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Maternity Care in the U.S.

The recent birth of the royal prince cost $15,000.  That sounds like a lot, right?  It is, but it’s only half the cost of a birth in America.  That’s right: the average price of a birth — in a normal hospital, not a luxury wing — in the U.S. is $30,000.  That makes us, according to an in-depth article by The New York Times, the nation that pays the most for maternity care.  Yet, we also have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world.  It seems like these two things should counter one another, but in … Continue reading →

The Sunny Side of Summer Scrapbooking

I share a summer birthday with my dad and grandfather, so there was no shortage of greeting cards around our home during the month of August. Given our collective ages, it’s no surprise that we still treasure receiving traditional birthday cards rather than the digital ones that are sent via email. I am a tactile person. I love wrapping my fingers around handwritten well wishes, and then cutting up said well wishes and placing them in a scrapbook. I’ve been doing it for years. Why waste a perfectly good greeting card when you can add it to a scrapbook layout? … Continue reading →

California’s AIM Program Covers Maternity

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Insurance coverage can be difficult when there is a baby on the way. The medical bills involved with having a birth in a hospital tend to be extremely expensive. If you live in California, and do not have health insurance coverage, the AIM program might help you. Many families see a pregnancy as a blessing. Soon, there will be a new addition to the family. The happiness of having a baby on the way is a very positive thing. What isn’t so positive, though, is the stress involved of trying to come up with the money to pay for the … Continue reading →

Watch Where You Point That Finger

Well, that didn’t take long. Then again, it rarely does. It’s been less than 72 hours since the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and already cyberspace is ripe with pointed fingers, harsh accusations and shameless sanctimony. Sadly, though, that big, ugly finger of blame, which was initially aimed at the shooter, quickly turned to the parents of the victims, specifically the moms and dads who allowed their young children to attend the midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Thanks to pure thoughtlessness, Twitter, Facebook and thousands of other sites– where commenters and posters are able … Continue reading →

Special Needs Blog Week in Review – Week of July 8 -14, 2012

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Every week, the Special Needs Blog Week in Review brings you a brief summary of each of the blogs that have appeared here in the past seven days. This is a quick and easy way to find out about the blogs that you might have missed when they were first posted. The Special Needs Podcast Roundup went up on July 9, 2012. This week, I’d like to point out an episode of The Coffee Klatch. The episode is called “DSM, Examining a Flawed System That Traps Our Children”. If I understand correctly, this is an episode of the “Bright Not … Continue reading →

Parents and Vacation Time

With Independence Day falling on a Wednesday this year, many parents with jobs outside the home, took off Thursday and Friday to extend the holiday weekend. Others simply exercised a week’s worth of vacation to spend uninterrupted holiday time with their families. Are you enjoying time away from the office right now? If so, consider yourself lucky. According to a new study, the United States is one of only a handful of developed countries in the world that doesn’t require companies to give their workers time off. In other cases, workers are given minimum vacation time that cannot be transferred … Continue reading →

Detoxing Your Home

Did you know that a recent study examining infant cord blood found it to contain more than 300 different chemicals? These are chemicals that are not naturally occurring in the body. Instead, they were chemicals and toxins taken in from the mothers’ environment or consumed through food. Many of the chemicals that we come in contact with every day, through touch, breathing or eating are toxic, known to contribute to diseases from asthma to cancer. While we can’t eliminate entirely the toxins in our modern lives, we can make sure that are homes, the place in which we spend the … Continue reading →

Losing It in Public

Overheard at the zoo last week: Mom to tweenage son: “Knock it off, Caden! We’re not in a video game.” Tweenage boy attempting to trip younger sibling: “You’re going down.” Mom: “Caden! Knock! It! Off!” Boy: “DOWN!” And that’s exactly where the younger sibling went. Flat on his face, courtesy of the tweenage boy, right in front of the polar bear exhibit where my daughter and I happened to be standing. Unfortunately, we had front row seats to the mama drama. And the show was far from over. In fact, it was just beginning. Once the mom saw her younger … Continue reading →

What Happened to Common Sense?

Growing up in Hawaii long before SPF was part of the ABCs of sun safety, I would regularly sport a mean red glow. Back then, parents could douse their kids with baby oil and let them play in a yard of aluminum foil and no one would bat an eyelash. Fast forward 25 years and those same parents would likely end up in jail or at least make headlines like Tan Mom for being so negligent. When you know better, you do better, right? It took a skin cancer scare to get me to break my bad habits, and now … Continue reading →

Consequences

One of the tenets of good parenting is teaching children about consequences. But what happens when kids see adults act inappropriately and not have to suffer a penalty for their negative actions? Well, you get a situation similar to the one described in my fellow blogger Stephanie Romero’s post about her son’s recent high school graduation ceremony. In her blog, Stephanie detailed the frustration she felt when several parents blatantly defied the principal’s plea to remain silent while the graduates’ names were being announced and diplomas were being handed out on stage. From what I gather from reading Stephanie’s post, … Continue reading →