Follow-up to the beginning of the last post (Train of thought):
Pediatricians are usually required to take ONE nutrition course, a couple developmental courses, and a briefing on breast feeding. The whole well-child visits idea came from the need to ensure all children in the US were receiving on-time vaccinations. The well-visits correspond with a schedule of vaccinations.
The health promotion/preventive medicine aspect of the visits is after-the-fact, and pediatricians are asked to provide parenting advice and preventive medicine care, when their education has largely been based on ILLNESS and disease. Western medicine is non-holistic and based on treatment rather than prevention. Yet MDs trained in treatment are being asked to provide all sorts of recommendations that end up being largely anecdotal and rarely evidence-based.
In one of my online discussion forums, the topic of pediatricians and parenting advice comes up over and over again. Every day there's another mom saying, "My pediatrician said ______!! But from everything I read and researched, speaking with other professionals, and following my mom instincts, I should be doing something else! What do I do?!"
It ranges from breastfeeding/nutrition advice to ... more breastfeeding and nutrition advice! Sleeping and schedules also come up often.
After reading yet another post and reassuring yet another mom that she doesn't have to start cereal RIGHT NOW with her four-month old, that he WILL learn to swallow food (what neurologically intact baby doesn't develop that ability once their extrusion reflex goes away later on!), that she shouldn't limit breastfeeding (since that's his main source of nutrition for the first year), that solids are more about practice and experimentation, not particularly nutrition, I decided to write this post.
Great news:
On Friday, May 23, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reversed the September 2007 decision of the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine which ordered Lancaster County midwife, Diane Goslin, to cease and desist from the practice of midwifery.
In other, not so great, news....
Nationally, home birth is being attacked by the American Medical Association (AMA), joined by American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). The AMA has introduced a legislative resolution at their 2008 Annual Meeting to outlaw home birth (Resolution 205, PDF). Incidentally, the AMA has also written legislation to propose a stop to the Board of Medical Examiners, who plan to begin testing and certifying Doctor of Nursing Practitioners (Resolution 214, PDF). Both resolutions can be found online American Medical Association.
I found The International Breast Milk Project from the Ovusoft Forums...
From their site:
- 25% of my milk will be donated to infants orphaned by HIV/AIDS and 75% will be retained by Prolacta Bioscience for critically ill infants in the US.
Prolacta Bioscience is a US company (and the only company in the world at this point) that uses breast milk to create fortifiers to meet the nutritional needs of NICU babies. Often, even breast-fed NICU babies will need fortifiers to increase their caloric intake. And for premature or ill infants, breast milk is SERIOUSLY superior to cows' milk-based replacements.
Hello Again!
It's been a long time. I am very pregnant now...33 weeks and counting...and a friend read my blog tonight and found out we're having a baby - surprise! (whoops!)
Life has been quite busy - I was sick for a month in December (did you get that nasty virus too?!), have finally gone to part-time this month, and we are getting ready for baby. I just set up a flickr selection for belly photos. It seems that even going to part-time, my days are just as full as if I were working 5 days a week...I'm getting to run all the errands and do things I haven't been able to do while working full-time...and I'm just as tired.
A Random Post
I just completely my first day in my CLC training program down in White Plains, NY. This has been hosted by the The Breastfeeding Advocacy Network.
One little tidbit gleaned from my day (well...maybe two):
Did YOU know that there are closed-system non hospital-grade pumps on the market?? I didn't know - I've worked and had clinical at hospitals that exclusively used a certain brand of pumps. Now, they work well, and our hospital-grade pumps ARE closed-systems and safe for use for multiple users...
Spent Thursday at Vassar Brothers Medical Center with Dots (aka grandma) in their cardio-thoracic waiting room. Pops had a long, intensive heart surgery, including bypasses, grafts, and a bovine valve replacement (the joke is that he's going to Moo!).
I was up at 4am today, and when I called to check in, he was already up doing his breathing treatment and I even got to say hello!
It was a early morning for me (very unusual), but Mark's in Wisconsin for their Grand Session and a presentation, and I couldn't sleep. So I got up and did some yoga, which felt great. I'll be working the next three days, so I expect I'll drop into bed when I get home tonight.
Well, I guess I've got an excuse for not blogging...the wedding's only 10 days away!
My 10 days are full, full FULL.
My brother is getting an award for his poetry tonight at RPI - boy, 8 years ago I would have thought I'd be the one writing poetry, and he be in science...guess you can never tell!!
I've got a book idea, though I might have to write it under a pseudonym. haha. I'm still working on reading Bill Bryson's great book "the mother tongue".
The wedding is coming, steady and sure. A friend's blue afghan showed up today, a great addition to our couch. We threw a small wine and food and dancing party Saturday night for friends, in addition to having a blue bracelet made for my by some of the women in my life earlier in the day. X-tina throws a wonderful shower. People keep notifying us of their travel plans and hotel arrangements, and we made reservations for a delightful B&B in Brattleboro VT for after the wedding!
So I've been working on one or two blog posts, but haven't put anything together.
Tonight Mark showed me some great talent showcased on Digg.com and they were good enough to pass on to you:
Cute Ventriloquist, who happens to be Phenomenally Funny
more Here.
I have settled into work rather well lately. There are always new things for me, but I've developed a simpler rhythm over the last month or more. At the same time, there have been some very new things for me, like becoming a member of a unit committee and taking on the entering of pediatricians' phone/address info into Excel.
The Committee
As a new 2006 employee of AMC, I was not required to be part of a committee, but since the new year I have begun the orientation to "QuadraMed" - our patient classification system. As a committee member, I'm in the process of becoming a SuperUser, someone who learns the system more than the average staff member. In addition, the QuadraMed program is changing - in the next month - from a ScanTron process to an online software program. The amount of work with this committee is staggering.
