My three year old daughter has eczema. She was diagnosed with Atopic Dermatitis a couple of years ago.  She has been seen by several different pediatricians and an allergist. This is a picture of her skin when she was a few months old. Look closely and you will see there is not a clear spot on her body and she even had some infection on her face from it:

Here’s what her face looked like before we realized she was allergic to latex. The redness isn’t sunburn or a bad photo. Her skin was simply always irritated. Yes, that is crusty, weeping skin you see beneath her mouth and on her cheeks:

The first year of her life, I just prayed we could rush forward until she was old enough to be told not to scratch herself so badly. The most preciously innocent year of her life was spent trying out every cream imaginable. Nothing would work. For the longest time, when we were in public, people would ask what happened to her. “Was she burned?” I don’t have pictures of her from her worst days, because I deleted most of the bad ones while crying about it one night. Here she was during some of her better skin days when she was still tiny:

The doctor’s acted like it was sad, but no big deal. For starters, if her skin is doing that, what other reactions can’t I see? Plus, having Atopic Dermatitis isn’t just having a little itchy skin. It is life changing. Fending off infections is just the serious part, aching because your child’s skin it so itchy and painful is heartbreaking. Also, my daughter had to be antibiotics for a month after her skin became infected. (That was before I learned how to treat infections early with raw Manuka honey.) If someone suggested a lotion, we’d get it. She wore socks on her hands every single day. We even sewed up the sleeves of slightly over-sized shirts so that her fingers had no access to her body:

After trying everything the doctor suggested and every single lotion and soap we could find, we finally figured out that we could save a lot of the turmoil by using simple natural remedies. These worked really well, but they were treatments. They weren’t cures. It would always come back. After each vaccination, after playing on playgrounds, after missing allergens in her diet, when another child shared a rubber toy, or when her immune system was run down. Then, we’d need to do a treatment again. It was a never ending cycle. The best I could do was control it.

Now, I have found two studies (found here and here) that claim a very high success rate at curing atopic dermatitis. These studies don’t claim a temporary fix, they claim real genuine relief. I, along with a fellow blogger named Regina, are going to give these treatments a try. Regina’s daughter also suffers from chronic eczema. After a discussion on Everything Birth’s Facebook page, she decided she would join me in chronicling the use of the homeopathic treatments from these studies to see if our children can also benefit. We are sharing this very vulnerable and sensitive part of our lives because we know that so many of you know our reality all too well. Many of you made the switch to cloth diapers because of this very condition.

For the first time ever, I have hope that my daughter might know life without a nightly rub down in coconut oil, without Manuka honey spot treatments, without the head-to-toe, twice-daily, full body inspections.

Here are the rules I will go by as I try out the homeopathic treatment for atopic dermatitis:

• I will not use steroid creams, medicated lotions, essential oils, herbs or special soaps.
• If an area begins to become infected, I will immediatelyapply the Manuka honey. If it does not, I will not. If I have to use Manuka honey, I will report this to you.
• If her skin gets worse without the herbal treatments we normally do, I’ll let you know, but I will start them back up again.
• The first two weeks, I will use  Sulphur 30X HPUS, two times a day following the proper method for dispensing homeopathic remedies: NPO 15 minutes before and after, no strong scents, no touching the tablets.

It’s been four hours since her first dose of Suphur 30C HPUS. I am pleased to say that already her skin is less inflamed.  She claims she has no itching and that, “It’s drying up!” The non-inflamed sand paper feel of her chest and back that she lives with every single day of her life are already gone. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here, but here is her skin now, only four hours after treatment. Still dry and scaly, but a significant improvement is already being noticed:

I’ll keep you posted!

I came across an article in Science & Sensibility that posed the question “How Long Can Labor Safely Be?”  The author, Henci Goer, discussed three sets of data that compared labor duration and outcomes. The perspective might shed a new light on the practice of medical intervention in situations where labor “fails to progress.”

