#1 grandson is of course going to press once again for his favorite name – Cool Ass Mojo – and once again isn’t likely to prevail. That’s okay, he can name his own child thusly. Grandpa and I are just delighted, hoping this birth will be much easier on our sweet daughter who has proven herself to be an extremely good Mom. Her family is happily well-adjusted and for her good choices we are grateful.

Meanwhile, Grandpa’s intensive work schedule in various regional public school systems kicked into high gear when school started in August, bringing home more than ‘the usual’ season-change cold this year. Some of you may know that the new H1N1 flu is officially rampant here in the Southeast. Some wish to call it swine flu, but it’s also got elements of bird flu and Spanish flu – a regular Chimera. So I just call it the Unicorn Flu, in honor of the worldwide panic it’s engendered since its so-public appearance in Mexico City this past April.

Hubby at first thought it was an attack of allergies, though he did have a headache and some fever to go with his sneezing and coughing. But not bad enough to cause him to miss work, so he no doubt helped spread it around. A couple of days later I came down with the sneeze attacks, head and body aches, sore throat and fever. I told him it had to be the flu, since allergies aren’t contagious.

Flu instead of just the usual cold because the cold doesn’t knock you down. Or, it doesn’t knock US down. I was down for a full 24 hours with this, and the fever was high enough to signal something more than rhinovirus. Still nursing a nasty congested cough two weeks later, with enough of a leftover fever to suspect I’ve graduated to bacterial bronchitis or mild pneumonia. Haven’t gone to a doctor and so long as I’m on top of it, won’t. It’s harvest time here on the homestead, I’ve been keeping up with that and preservation, can still play 5 holes of mountainside disc golf without trouble, and have been drinking a lot of my anti-viral/antibiotic herbal tea both hot and cold, with raw honey. I think I’ll live.

Deal is, for all the super-hype for this flu, it’s not nearly as bad as some other flus we’ve managed to catch over the years. While I wasn’t inclined to eat anything, there was no nausea or vomiting like there was with the Hong Kong flu back in the ’70s. Which nearly killed us for sure, though we were healthy 20-somethings at the time. I’ve read quite a bit of alternative super-hype about the vaccines they’ve rushed into production for this flu, and that’s over the top as well.

The rampant paranoia about forced vaccination and quarantine is overblown, given that the first vaccine is still weeks away and the flu itself is rampant. Not even bad enough to close any schools, it’s making the rounds pretty much like your average cold and not causing serious absenteeism or an increase in hospitalizations on a par with the average flu season around here in January. I see no indications from CDC that they’re going to force us all to get shots now that a majority of us have already had the flu. What would be the point in that? If it ever was the plan, the vaccine is too little too late in a region where the epidemic has already taken hold (and just about over by now).

So. If you happen to live in one of the states where this flu hasn’t yet made itself rampant, you may well wish to get the vaccine. Especially if you are in the high-risk groups, which in this case includes healthy young people. I’ve advised younger daughter to get vaccinated a.s.a.p. because she’s pregnant – and pregnant women have depressed immune functions by purposeful nature so they don’t attack their own baby growing in the womb. They account for many of the deaths reported for this flu, so that’s a definite risk. We’ve got our fingers crossed that she’ll make it to when they release the vaccine, and is first in line. Prayers to that effect offered daily!

For the rest of us, don’t worry so much. It’s not that bad.

My DiL is an organic gardener like me (I’m so proud!), we often go back and forth about different cultivars, particular techniques for (trying to) beat bugs, etc. She linked me to a story from the LA Environmental Health Examiner this morning that I’m making the subject of this post.

Jon Stewart spoofs and doctors warn: avoid GMOs

Seems that on the 8th of May this year the American Academy of Environmental Medicine [AAEM] officially called on doctors to educate their patients and their local medical communities as well as the public to “avoid GM foods when possible.” Why? Well, it seems that the results of those long-term feeding studies that Monsanto, et al. were NOT required by the FDA to do before they introduced poisons disguised as staple food crops are finally coming in, and they aren’t good…

“There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation,” according to the AAEM’s resolution to its membership.
“The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.” A review of more than 600 papers in scientific journals led biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava to conclude that GMOs are a major contributor to the sharply deteriorating health of Americans. Worse, pregnant women and their babies are at the greatest risk for harm. What is known from experience with GMOs as animal feed so far:

• Female rats fed GM soy suffered a greater than 50% loss of their litters, compared with a 10% death rate for the natural soy control group.

