The Mom Crowd

Happy Earth Day! In honor of Earth Day I have composed a few easy things you can do to contribute to helping the earth be a little safer for our kids.

1. Next time you go to the store try buying Tide for Cold Water. Using cold water on all laundry uses less energy–thus reducing your carbon footprint. It will also save you about $65 per year on your electric bill.

2. Reuse those baby food jars! They can be used to:

• transition toddlers and preschoolers to a big girl/boy glass at the dinner table

• serve ice cream, pudding, or mouse in them for great kiddie sized portions

• organize your “junk drawer” for things like rubber bands, thumb tacks, paper clips, small watch/toy batteries, stamps

• put paints in for your budding artist to dip their paintbrush into

• catch bugs in

3. Break out those cloth napkins that you registered for at your wedding! I don’t know about you but I registered for cloth napkins and I never used them. We just went through our LAST pack of paper napkins and we are now using cloth ones. Buying or using cloth napkins reduces the use of energy and resources to make the paper napkins. You can also reuse old dishcloths and make them into cloth napkins. If you want to get creative you can assign each person in your family a colored napkin. You could also have napkin holders with each persons name on it. When the napkins get yucky enough you can throw them in the wash. They don’t have to be washed after every use!

4. Consider purchasing a reusable water bottle for every member in the family. 38 billion water bottles are put into landfills every year! A reusable water bottle will help decrease that amount. Sigg and Kleen Kanteens are great choices that are environmentally friendly and recycleable! They also make them in great kiddie sizes.

5. Turn your heat/ac up/down 1 degree. One degree won’t be that noticable and it will also reduce your energy bills and carbon footprint!

6. Arrange a Toy Swap with your other mommy friends. Toy Swaps help rid your house of clutter toys your kids have lost interest in and provide “new” toys for the kiddos to play with. It doesn’t necessarily cut down on toy clutter but it does help reduce waste from buying new toys. With 3 kids I have toys coming out of my ears. Sometimes the plastic toys make me feel like I’m going insane. I have a pile in the basement of toys that we have grown out of or have lost interest in and I am already planning on making a stop at good will or arranging a toy swap of my own!

I recently bought a book that just came out called Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating A Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. It is a book with tons of information about making your home nontoxic, recipes for air freshener, bubble bath and pet flea repellents, green gardening, how to avoid those scary toy recalls and how to choose safer art supplies, smart choices for remodeling your home and even a shopper’s guide for quality green products, brands, stores and websites. I haven’t read it all the way through but I have read most of it and have been impressed with the helpful information in the book. One thing I appreciate about the book is that each chapter covers the impacts of our choices on the environment. I know that the idea of being green and changing family patterns and habits can be overwhelming but the book emphasizes that any choice to go greener is a step in the right direction. I think it would be impossible to overhaul everything in our lives all at once. I know in our family we are taking one step at a time and it still feels like we are doing so little. I am trusting that my small contribution combined with others contributions will help make a big impact on making the world a better place for my kids and grandkids.

Being green is definitely becoming more popular and easy to do. What kinds of green things do you do?

As I was passing time at the airport bookstore an article on the cover of USA Today caught my eye. The headline reads, “Day care’s new frontier: Your baby at your desk.” The article by Stephanie Armour explains how some companies are allowing parents to bring their infant up to 6 or 9 months in age to work with them. Most of the referenced companies are desk jobs. A company in Austin called T3 even gives parents their own private office when they start bringing in their baby with them. The companies and their employees have concerns about productivity, liability issues, health concerns, and what is best for the baby.

If my old job as a Human Resources Specialist allowed me to bring my baby with me to my desk, I may have been tempted to stay, but I wouldn’t have done it. I don’t know if I could have handled the demands of a boss, emails, managers on the phone, co-workers, my growing inbox, and on top of all that my baby too! Some moms are able to handle all that, but not me. Also, I know some moms have to work and it would be a huge blessing to have their little one beside them all day. Although there are some moms who definitely enjoy the break they get from their baby when they are at work.

I would have had some health concerns about bringing my child in the office. I think our building was cleaned maybe twice a year. Our building was old and had bad circulation and many employees got sick often. I don’t know if I would have brought Ace into that environment with co-workers that came into the office clearly too sick to work. The USA Today articles cites one company where bringing in babies would not work in their office because of the open floor plan. My old job where each person gets their own corner of a large square cubicle would not have suited a pack-n-play and swing. We had so many folders and drawers I would have been afraid of a stack of files falling on my baby!

Productivity specialists are raising eyebrows at the practice, saying it could amount to favoritism for parents and rankle co-workers who don’t want to put up with a baby gurgling — or worse — in the next cubicle.

As a Human Resources major I can see both the benefit of retaining great employees and the downsides of jealous co-workers and annoyances. I think for babies in the office to work the culture of the company has to be the right setting. Some clients may be put off by the mom in the meeting wearing a Baby Bjorn and standing while everyone else is seated at the conference table. I think if I were that mom all I would be thinking is “Don’t cry! Don’t cry!” and have a hard time paying attention to the meeting. I also believe that the baby would be a total distraction to everyone else. A baby is a lot more interesting than any power point slide show.

