The book-party babies are all here!

I just heard the wonderful news that my friend Meema gave birth last week to baby Django (named after jazz guitar legend Django Reinhardt; he is the second or third baby Django I have heard of in NYC). This means, drumroll please, that all five of the babies who attended my book party in utero last January have arrived safe and sound! Django joins Samantha, Julia, Quentin, and Fiona. Here is an interesting stat, though, three of these four deliveries were C-sections. One of the births was planned this way (the twins), the other two were emergency C-sections after long labors--five DAYS of at-home labor in one case. Was this 75 percent rate of C-sections due to the fact that my friends are all "older" moms (all in their late 30s, which in NY mom years is not old at all, but in medical jargon is). Or because we live in New York? Or just the way the dice of childbirth fate were rolled in this particular group? Bottom line is all the babies are adorable and healthy, and I have no one to go to the theater with anymore, since everyone is home feeding or nursing. Well, I guess I'll see Spring Awakening on my own! Congrats to all the new moms.

Toddlers and TV

I’m going a little off-topic this week, but I wanted to let you know about a really interesting book I just read. As a parenting writer, I interview several authors each month who have written books on everything from toilet training to maternity fashion to donor insemination; some are insightful, some make me wonder how a publisher was conned into writing a check for such a heaping pile of crap. But this month the galley of a book called Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children from Birth to Age Five arrived in my mailbox. It was written by Lisa Guernsey, an education reporter for the New York Times. Guernsey has two daughters roughly the same age as Bellamy and Molly, and has gone through the same soul-searching about TV that I have. The American Academy of Pediatrics tells us we shouldn’t let kids under two watch any TV at all, but then you have the Little Einstein folks telling us that repeated viewings of frog puppets dancing to Mozart will turn our babies into creative geniuses. Guernsey, like me, was skeptical about both claims, and set out to investigate the truth about what TV does—positive and negative—to kids. She did a kick-ass job combing through every bit of research that has been done on kids and TV, and found that a lot of the hysterical claims about TV turning kids into mindless zombies or causing ADHD do not stand up to scrutiny. She also visited research centers and interviewed early childhood experts across the country and found that kids under five do not learn in the same way that producers of those educational videos claim they do. The bottom line is that TV itself is neither harmful nor helpful to children. It’s all about context and content.

I remember when Bellamy was around two, a highly neurotic mom I knew was complaining to me that she could never get a five-minute break from her kid to unload the dishwasher or flip through a magazine. “Why don’t you let her play a computer game or watch a video for a half hour?” I said. She looked at me as if I had suggested she sprinkle some crack on her daughter’s Cheerios. But as Guernsey concluded, putting your child in front of an age-appropriate TV show for a half hour is not going to hurt them in any way, and if it gives the mom a few minutes to chill and revive, then it is actually a good thing for everyone. So check out the book. It’s a fun read, and you’ll never look at Blue’s Clues the same way again.

Drugs vs. natural: a wee little question

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. I'm in the thick of two projects I want to complete before my birthday in September: training for a 5k walk/run (you can sponsor me and help fund breast cancer research and treatment here; and finishing all six of Jane Austen's novels. So far I can make it around the park a couple of times without collapsing, and I'm in the middle of book number 3. Two months to go, wish me luck!

Since we last spoke, I attended the bris/baby-naming for my twin niece and nephew. If you haven't been to one, a bris is when a Jewish baby boy is circumcised by a mohel, and then everyone sings, schmoozes, and eats bagels. A bris traditionally happens on the the 8th day, but since Quentin was less than five pounds at birth, it was put off for a few weeks. When my brother and sister-in-law were looking for a mohel, they waded into a debate that echoed one of the biggest questions about childbirth iteself: drugs or natural? Most mohels perform the bris with no anesthetic, just a few drops of red wine or grape juice (in the baby's mouth, that is, not on the part being circumsized). One of the many arguments against anesthetics is that ritual circumcision has been performed for thousands of years with no dugs. The same is of course true of childbirth. But does that mean we shouldn't take advantage of modern medical methods of pain relief? There are also the questions of whether the anesthetic does more harm than good. I found it fascinating how such similar questions came up with both childbirth and circumcision. In the end, my sister-in-law decided to use a mohel who is also an MD, who injected a local anesthetic before he did the snipping. Quentin was a champ. We ate bagels, we schmoozed. So, tell me what YOU think of this debate.