A little over a year ago, I had my first real health scare when I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. I didn’t panic at the echocardiogram report until I Googled and found out that people with this condition are at risk for heart failure or sudden cardiac death. I was horrified. Here I’d been gearing up for my midlife crisis, and I was learning that I might have grossly miscalculated. And I had two toddlers to raise.

I was extremely lucky, more so than I can express. My condition was apparently the result of thyroid disorder. Once my medication was adjusted, my heart self-corrected. All tests since then have come back normal.

But I’m a changed woman. I think differently about my heart. I cherish it. And I ask you, if you do not do so already, to cherish your own heart as well.

Tomorrow, February 1st, is National Go Red for Women Day. We’re asked to get educated about heart disease. For starters, consider these facts and statistics from First Lady Laura Bush’s web site:

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death of American women, accounting for 32 percent of all deaths per year. Nearly 366,000 women in America die every year of heart disease.
• 8 million American women are currently living with heart disease and of those, 6 million have a family history of heart disease.
• Fewer than half of all women are aware that heart disease is the number 1 killer of American women. Most women identify cancer as the leading cause of death.
• In the United States, all cardiovascular diseases combined claim the lives of more women’s every year than the next 16 causes of death combined — and almost twice as many as all forms of cancer.
• One in three women will die from heart disease, while one in 25 women die from breast cancer.
• Every year since 1984, more women than men have died of cardiovascular disease.
• There is no previous evidence of coronary heart disease in 63 percent of the women who suddenly die from the disease.
• Smoking is the most prevalent and preventable risk factor for cardiovascular disease in women younger than 45.
• 40 percent to 50 percent of women older than 45 have high blood pressure and an elevated total cholesterol level — both well-documented risk factors.
• Heart disease is often preventable.

According to the Mayo Clinic, these are the five important steps we can take to help protect ourselves from heart disease:

• Don’t smoke, or quit if you do.
• Be physically active.
• Eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in saturated fats (and skip the trans fats altogether - these are the worst for the heart).
• Maintain a healthy weight.
• Get regular health screenings. (May I add, ask for a blood test to look at thyroid function.)

We need to be our own advocates. When I told my doctor I was afraid something was wrong with my heart and described my symptoms, she wrote it off as “holiday stress” and gave me a prescription for a tranquilizer. The only reason I was tested was because, even though I was painfully self-conscious about it, I was persistent.

And my story is not unusual. As far as heart disease goes:

“Research shows that women may not be diagnosed or treated as aggressively as men,” says the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Since my brush with heart disease, I’ve not been perfect. I let some weight creep back on me (which I’m kicking with the Biggest Loser moms over on the Health and Fitness board), and I’ve scarfed my share of Milk Duds without checking the label first for saturated fat content (3.5 grams per 13 comforting duds). So I’m grateful to the Go Red campaign for reminding me that our hearts serve us well so long as they are treated well. They are resilient - I’m living proof - but they are not invincible.

Wear red tomorrow and help educate other women about heart disease. Look at your little ones and remember that one day you’ll be advising them on how to take care of their own children, so long as your heart is healthy and strong.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Amid all the recent toy recalls, the Toy Industry Association, Inc., a trade group representing over 500 companies that are responsible for around 85% domestic toy sales, maintains that toys are for the most part quite safe. For good measure, the group is offering tips to help parents make better toy choices this holiday season.

Buy Smart:

• Check age grading and all toy packaging labels to make sure the toy is appropriate for your child
• Avoid toys with small parts for children under age 3 or children who mouth toys
• Look for toys with sturdy parts and tightly secured joints
• Shop at a reputable retailer, one you know and trust
• Inspect the condition of second-hand toys and make sure you have the original packaging and instructions
• Batteries in toys should be firmly attached and not accessible to children
• Listen to toys with noises before purchase to make sure it’s appropriate for your child

Read the Label:

• Labels and instructions on packaging can give excellent guidance for safe purchasing decisions

Organize and Supervise:

• Follow instructions for toy assembly and use
• Supervise children as they play
• Be a good role model and set an example for safe play
• Keep toys with small parts away from children under three and from children who tend to mouth objects
• Avoid all toys with sharp points or rough edges
• Keep toys in an easily accessible storage bin with a removable lid
• Repair or discard broken toys
• Teach older children to keep their toys away from younger siblings.
• Keep a separate toy chest for older children whose toys may contain small parts not suitable for their younger siblings.