Three Sources Compared

Two sources compiled data gathered about labors assisted by midwives. The third source was date from the  U.S. Consortium on Safe Labor (CSL). The CLS is a collection of 19 hospitals whose primary purpose is “to describe contemporary labor progression and to evaluate the timing of Cesarean delivery in women with labor protraction and arrest.”

All three groups involved spontaneous labor with a full term baby that was head down. Henci explained that since first time mothers usually have longer labors, the data that was used was based on first time mothers. Henci Goer wrote:

As you can see, labor averaged even longer in the physiologic groups without doing any harm to the newborns. As you can also see, the midwifery data blow active management concepts, now enshrined in partograms, out of the water. Setting 1 cm per hour as the threshold for abnormally slow progress—which allows 6 hours to go from 4 cm to 10—means augmenting first-time mothers dilating faster than the average rate!

In the two data sets where there was no intervention, there were no incidences of epidural,  oxytocin augmentation, or birth instruments used to assist delivery. None of the women in either of the natural labor data sets required a cesarean section.

The CSL labors involved a 60% epidural rate. The CLS used oxytocin to augment labor 37% of the time. 10 percent of the deliveries involved birthing instruments being used and 16% of all the deliveries resulted in a cesarean section.

Perhaps more importantly though, the CLS group of babies had five minute apgar scores of of less than 7 more frequently than the other two natural birthing groups.

So, What’s the Rush?

If deliveries are allowed to progress on their own, instead of by a time table that a large portion of women could not possibly labor in accordance with, what gives? The hospital where I delivered had schedules and it was so stressful. I was explained that they would like to see me progress 1 cm per hour at least.  If a woman progresses more slowly than that, many doctors will start the meds to speed up labor.  Well, as we all know, at least from discussing with each other, those labor accelerating drugs make labor hurt so much worse. That’s when we often accept their offer for an epidural. Well, you know the story from there.

epidural

This whole time though, I thought that the people who made these rules were genuinely concerned about labor taking too long because of their perceived risks to the baby. I have to believe that’s usually the case, but listen to this…

The CSL investigators, according to Henci, wrote that the extra two hours of average labor duration in first-time mothers (compared to cohorts from the 1960s) cost Intermountain Healthcare hospitals an extra $110.40 per labor. Grand total, Henci explained, that amounted to an annual excess cost of $600,466. The CSL investigators went on to say, “The implications for healthcare systems and payors are obvious and should drive a reconsideration of modern-day labor process management with an eye towards process improvement.”

So, it saves a lot of money to shave time off a labor. Then, if the labor doesn’t speed up or if the process stresses the baby out and the baby won’t come out vaginally, Cesarean Sections  are always on standby, with an almost $8000 price tag.

One of the main arguments I keep hearing used to justify complying with the mandatory vaccine schedule for pre-school children is, “Well, we were all vaccinated, so what’s the big deal?”

It’s true that I was vaccinated in accordance with the CDC’s schedule at the time.  Here’s my pre-school vaccination history:

When I was two months old, I got a shot of DTP and a shot of OPV.  At my four month well visit, I was given a second shot of DTP and a second shot of OPV. At my six month well visit, I was given a third dose of DTP. Then I was good for awhile until at fifteen months, I was given the MMR. Three months later at 18 months, I was given another round of both the OPV and the DTP.  At four years old, I was given another dose of the DTP and of the OPV. Then, I was ready for kindergarten.

