Let’s face it, Beef and to some extent dairy have a bit of a PR problem.. Saturated fat: check! Hormones and antibiotics: check!  But most of us know enough by now to buy hormone free and organic beef & dairy but not as many people are aware of the treasure trove of nutritional value in grass-fed (or pasture fed) beef & dairy products.

Before I became aware of the “grass vs. grain” issue, I didn’t even REALIZE that cows weren’t fed grass on a conventional farm. Maybe I was aware they were being fed grain, but I didn’t know that grain is a completely unnatural food for cows to eat – a cow in the “wild” (Ok, I’m not sure there are really “wild cows” but you know what I mean!) would never eat grain. They are natural pasture grazers.  And like with most other things where humans step in to “improve” upon nature – we usually end up paying a price.

In this case, the price is twofold: First, because it is completely unnatural to feed cows grain they get horrible stomach infections requiring antibiotics (hence the high levels of antibiotics in most conventional dairy) and second: meat from grain fed cows is high in saturated fat and low in the wonderful things that naturally occur in pasture fed cows. What are these wonderful things? I thought you would never ask..

Grass fed beef is low in bad fats, and rich in Omega 3s, DHA and EPA!

Yep, crazy ins’t it? Most of us associate Omega 3s with fish and nuts, but certainly not with beef. But actually, the meat and dairy from pasture fed cows has less saturated fat than chicken and  6 times the Omega three levels as grain fed beef and 86% more vitamin E!  Grass fed beef is also the richest known source of CLA’s (Conjugated Linoleic Acid) which studies are showing to be a powerful anti cancer agent.

Aside from the nutritional benefits, pasture feeding cows is obviously a much more humane way to raise animals.

In an ideal world, we’d all be able to get pasture fed dairy from a local farm (and you may even have one near you, check this website!) but even for those of us in more urban or suburban areas we can still get this products in our health food stores.  The grass fed beef usually comes ground in a 1lb package in the meat section of the store and there is a brand of dairy called “Natural by Nature” that sells grass fed milk, butter and other dairy products.  (Applegate farms also makes DELICIOUS grass fed beef hotdogs!)

Yes, you will pay a bit of a premium for the grass fed beef, but it’s still cheaper than fish and just as nutrient dense! I find the dairy to be remarkably cheap – for a half gallon you might end up paying a dollar more at most vs. plain organic milk. Totally worth it for all those extra Omega 3s, DHA and CLA particularly if your child has made the transition from breastmilk/forumula to cow’s milk and it is one of their main sources of nutrition.

I’ve been feeding Jasper the grass-fed beef hotdogs for a few months now, but only recently came up with a good way to get some of the ground beef in his diet:

Grass fed- beef and sweet potato puree:

Put 1/2 lb of grass fed beef in a medium size pot
Add 1/2 – 1 whole cut up  sweet potato or yam (or regular potato if your kiddo isn’t a sweet tooth!)
1/2 a chopped onion
1 carrot stick chopped
Anything else you’d like to add..
Add water until it just covers the ingredients.
Simmer until meet is cooked through and vegetables are soft (20 minutes or so)
Either continue to simmer until extra water is cooked out or simply remove excess liquid with a large spoon and then use a hand blender (or regular if you don’t have one) to mush it up right in the pot!

This makes a pretty chunky puree, but if your baby is younger and likes a more liquid puree just add back in a bit of the removed liquid until it reaches the desired consistency.

This puree is sooo yummy, packed full of iron, omega 3s, DHA and other wholesome goodness.

PS: I am a little slow because I only RECENTLY thought to use my hand blender to make baby food – SO much easier than transferring everything to the blender.  Why didn’t I think of that 6 months ago???

:)

At Jasper’s daycare they have a large playhouse in their outdoor area and Jasper LOVES it.  It’s got a front door that he can open and close to his door obsessed little heart’s content, shutters to peek through and even cabinet doors to open and close. What’s not to love?

I decided it would be nice for him to have one at home to play in, but was dismayed by the rather exorbitant prices these little hunks of plastic go for. Even on trusty craigslist they were often listed at upwards of $200!

So when I saw the one in the video above listed for $40 (!!!) I emailed the owner before I even finished reading the listing.   Craigslist never fails you so long as you are patient enough to wait for the right item at the right price and are diligent about checking for those items frequently.