Sign up for CPSC e-mail recall alerts.

You can find more resources on the association’s new site for parents.

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Consumers Union (which publishes Consumer Reports) is rolling out a toy safety advocacy project, titled Twelve Safe Days of Shopping, and they needs help. Sign up to receive a book of coupons to give to store personnel while you’re doing your holiday shopping. The coupons encourage stores to keep from stocking unsafe toys and to post recall notices.

They also need volunteers who will agree to hand out information and talk to local media representatives at large outreach events in Boston, NYC, Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Francisco.

If you can help, get in touch with the CU folks ASAP!

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And now for something completely different…our friends at the Sierra Club have their own take on the lead toy story, told by Spacey the Lead Elf:

The part about the single CPSC staffer who is in charge of testing toys for safety is hard to fathom, but apparently true.

Posted by MommaSteph.

If you’re like me, your house is a bit overrun with stuffed animals bestowed on your little ones by well-meaning relatives. I’ve been contemplating what to do with these space-stealers (my boys each have two “friends” and pretty much ignore the rest), and this past week I found the answer.

I happened upon a collection site for toys for soldiers to give Iraqi children.

Hooray!

Small, sturdy toys are welcome. The soldiers carry them in their pockets and give them out to children as they go about their duties. The children love the toys, and the soldiers love making the kids’ lives a little sweeter.

If you don’t have a collection site near you, check out the website BeaniesForBahdad for instructions on how to get the toys to where they can do some good.

Yesterday was Veterans’ Day. Here’s one way to make life a little sweeter for a future veteran while bringing some joy into a child’s life. What a great idea.

Posted by MommaSteph.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission and Amscan Inc., of Elmsford, NY, announced a recall of Halloween “ugly teeth” party favors because they contain excessive levels of lead. (Memo to Acting Chairwoman Nancy Nord: Is it “impractical” to call for a ban on lead in products designed to go in kids’ mouths?!?)

Two more recalls of note: Toys R Us is recalling “Elite Operations” army toys due to lead paint violations (sample set below, see the recall page for more photos).

And SimplyFun is recalling Ribbit Board Games because they’ve been found to be simply full of lead.

Signed the petition yet?

Posted by MommaSteph.

Some fresh recalls to report: The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall of Fisher Price Go Diego Boats because surface paint on the boats contain excessive levels of lead.

Halloween pails sold at Family Dollar Stores are also recalled, as the green paint contains excessive levels of lead.

Garden tools sold at Jo-Ann stores are being recalled because of lead paint on the handles.

Bobble head cake decorations representing various football teams, sold in bakeries and ice cream stores nationwide, have excessive levels of lead in the paint on the bodies.

Kids’ metal jewelry pieces sold at Dollar Tree, Dollar Bill$, Dollar Express, Greenbacks and Only $1 nationwide are also being recalled for lead.

Children’s jewelry sold at Dollar Tree stores also contain toxic levels of lead. (Sample picture below, see the recall page for more samples of toxic jewelry.)

If you have any of these items, check the corresponding recall page for information on returns, refunds, etc.

If you have not yet signed our Toy Safety Petition, now is the time! Until we agree to use our collective buying power to stop the import of toxic toys, nothing much is likely to change.

And stay tuned to MomSquawk. We have a challenge (for you!) in the works.

Posted by MommaSteph.

