Week 38 belly

Living in our tony park slope neighborhood, residents will nod or smile or hold doors for a pregnant lady. Some will strike up a conversation and offer any advice they can to a new mother. Walking in downtown Brooklyn, folks are a little more vocal. Generally Latinos or men from the islands in strong accents…

(larger, dark skinned man with headphones on - dark jacket and mlb cap on sideways - keeping to himself leaning against a wall - comes to life when Alisa walks past and takes off his headphones quickly…)

“Hey!! You know it’s a boy, RIGHT? No, I’m SERIOUS! Look at her, you can TELL!!!”

Not 5 minutes later, we’re walking on Flatbush Ave., after dark. A black man in a parka walks past and stops short right before Alisa…

“Oh! You’re having a BOY!! You must be so proud! You can tell, you know? Look at how she walks - she walks UP! Her face held up high to the universe. It’s true!”

I’m perhaps most surprised that young kids of 18 or so are stopping us and telling us the sex of our child. I guess I figure it’s quite possible that these kids already have first hand knowledge of these things - I certainly never thought about these things before this year.

My mom told me the sex of our child even before I shared our sonogram news with her. She told me, “You don’t have to tell me, I already know.” Intuitive dreams figure very prominently on my mom’s side of the family, and she already had a vision of our baby boy. Alisa’s mom also had a premonition of Alisa’s pregnancy before we told her. There’s a lot that goes on in this world that is not black and white on paper.

“…U.F.O.’s, astral projection, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, full-trance mediums, telekinetic movement, black and/or white magic, pyramidology, the theory of Atlantis, the Loch Ness Monster… spooks, spectres, wraiths, geists, ghosts?”

Oh BOY…

And here’s visual proof of our impending boy child - note Alisa’s torpedo-like profile - proof she’s carrying a boy

I’ve been taking prenatal yoga classes at Lila Yoga (Eden is the founder) from my 8th week of pregnancy, twice a week (mostly). I don’t know how well I can describe the benefits I got from yoga except to say that I feel ready. And I would think that is the greatest endorsement.

Here’s my own imperfect version of the prenatal “Sun Salutation” we do at Lila (video engineered by Chris, from photo stills):

And then there are morning walks in Prospect Park, 3 miles at least 4 times a week (upping it as the B-day approaches). As the year progressed, I got more and more inspired. And who wouldn’t: the park is just beautiful this time of the year!

Why to vaccinate?

Vaccines have improved the lives of people since they were first introduced. The incidences of diseases have been so greatly reduced that we are getting complacent about them and have turned our worry on the side effects of vaccines rather than the dangers of the diseases they prevent. This is a luxury that will go away if the majority of people stop vaccinating and epidemics emerge.

While most of the diseases we vaccinate against aren’t all that dangerous, they can be fatal or can cause lasting problems (brain damage, sterility). While there are side effects to vaccines, the link between autism and MMR vaccine is unsubstantiated.

Vaccine ingredients are all necessary. For example, aluminum makes a vaccine work better. Compared to the amount of aluminum ingested in our everyday lives, the quantity injected through a vaccine is much less. There is no longer any mercury (thimerosal) in vaccines (and some never carried it).

New York State law requires it. Children can’t go to public schools unless they are up to date with vaccines.

Why not to vaccinate?

Ascribing the decline in contagious diseases only to vaccines diminishes the socio-economic factors that have contributed to this decline. The quality of life has improved. For example, incidences of diphtheria steadily fell after the vaccinations started in 1920, but so did incidences of yellow and scarlet fever without vaccinations.

We carry trillions of bacteria and viruses in our bodies: micro-organisms do not necessarily come from the outside but live in us as well. We vaccinate against 26 of them (though the number keeps rising). New diseases will be born out of this imbalance - other strands of a virus or bacterium that are not immunized against rise to fill the void. When the body has an opportunity to fight off a disease, it acquires a full cellular immunity to it. Antibodies, acquired by vaccination, are just one part of this immunity and that immunity is incomplete.

Being sick and letting the body do the work of fighting off a disease also affects children developmentally. A high fever fights an infection and helps in the ‘pruning’ of older brain cells. Post sickness, it’s been noted that children experience growth spurts both mentally and physically (for example, a child is found to talk or walk better than before).

One in 5 American children have some kind of developmental delay, autism being just one of them. Our vaccination rates are the highest in the world and they correspond to high atopic disorders such as allergies, lupus, asthma.

Vaccine ingredients include heavy metals, animal serum and known neuro-toxins (i.e. formaldehyde and some others). While it’s true that we do ingest or inhale heavy metals in food and air naturally, injecting them into the bloodstream exposes our bodies more directly. The body has natural filters such as the skin, the mucous membranes, and the digestive system. Injecting a vaccine directly into the bloodstream bypasses all of them. The vaccine additive polysorbate 80 enables a virus injected into the bloodstream to easily pass into the brain, bypassing important natural barriers.

