take a swing anyway.

As the days have passed I have regained near normal movement in my upper limbs.

Shedding skin. I have also started to shed skin like a snake, lending whole new meaning to the phrase “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours!” My husband, lucky man that he is, gets to witness it all.

All I can say is that when it comes to reliving the sheer stupidity of the moment when I chose to eschew the necessity of sunscreen for the certainty of a not-so-slow burn, all I can say, is boy, was my face red.

Bookmark to:
    

Like many imperfect parents, I’m more or less a very good parent on most days… but this requires a certain amount of concentrated effort and a whole lot of help. I used to get help in a bottle, and now I get help from a variety of sources.

But I still need and want a vice.. something that serves no other purpose than pleasure and rebellion. A way to cut loose and be onesself without getting mistaken for a “ma’am” or a “sir”… or someone who is, say, turning 40.

I like to joke about starting a respite center for mothers staffed with hot Italian boys (or girls, depending on your preferences).. and I’m only sort of joking. Seriously, it’s so very easy to take parenting too farging seriously these days.

But the thing is, I miss having a vice. I don’t want anything life or health or marriage threatening, just something to spice things up and remind me of the wild girl I used to be long long ago.

So when my friend told me of her new “thing” for nicotine-free cigarettes (doesn’t that sound like “no strings attached” sex?? nice idea but highly unlikely?), I thought I’d give them a try.

I’ll report back soon.. but until then.. any vices you’d recommend?

Bookmark to:
    

In this universe, I’m just your average, garden-variety ineffective parent whose favourite method for calming down involves a large glass of shiraz and an even larger block of chocolate, and whose body would simply snap in half if made to do the downward dog.

When my mother was a stay-at-home-mother of four she went to yoga classes once a week – we used to say she was going to Yoghurt Classes – and she once told me that yoga saved her sanity in those days. So one day I went to a yoga class for new mothers and stretched for about 50 minutes before being told to lie down and listen to the lovely music and breathe deeply and just as I felt the tension melt away and the thoughts leave my troubled mind and just as I reached that state of blissful contentment… I fell asleep. I might have snored. Well, at least I didn’t neigh.

I really love the idea of meditation, but although I have tried I just can’t do it without the snoring. So, like all good mothers, I am living the life of a calm and contented human being vicariously through my children. My kids are learning to meditate. In our house, every day ends with reading from a book called The Wishing Star: Meditations for Children by Marneta Viegas. There’s a good reason why this is a good thing.

Both my girls have Anger Management Issues and I’m entirely responsible. I would like to be able to tell you that I am a slightly smug and contented person with nary a cranky bone in my body but that would be lying. I do have a cranky bone in my body, and I suspect it might be one of the big ones. Like the femur. Or pelvis. I have a cranky pelvis on account of all the kids I’ve birthed. They were both posterior, so it makes sense really. My pelvis has a lot to be cranky about. Anyway my point is that every now and then I get a bit cranky and I wish I could clear my mind of all my negative, cranky thoughts and just calm the heck down (without falling asleep) and I also wish that I hadn’t passed on my cranky pelvis gene to my kids. I have a tendency to fly off the handle a little and maybe raise my voice from time to time and yes, I’ve been known to slam the odd door in frustration. And sometimes they slam the door too. They inherited their father’s nice straight nose, they got my Issues. Whenever Ella yells at Madeleine I cringe a little because I know that she learned that behaviour from me. And when Madeleine yells back at her I know she got that from me too. It’s cute, really, how alike we all are.

I am a firm believer in meditation and all that positive-visualisation stuff. I’m not a religious person so I don’t pray. I suspect that a lot of people who do pray to a God or some other Higher Being get some of the same benefits of people who meditate regularly. It’s doing something good for your soul, isn’t it? I believe that spending some time each day just clearing your mind of negativity and instead filling your heart with peace is good for you, good for your relationships and good for the earth. The thing I’ve always said I want for my kids, more than anything else, is for them to be happy. I can give them love and stuff and food and pony rides and all of these things will make them happy but true happiness must come from within and…

… and I’m starting to sound a little preachy. Sorry ‘bout that.

The bottom line is that I feel more than a little bit responsible for making them short-tempered cranky-pants and so it’s my responsibility to help them find some peace. This is why I got the Meditations for Kids book. At bedtime, after we’ve tucked them in, I read one of the meditations and they go off to sleep all calm and at peace, dreaming about rainbows and fairies and clouds. And my last contact with them at the end of the day is positive and happy, which is lovely for all of us. I hope that they will both grow up to be the sort of people who don’t throw tantrums and slam doors like their mother did. And I hope they don’t have odd-shaped pelvises and babies that want to come out the wrong way up.

Oh, and I hope that when they find their inner peace, they don’t disturb everyone else with their snoring and neighing.

Bookmark to:
    

We’re certainly not ones to shy away from a trend when there’s good science and our kids’ health involved, so we’ve convinced Medela to give away a Breastmilk Feeding & Storage Set containing three BPA-free bottles, lids and nipples, to 5 of our lucky readers to get started down a toxin-free path. (Pssst, we have a sneaky feeling these bottles would be just fine for formula feeding as well.) The entry form is here.

Ed. note: The Imperfect Parent did not receive any compensation for this post

Bookmark to:
    

1. When there are kids in the car – NO SMOKING
2. When there are kids in the house – NO SMOKING
3. When I am near my pregnant sister – NO SMOKING
4. And when I am in the vicinity of children – NO SMOKING

If I happened to be outside smoking and I see someone approaching – especially if that someone is a child — I quickly move, attempt to blow the smoke as far away from them as possible, or hold my breath until they pass.