My daughter’s mandatory vaccine schedule, had I not opted out of most of it for health reasons, would have looked quite a bit different. Here is her ideal vaccination schedule to start kindergarten according to the CDC:

My daughter would have first been exposed to the influenza vaccine while still gestating within me. Then, fresh from the womb, before being released from the hospital, she was supposed to get the Hep B vaccine. Four weeks later, she was supposed to get a second Hep B vaccine. At a mere two months old, when I was getting my first two immunizations, my daughter was supposed to the DTaP vaccine, the Hib vaccine, the IPV vaccine, the PCV vaccine and the Rotavirus vaccine.  Two months later, at her four month well visit, she was supposed to get another dose of the DTaP vax, the Hib vax, the IPV vax, the PCV vax and the Rotavirus vax.  Her next well baby visit was supposed to be at 6 months. At that visit she would have been given another Hep B shot, another DTaP shot, another Hib shot, another IPV shot, and other PCV shot, a flu shot, and a final Rotavirus shot. Then, we’d take a six month vaccine break. Her immunizations would pick back up on her first birthday and I would go in and her her another Hib vaccine, her first MMR vaccine, the chicken pox vaccine, the PCV booster, and a vaccination for Hep A. Her 15 month well baby visit would have been a breeze because she’d only get the DTaP at that visit. At 18 months, she would get another flu shot and another Hep A shot.  At two and a half, she’d be ready for another annual flu shot. Again at 3 and a half years old, she would have gotten another flu shot. At four years old, before pre-school, she would have been given another MMR vaccine, another DTaP vaccine, another chicken pox vaccine, and another IPV vaccine.  One more flu shot at 4 and a half and then (provided they don’t add any new vaccines to the schedule in the next couple of years) she will be ready to start kindergarten. 

I think we can all agree, at the very least, that those two kindergarten readiness schedules are vastly different from each other. So, I request that that argument be stricken from the record. Will anyone second that request?

A new study is saying what many of us have known for a long time: Pesticides and herbicides and pregnancy do not mix.

Obstetricians have been told by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine to issue a basic warning that pregnant women should stay away from pesticides and herbicides that are in non-organic foods because of previous studies indicating they can harm the developing fetus.

In this study, Cincinnati-area women demonstrated levels of organophosphate insecticides that significantly affected birth weight and gestation period. Lead researcher, Dr. Bruce Lanphear, and his partners followed an economically and ethically diverse group of more than 300 expectant mothers from the Cincinnati and the surrounding areas and they measured the levels of organophosphates in their urine. The women with the highest concentrations of urine had babies that were delivered, on average, about half a week earlier and weighed one-third of a pound less than those of women with the lowest exposures.

This may not seem like a big deal. In fact, for many women, it may seem inviting to have to deliver a smaller baby and wait a few less days to deliver, but it is indicative of a bigger problem.  Pesticides and herbicides in our foods are getting into our bodies and causing an effect on our lives.

Now, combine this new study with past studies and we get a better picture of just how dangerous eating foods sprayed with or genetically altered to manufacture their own herbicides or pesticides really is. Other studies include:

• Three studies that found that prenatal exposure to organophosphates was associated with a lower IQ in children.
• A study that shows glyphosate (an herbicide used in our foods) causes damage to placenta, umbilical, and embryonic human cells.
• One study saying that our current  formulations for food use underestimate their toxic and hormonal impact on pregnancy.
• A study that linked the herbicide RoundUp to birth defects.
• A studying addressing herbicides’ link to neural defects and craniofacial malformations.

I understand the the topic of mainstream food verses organic food is an especially hot topic these days, especially as the Just Label It campaign managed to muster up over a million signatures on their petition to the FDA requesting that genetically modified foods be labeled in part because of their enormous use of herbicides and their ability to manufacture their own pesticides within their own DNA.  This is a very political issue. I understand that.

My motives for writing this post are not about politics though. In August of 2000, I had a still born baby and last year, I found a study that showed, finally, a cause for what my doctors had said was a fluke genetic mutation. After ten years, I discovered the only known, provable cause for my daughter’s genetic defect that resulted in her death. That cause was organophosphates. That loss was one I hope to prevent other women from experiencing. That is the reason for my message.

If you are planning a family, as I know many of Everything Birth Blog’s readers are, please consider making the switch to organic foods for both you and the father-to-be. It may spare you a devastating heartbreak…

Stillborn because of a genetic mutation found to be linked to organophosphates.