• Surviving females in those rat litters experienced problems becoming pregnant when they matured.

• Male rates fed GM soy had their testicles change color. Their sperm was altered to produce fewer offspring and those offspring were smaller than normal.

• Indian buffalos that grazed on GM cotton plants after harvest had reproductive problems or became infertile. Pigs fed GM corn also became sterile.

• In the US, the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility and infant mortality are all rising dramatically since the introduction of GM foods in the human foodstream.

Serious food allergies are rising epidemically, immune dysfunction is also becoming endemic in the US population. Multiple animal studies of GMO diets indicate that these too are attributable to the new staple foods. The various Bt crops – engineered to produce bacterial toxins in every cell of the plants – have been implicated in the mass deaths of buffalo, cows, horses and chickens.

Bottom line is that no matter how convenient these genetically modified crops are for farmers, seed purveyors and agricultural chemical conglomerates, they are not good for what we humans use them for at our end of the production chain – food. AAEM’s resolution contains advice to doctors to inform their patients to avoid GM foods. This means staying away from anything with soy or corn derivatives, cottonseed and canola oil, and sugar from genetically modified beets.

Those products are okay if they are labeled “organic” or “non-GMO,” so read those labels carefully. Growing season is upon us, so local farmers will be selling produce at farmer’s markets in bulk, and are usually on hand (or a family member is) to tell you whether or not the produce came from GM seeds. Eat as fresh and close to local as possible, avoid highly processed foods – most contain GM soy, high fructose corn syrup from GM corn, and possibly other GMO ingredients.

Your family’s health is on the line, so do what you must. And don’t let Monsanto’s strong-arm tactics get in your way, don’t believe a word of the pro-GMO advertisements they’re paying a fortune to brainwash you with. I’ve found that the best thing is to not buy any food you see advertised on TV. But then again, we quit paying to be brainwashed by TV way back in the mid-1970s, so that hasn’t been difficult!

Please go to the above link and read the article. It’s highly informative, and should help make up a lot of people’s minds about this issue. There is plenty of information about GMOs out on the wide web, easily accessed through OCA or a Google search on “GMO.” Educate yourself, save your family from the health effects of industrial foods.

Science reports this week yet another research study touting the considerable benefits of breast feeding over formula or cow’s milk for babies.

This time the study is used to support the notion that breast fed babies are just plain smarter than babies who don’t have that advantage. The original article in ScienceDaily makes a causal inference that may not be scientifically warranted given the details of the study and the fact that correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but it’s something for new parents to consider.

Meanwhile, another study published this week links early consumption of cow’s milk with Type-1 diabetes, and that’s a correlation no parent needs to ignore! Researcher marcia F. Goldfarb suggests that the culprit may be a cow protein lactoglobulin may have adverse effects to the breast milk protein it mimics (glycodelin), which controls T-cell production in the human immune system.

So ladies, here are two more great ['scientific'] reasons to breast feed your babies no matter what your grandma or your Mother-in-Law tells you about the “unseemliness” of it all!

Today, April 2nd, is World Autism Awareness Day as declared by the United Nations after the UN ambassador from Qatar introduced the resolution last November. On the occasion of the very first Annual World Autism Awareness Day, this is a good time to take a look at some of the issues associated with this increasingly prevalent malady.

Autism is a complex brain disorder that inhibits the ability to communicate or develop normal social relationships, and often comes with behavioral problems that can be extreme. There is a range of autistic disorders from fairly mild to completely debilitating, so doctors call this the “Autism spectrum disorders.” It is currently being diagnosed in 1 of every 150 children in the U.S., with four times as many boys suffering the disorder than girls. That diagnosis rate has increased tenfold over the last ten years, and there is some dispute about why the rate is rising so fast.

