Home Birth Versus Hospital Birth: Which Option is Safer?

For today's post, I thought I'd share my article on Suite101.com. Enjoy!

Home Birth Versus Hospital Birth: Which Option is Safer?

Food for Thought

Have you ever sat down to eat a pizza and devoured the entire thing, then wondered how you managed to stuff all of that food into your stomach? Well, I have and while I was reading Whole Living magazine the other day when I came across an interesting research study that confirmed my beliefs that certain foods contain appetite suppressing chemicals.

Scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School discovered that, in animal studies, palmitic acid, a fancy word for the most common saturated fat on the planet, causes the brain to ignore appetite-suppressing hormones.

What this means is that when you eat foods containing high amounts of saturated fat, foods like pizza, meat, ice cream, butter, cheese, high fat dairy products, palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil, you are a lot more likely to overeat because your brain isn't receiving the hormonal signals that tell you you're full.

This is why it is so important to practice moderation. Don't sit down with an entire pizza, instead allow yourself 1-2 slices then freeze the rest to make it harder to binge later. Don't sit down with the entire jug of ice cream, instead dish yourself out a bowl.

Don't eat more than one serving of red meat at a time. Limit your intake of high fat dairy products. Look for olive or canola oil based margarine spreads (avoid spreads with hydrogenated oils) rather than palm oil and palm kernel oil based spreads.

Another trick is to eat a low-fat salad or have a low-fat bowl of soup 20 minutes before you consume the high-fat food to help kick-start those appetite suppressing hormones.

And that, my friends, is Friday's food for thought.

Bicycle Off Extra Pounds

Bicycling is one of the most energy efficient mode of transportation and, according to a new study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine it is also an excellent fat burning activity.

The study, which you can read about at Rodale.com, shows that daily cycling works miracles in terms of helping people, especially middle aged women lose weight and maintain their current weight. How? Nobody understands the exact mechanisms involved, but my money's on the fact that bicycling simultaneously increases your heart rate and works every muscle in your body.

Think about it.

• You use every muscle from your hips down to power each pedal stroke.
• You use the core muscles of your back and abs to help you maintain balance.
• You use your arms and chest muscles and even your lats and traps to hold onto the handlebars and keep the bicycle steady.
• Your neck muscles work to hold the extra weight of your bicycle helmet.
• Your face muscles work harder because bicycling often leads to smiles and smiles burn more calories than frowns.
• Additionally, your brain works hard because you have to beware of obstacles such as potholes, pedestrians, animals, cars, rocks and trees, etc.

And one more thing, bicycling, in my non-expert opinion gives you a higher endorphin rush than traditional weight loss activities simply because it makes you feel like a kid again. This may also help to burn additional fat.

So hop on your bike and ride, even if it's only around the block. The exercise will do you good.

And when you fall in love with cycling, be sure to check out my Tips for Commuting by Bicycle article at Suite101.com.

P.S. I'm pregnant and fighting the wonderful first trimester fatigue and nausea and I've still managed to ride either my mountain bike (in the city) or my road bike nearly every day this week. I thought I'd share so that it might inspire you to get out and ride. :)

What to Do When 911 Doesn't Work

Last night, Justin and I were awakened by gunshots being fired in our neighborhood. The shots were actually being fired right outside our house. I got up, grabbed the phone and called 911. The line was busy. I hung up and dialed again. Still busy. I dialed at least 5 more times with the same result.

I thought maybe there was a problem with my portable phone, so I headed into the office to use the land line. This was the last place I wanted to be since the shots seemed to be coming from the front of the house and the office is in the front of our house with a nice, big window that's right in line with the phone.

I slid into my chair and kept it as close to the wall as possible and leaned over to dial 911 on the land line. This time, the call just would not connect. I tried again. Same thing. I felt like I was in the middle of my worst nightmare. People outside were shouting, there was gunfire and here I was trying to dial 911 and the call wasn't going through.

What good is 911 if you can't get through? I didn't feel like I had any other option but to keep trying. So try and try I did. Finally, after several minutes, I found success. I told the 911 operator what was happening and she said she'd send the police and that was the end of the call.

By the time the police arrived, everyone involved in the incident had vanished like a bunch of cockroaches running from the exterminator. The police visited our neighbor's house and then left. Apparently, there was nothing suspicious going on any longer so there was no reason to stick around.

Perhaps if I'd been able to get through to 911 when I had first dialed, the police would have gotten my call a few minutes sooner and they may have been able to nail the shooter.

This morning, I found three 9mm shell casings and one 9mm unspent bullet in the street right outside our front door. We called the police and learned another scary fact. Nobody had actually responded to my shots fired call. They had responded to a call about the party going on next door.

The officer who responded this morning was curious that nobody had responded to my call about the shots fired. He hinted that perhaps since calls about the party and my call about the gunshots happened at the same time, my call must have been incorrectly prioritized. I wondered if maybe the dispatcher thought I was simply hearing fireworks and didn't take my call seriously or if the dispatch system screwed up and mis-prioritized my call. I used to work for a company that programmed 911 software. It does occasionally mis-prioritize calls. Who knows?

I was horrified to think that the officers who responded to the party next door last night had no clue that shots had been fired. These officers got lucky. They could have been walking right into a war zone and they wouldn't have ever known it. That's scary!

I just kept thinking had this been a medical emergency or had the gun person been breaking into our house or shooting at us or at some other person, the added minutes it took for me to get connected to 911 could very well have cost Justin and I or someone else his or her life...

Fortunately, we got lucky last night. Nobody was injured or killed (that we or the police are aware of). There wasn't even any visible property damage to any of the houses or cars in the neighborhood. Even so, the incident was extremely terrifying.

I was up most of the night so I had a chance to do a lot of thinking. I can't change how a dispatcher or 911 system prioritizes a 911 call, whether my information gets passed along to officers and whether or not the police will respond, but I can change how much time I waste trying to call for help.

From now on, if Justin and I ever get a busy signal when we call 911 or if the call won't go through on the first try, we will hang up and call the police dispatch line directly. Trust me, in an emergency, the last thing you want to hear is a busy signal or the endless silence that comes when a call won't connect.

So that said, I urge everyone to go and find the phone number to your local police department's dispatch office. Right now! Write it down. Glue it on the phone. Teach your kids how to use it in the event 911 doesn't work because, as we found out last night, 911 sometimes doesn't work.

Having a backup plan in an emergency may very well save your life or the life of someone you know and love.