A notorious example of vaccine composition is the original polio vaccine invented in the 1950s. The polio virus was cultivated on shredded monkey kidneys, then made inactive by dunking in formaldehyde, and then the mash was made into vaccines. But the monkey kidneys bestowed this mash with something called SV40 (simian virus 40) which also got injected into people, millions of them. SV40 has been found to cause brain cancer. (Of course, there are studies that show that this monkey virus has no effect on people, but beware of statistics). This was in the past, right? Well, as late as 1999, this virus was found in the blood of a vaccinated child or two, during an autopsy…

What are we going to do?

Read. Think. Pray.

On our reading list:

The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child, by Robert Sears

The vaccination dilemma, edited by Murphy, Christine.

Recommended by Tribeca Pediatrics

Summary of Notifiable Diseases, United States, 2006: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/summary.html

Possible Side-effects from Vaccines: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm

Afzal, M.A. (2006). Absence of detectable measles virus genome sequence in blood of autistic children who have had their MMR vaccination during the routine childhood immunization schedule of UK . Journal of Medical Virology, 78, 623-630.

and more…

Recommended by Dr. Palevsky

Vaccines and Their Specific Ingredients: http://www.informedchoice.info

Fear of the Invisible, Janine Roberts (book)

The Virus and the Vaccine, Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher (book)

Research by Boyd Haley.

and more…

Week 37 belly

We are full term!

Chris will jokingly say that my “untreated” high fevers killed many a brain cell and I can’t find any evidence to refute him. What are going to do…

The thing is, my parents still swear by their methods. Here are some of them:

High Fever

- Mom would soak a pair of thick socks in vinegar and put them on our feet. She would then cover the wet ones with a pair of thick Bosnian handmade wool slippers-socks. Tucked in.

Cough

- Parchment or newspaper thickly coated with lard, laid on our chests. Tucked in.

- Primrose tisane

Crying baby

- Chamomile tea, sometimes with milk.

Flu

- Raw garlic. Lots of it.

Worms (yes, this we did have)

- Grind pumpkin seeds, raw garlic, corriander seed. Ingest.

Minor cuts

- Apply propolis tincture — a bee product my dad still swears by

Constipation

- Yogurt or

- Raw, cold milk

Ear infection

- Few drops of expressed juice of a succulent plant Common Houseleek, into the ear or

- A drop of olive oil

Diaper rash

- Fish oil pomade

Stomach pain

- Few drops of propolis tincture in warm water

Week 36 belly

There is anecdotal, but not clinical, evidence that MMR (mums, measels and rubella) vaccine causes autism. Doctors say MMR is perfectly safe, while some moms report their children getting sick after getting it and then being diagnosed within autism spectrum or ADHD. In addition, there is a school of thought saying that antibodies introduced into the body through administration of a given vaccine don’t exactly reproduce the full cellular immunity that a body develops when it fights off the disease by itself. And there is a bunch of other stuff I don’t know anything about (and we know that little knowledge is dangerous).

Through haze, I remember being sick with some of those disease as a kid. I was out of school for a while and had red, pussy dots all over me. Parents made soups and cuddled me. I lied in a darkened living room and read a lot. I do not remember any pain (though, I’m sure there was some), just the feelings of love, care and freedom from school. It is a pleasant memory.

Am I being ridiculously idyllic about something dangerous? What’s at stake isn’t just our personal health, there are public as well as legal repercussions to consider.

The medical practice we are considering for the kid is “pro-vaccines” but they have a less aggressive immunization schedule than most other practices. This is supposed to make us feel better. We attended an information session and it turns out the kid would need to be vaccinated for 12 different diseases for a total of 30 pokes by the time he’s 11. More than half of these pokes will happen in his first year of life (17). Each of the diseases/vaccines has its own special quirks, so, I guess, we have to read up on them individually. There are few books on the subject on reserve at the library and we are going to an “anti-vaccines” information session next week.

I am of a heavy, heavy heart about this whole thing. Chris promised to read some books, though he did sigh and wished I was into architecture or Mayan ruins.

When I got back, Chris and I had to scramble (again) to make our place a little more presentable. The occasion? Why, it was the midwife visit day, of course!

Every time I see her, I feel like I can fly. She makes me feel so confident and secure, it’s like she’s sprinkling faerie dust on me.

Things are well: belly is perfect 34.5 cm (corresponding to my 35 weeks), blood pressure 104/65 (I seem to have an even pattern here), baby’s little heart regular (she lets me and Chris listen on her stethoscope),  his head is down, his back turned toward my left side (optimal: chances for posterior labor are smaller), weight gain at 20lb (can go 5-10 more by the end).

We have 2 more weeks before I can stop worrying about preterm labor (and replace that with post-term worry :-), but even at 36 weeks (as early as next week!), she’s confident to assist me at giving birth at home.

Magical!