There are several different bugs going around my daughter’s school right now.  They range from your typical colds all the way to a stomach virus, add in some strep throats and fevers and it seems everybody has something.  I got lucky with a stomach virus that seems to be lasting way more than 24 hours.  My daughter caught the cold with some major coughing.

My mom, my daughter and I all seem to have that in common. We catch a cold and we cough for weeks.  Needless to say, getting a good night’s sleep while constantly coughing can be a little tough – I’m sure you already know this.  Once my daughter turned two, over the counter cough medicine was what her pediatrician recommended – following the dose recommendations carefully and exactly of course. **WARNING- It is now recommended that cough medicine NOT be given to children under 4 and some doctors prefer that age to be 6**.  

Getting my daughter to take cough medicine was almost next to impossible.  It always involved major crying which of course made her stuffier and made the coughing even worse.  So several years ago when my daughter started coughing horribly with a cold, I dreaded the upcoming bedtime cough medicine battle.  I decided to see what kind of home remedies I could find.  I found various home remedies and they all had one thing in common – honey. 

**In case you skim while reading I didn’t want you to miss this –Another Warning  – Never ever give a child under 1 honey. It can be deadly because infants don’t have the stomach acid necessary to kill the bacterial spores and the honey will cause infant botulism**

Okay now that I’ve given you the warning, I can continue on with my honey story and it’s happy ending. The honey worked!! I couldn’t believe the first time we tried it and we had a night of no coughing. The recommended dosage is a ½ tsp in a single dose 30 minutes before bed for kids 2 to 5, a full tsp for kids 6 to 11, and two teaspoons for kids 12 to 18.

Dark honey is supposed to work significantly better at stopping coughs than the light honey. In addition, research done by the University of Illinois has found that dark honey has 20x more antioxidants than light honey, meaning more illness-fighting agents. For whatever reason, I have not been able to locate any dark honey in my area so we are using the light honey. In either case, this give a thumbs up to honey to helping ease kid’s (over 1) coughs.

MiracleMunchkins.com

Yuck, just the word brings back horrible memories of day and night nausea.   There are still foods from that time in my life that I will never eat again.  The best way I can think to describe it is having the flu for months.  My morning sickness started off normal enough and then progressed  to the very rare, severe and dangerous form of morning sickness called hyperemesis which was for me morning sickness for the full nine months of the pregnancy including during labor.  I was still actually getting sick during labor but the moment my daughter was born, literally within a minute, I wanted to eat a bowl of cereal – it was the first time I had wanted to eat in 9 months.  This is a long story though and a blog for another time.  Right now I want to talk about that first trimester of morning sickness that most women experience and tips for getting through it.

I would really love to get some tips and comments  that we can post for women going through it right now.  Believe me I would have tried almost anything so let’s see if we can help.  To leave a comment, at the end of the blog, you’ll see the word “comments”.  That is a clickable link, even though it’s not underlined, just click to leave your morning sickness advice.  You can also cut and paste this link in to your browser – http://miraclemunchkins.com/blog/?p=172

So on to my tips……

The first thing I tried right at the beginning when I was just feeling a little yucky but nothing too bad were those motion sickness wrist bands.  The basic premise is that the wristbands provide acupressure to help relieve the nausea.  I’ve never had problem with motion sickness so I can’t speak to the effectiveness of these bands for motion sickness or chemotherapy (another use) however I didn’t ever feel that they helped reduce my morning sickness.  That being said, I rarely removed them as I wasn’t taking the chance.  At any rate, it was hassle-free, drug-free and definitely worth trying.

The most helpful thing I was told and that I tried to do was to make sure that you don’t let your stomach get empty.  An empty stomach will make the nausea worse and I definitely found that to be very true. By the way, this is typically why it is called morning sickness.  Our stomachs are the emptiest during the morning which means you usually feel worse at that time.  I felt horrible 24 hours a day but an empty stomach was like giving me a double dose of morning sickness.   That means you need to snack and snack a lot. This doesn’t mean tons of junk food, think healthy snacks.  Fruits are recommended but to be honest I couldn’t stomach it , for me it was saltines and pretzel sticks and they really did help.  Also, try keeping some snacks, like crackers,  at the side of your bed to eat before getting out of bed in the morning.

Sugary lemon drops -  a friend said she sucked on these during her morning sickness and something about them just seems to help a little.  I have never really loved hard candy but the sugary lemon drops really were comforting and did seem to make a difference.  I haven’t had them since but I probably sucked on enough of them during the first trimester to last a lifetime.

room temperature water – Ice cold water may make you feel worse when that cold hits your stomach, it did me, so try your water at room temperature.   Whatever you prefer, make sure you are staying hydrated, vomiting frequently will dehydrate you quickly.  Besides being dangerous, dehydration will also make you feel significantly worse.

ginger tea – okay, I hate ginger and I hate tea so I this idea also didn’t appeal to me whatsoever but ginger has long been used to treat nausea.

taking a vitamin b6 supplement- of course always ask your doctor before adding an additional vitamin as perhaps you are already getting your maximum amount through a medicine your doctor is providing you.  However many women have reported that taking a b6 supplement helped.   During my pregnancy, somebody recommend a vitamin e supplement.  I tried that for awhile and I didn’t really notice any improvement.