Most researchers believe the causes of autism are a combination of genes, gene expression, and exposure to environmental triggers. Chief among suspects for environmental trigger has been mercury, a ubiquitous environmental neurotoxin released by coal burning and contaminating many types of fish consumed by humans. Mercury was also used until 2001 as a preservative and antimicrobial agent in vaccines [thimerosal]. There were significant increases in recommended childhood immunization doses during the 1990s, leading to a situation where it was possible for a 6-month old infant to have been exposed to a cumulative dose of organic mercury that exceeded certain limits set by government health agencies. Many parents of autistic children have connected this situation with the rapid increase in diagnosis of autism.

The annual flu vaccines still use thimerosal, and doctors recommend all children between 6 months and 18 years of age get the flu vaccine every year. 7,000 parents of autistic children have filed claims with the government’s Court of Federal Claims, which exists to settle claims using a vaccine-injury fund established for that purpose. In early March the family of 9-year old Hannah Poling of Georgia won the first settlement in those cases. For the first time, government officials have admitted that thimerosal indeed did cause neurological injury to young Hannah.

Hannah, unlike most other children, suffers a disorder that prevents her from eliminating mercury from her system through skin and hair. Other children have also been tested and shown toxic levels of mercury in their systems. If the government and drug manufacturers can be convinced to eliminate the use of mercury as a vaccine preservative in all vaccines (not just the usual childhood varieties), some medical statisticians expect the sharp rise in autism to stabilize and then sharply decline.

But researchers are not convinced that it’s all about mercury neurotoxin. There are many other neurotoxins in our environment and food supply. Agricultural pesticides, for instance, are so prevalent in our water systems and on fruits and vegetables that a recent study showed that breast milk in ALL women tested was contaminated. Pesticides are neurotoxins.

It is hoped that genetic researchers will soon develop a test to identify children with compromised immune and toxin elimination systems so their exposures can be carefully managed through life. Some parents are opting out of having their children vaccinated at all, and this situation could lead to renewed epidemics of the sometimes deadly childhood diseases that have been practically eradicated from our society.

Because I am old enough to be a grandma, I remember what it was like when mumps or measles, rubella, and whooping cough moved in waves through the student body at my school, sometimes shutting them down for weeks at a time. I remember being very sick, too, and not much enjoying it. Worse, I was born in the years before universal vaccination for polio was instituted. There were classmates and teachers throughout my education who had been crippled by that awful disease, which now strikes only rarely and only in sub-populations that traditionally eschew vaccinations of any kind (like the Amish).

At any rate, all expecting and new parents out there should educate themselves about autism, vaccination, and the issues of special needs children. Today is a good time to start, since it’s World Autism Awareness Day. And all you Grannies out there need to make sure your children are well versed on these issues too, for the health and future of your precious grandbabies!

Links:

Autism Speaks
World Autism Awareness Day
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate?

Welcome to the world, Sunshine! She made her overdue debut on Saturday, March 22 at 12:07 a.m., a true Equinox baby. Daughter had a bit of a rough time with two pitocin drips over 36 hours to induce, then a C-section. Given that my own son was at least a full month overdue when he made his appearance (after a not too hard 2.5 hour labor), I’m not sure why the medical profession these days seems to think it’s such a desperate big deal when a baby doesn’t show up precisely “on time” for whatever plans they’ve made. Babies seldom confirm predictions precisely. You’d think they would have figured that out by now.

At any rate, it’s been a fun, family-filled Easter around Granny’s homestead, what with photos and videos and multi-communications among the far-flung brood, and three of the older grands right here to hunt eggs. And they’re old enough that when I say “hunt eggs,” I mean with crossbows and BB guns…

Her name didn’t turn out to be CoolAssMojo (though #1 grandson swears he’s going to call her ‘Mojo’ for short and never anything else) or even GuitarGreg. Worse, it’s not even really Sunshine. But Sunshine will do for internet work, and she’s a real beauty!!!

I had two babies in diapers before I was 20. The hospital sent #2 home with several boxes of a nifty new product called “Pampers.” Disposable diapers the baby uses once before they go to the landfill to take up space for 500 years! I thought they were totally cool. Until I got home and tried to fit them on my newborn boy-child.

