All right, 84% of you hate the idea of the candy corn Oreo.  10% want to at least taste one, and 5% are all over them.  I think I need to eat one just out of sheer curiosity.  But I’ll let someone else buy the box.

Now, have you heard about the college professor breastfeeding her infant during a lecture?

So 43% of you are just fine with the Unbaby.me app that removes all bubbeh pics from your Facebook feed.  26% are like, whatever, 17% say if you dislike babies that much, just unfriend the person already, and 13% of you are not even on Facebook.

Today’s question is regarding the recent change in policy to male infant circumcision.  It seems that a peer-reviewed study has shown that the benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks, and the AAP is stopping just short of recommending routine infant circumcision.

A 14 pound baby boy was recently delivered naturally and without an epidural in Iowa.

Ouch.

My own baby-chute cringes in sympathy.

Did I really just call it a baby-chute? Impressive what the lack of sleep can do for your vocabulary.

And I didn’t even give birth naturally, but had two C-sections.  Aaaaand, even if I hadn’t had the C-sections, both of my children were roughly half the weight of young Asher.

A good friend of mine had to deliver her second child without an epidural because her labor progressed more quickly than she realized, and she admitted that it was indeed the worst pain imaginable.  That was with a nine pound baby.  Add five more and you’ve got to have some major endorphin rush happening just to stay conscious.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has advised that they no longer recommend the use of crib bumpers.

Yes, the ones people have been using for YEARS. Pretty much every single crib bedding set at BabiesRUs has a bumper.

Now, I’m not saying that there is no basis for the new recommendation, I’m sure there is.  It’s just that all of a sudden, bam!  Don’t use them anymore! They can kill! I’d heard various things throughout the years about crib bumpers, and when my daughter (briefly, like, two weeks) slept in a crib we had the breathable ones.

But the whole notion of the crib bumpers is to keep their arms and legs from getting stuck in between the slats, as well as in my daughter’s case, to keep her head/body from bumping against the slats and waking her up.  Which she did constantly, which is why we started co-sleeping.  She also would try to climb up on top of the bumpers, as they had to be stretched fairly tightly to stay on properly, thus resulting in something she could get her feet up on.  Scary stuff, much scarier than the supposed risks of us rolling on top of her or something, which has never even remotely happened.  When I sleep with her I am so hyper-aware of her presence that I barely even move.

Neither of my children did well in the crib, and luckily we had bought the convertible kind, because at least we got to use it as a head and foot board for my son’s big boy bed.  Otherwise, total waste of four hundred bucks.

So if you aren’t supposed to use crib bumpers, I wonder what people are going to do?  Will people pay for them but not use them?  Or will all of these sets suddenly go on sale?

According to this article in the Washington Post, researchers

… found that a lack of sleep led not just to poor performance on tasks that require “innovative thinking, risk analysis, and strategic planning”—though studies have shown all those to be true—but also to increased deviant and unethical behavior in both groups. Examples included rudeness, inappropriate responses and attempts to take more money than they’d earned.

And that is why my friends who are also mothers of young children and I have decided to go ahead and form a posse.  We’re toying with the name “Bad Muthas” but someone else suggested “Bad Mamma Jammas” and I’m sure we’ll have an argument about it before the final decision.

We will go around town with our strollers, terrorizing the locals with our rude behavior.  Why, when we order something at the local Starbucks, we WILL not tip.  

Then when someone asks us about how our day is going, we will point to our “special snowflakes” and ask them how they think it is going when we have to deal with twenty pound dictators all day long.  We will then rough them up and take their wallet.

Membership in the posse will be terminated once your child starts sleeping through the night, no exceptions.

We can’t afford the chance that one of our number might act ethically due to getting enough sleep.

When you see the stroller brigade coming your way, be very afraid.

We swore we weren’t going to do it with this one.

Little did we know.

When our son was born, he refused to sleep alone.  After many heartbreaking attempts to get him to do so, my husband and I finally gave up.  I’ve always leaned toward attachment parenting, and we just went with it. We had two bedrooms, and one of us at a time co-slept with our son until he was about two and a half years old.

Now, it wasn’t horrible.  The Munchkin was and is still a very sound sleeper and everyone got plenty of sleep during that phase.  Since we “weaned” him off the co-sleeping, he has had absolutely zero sleep issues. He goes to be without a fuss every night and wakes up refreshed in the morning.  No nightmares, no crawling into bed at 2AM, no sleep-walking, nothing.

But, everyone always clucks at you when you let it slip that you co-slept. And yes, usually people don’t own up to the fact simply because it’s easier just not to have to explain to people that no, you are not trying to destroy your kid.  Despite the fact that we were sincerely doing what we thought best for our family, everyone is always out to second-guess you.

When my daughter was born, it all started wonderfully.  She slept alone in her co-sleeper bassinet, (which I highly recommend, by the way) and in her swing. 

She then transitioned pretty well into the crib, although there were some rough nights here and there.  But nothing out of the ordinary.

However, between the sixth and ninth months of her life, she got quite ill from whatever her brother brought home from school, and simply refused to sleep alone.  We tried, we really did.  But she was sick three times in a three-month period, and everyone was absolutely miserable and getting little rest.  Everybody knows that much poor decision making comes from lack of sleep, and we were no different.

