(The picture is of my son’s leg after getting his vaccinations)

Andrew Wakefield kicked off the anti vaccination movement with his paper published in 1998 that claimed to show a link between Autism and vaccines. His  findings  have been proven false over and over again. It was also found that he most likely faked his data.

Last week  the UK’s General Medical Council found that Andrew Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” when doing his research. And now The Lancet (who published the paper) has issued a full retraction.

This is very good news and I hope that this will help put parents concerns about vaccinating their children to rest.

In other news, Bill Gates has committed $10 Billion (yes Billion!)  to develop and deliver vaccines to children in the developing world. “We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

I get a daily email from the American Council on Science and Health called “Health Facts and Fears”. In that news letter Dr Gilbert Ross is quoted as saying of Bill Gates, “We must give credit to him for taking a very effective, targeted, lifesaving approach to charitable giving as opposed to activists, who prefer to wage irrational attacks on substances that have no nexus with human health.”

I’m a Mac girl but this makes me want to buy a PC!

Interesting research has just come to light from Germany, where scientists found that babies cry with accents. The cries of sixty French and German newborns, who were all within three to five days of life, were analyzed by researchers. They found that the babies cried in the mother’s tongue.

The French newborns cried with a rising “accent” while the German babies’ cries had a falling inflection.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.

The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb.

Very cool stuff.

Photo

Skeptical OB’s last two posts are pertinent to issues we’ve discussed on this blog. Yesterday she posted an elementary primer on how vaccines work.  I understand that Amy Tuteur isn’t everyone’s favorite blogger, but this is just your basic science, so it probably won’t offend.  I was pretty familiar with how vaccines work, but if you’re not, or you want a refresher, this is a good piece: » Continue reading “Two from Amy”

I really would panic if my baby looked like this.

At Let’s Panic you’ll get lots of really great advice.  For example, this fantastic quiz helps you to interpret your baby’s cries and begins by asking the sensitive question:

What’s that sound coming out of Baby’s face-hole?

I also enjoyed reading “Your Post-Childbirth Vagina: Get To Know It!”

All that stretching and tearing and stitching. Will you ever be pretty again, down there? Will you ever be able to feature your vagina in your annual Christmas portrait?

Thanks to Molly for the link!

duncan @ five minutes

By Dean Cameron

This past August 1, 2009 at 10:45am, my son, Duncan Huxley Cameron was born.

Not only is he quite a bit bigger now than he is in that photo, his ability to melt me with a look, has increased.

We are raising him as rationally as possible. Obviously, he’ll make his own decisions about how to interact with his world, but we’ll tell the truth as we see it and let it go. There’s plenty of woo out there for him to encounter and deal with on his own, so we don’t need to burden him with more at home. It’s going to be intersting as, even before he was born, people I consider rational were saying really weird and irrational things.

» Continue reading “Guest Dad Post – HAVIN’ MY BABAY”

Jessie had her baby boy yesterday and mom and baby are doing great.  So now Jessie is not just a rational pregnant lady but an actual rational mom!

Check out this article about how homebirth increases the neonatal mortality rate by Amy Tuteur, the Skeptical OB.  I’ve been reading her blog for a while now.  I started with her previous blog, Homebirth Debate.  There is probably something appealing to many folks on Dr. Amy’s, whether you are interested in homebirth, or dead set against homebirth, or just wanting information about homebirth, or really, even if you don’t give a hoot about homebirth but just love to watch people get seriously into it with each other in the comments.  I mean, these folks go at it.  It’s kind of like the Jerry Springer of skeptical blogs.  I can’t get enough. » Continue reading “Fighting–er, I mean debating about homebirth”

For formula-feeding parents, a big worry is that your baby might be allergic to, or intolerant of, cow’s milk formula. This can lead to a lot of trial-and-error of different brands and types of formulas. A new study has suggested some parents are misdiagnosing milk intolerance and may be too hasty when it comes to switching formulas–especially without consulting a health professional.

The researchers found that nearly half of formula-fed babies experience a formula change in the first six months. Could parents be over-reacting? While a relatively small study, they found no difference in infant intolerance to either milk-based or partially hydrolyzed whey protein formula. (The later is a formula modified to remove some of the proteins found in cows’ milk.)

While regurgitation, crying, fussiness, and colic can be signs of intolerances, similar episodes are also normal during early infancy. But anxious parents may mistake these normal episodes as formula intolerance.

The best course of action seems to be talking to a health-care professional, such as your child’s pediatrician. Breast-fed babies can also spit up, have colic, reflux, and/or general digestion discomfort. Both of my daughters were breast fed, and each had horrible nighttime crying fits around three and four months old. It never mattered what I ate (or didn’t eat). We just had to comfort them as best we could.

Dairy allergies and intolerance are real, but perhaps may not be as prevalent as some parents fear.

One short year ago

My son turned one June 10th!  He is walking like a pro and can say six words:  mommy, daddy, ball, bubble, water, and, “Wow.”  (I don’t think he really understands what he’s saying with that last one, but it’s adorable.)

I have looked forward to this milestone for many reasons, and I can’t deny that one big reason was the promised end of nursing, as the AAP recommends breast feeding for one year.  I don’t know if I 100% buy this recommendation, but hey, I made it a year, which is something of an accomplishment.  So I’d like my certificate and my prize money, please, and then I’d like my old bras back. » Continue reading “To wean or not to wean?”

There’s an app for that.

Somehow while surfing around tonight, I came across an ad for a software program called Trixie Tracker.

Trixie Tracker was invented by stay-at-home-dad Ben MacNeill to so he could take better care of his new daughter. He knew there was a daily schedule and wanted to understand it, but it was too difficult to keep track of all the little baby care details.

That’s where Trixie Tracker software comes in. It keeps track of the details for you and connects the dots in ways that reveal incredibly helpful patterns over time.

» Continue reading “Want to know your baby’s total lifetime number of diaper changes?”