Perhaps first time mothers don’t know this, but there’s a difference between girl babies and boy babies. My girl had ample hips and chubby legs, never had a problem fitting diapers – cloth or disposables – on her. My boy’s little bottom end came to a point. No hips, spindly legs, and a pee mechanism that didn’t care which way it was pointed. This was before disposable manufacturers figured out that the gaping gaps around the legs weren’t particularly good at catching any of the products diapers traditionally are meant to catch and hold. My boy peed straight out of the leg hole more often than he ever caught the “super-absorbant” part. And he had diarrhea for 3 straight months…

So despite my initial reaction to the idea of disposable diapers, I quickly learned they were useless and went back to old fashioned cloth diapers. Which, despite having poked enough holes in my fingers to donate blood at the Red Cross, actually did work for the purpose diapers were invented to address.

We were too poor for a diaper service, so I washed my own (sometimes in the sink because we didn’t have a washing machine and couldn’t always afford the laundromat) and hung them out to dry in the sun. Which answers the question I see asked a lot in diaper discussions about retained odors in cloth diapers even after washing. A little fresh air and sunshine works wonders, and the UV actually kills any leftover microorganisms (which can contribute greatly to diaper rash).

So as I’m finishing up my projects for pregnant daughter #2 and collecting odds and ends she doesn’t have yet from my local Freecycle Network, I’m also considering buying her some newfangled cloth diapers, wool covers and a nice soaking pail. I’ve been surfing to see what’s up since last we had a newborn in-house. I already knew that cloth diapers are certifiably more “Green” than disposables, and I knew they’re actually better for the baby’s sensitive skin. There are issues to consider – not the least of which is that day cares generally REQUIRE disposables for convenience – so here’s some of the information I’ve found…

Did you know that disposable diapers on plastic take 500 years to biodegrade? That according to the EPA, 20 billion disposable diapers were dumped into landfills in the US last year, creating 3.5 million tons of waste? That’s 10,000 tons – 20 million pounds – per day!

Cloth diapers are healthier for babies. Disposables come complete with chemicals associated with health problems, and increase the incidence of diaper rash – and subsequent infections – due to chemical allergies, poor air flow and longer time between changes.

Cloth diapers laundered at home (my daughter works from home) can save a parent between $800 and $1,600 over the 2.5 years the baby needs them. Using a diaper service is about as expensive as disposables, but many couples will choose that option based on health and environmental reasons.

Now, cloth diapers can be flat, pre-folded or all-in-one. I like prefolds best, and polyester velcro covers. The all-in-ones are easier for changing, but more difficult to clean. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, prefolds and covers still look like the best option. I was delighted to find that there’s been some nifty developments in diaper world since I left it behind, too.

I found a thing called “G-diapers” that consist of an outer shell similar to a diaper wrap, an absorbent – and FLUSHABLE – insert, and a nylon snap-in liner. They come with a “swishstick” for breaking up the disposable insert in the toilet. Of course, you have to tear the pouch open before it goes in the toilet, so you’ll be handling baby-ick just as much as you would if you just used regular cloth diapers. The trick is to soak the soiled diaper in the toilet, then hold it and rinse it thoroughly during the flush before then tossing it into the diaper pail to soak before laundering. Biggest drawback to that are husbands and older children who can’t manage to figure out there’s a diaper soaking before they use and flush the toilet. Plumbers are expensive.

Now, there is still the issue of cotton diapers and chlorine bleach, which releases dioxin. You can get unbleached cotton, but there’s also the issue of the crop itself. Fully half of the world’s pesticides are sprayed on cotton. What else is there? Why… Hemp! There are all sorts of “green” sources out there specializing in hemp diapers and associated products, as well as hemp/unbleached cotton blends and even naturally colored, organically grown cotton – I love the soft greens and blues and beige. Hemp is naturally anti-microbial and has eight times the tensile strength and four times the durability of cotton.

So that’s my plan. Granddaughter is due around this time next month, so I’d better get busy ordering!

Links:

Diaper Pin: Is Hemp Really Better?

Growing Greens Hemp Diapers

DiaperCuts: Hemp Products

eartheasy: Cloth Diapers

Cloth Diapering Pros and Cons

Mongabay: Diapers Go Green

DiaperWare: Prefolds and Flats

Crone, noun
A wizened elderly woman. Feminine version of sage.