So one night we said, let’s just try bringing her in the bed and see what happens.

Worked like a charm.  She’s a bit of a restless sleeper, but if she wakes up she will usually go right back to sleep.  Unless of course it is teething pain, and then all bets are off. She is able to sleep by herself during naps, although she requires someone to fall asleep with her. 

So instead of starting out co-sleeping and then transitioning to the crib, we sort of did it backwards.  Goodness knows, not by design. Would I prefer that she sleep on her own in a crib? Yes.   But sometimes things just work out a certain way, and that’s what happened with us.

And really?  I’ve pretty much stopped caring about what other people think about the co-sleeping situation.  We have made the bed perfectly safe, and she is well past the age of being smothered by blankets or pillows.  She gets her rest, I get my much-needed beauty sleep, and we are all happy.  There is nothing wrong with this picture except for the people who want to get all hot and bothered about things that aren’t really their business. 

We co-slept with our son and he didn’t turn out to be some co-dependent wussy who can’t fall asleep on his own.  Quite the contrary. 

So, if you are thinking about co-sleeping, do what works best for you, and all the rest can shut up and do what’s best for them.

Last week I asked if a 17 year old was too young to be Miss America, and 72% of you think just that.  I agree.  The funny thing is, I don’t really have any “facts” to back that up with, it’s just my gut feeling.  I will be honest, I was fairly selfish and self-centered at 17, and I can’t imagine having to do all of the things a Miss America is supposed to do at that age.  However, maybe I was just an immature brat.  Not completely out of the realm of possibility, I’m afraid.

Today, I wanted to point you to a fascinating discussion going on over at BoingBoing and find out what your views are on the topic, which come from an article written by pediatrician Rahul K. Parikh on CNN.

According to the Daily Beast, anyway…

At the top were names such as Louis Bardo, Marcello Daniel, and Cosima.  All right, I’m down with those.  But Billie Beatrice? Amadeus Benedict Edley Luis? Nelly May Lois?  I’m sorry, but I am so not feeling them.  For some reason, I don’t like when girls are named boy names. I know, I’m an old fogey and anti-feminist, but I just think that when I see a name on a piece of paper, I should know if it is a boy or girl.  Feel free to flog me publicly.  Don’t get me started on the Amadeus one, which the site praises for it’s mix of “style, ethnicities, and eras.” Do they not know people are going to follow him around on the playground singing the refrain to a rather bad but unforgettable 80′s pop song? And Nelly May Lois sounds like someone who spends most of her time being mean to people at a bingo parlor.

At the bottom were gems like  Buddy Bear Maurice, Sundance Thomas, and Draco.  Jamie Oliver (who is currently winning his CDF round) is perpetrator of the Ursa major, and Draco comes courtesy of one former Ms. Winnie Cooper.  I’m not totally up in arms about Draco, though.  At least it’s a literary name, not one that’s made up.  They also slammed Vera Farmiga about her choice of name, which was an ethnic Lithuanian one.  I’m not cool with making fun of names from other cultures, so I take issue with that one.

It’s a hectic week my friends, so posting this week? Totally on the light and fluffy side… Hope you don’t mind.

My love affair with this product began with the Munchkin, and has continued with the Munchkinette. 

Where to start?  It is a no-rinse wash for babies that is perfect for (ahem) the holidays when you are staying out later than normal and possibly skipping baths, yet still needing to cleanse sensitive areas.  It is ridiculously easy to use, smells fabulous, and if you just make sure it isn’t cold before applying to baby, then everyone is happy as a clam.  This is one of my favorite shower gifts to give to new moms. 

 It comes in handy way more often than you would think.  Got a kid who gets carsick often?  This is the product for you.  I used it more times than I can count on the Munchkin, who was famous for his ability to get sick in the car on even the shortest of trips.  Takes the smell right off them.  Same for a diaper explosion or any other of the three thousand things that happen to kids that make them dirty and smell not-so-superfantastic.

If you have a baby or know someone that does, get it.  You won’t regret it.  It’s also paraben, triclosan, and pthalate-free.

It certainly looks like an instrument of torture, doesn’t it?

In fact when I was a young child, I remember seeing one of those in our bathroom (and mercifully the memories of it having been used upon me blanked out) and thinking that something that looked like that could only be used for nefarious purposes.

It is bad enough to have a baby/young child with a cold.

What makes it ten times worse is that you have to use the bulb to suck out the mucous, and in doing so, the child in question screams bloody murder and is obviously quite certain that you are trying to suck out their brains.

At least that is certainly what my daughter was thinking as I would approach with the bulb, and the terror in her eyes was enough to make your heart melt.  However, the only option other than not suctioning is that they can’t breathe, so the choice is obvious.  Heartless mama that I am, I would have to pin her little arms down else she would try to push my hands away.  I in no way blamed her, and that must make it all the more traumatic that your mother is purposefully putting you in a chinlock and attempting to remove your brains from your head via your nose.

After one such session, which resulted in screams and tears heard ’round the block, I came out of the room and made a feeble joke about our neighbors thinking we are horrible parents.  My husband looked at me and said, “Forget the neighbors, I almost called Child Services on you myself.”