San Francisco Parents of Multiples SFPOM General Discussion 8/27/2012 9:15 am - 8/28/2012
1. Tummy tuck - how long to wait (dnjordan)
2. Crib Tents? (sfmama09)
3. Interesting article on Autism (liz_mccarthy)
4. Comment: Interesting article on Autism (jeccat)
5. Desperately seeking nanny (pccp22)
6. Comment: Desperately seeking nanny (bbartlett19702901)
7. Comment: Post partum belly band (EstherRN)
8. Comment: Post partum belly band (kaluzoo)
1. Tummy tuck - how long to wait
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dnjordan - 8/27/2012 9:02 pm
Hello Mamas!I have three children: twins (7 months) and
4 yr old daughter. I lost all my pregnancy weight
about 2 moths ago (5 moths postpartum), but my belly
looks horrible. no stretch marks, just a pouch (pop
belly) and some extra skin. I don't mind the extra
skin as much as the little pouch. How long should I
wait? Btw, I'm still nursing my twins. They are not
crawling yet. Any recommendation re: plastic
surgeon?Thank you!
Send comment to: <sfpom_general@lists.bigtent.com>
With subject line: "Ref#71788352 - Tummy tuck - how long to wait"
Email author: dn.jordan@gmail.com
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2. Crib Tents?
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sfmama09 - 8/27/2012 1:25 pm
I posted few weeks back but have not had any responses
from this group. Trying one more time, I trust there is
wealth of information with SFPOM that I can tap into
here.... My 20 mo old twins are jumping out of the
cribs and I would prefer to keep them in cribs a while
longer.Unfortunately the Tots in Mind Crib Tent has
been recalled in July
(http://emmaus.patch.com/articles/crib-tents-sold-at-walmart-recalled-1d53c666).
Are there any other crib tents I could purchase? I
can't seem to find anything else online. I think they
may be all recalled. Anybody has any used crib tents
for sale?
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With subject line: "Ref#71775383 - Crib Tents?"
Email author: azdebski@gmail.com
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3. Interesting article on Autism
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liz_mccarthy - 8/27/2012 11:09 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html?_r=1&pagewanted=allAn
Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism By MOISES
VELASQUEZ-MANOFFPublished: August 25, 2012IN recent
years, scientists have made extraordinary advances in
understanding the causes of autism, now estimated to
afflict 1 in 88 children. But remarkably little of this
understanding has percolated into popular awareness,
which often remains fixated on vaccines.Eleanor DavisSo
here's the short of it: At least a subset of autism
perhaps one-third, and very likely more looks like a
type of inflammatory disease. And it begins in the
womb.It starts with what scientists call immune
dysregulation. Ideally, your immune system should
operate like an enlightened action hero, meting out
inflammation precisely, accurately and with deadly
force when necessary, but then quickly returning to a
Zen-like calm. Doing so requires an optimal balance of
pro- and anti-inflammatory muscle.In autistic
individuals, the immune system fails at this balancing
act. Inflammatory signals dominate. Anti-inflammatory
ones are inadequate. A state of chronic activation
prevails. And the more skewed toward inflammation, the
more acute the autistic symptoms.Nowhere are the
consequences of this dysregulation more evident than in
the autistic brain. Spidery cells that help maintain
neurons called astroglia and microglia are enlarged
from chronic activation. Pro-inflammatory signaling
molecules abound. Genes involved in inflammation are
switched on.These findings are important for many
reasons, but perhaps the most noteworthy is that they
provide evidence of an abnormal, continuing biological
process. That means that there is finally a therapeutic
target for a disorder defined by behavioral criteria
like social impairments, difficulty communicating and
repetitive behaviors.But how to address it, and where
to begin? That question has led scientists to the womb.
A population-wide study from Denmark spanning two
decades of births indicates that infection during
pregnancy increases the risk of autism in the child.
Hospitalization for a viral infection, like the flu,
during the first trimester of pregnancy triples the
odds. Bacterial infection, including of the urinary
tract, during the second trimester increases chances by
40 percent.The lesson here isn't necessarily that
viruses and bacteria directly damage the fetus. Rather,
the mother's attempt to repel invaders her
inflammatory response seems at fault. Research by
Paul Patterson, an expert in neuroimmunity at Caltech,
demonstrates this important principle. Inflaming
pregnant mice artificially without a living infective
agent prompts behavioral problems in the young. In
this model, autism results from collateral damage. It's
an unintended consequence of self-defense during
pregnancy.Yet to blame infections for the autism
epidemic is folly. First, in the broadest sense, the
epidemiology doesn't jibe. Leo Kanner first described
infantile autism in 1943. Diagnoses have increased
tenfold, although a careful assessment suggests that
the true increase in incidences is less than half that.