It’s Halloween, and since I happen to be a certifiable crone, I’ll begin this last chapter of the series on birthing options with some tales of witchcraft and bloody deeds of persecution that at one time threatened to eradicate the very existence of the ‘Medicine Women’ who traditionally attended the birth of new generations. The wise crones and grandmothers who tended the health, love lives and fertility of mothers, daughters and sisters back when the patriarchs of shamanism believed women to be chattel property like horses or goats, untouchable in their fertile ‘curse’ and dutifully banished from the household entirely for the duration of their menses.

It’s not a pretty history. From Witches, Midwives, and Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English:

“Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.”

Medicine women – primarily midwives – were persecuted mercilessly by the Medieval church that controlled medical education and practice on behalf of the ruling classes. This persecution lasted well into the so-called “Age of Reason” [14th through 17th centuries] and swept Europe before it again reared its ugly head in the American colonies with the famous witch-trials of Massachusetts.

The extent of the persecution is breathtaking. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there were tens of thousands of executions – usually live burning at the stake – and some historians claim millions were eventually killed. 85-90 percent of those killed were women.

As the feudal and religious war against women healers waned in the 18th century, the rise of male-dominated allopathic medicine took place and the battle against midwives was taken over by the medical profession and its control of regulatory law. Beginning in 1896, the U.S. medical community embarked on well-documented, well-coordinated and well-financed campaign to eliminate the midwife from the practice of her own profession.

To pull this off doctors had to re-define pregnancy and childbirth as disease rather than normal reproduction not fundamentally dangerous to mother or child if properly managed. By the 1920s a shift from home birth to hospital births had taken place, and the death rates for both mothers and babies soared as a result of routine medical and surgical interventions in the birth process. To this day the United States ranks at the bottom of all industrialized nations in infant and maternal mortality rates.

Yet there is good news, even though the war against midwives continued unabated medically and legislatively through the last part of the 20th century. States are again licensing midwives to attend uncomplicated births at birthing centers and in homes, as the statistics have demonstrated that healthier mothers and babies result from treating the birthing process as a normal organic function rather than a dread disease.

Homebirth 101 offers a sobering look at those statistics, and how they compare with hospital outcomes of overly medicated, overly managed birth. The American Pregnancy Association offers a fine list of questions and answers relating to the decision to give birth at home, what conditions would indicate that hospital birth would be safer, and what to expect if one chooses to give birth at home.

The first home birth I attended was when my little sister gave birth to my niece in Florida in 1984. I couldn’t imagine how she’d get through it without painkillers, as it was her first baby and she had a history of ER visits once a month just for menstrual cramps ever since she was a teenager. Yet the OB who had partnered with the only licensed midwife in the northern part of the state was forced to pull out of his partnership by peer pressure, and it was too late for the pregnant women who had already paid for the service to get other doctors. They had no choice – it was ER births or home with the overworked midwife who no longer had a clinic.

Surprisingly to me, the labor and birth went without a hitch even though the midwife (who had attended three other births that day) didn’t show up until it was pretty much over. We’d done our Bradley classes and were well prepared to manage the entire process if we had to. My second home birth experience was when my elder daughter gave birth to #1 grandson in my baby sister’s guest bedroom. Different midwife, and baby sister is an R.N., there was a last minute complication (cord strangulation) that I am quite sure would have resulted in a dead baby if we’d been at a hospital. Our midwife handled it quickly and ably, and that grandson starts college next fall.

My pregnant younger daughter hasn’t informed me of her birthing decision yet, probably hasn’t entirely made up her mind. But if she wants to have Sunshine at home, I’ll certainly be there to help. And I won’t be too scared to know what to do. I can help with cleaning and food, I can help distract her from hard labor, I can keep the water boiling and can even catch that baby if Daddy passes out. I’ve attended 6 other home births since, they all worked out fine.

After all, I am a certifiable crone.

Links:

Is Homebirth for You?

Home Birth

The Fall of Midwives

The war on midwives (part 3)

Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-Witch

My younger daughter and her husband visited this past weekend from Indianapolis. She’s into her 4th month of pregnancy (her first), just getting over the serious morning sickness phase, needed some Mom-time. Which I was of course delighted to lavish on her, sympathizing with her queazy stomach and re-arranging innards, happy to whip up some colorful stir-fry, hummus, falafel and tabouli for pita sandwiches, anything that sounded good, that she thought she might be able to keep down.