Co-workers may be jealous because of favoritism, but the opposite may be true. Parents with little ones at work may be discriminated against or looked over for promotions, because “they can’t handle it.” The article also shares how fathers have taken the opportunity to bring their little one to work with them. I wonder if the mothers would haven even more discrimination than the fathers with babies. The parents may feel pressure to produce more to keep up with other employees. I think I would have an issue with a parent that isn’t keeping up their end of a project. Of course, I would have grace for them, but deep down it would totally annoy me. The article mentions that parents are paid for their time when they are tending to their little one, but where do you draw the line? Would they have a clock in and clock out system on their computer? Will a parent have to work 10 or 11-hour days to ensure that they got their 8 hours of work done? It seems logistically difficult, but could work for company cultures that are open to flexible schedules and have understanding employees.

Many companies balk at the concept of babies at work full time. At Ernst & Young accounting firm, parents can get subsidized, backup child care in their homes.

Some companies offer alternatives to bringing your baby to work such as subsidizing the cost of childcare in the home. I had a co-worker that had a nanny come everyday to her house. I know she felt better about herself for working knowing her children were home. Another alternative is on-site child care. You can get your work done while someone watches your child. You are within a few minutes walk if you have some time to spend with them. GDC Marketing and Communication in San Antonio, TX is a great example of how a small company with on site child care, and a welcoming corporate culture can all work together to maintain a work-family life balance.

If my baby were at work with me I would get nothing done. Even now I wait to get my blogging done at night when Ace doesn’t need me because she fell over and banged her head again.

What are your thoughts about the article? If you could bring your baby to work with you would you? If you don’t work outside the house anymore what would it look like if you brought your baby with you to work?

For more thoughts about the USA Today’s article check out Laura Vanderkam post in the Huffington Post.

• ‘DwellStudio For Target’ on Tutus & Turtles

I LOVE Dwell Baby nursery stuff. I couldn’t afford Dwell items when Ace was born, so we came up with our own Ikea version. I am super excited that DwellStudio is coming to Target. Where was this nine months ago?

• ‘Birth, The American Way’ on Newsweek

I read this article in my Newsweek last week. The article is review of the controversial documentary,”The Business of Being Born.”

• ‘7 Qualities You Need to Be a Great Parent to Preschoolers’ on CNN

Earlier this week we had a discussion on preschools. Here is an article to give you more tools in your Mom Toolbelt to help you parent your independent Preschooler.

• ‘Cold Meds Send 7,000 U.S. Kids to ER Each Year’ on Yahoo

The article states that the majority of the cases is from children taking the medicine unsupervised. Be sure to keep your medicines out of reach!

• ‘Love you friends, hate their kids’ on CNN

What do you do when you don’t agree with your friends’ kid’s behavior? The article explores how different parents responses. Interesting thought. Luckily I don’t think any my friends’ kids are monsters!

• An Interview with Laura Bennett from Season 3 of Project Runway on Parents.com

Laura Bennett is a mother of six, an architect and a fashion designer in the Big Apple. Yes, this article is a little dated! There was not a new episode of Project Runway tonight. I need my fix!

Bonus Link

A mom delivers her baby in her driveway on CNN

• Young Pregnant Women Need to Take More Folic Acid

There are new reports stating that women between the ages of 18 to 24 are not taking enough folic acid supplements. Last week was Folic Acid Awareness week with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I think I had enough folic acid in my prenatal vitamin and I tried to eat veggies rich in folic acid. I remember my dentist telling me to take supplements, because it saved the lives of his twin girls.

• Letting Newborns Sleep in Their Car Seat

There is interesting discussion going on over at Parenthacks about the safety of allowing your newborn sleep in their car seat. I know many moms (including myself) who have let their newborn snooze away in their car seat.

• Fisher Price Stack & Rolls Balls

Our friend Dawn wrote a review about one of her new favorite toys the Fisher Price Stack & Roll Balls on her blog ‘Against the Window Pane*’.

• Pregnant and Unemployed

One of my favorite bloggers, Miss Zoot, started her own parenting blog titled ‘Pregnant and Unemployed.’ I love her honesty about parenting.

As the mother of two children with congenital heart defects, I pay extra close attention to changes with the American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines. At my children’s last cardiology visit, our cardiologist informed me of a huge change the AHA has made. Many (not all) cardiac patients have been advised until recently to take a special antibiotic prior to dental work or surgery of any kind due to the risk of endocarditis. Endocarditis is an infection in the heart’s valves or lining and is spread through the bloodstream. This is a very serious and life-threatening infection. Dental work or medical procedures are a very common way this bacteria is spread. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been enough research to prove that the prophylaxis antibiotic is effective in preventing this infection and antibiotics have their own set of risks. The AHA has now changed their guidelines and does not recommend prophylaxis antibiotics prior to procedures except for a very small number of cardiac patients.

My children’s cardiology practice is saying “no thank you” to the AHA’s new guidelines. While unnecessary use of antibiotics can cause allergic reactions and antibiotic resistance, some people feel that a one time dose of antibiotic prior to a procedure does not contribute to the antibiotic resistance issue. It is also feared that this is the AHA’s way of getting the necessary research done to know for sure whether the antibiotic is effective in stopping the spread of endocarditis. It was impossible to ethical perform research studies under the previous guidelines.

This is a huge controversy among many families and the medical community and a very important issue. I am curious to see how this all plays out. I am curious to see how many cardiologists agree with the AHA and how many disagree and continue to prescribe antibiotics for their patients prior to procedures. My children will continue to receive the antibiotic prior to procedures and dental work until I and their cardiologist feel more confident in this new change, however please check with your cardiologist to see what precautions from endocarditis he or she recommends.

The AHA’s current information and guidelines on endocarditis can be found here.