So here’s a little tip to make sure you don’t miss YOUR next wish list item before someone else snatches it up:

Enter your chosen search term in the search box on your local craigslist and scroll down to the very bottom of the results page.  Look on the right:  you’ll see a little “RSS” button:

Click on that button and it will bring you to the RSS feed for that search which you can subscribe to in the feed reader of your choosing!

So now, in addition to whatever new blog postings and news searches you subscribe to you can also browse  what new items have been posted on craigslist that you may be looking for, all right from your feed reader!  Nifty huh?

Happy hunting!

PS: A BIG thank you to everyone who posted the best parenting things they learned on the internet for my podcast guest appearance.. we never ended up getting to them on air, but it was fun and informative to read through them. Maybe I’ll put them together for a new post since many of you probably don’t come back to read all the comments.

I’ll let you know as soon as I do when the podcast will air though I’m not sure I was all that interesting of a guest.. there were so many things that I wanted to say that I didn’t get a chance to!  It’s one of those situations where you always think of what you SHOULD have said in retrospect – damned hindsight ;)

Shot with my Canon digital rebel xsi, Tamron AF 28-75mm f/2.8 Lens, and canon 430 ex II speedlite at these settings:
f4.0
SS 1/6oth
ISO 200

I’m taking a mini-posting vacation today, relatives coming over in a minute. But I’ve been wanting to do a little series on the random tidbits of information that I’ve picked up here and there that surprised me. I figure if I didn’t know them at one time, some of you might not either!

So here’s something that isn’t so useful for us with the 6+ month olds, but if you are still exclusively breastfeeding, this tip is priceless..

Did you know that if you put something stained by breastfed poop (you know, that bright yellow stuff that is impossible to get out of anything?) in the sun that the stain will completely disappear? Apparently the thing that makes the poop bright yellow is the Bilirubin, the same thing that causes jaundice and is cured by sunlight. And so sunlight too “cures” the bilirubin stains by bleaching them out!

This phenomenon totally blew me away when I first discovered it, and it saved many articles of clothing from certain doom. Most of you mommies probably knew this already, but I know we have a few pregnant readers who might find this information as surprising as I did!

OK, have to go.. company coming over any minute.

PS: Jasper took about 6 steps in a row today!!

Fast forward 1 year and I am finally committing to going back to the gym at least on the weekends – the only time I can manage to squeeze it in.

I had a vague memory that the pregtastic folks also had a show about breastfeeding called Mommy’s Milk and More, so this past weekend I downloaded a few episodes and it was just as good as I remembered pregtastic being!

I listened to several episodes and learned a little something from each one.

I just was visiting the website and was so thrilled to discover that the makers of pregtastic and Mommy’s Milk & More just launched a new podcast called New Moms New Babies!

From their site, they describe it as:

“A weekly podcast by new moms, for new moms with tips, tricks and sanity savers on sleeping, feeding, crying and more! Future guests include, doctors, pediatricians, authors, experts on child seat safety, strollers, baby carriers, activities and more! Friendly advice, various perspectives and relevant information to get you through those first years.”

I haven’t listned yet, but I’m sure it’s as educational and entertaining as their other two shows.  If it is, you won’t want to miss a single episode.

Enjoy!

About 2-3 weeks ago, I had a really bad sore throat.  I thought I was getting the flu and was grateful that I wasn’t in my first trimester when a temparature can be really bad for baby..

Strangely though, unlike the usual sore throat > sneezing > stuffy nose> congestion > cough progression that I have always had for any cold or flu, the soreness completely disappeared two days later. The only symptom I was left with was fatigue that hasn’t gone away.

Fast forward to a week ago when I feel that I have a slightly swollen gland on the left side of my neck.  I didn’t think much of it until it got so big and so sore that you can see it bulging if I just tilt my head a bit and so sore that it hurts when I turn my head.