From the Environmental Protection Agency site:

National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week is set aside to educate parents and children about the dangers of lead exposure, especially lead-paint hazards in housing. As part of the observance, many states and communities will offer free lead screening, and conduct education and awareness events.Lead exposure among young children has been drastically reduced over the last three decades due to federal, state and local regulations that banned lead in gasoline and house paint, and efforts to reduce or cleanup lead in industrial emissions, drinking water, consumer goods, hazardous sites and other sources. In 1978, there were about 13.5 million children in the United States with elevated blood-lead levels. Today, approximately 310,000 children ages 1-5 years in the United States have elevated blood-lead levels.

It is the federal government’s goal to totally eliminate childhood lead poisoning by 2010.

Although most lead exposure occurs when people eat lead paint chips or lead-dust, EPA estimates that 10 to 20 percent of human exposure to lead may come from lead in drinking water. A DVD, “What Your School or Child Care Facility Should Know About Lead in Drinking Water” was recently made available to the public and sent to the 50 largest school districts in the country to help increase their understanding of the importance of testing for lead in drinking water.

Lead is a highly toxic element that cause a range of health effects, from behavioral problems and learning disabilities, to seizures and death. Children six and under are most at risk because their bodies are growing quickly.

The theme for this year’s lead week is “Protect Our Most Valuable Resource — Our Children.”

Here’s an earlier MomSquawk post on lead paint in old housing.

And if you’re a regular reader of our blog, you know we’ve been all over the lead in toys issue for over a year now. (I was just taking a little trip down memory lane with this post from September of last year - it’s amazing how inconceivable lead toys sounded at the time…)

Please, take a moment and sign our Toy Safety Petition. We are not powerless. We can use our consumer dollars to take action to protect our children.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Got a phone? Get involved!

BlogHer, Postpartum Support International (PSI), and Postpartum Progress are joining forces and asking that you and I take action to help the MOTHERS Act advance to the Senate floor with the support of as many Senators as possible.

The MOTHERS [Mom’s Opportunity to Access Health, Education, Research, and Support for Postpartum Depression] Act aims to ensure that new mothers and family members (as appropriate) are offered screening and treatment for postpartum mood disorders, and to expand and focus research at the National Institutes of Health on postpartum mental health issues.

I am pleased that the text of the legislation includes the following, which might offer someone unfamiliar with the subject matter some perspective on how postpartum mood disorders are still taboo topics for so many new parents, and how very destructive they can be, and not just for Mom:

All too often postpartum depression goes undiagnosed or untreated due to the social stigma surrounding depression and mental illness, the romanticization of motherhood, the new mother’s inability to self-diagnose her condition, the new mother’s shame or embarrassment over discussing her depression so near to the birth of her child, the lack of understanding in society and the medical community of the complexity of postpartum depression, and economic pressures placed on hospitals and providers…

Untreated, postpartum depression can lead to further depression, substance abuse, loss of employment, divorce and further social alienation, self-destructive behavior, or even suicide…

Untreated, postpartum depression impacts society through its effect on the infant’s physical and psychological and cognitive development, child abuse, neglect or death of the infant or other siblings, and the disruption of the family…

The MOTHERS Act is currently in the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee of the Senate. If a majority of those committee members support the proposed legislation, it will move into the Senate proper. If enough Senators know that this legislation is important to their constituents, it should progress relatively smoothly from there.

If you would like to see this legislation passed, call your Senators today to voice your support for the MOTHERS Act. Postpartum Support International has a list of Senators’ phone numbers and a handy script for those of us who get a little tongue-tied on the phone. If your Senator is already a co-sponsor of the bill, PSI recommends that you call anyway to express your thanks.

I’m a fairly well-educated woman, fairly self-aware, and I had a nice support system in place when I became a mom, but still I was completely blindsided by postpartum OCD. According to the American Psychiatric Association, postpartum depression affects around one in ten new mothers. Postpartum mood disorders with psychotic features affect between one in 500 to 1000 new moms. This is not a small problem. It’s time for us to get postpartum mental health disorders out of the closet and give those affected some solid treatment options.

Please, if you support the MOTHERS Act, pick up the phone now.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Those of you who have been regular readers of our blog are surely aware of the problem of lead toys.

