Santa Clara Fire Station: Safe Surrender Site

I walked past a fire station in Santa Clara today and this sign was on the door.  This is a law in California that allows a mother who is overwhelmed, to surrender a baby to a responsible site without any type of criminal charge or questions asked.  In our state the surrender sites are determined by the Board of Supervisors of the county.  They are usually hospitals and fire stations.  The surrender must occur within 72 hours of the babies birth.  The law has resulted in a decrease of abandoned babies by about 5x to now only about five a year in the state.  On the other hand, statewide there are over 50 babies surrendered each year.

Pamphlet review: 10 Best Reasons Not to Smoke While You're Pregnant

A summary of the 10 reasons
1. You can do it, many women stop smoking before pregnancy or after getting pregnant.
2. If you quit, your baby does too!  The chemicals from cigarettes get to the baby.  Stopping allows more oxygen and nutrients to get to your baby.
3. You'll have a healthier pregnancy.  Women who smoke have higher incidence of miscarriage, bleeding and premature birth.
4. Your pregnancy may be easier.  Quitting means you can breathe easier, will have more energy, and better taste.
5. You baby will be a healthier weight.  If you quite your baby will more likely be healthy.
6. Risk of SIDS will be lower.  Not smoking during pregnancy decreases the risk of SIDS after the baby is born, and of stillborn birth.
7. Your breast milk will be free of chemicals.  Chemicals from cigarettes in breast milk can cause restlessness, vomiting, diarrhea.  It can also reduce the supply of breast milk.
8. You'll protect your baby from second hand smoke.  Quitting means your baby will be less likely to get sick, less likely to have colds, bronchitis, ear infections and asthma.
9. You'll live to see your child grow.  Quitting will reduce your own risk of cancer, hear disease and other illnesses.
10. Tips for quitting: throw out cigarettes, pick a day, drink more water, keep your hands busy.  If you can't stop, cut back.  Think of your baby.  Remember 1-800-NOBUTTS.

**Folic Acid and Birth Defects

This is an article by the public health depeartment of California.  I put it here because this is something I did not know, the relationship between folic acid and the prevention of birth defects, but which is important to know.  Especially since it is recommended to take folic acid for a month before pregnancy, while most people don't visit the MD until several months after becoming pregnant.

https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6805706512913964474#editor/target=post;postID=4351013393326151496

Folic Acid Awareness Week is January 5 - 11, 2014

Updated January 3, 2014

Folic acid is a B-vitamin that is necessary for proper cell growth. If taken before and during early pregnancy from multi-vitamins or fortified foods, folic acid can prevent some forms of serious birth defects of the brain and spine by 50% to 70%. Every woman needs folic acid every day, whether she’s planning to get pregnant or not, for the healthy new cells the body makes daily.

The CDC recommends that women who could possibly become pregnant should take 400 micrograms of synthetic folic acid daily at least one month before getting pregnant from:

• Fortified foods like grains, pastas or breakfast cereals
• Daily multi-vitamin
• Eating a variety of foods as part of a healthy diet

The easiest way to be sure to get the recommended daily amount of folic acid is to take a multi-vitamin every day.

Multivitamins and folic acid pills can be found at most local pharmacy, grocery, or discount stores. Check the label to be sure it contains 100% of the daily value (DV) of folic acid, which is 400 micrograms (mcg).

**Documentary Movie Review: *When the Bough Breaks

http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/about_the_series.php

This documentary explores the relationship between prejudice and racism, and the health of the victim.  When the Bough Breaks is a movie that is part of the series Unnatural Causes which was produced for PBS by California Newsreel.  I understand the series is going to be presented again on PBS.  It originally aired in 2008.  For better or worse this series is part of the policy discussion in health care.
I was at a training yesterday, in which the movie was shown and it has me thinking.  Perhaps my previous blog "Racket Sports Make You Smart" was a sarcastic reaction to this movie.
The movie presents data about low birth weight babies.  The statistics show that African American mothers have twice the chance of having a low-birth weight baby as a whit mother.  It indicates the researchers thought this must have been due to difference in socioeconomic class.  However when they ruled this out, the gap became wider rather than narrower.  The movie presented the story of an African American mother, lawyer and successful in terms of things of the world.  However her baby was born just over two pounds if I remember, and was another statistic in this debate.  It pointed out that upper economic classed African American women have babies with lower birth weight than the babies of White women.
They decided this must be something in their genetic code.  However when they looked at recent immigrants from Africa, their babies had the same weight on average as white babies.  However after being in the United States for a generation, then their statistics reflected the African American population at large.  Consequently they concluded it wasn't genetic factors.
They concluded that the reason for the low-birth weight among babies born to African American woman had to be racism.  That racism, over a life time effects the Black women in such away as to make affect the health of their babies.
The movie points out the infant mortality in the United States is not much to be happy about.  It seems the United States ranks 34 overall in the world.  Even taking away the African American babies we still rank around 23.  So the health and risk of low-weight babies is prevalent amongst our entire population, and more prevalent among the African American population.
In our own family, our little Tony was born with low-birth weight.  He was in the hospital for 10 days.  In his case his birth mother was very young.  I also find that drugs may have something to do with low-birth weight.  It seems doing foster care, most or all of our babies have been exposed to drugs.  I wonder if age of the mother and drugs could be factors? Another factor could be multiple births.
During the past year there have been four low-weight babies born among my extended family.  The wife of my nephew had triplets, all of low-birth weight.  They are all doing fine now.  My niece also had a baby who was born too soon.  Unfortunately she lost her baby when he got an infection in the hospital.
Low-birth weight is not confined to babies of African American women.  I wonder if this issues is more complex than just blaming it on racism.  Are their other factors at play with regards to the make up of the African American family that could play a factor as well?