Due to all of the moving around and switching of health plans we’ve done in the past couple of years I don’t really have a primary care doc. (I had one picked out who’s name was on my insurance card, but I’ve never seen him. )

Last Saturday, the gland became large enough that I realized I really need medical attention in case it is some sort of infection. I called the primary listed on my card – he’s not accepting new Aetna patients. I had an appointment scheduled to see my OB on Wednesday, but didn’t want to wait that long. Knowing that my OB appointments are like 2 minutes long, I thought maybe they could squeeze me in Monday instead of Wednesday…

I call the receptionist and she says “swollen gland? That’s not pregnancy related. Call your primary care doc or go to a clinic.”

Bitch.

So I call Aetna, the only urgent care clinic that accepts Aetna is in NJ.  Off to Jersey I go. A negative rapid strepp test later the doc tells me to start antibiotics (just in case even though he thinks its probably viral.) He says hell call with the results of a more thourough throat culture (which turned out to also be negative.)

Two days later on Wednesday, I have my OB appointment. The doc says “wow, that’s big” and that he’s not worried about the baby, but that I really needed follow up care because “that thing is the size of a golf ball.”  To his credit, he did offer to help me get an appointment with a primary if I couldn’t find one to see me soon.

I did end up being able to get an appointment at the office of a doctor I’d seen once about 10 years ago. Other than being a little wacky, he at least took the issue seriously and ordered a CBC, thyroid tests, mono and CMV titer. I went to quest this morning and had the blood drawn.

My dad calls me this afternoon and says he thinks I probably have CMV, its super common and I’ve had all the symptoms.  He said he was sure the baby was protected though because isn’t that what the “umbilical cord” is there for? (Dad, I think you mean placenta.)

I of course google CMV during pregnancy. Wow, I wish I hadn’t.

According to CDC, CMV infection occurs in about 1 in 150 babies born in the United States, some of whom develop hearing or vision loss, mental disability or other problems. It is the leading infectious cause of birth defects and developmental disabilities in the United States, according to the CDC.

1 in 150! And yet, I bet your OB never talked to you about CMV (according to MSNBC, 40% of OBs don’t). Even though its probably 10 times more likely than say Downs, which is something they routinely recommend screenings for.

Needless to say, I am terrified.

I called the doctor that ordered the bloodtest and asked the receptionist how long the results would take. She said usually about a week for bloodwork from quest. A week of sleepless nights.. so I called my OBs office, a little ticked off that the OB never told me (even though I had the symptoms) that there was a potential (however small) of having something that could be bad for my baby to see if maybe they would re order the test stat.

I start crying on the phone with the receptionist, so she puts the doctor on call on (who I’ve never seen.)

In a pretty bitchy way she tells me that it’s so rare that I shouldn’t worry about it because there is no treatment for it anyway and that I should just stay off the internet. Funny, because everything I’ve read says its NOT really that rare and that OBs are the ones that maybe should get ON the internet. Besides which, telling an expectant mom not to worry about her unborn child is really quite futile, and in my opinion, shows a complete lack of compassion and sense of reality. Thanks for nothing.

Defeated but willing to give it one more try to get the order changed to stat I call the primary care docs office again. This time, I ask to speak to the doctor who I saw yesterday. They take down my name and number and say the doctor on call will call me back.

Some other person calls who can’t even spell CMV (clearly not a doc, but I can hear the doc in the background).  I guess she mistakenly tells the doc its mono I want stat? Because the doc (I think it was the doc) gets on the phone and says don’t worry, I don’t think of mono when I think of mental disabilities and babies. No, NOT mono, CMV! Oh she says, I mean yes CMV. Ok, clearly she hasn’t done her homework either.  She does tell me that the results can’t be ordered stat because its a culture anyway, and that it should be around 3 days or so.  Again I get the “don’t worry about a disease you probably don’t have” lecture. Its too beautiful a weekend she says.

Clearly she’s never been a mom, or pregnant. Or if she has, she has amnesia.

If you are still with me, you may be wondering why I’m posting this.  It’s partly because

A) I am upset and hormonal and needed to get that off my chest

B) I am half hoping that if I write about it, the test won’t come back positive for primary exposure

C) Because if you interact with children on a regular basis (daycare worker, or mom!) and are pregnant, you really need to know about CMV and its dangers and take extra precautions. Because if your OB is anything like mine, you won’t hear it from them.

Links:

http://www.wearsthebaby.com/cmv.htm

http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/cytomegalovirusinfection.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22827257/