For those unaware as to why we at MomSquawk are so concerned: lead poisoning can cause serious and lasting damage to the brain and nervous system, including seizures, coma, and even death.

And when innocent play has become hazardous, something is seriously wrong.

The scariest part about all of these recent recalls is that these are just the unsafe toys that have actually been caught. The dangerous manufacturing processes producing these toys aren’t confined to small companies. As you’ve read here, even some of the country’s largest toy manufacturers have traded child safety for profits.

Something needs to be done. We are going to try and do our part, but we need your help.

Please sign MomSquawk’s open letter to toy company executives, Congress and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to let them know that we will no longer tolerate such needless dangers to our children’s safety.

And please help us spread the word about this issue, so important to the wellbeing of our children. A few seconds of your time in sending an email to friends and family asking them to also sign the letter can make the difference in keeping children safe.

For questions about this initiative or how you can get involved, please email safetoyinfo@momsquawk.com.

Another public breastfeeding kerfuffle, nicely covered over at The Lactivist.

The dispute with Applebee’s began June 14. [Brooke] Ryan chose a booth in the back of the restaurant away from other customers. When her baby, Michael, got hungry, she began to nurse him discreetly, she said.

But a waitress came over and said that if she wanted to breast-feed, she had to cover the baby with a blanket. Ryan said it was so hot that she didn’t have a blanket. The waitress then repeated her request. Ryan said she then asked to see the manager and handed him a copy of the 2006 Kentucky law that prohibits interference with a woman breast-feeding her baby in public.

The manager said he knew about the law but a customer had complained about indecent exposure, so she had to cover the baby with a blanket.

Kentucky’s breastfeeding law, which, as we’ve noted before, like other state laws, merely reiterates a woman’s already established right to breastfeed in public anywhere in the US, states:

Breastfeeding a child or expressing breastmilk as part of breastfeeding shall not be considered an act of public indecency and shall not be considered indecent exposure, sexual conduct, lewd touching, or obscenity.

And:

No person shall interfere with a mother breastfeeding her child in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be.

Which means the waitress and manager effectively broke the law.

Ms. Ryan and her lawyer sent a letter to Thomas and King, the company that operates the Applebee’s in question. No response at first, but their second letter got a reply, in which the company noted that they were considering keeping blankets in the restaurant so that breastfeeding women could cover themselves.

Seriously.

There’s been a campaign afoot to contact Applebee’s proper. Their apparent canned response:

“[The] corporate response to the breastfeeding in Lexington, Kentucky is that Applebee’s and its franchisees love having families dine together at our restaurants. We believe that this franchisee made a reasonable and lawful request of this guest in order to promote a pleasant and comfortable experience for all of its guests.”

The BWB Lactivist Yahoo group is organizing nurse-ins at Applebee’s on September 8, 12-1:00. Can’t say I blame them. Check their site for more information.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Chemicals and Breast Milk: Over at Huffington Post, Mary Brune of Making Our Milk Safe (MOMS) makes her case in support of The California Furniture Safety and Fire Prevention Act, which would ban the use of most toxic fire retardants in furniture and bedding. She notes that chlorinated Tris, a probable carcinogen that was phased out of children’s sleepwear decades ago, is the second most commonly used flame retardant in furniture in California. Flame retardants can be found at higher levels in children’s bodies than in adults, and it finds its way into newborns via breast milk. In Sweden, when levels of PBDEs (Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers) in breast milk were found to be doubling every five years, a voluntary phase out of the chemical resulted in a corresponding decline. Moms Rising has a petition up in support of the chemical ban.

Monkey Moms: University of Chicago researchers report that female rhesus monkeys use “motherese” when trying to get an infant monkey’s attention. “Motherese is a high pitched and musical form of speech, which may be biological in origin,” Dario Maestripieri, associate professor in comparative human development, explained in a prepared statement. “The acoustic structure of particular monkey vocalizations, called girneys, may be adaptively designed to attract young infants and engage their attention, similar to how the acoustic structure of motherese, or baby talk, allows adults to visually or socially engage with infants,” he said.