But in that same period, viral and bacterial infections
have generally declined. By many measures, we're more
infection-free than ever before in human history.Better
clues to the causes of the autism phenomenon come from
parallel "epidemics." The prevalence of inflammatory
diseases in general has increased significantly in the
past 60 years. As a group, they include asthma, now
estimated to affect 1 in 10 children at least double
the prevalence of 1980 and autoimmune disorders,
which afflict 1 in 20.Both are linked to autism,
especially in the mother. One large Danish study, which
included nearly 700,000 births over a decade, found
that a mother's rheumatoid arthritis, a degenerative
disease of the joints, elevated a child's risk of
autism by 80 percent. Her celiac disease, an
inflammatory disease prompted by proteins in wheat and
other grains, increased it 350 percent. Genetic studies
tell a similar tale. Gene variants associated with
autoimmune disease genes of the immune system also
increase the risk of autism, especially when they occur
in the mother.In some cases, scientists even see a
misguided immune response in action. Mothers of
autistic children often have unique antibodies that
bind to fetal brain proteins. A few years back,
scientists at the MIND Institute, a research center for
neurodevelopmental disorders at the University of
California, Davis, injected these antibodies into
pregnant macaques. (Control animals got antibodies from
mothers of typical children.) Animals whose mothers
received "autistic" antibodies displayed repetitive
behavior. They had trouble socializing with others in
the troop. In this model, autism results from an attack
on the developing fetus.But there are still other paths
to the disorder. A mother's diagnosis of asthma or
allergies during the second trimester of pregnancy
increases her child's risk of autism.So does metabolic
syndrome, a disorder associated with insulin
resistance, obesity and, crucially, low-grade
inflammation. The theme here is maternal immune
dysregulation. Earlier this year, scientists presented
direct evidence of this prenatal imbalance. Amniotic
fluid collected from Danish newborns who later
developed autism looked mildly inflamed.Debate swirls
around the reality of the autism phenomenon, and
rightly so. Diagnostic criteria have changed
repeatedly, and awareness has increased. How much if
any of the "autism epidemic" is real, how much
artifact?YET when you consider that, as a whole,
diseases of immune dysregulation have increased in the
past 60 years and that these disorders are linked to
autism the question seems a little moot. The better
question is: Why are we so prone to inflammatory
disorders? What has happened to the modern immune
system?There's a good evolutionary answer to that
query, it turns out. Scientists have repeatedly
observed that people living in environments that
resemble our evolutionary past, full of microbes and
parasites, don't suffer from inflammatory diseases as
frequently as we do.Generally speaking, autism also
follows this pattern. It seems to be less prevalent in
the developing world. Usually, epidemiologists fault
lack of diagnosis for the apparent absence. A dearth of
expertise in the disorder, the argument goes, gives a
false impression of scarcity. Yet at least one Western
doctor who specializes in autism has explicitly noted
that, in a Cambodian population rife with parasites and
acute infections, autism was nearly nonexistent.For
autoimmune and allergic diseases linked to autism,
meanwhile, the evidence is compelling. In environments
that resemble the world of yore, the immune system is
much less prone to diseases of dysregulation.Generally,
the scientists working on autism and inflammation
aren't aware of this or if they are, they don't let
on. But Kevin Becker, a geneticist at the National
Institutes of Health, has pointed out that asthma and
autism follow similar epidemiological patterns. They're
both more common in urban areas than rural; firstborns
seem to be at greater risk; they disproportionately
afflict young boys.In the context of allergic disease,
the hygiene hypothesis that we suffer from microbial
deprivation has long been invoked to explain these
patterns. Dr. Becker argues that it should apply to
autism as well. (Why the male bias? Male fetuses, it
turns out, are more sensitive to Mom's inflammation
than females.)More recently, William Parker at Duke
University has chimed in. He's not, by training, an
autism expert. But his work focuses on the immune
system and its role in biology and disease, so he's
particularly qualified to point out the following: the
immune system we consider normal is actually an
evolutionary aberration.Some years back, he began
comparing wild sewer rats with clean lab rats. They
were, in his words, "completely different organisms."