She’s never been a happy morning person, so when her hubby mentioned how hard the last few months have been – a strain on their relationship as well as their income since they work together out of home – I wasn’t very sympathetic. Grandpa could take care of that chore. And he did.

My hubby and I just celebrated our 38th anniversary earlier this month, but didn’t get to go to the lake house like we have ever since it got built because elder daughter blew the engine in her car, my car’s back end is about to walk out from underneath it, and that puts us down to a single pick’em up truck we’ve got to share. Ah, well. We’ve had worse anniversaries…

Anyway, I mention this because my husband – “Uncle Grandpa” to dozens and just plain “Grandpa” to a rising tide of others – is amazingly well trained. I was pregnant for 18 months out of our first 3 years of marriage, and was deathly ill for every minute of it. What my Son-in-Law was complaining about seems trivial compared to that, as well as compared to all the years since I decided to stop doing the pregnant thing. His marital philosophy is one that should be preserved and taught as classical wisdom, which seems to be in very short supply in these days of “for better and screw you if it gets worse” serial monogamy.

She Is Always Right, You Are Always Wrong.

Short, simple yet profound, endearing in the extreme. Growing, having and raising a baby isn’t an easy job, and the vast majority of the physical investment in that endeavor comes exclusively from the woman. That’s just how nature and/or God set things up, we should presume life and/or love set it up that way on purpose: it works, better than possible alternatives. For couples to get through the year it takes to grow, produce and nurture an infant to a good healthy start in life, it’s just best for the Dad to live this philosophy as much as possible, put aside his own juvenile tendencies and ‘all about me’ delusions.

I admit to being somewhat flummoxed by the underlying ‘wrong-ness’ of pair bonding these days, when half of marriages end in divorce before even five short years, kids grow up in multiple homes with multiple Moms and Dads and Temporaries (or none at all), and nobody seems willing to build relationships rather than simply toss inconvenient ones out with last year’s clothes. A year in the course of a lifetime is nothing, relatively speaking. To a mere temporary arrangement, it’s forever.

That’s a shame, but it’s what is real in the world my children are trying to negotiate, and the one my grandchildren will soon be trying to live with. At any rate, I got to baby my baby for a couple of days, Grandpa got to lend sage advice and an understanding ear to her choice of mate. That’s really about all we’re good for at this point.

Though we did spend hours and hours around the campfire, playing dice at the kitchen bar, sitting idly about the living room thinking up baby names. THAT is a fun pastime! I think we went all the way through the alphabet from Adam to Zelda and everything in between – including, of course, Elvis.

But it seems they’ve already settled on a girl name – Sunshine – that I’m hoping may reflect a happier morning person personality than her Mom ever managed. By the time they departed for home on Sunday afternoon, the guys had settled on two boy names I’m hoping will be overruled firmly when the baby is born (if it’s a he)…

GuitarGreg and CoolAssMojo (both as single first names). I voted for Elvis, so this is NOT my fault!

Links:

Baby Names, Name Origin and Meaning

Unique Baby Names, Meanings

It’s no fun. Got a call from my 21-year old daughter this morning. She’s in the early stages of pregnancy (her first child, my 10th grandchild), and suffering from morning sickness. Wanted some comfort and advice. I seriously sympathize.

I was the world’s sickest pregnant lady. Morning, noon, evening, middle of the night… I literally weighed less than 90 pounds with both of my pregnancies before I ever began to put on real baby-poundage (about the end of the 6th month). And I was a little queasy and occasionally vomiting throughout.

Research has found positive aspects of morning sickness, and there is plenty of information available about the causes and remedies for morning sickness. I sent all these links to my daughter, and I’d recommend them to readers who are experiencing the unpleasantness of early pregnancy.

Links to Interesting Articles and Research:

Cornell: Morning sickness protects both unborn and mothers-to-be

NYTimes: Morning sickness series

Family Doctor: Morning Sickness

Morning Sickness Help – Information and Remedies

Morning sickness: Causes, concerns, treatments