Okay ladies, let’s hear some things that may have helped you!!

Munchkins Mom at MiracleMunchkins.com

Alyson Hannigan was on the Ellen DeGeneres show earlier this year saying that she had pregnancy brain. I realize that this is old news now since this happened at the end of January but the topic of pregnancy brain recently came up while I was talking with a customer.

She had placed her order for baby shower invitations but put a shipping address that she had not lived at  for over 10 years.  Luckily she caught her mistake in time before we shipped – you have to love a happy ending –  and she blamed her crazy error all on the massive pregnancy brain she was experiencing.   She said that putting an old address down was not something she ever would have done before she was pregnant.

She isn’t my first customer to mention pregnancy brain either. Misspelling your older child’s name that you’ve been spelling for the last 5 years, putting the wrong birth year when you just gave birth a few days earlier, completely forgetting where you have registered for your baby shower…. these are all things some of our customers have blamed on pregnancy brain.  You know what, I understand this completely.

I’ve always prided myself on my excellent memory.  One of the best things about being in the birth announcement and baby shower industry is being able to work one on one with designs for each customer.  I’ve always loved when a repeat customer comes along with a new baby because I remember them from their first child.  I have a customer who orders photo Christmas cards every year for the last 8 years and I’ve just loved watching how much the kids have grown.  She always reminds me who she is when she places her order every year but she doesn’t need to.  I remember her and I’m am grateful to have the type of   memory that has allowed me to form special bonds with customers.  I am especially grateful for this because during the 9 months I was pregnant with my daughter and for about 4 months afterwords, my memory was just completely filled with holes.

My spouse has a horrible memory and during my pregnancy it was the first time I truly understood what that was like.  I couldn’t remember doctor appointment times and I had never had to write them down before.  I had a difficult pregnancy and I became very close at that time to a nurse who help me get through it but I could never remember her name even though I saw her every day for 3 months.  I did silly things like put the ice cream  away in the refrigerator rather than the freezer.  Sure that happens to all of us but you would be shocked if I told you just how often I did things like that.

I have no doubt at all that I experienced “pregnancy brain”, “cottonwood brain” as it is sometimes know or even the cute “momnesia”, however not everyone agrees.  According to a study done by Australian researchers pregnant women are not more likely to have memory lapses or problems with attention to detail.  I am definitely not a scientist nor do I play one on television but in our own little Miracle Munchkins world filled with many many pregnant moms, I go on the records stating that I am a believer that  pregnancy brain really does exist.

What do you think? Have you ever experience pregnancy brain?

I hope everybody had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!  

While my family gathered around the dinner table for our Thanksgiving meal, I was quickly reminded it was cold and flu season by all the coughing, sniffling and sneezing going on around me.  Luckily everybody seemed to be in various stages of having some type of cold rather than something more serious; all except for one relative who seemed to have the flu.  As he started getting his fever, I was immediately grateful that I received my flu shot several weeks ago.

I have personally found that the flu shot has really helped reduce my chances of getting the flu during the main part of flu season.  However, as many of the visitors to this website are pregnant, what about them – - should pregnant women also get flu shots?

Did you know that women who will be pregnant during flu season are now on the Center for Disease Control and Preventions recommended list on who should get the flu vaccine?  http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/keyfacts.htm  The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) also agrees with this recommendation.

Originally the flu vaccine was recommended only for women who would be in their third trimester during flu season. That was recently changed to include all trimesters because according to the CDC, pregnant women are more likely to suffer severe complications from the flu than are women who are not pregnant.  A recent study also suggested that with the flu vaccination, protection from the flu is provided for both the mother and baby.  This study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicated that newborns whose mothers received the flu vaccine while pregnant had a 63% reduction in influenza. The full study can be found here – http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/359/15/1555

However, giving the flu vaccination to pregnant women is not without controversary.  The majority of influenza vaccines available currently contains thimerosal (mercury); see – - http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/ABOUT/QA/thimerosal.htm  While not everybody is concerned about thimerosal in vaccinations, it clearly is an issue for quite a few women. Currently only about 14% of women are vaccinated for the flu.  If you are unaware about thimerosal and why concern exists, www.safeminds.org has a lot of information.

According to the ACOG,  “there is no evidence showing that thimerosal is a danger to the health of the pregnant woman or her fetus.”  While at face value that statement is true, it is misleading because there has been no research, therefore there is no data, either way regarding the safety to the fetus. 

If you are concerned about mercury in vaccinations, the good news is that thimerosal-free flu vaccinations do exist!  You just may need to make a few phone calls until you find a doctor’s office that stocks the thimerosal-free version.  In addition, within the last several years, six states –California, Delaware, Missouri, New York, Washington and Illinois– have enacted laws that ban the use of the thimerosal-containing vaccines in both children under 36 months of age as well as pregnant women.   More states have legislation pending.

The bottom line is do some of your own research so that you have the knowledge to make an informed decision that is best for both you and your baby and talk openly to your OBGYN. 

www.MiracleMunchkins.com

Information on this site is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to substitute the advice provided by your own doctor.