Wild rats tightly controlled inflammation. Not so the
lab rats. Why? The wild rodents were rife with
parasites. Parasites are famous for limiting
inflammation.Humans also evolved with plenty of
parasites. Dr. Parker and many others think that we're
biologically dependent on the immune suppression
provided by these hangers-on and that their removal has
left us prone to inflammation. "We were willing to put
up with hay fever, even some autoimmune disease," he
told me recently. "But autism? That's it! You've got to
stop this insanity."What does stopping the insanity
entail? Fix the maternal dysregulation, and you've most
likely prevented autism. That's the lesson from rodent
experiments. In one, Swiss scientists created a lineage
of mice with a genetically reinforced anti-inflammatory
signal. Then the scientists inflamed the pregnant mice.
The babies emerged fine no behavioral problems. The
take-away: Control inflammation during pregnancy, and
it won't interfere with fetal brain development.For
people, a drug that's safe for use during pregnancy may
help. A probiotic, many of which have anti-inflammatory
properties, may also be of benefit. Not coincidentally,
asthma researchers are arriving at similar conclusions;
prevention of the lung disease will begin with the
pregnant woman. Dr. Parker has more radical ideas:
pre-emptive restoration of "domesticated" parasites in
everybody worms developed solely for the purpose of
correcting the wayward, postmodern immune
system.Practically speaking, this seems beyond
improbable. And yet, a trial is under way at the
Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine testing a medicalized parasite
called Trichuris suis in autistic adults.First used
medically to treat inflammatory bowel disease, the
whipworm, which is native to pigs, has anecdotally
shown benefit in autistic children.And really, if you
spend enough time wading through the science, Dr.
Parker's idea an ecosystem restoration project,
essentially not only fails to seem outrageous, but
also seems inevitable.Since time immemorial, a very
specific community of organisms microbes, parasites,
some viruses has aggregated to form the human
superorganism. Mounds of evidence suggest that our
immune system anticipates these inputs and that, when
they go missing, the organism comes unhinged.Future
doctors will need to correct the postmodern tendency
toward immune dysregulation. Evolution has provided us
with a road map: the original accretion pattern of the
superorganism. Preventive medicine will need, by
strange necessity, to emulate the patterns from deep in
our past.
Send comment to: <sfpom_general@lists.bigtent.com>
With subject line: "Ref#71769984 - Interesting article on Autism"
Email author: liz@alizard.com
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4. jeccat says...
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8/27/2012 1:54 pm
I agree! I find it really encouraging how much progress
has been made an exploring the real roots of autism
spectrum disorders in the past decade.
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5. Desperately seeking nanny
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pccp22 - 8/27/2012 7:09 am
We are looking for a new nanny for the beginning of
September as the person we had lined up didn't pan out
in the end. Our boys are 2.5 years old, we live in SF
and need someone full-time. We are looking for someone
with experience potty training and working with twin
toddlers, who is comfortable taking boys to activities
within SF in the car. Any leads appreciated! Thanks,
Patricia
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With subject line: "Ref#71760412 - Desperately seeking nanny"
Email author: pchy@mindspring.com
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6. bbartlett19702901 says...
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8/27/2012 10:03 am
Hi, My name is Bridget. Our nanny is looking for work
because our girls are going off to kindergarten and she
also has a number of friends in the same situation. If
you think you might want to connect with her, let me
know and I will send you her information. It might help
if you let me know what neighboorhood you are in, how
many hours you are looking for and what you rate you
are hoping to pay. Or, I can send you my nanny's
contact info and you can contact her directly. Let me
know! :) My email is bbartlett19702901@yahoo.com. Good
luck!
Email author: bbartlett19702901@yahoo.com
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Topic: Post partum belly band
I've been hearing a lot about belly bands to wear after
delivery. There are a few...
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With subject line: "Ref#71732500 - Post partum belly band"
7. EstherRN says...
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8/27/2012 2:24 pm
I got the Gabrialla one and really liked it. I found it
comfortable and I wore it even in bed, since I had back
pain otherwise.
Email author: estherroldan10@yahoo.co.uk
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8. kaluzoo says...
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8/27/2012 5:04 pm
I wore the band my doctor gave me post c-section and it
was great (ditto on the back pain w/o).
Email author: sarahchandler@gmail.com
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