So, the next time I see someone smoking with a mini-van full of children, or smoking while pushing their child in a stroller and holding another kid’s hand, smoking while holding a child, or smoking while — gasp — pregnant, would it be impolite of me slap them upside the head?

Bookmark to:
    

It’s too bad that far too often, a parent’s desire to influence a social movement leaves them vulnerable in order to make a point or act in protest.

For example, and I know this is a touchy subject with some, but parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, claiming that it’s all part of some conspiracy theory to line the pockets of pharmaceutical companies. Many parents are so busy trying to find ways that vaccinations cause more harm than good, I think they forgot why vaccines were introduced to begin with. How much evidence does one need to make the logical conclusion that your political gain may compromise the health of your child?

For example, a recent Measles outbreak in San Diego:

On Jan. 25, the 7-year-old’s parents took the youngster to the Children’s Clinic of La Jolla. The child may have coughed and sneezed in the office, thus infecting four other children.

Those four patients returned to the clinic between Feb. 5 and 8, possibly spreading the virus to 60 other children.

All of the 11 confirmed patients, from 10 months to 9 years old, were not vaccinated either because they were younger than 1 – the minimum age for measles inoculation – or because their parents objected to having them vaccinated, county officials said.

…and, although it has NEVER been proven that vaccinations cause Autism, and countless studies fail to even make a link, there are still those holdouts that don’t care what science has to offer, the political statement of pharma vitriol means more to them than what they consider to be a minuscule risk. Nevermind that the risk WIDENS and INCREASES as more and more parents decide not to vaccinate. (Oh, the irony!) Facts, in these cases, don’t seem to be a priority.
One physician tries to uncover the psychology of it all…

It seems to have taken on a life of its own and may be a good example of a socio-psychological phenomenon known as “groupthink,” a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive group.

There may be many parents who will never be convinced that the benefits of immunization for their children in most cases outweigh the risks. In free countries, that is their prerogative and I, as a physician, accept that.

Society must understand that such convictions must not dictate public health policy. Failure to offer people a sound vaccination program would no doubt result in a resurgence of contagions such as polio, measles, and heaven forbid, perhaps even smallpox, should the wild virus ever be reintroduced into the world.

The human toll in lives and suffering, long forgotten by our postmodern world, would be incalculable in a jet age which rapidly spreads infectious disease to all continents.

I’m sure we all have different, conflicting examples of “group think” and some “group think” is beneficial to a child, like the disdain of child abuse, but when does group think interfere with our own sensibilities? I think the Internet, for better or worse, has propagated much of this and found validations for practices in which some critical thinking would go a long way. I can think of a bunch just off the top of my head, can’t you?

Bookmark to:
    

Then they argued as to whether it was rape or assault and who had actually been raped and who was qualified to categorize it as “rape”.

Yep. They call it “birth rape”.

So to all the fine, imperfect people out there, can medical intervention be classified as “rape”, if it is against the implied, specific or vague birth plan of the mother? If you wish to read where the “birth rape” started, go to page 33, post #323.

Bookmark to:
    

Supposedly the best way to prevent the spread of MRSA is good hygiene and diligent hand washing. That sure makes me feel better since we all know how good young kids — especially boys — are at keeping clean, right? One way us parents can help is to keep bandages on open wounds. Here’s a MRSA fact sheet from the CDC that will either ease your mind or, if you’re an online-enabled hypochondriac like me, make things worse…

Bookmark to:
    

The nurse was nice enough to prep me, she said, “You know a lot of women complain about how painful this test is, but I think you’ll find that it isn’t as bad as everyone says.”

“Thanks a lot,” I thought to myself, “I hadn’t actually heard that, but thanks for making the 45 minute wait that much sweeter.”

First of all, it’s awkward, because you have this woman man-handling your breasts and she pulls them and stretches them every which way. I’ve heard women tell me it’s worse when you have less (pointing out that I have “more”), but then there’s less to squeeze and squish in between those large plastic plates. Now that I’ve done it, I have to disagree.

Seriously, I have red marks above my boobs and I’ve had to take ibuprofen last night and this morning and I’m still in excruciating pain (over 24 hours later). There is no way that can be good for your breast tissue. Screw the dangers of radiation, I feel like the damage to my breasts is enough to facilitate cancer even if there was none to begin with. I hear stories from people all the time, where an injury later developed into cancer in that area. While doctors and scientists poo-poo the idea, I’d like to see more research in the area myself. Bodies are not meant to be damaged. We are fragile beings. My boobies are fragile. Be kind oh, mammogram operator. It just isn’t right!

I even told her when it was done that I didn’t agree with her, the whole thing sucked the big one and I was too young to get it done anyway, “I’m 38,” I boasted. She wasn’t impressed. She told me that the first mammogram should be between the age of 35 and 40 and then it was to be done every 2 years until 50 and then it’s to be done every year.

The only reason I even did it was because my OB-GYN wouldn’t renew my birth control pills without my having it done, so he had me over a barrel. (If you lived with my two boys, you would know what I mean.)

My GYN recommends a mammogram after 40 every year.

This experience has taught me two things a) I need to get a new GYN (one that sticks with traditional protocols) and b) breasts were never meant to be compressed like a stale piece of gum, stuck to a cheap pair of shoes. Mammograms really hurt. Next time, I’m stopping by a bar and having a few before the torture.

As if coming upon 40 weren’t bad enough…

Bookmark to: