Marcia Cross Is Looking Pregnant

I haven't updated anyone on Marcia Cross lately, so here is the latest picture of her leaving the Papyrus store earlier this week in LA. Seems that she is excited for her little ones to arrive. Shopping for baby announcement invitations perhaps? I guess its never too soon. pregnancy baby pregnant marcia cross pregnancy weeklymaternity expecting due date desperate housewives

Diabetes in pregnancy puts baby at disease risk

EVEN a mild elevation in a woman's blood sugar in pregnancy may greatly increase the risk that her child will develop diabetes later in life, according to Sydney research that suggests the health consequences of the present obesity epidemic could persist for generations.

The findings - which come amid a surge in diagnoses of pregnancy-related diabetes linked to women's excess weight - underline a need for diabetes screening for all pregnant women rather than just those thought to be at high risk, experts say.

They also add urgency to public health measures to deal with the nation's weight crisis, as today's young women gain kilograms at an unprecedented rate even before motherhood.

It was already known that having full-blown diabetes in pregnancy increased the risk of the disease for children. But the research from Blacktown Hospital, published in the journal Diabetic Medicine, suggests even gestational diabetes - usually considered a transient and relatively trivial condition - may have long-term health effects on offspring.

Dr Mark McLean, a specialist in diabetes and endocrinology, asked 5850 women attending antenatal clinics whether either of their parents had diabetes. Those whose mothers had the disease were twice as likely to have elevated blood sugar in pregnancy than those whose fathers had it.

Because diabetes genes are thought to be inherited equally from fathers and mothers, the difference was unlikely to be explained by genetic factors, Dr McLean said, and therefore might be attributable to the effect of the mothers' blood glucose levels on the daughters while in the uterus.

At Blacktown Hospital the condition affected 5.4 per cent of pregnancies in the first six months of this year - a near doubling compared with the 3.4 per cent affected as recently as 2002, Dr McLean said.

Dr McLean said doctors' main concern had been the large size of babies of women with gestational diabetes, which caused birth problems. "It has really only been viewed as a short-term issue," he said.

Gestational diabetes is treated with dietary changes and sometimes insulin injections.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology would review its position on gestational diabetes screening, which it has so far not recommended for all women, said its spokesman, Jeremy Oats.

"The evidence is certainly becoming very strong that there is a benefit for screening," said Professor Oats, clinical director of women's services at Melbourne's Royal Women's Hospital. "The question is what [blood sugar level] we should call abnormal."

David McIntyre, director of endocrinology and obstetric medicine at Mater Health Services in Brisbane, said the findings "may be one of the reasons why diabetes is accelerating at such a great rate … maybe you're getting a self-perpetuating cycle, programming a new generation of girls to have an increased tendency to diabetes".

Source: SMH

Getting Your Body Back

I've been trying new exercises to get back into shape and I found some easy ones directed toward women who just had a baby. You can try these at home and they won't take too much time. I noticed that my main concern is my tummy at the moment, and I see a lot of tummy crunches in my near future! Check out the exercises below. You can easily do these at home. You may find it difficult to maintain a regular exercise routine once your new bundle of joy arrives. Since it took 9 months for your body to gain the necessary weight, give yourself at least 9 months to lose it. While you may drop your first 20 pounds after delivery, shedding the rest requires commitment, exercise, and a sensible diet. Here are some exercises to help you get back on track and into shape after giving birth:

• Tummy crunches - Lie down on your back, bend knees and look forward. Lift your shoulders and head up off the floor, pulling in your abdominal muscles. Exhale as you come up and inhale as you lower back down toward the floor. Repeat 5 times, increasing repetitions as you get stronger. For a twist, stretch your right hand across to the left knee as you lift your shoulders and head up from the floor. Repeat 5 times each side, adding more crunches as your body strengthens.

• Hips and thighs - Lie on your right side with your knee slightly bent and toes facing forward. Raise your left leg, then lower. Repeat 5 times and switch to the left leg.

• Leg lifts - Stand straight with knees slighty bent, using the back of a chair for balance. Extend one leg out behind you. Lift and lower your leg, keeping your abdomen tucked in. Repeat 5 times each leg.

• Stretch before and after your exercise to keep your muscles flexible.

working out baby newborn pregnancy weekly parenting mother family crunches diet

Gwyneth Paltrow with Apple Celebrating Halloween

The women in the mask is Gwyneth Paltrow with 2-year-old Apple. They were walking down the streets of New York on Halloween in search of Tricks or Treats. It looks like an "Alice in Wonderland" theme. How cute! gwyneth paltrow baby halloween pregnancy weekly parenting mother family

Stretch Marks and Pregnancy

Stretch marks and pregnancy… the worries of every mother to be. Can you prevent stretch marks, and can you treat them? One thing you are never fully aware of when you become pregnant is about stretch marks. People tend to tell you about just about everything else under the sun that plagued them during their pregnancies, but no one seems to mention anything about stretch marks. It must be some sort of hidden secret. Maybe they don’t want anyone to know that they have the god-awful things on their stomachs years after giving birth? I’ll tell you one thing about stretch marks, and that is there is nothing to do to prevent them. It is purely genetic if you have the elasticity in your skin that will allow you to glide through pregnancy as one of the lucky bitches that never ever sees one of those river deep indentations on your skin. Six months after giving birth to my second child, I still have horrendous stretch marks that don’t seem to be fading. Don’t be fooled by what commercials try to tell you about stretch marks and their magical creams to avoid them. I tried everything under the sun during my first pregnancy and still had awful stretch marks that were deep and red. Only about one year later did they seem to be somewhat subsiding, and I decided to get pregnant again which only added more on top of the ones that already existed! Creams, lotions and the like will not prevent them, no matter what they tell you about stretch marks and prevention. Sure, the creams will make your skin itch less, but they certainly won’t stop your body from producing marks. You may think you have made it through pregnancy without getting them once you reach your last few days. Surprise! That’s another thing that is never mentioned about stretch marks – you often get them after you deliver your child! It makes absolutely no sense to me, but several women I know have gone through their entire nine months with not so much as a small mark, and them BAM! They deliver and they have stretch marks all over their sides. And when you start to lose your pregnancy weight? You know when you are supposed to start feeling good about yourself again? That’s when they become more apparent, mainly because they have less surface area to cover so they get all smashed together into one big lump. Yes, pregnancy is a beautiful time in a woman’s life. But ask questions about stretch marks and other side effects before you even become pregnant. That way you won’t be surprised when your body is just never quite the same.

Source: Medical Health Medicine

Happy Halloween!

I would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Halloween! Have a great time taking your kiddies out trick or treating! Where ever you are in the U.S. I hope the weather is bearable enough not to hide all the creative and fun costumes. Be safe and have a great time!!!

Good Halloween news: chocolate could be better for your kids than broccoli!

Hard to believe that anyone could think that the contents of your children's triuck-or-treat bags could be considered health food, but according to all kinds of recent studies, dark chocolate is full of flavonoids, chemicals found in fruits and vegetables that have positive effects on everything from blood vessels, heart and brain to endurance and longevity. In fact, dark chocolate has higher antioxident levels than green tea, red wine, and even blueberries. A number of studies (discussed in the article) have shown the many positive benefits of dark chocolate. The bad news is there probably won't be a lot of dark chocolate in your kids Halloween candy hordes. Most candy is made from milk chocolate that contains 50 percent less cocoa, which is the source of the health-increasing flavonoids. And that milk chocolate is often partnered with sugar and saturated fat. Still, some savvy household in your neighborhood might be passing out dark chocolate this year, and when you go through your kids' bags, be sure to tell them about any "health food" they might have received. Source: Blogging Baby

If your baby does not eat well

Luckily, I haven't had a problem with my little girl and eating. Maybe it might become more of a problem as she gets older and becomes more picky. Read below to get some advice on getting your baby to eat well. _______________________________________________________ As a rule, all parents want their babies to eat breakfast, dinner and supper with zest, and also ask for a second helping. In real life we often see contrary situation: mom, dad and grandparents are literally “attacking” a loved baby with a request to eat another spoon for mom, and another one for dad… And a creature is sitting with tight lips, sometimes shedding tears or, eats all offered “a spoon for mom, and for dad” like a lamb…, but, when meal is over, he eructs. Let’s clear out – is it so useful and necessary to feed a baby by force? If your baby (we speak about babies over 1 year) is growing and developing the way his coevals do, and feels excellently, but eats half a portion of a neighbor’s Billy, don’t worry and leave him alone: he has such metabolism, he is satisfied with nutritive materials in that quantity of food, that comes to his stomach. If your offspring is head and shoulders below his coevals, it’s another cup of tea, but there’s no universal recipe here too. First of all, look at mom and dad closely, and, if it turns out that their height is below average, then what can we expect from a son or daughter? (As they say, like father like son…). Don’t force such baby eating like everybody does, moreover, you cannot feed him by force (imagine yourself on his place), this can lead to a bigger dysorexia up to indigestion. Such baby should have a food ration, appropriate for his physical development (i.e. his real height and weight), not for age norms. Usually during pubescence period such children start growing quickly and catch up with their coevals. Unfortunately, underweight body appears mainly as a result of wrong nutrition (or diseases). And here we receive vicious circle: as a result of long unbalanced (mainly – in quantity and quality of protein) nutrition, activity of digestive juices lowers, digestion and absorption of nutritive materials worsens, what, in its turn, leads to dysorexia and further reduction of body weight. Here parents should learn one pattern: normal wish to eat appears in one only when his stomach is completely released from another portion of food (as a rule, in children this happens 3-4 hours after feeding), but a baby with hyporexia, as you remember, has lowered secretion of digestive juices, and a usual portion of food just fails to be digested properly and “leave” stomach, if you still force a baby to eat some food in this case, then he can start vomiting, and it will be a defense reflex against overfeeding, and if such situations recur often, then risk of usual vomiting not only during feeding, but even on one looking at food (we meet this on practice much more often, than we would like to, and, what is even sadder, some parents try to cure vomiting with medicines, not realizing reasons of its appearance, what can lead to overload of baby’s organism with medicines, and further – to medicinal allergy or inflammation of gastric mucosa) is possible. Well, how can you help a child to break the cycle and teach him receiving not only use, but also pleasure from food? Here’re several practical advices for parents: - you should stick to a feeding schedule strictly and give nothing to a baby in intervals between meals, including juices (especially sweet ones – banana, peach etc.) and even water. Then a child will gladly start a meal with a liquid dish. - perhaps, adults’ calm behavior during feeding (may be this is the most difficult thing, but if a mom cannot show patience and endurance, then what can we expect from a child?) is one of main moments. - if a baby refuses to eat by the moment of regular feeding, then you should miss it - during some time (1,5-2 months for children over 1 year!) you can use a so-called free feeding method, i.e. feed your baby only wish dishes he likes. In further change recipes little by little imperceptibly (not accentuating baby’s attention on it), adding necessary products. - try to make dishes looking appetizing, buy beautiful and comfortable dish for a baby (allow him choosing what he wants), lay the table beautifully. - try to prevent a baby from sitting down to table in excited state, play a calm game with him or read a book for 10-15 minutes before feeding. - some children don’t want to eat well in the morning, if parents offer them breakfast right after awakening, when children are still half asleep. You need to consider this and feed your child only after he switches in a daily regimen actively – washes face, dresses himself, sometimes plays a little. You can offer 2 breakfasts for such child: I – tea, juice or compote right after awakening, and II – something more substantial… (but remember that in such case lunch time can be postponed for a while, may be, even after sleep). - children often refuse from eating in hot summer days, - the matter is that while excessive fluid loss production of digestive juices is reduced ( this is especially important in a sick child’s nutrition, we’ll mention this below). That’s why in summer it’s recommended to change feeding schedule slightly, and during hot weather you should offer your child not a dinner, but a second breakfast (for example, yogurt, cotton cheese, light porridge, fruits, juice), and after sleep rather hungry child will easily cope with the dishes you cooked him for dinner. - and, finally, several words about sick child’s nutrition. As a rule, in 80% of cases sick children have heat and sometimes vomiting and diarrhea, what can lead to dehydration quickly (as we mentioned before, in such state activity of digestion processes is lowered abruptly), so, please, remember this simple and almost universal rule (excluding rare serious diseases of heart and kidneys), you need to water a sick child, not forcing him drinking 2-3 glasses of liquid at one go (what can provoke vomiting), but offering him some liquid little by little, 20-30 ml (1-2 table spoons) of mineral water (preferably non-aerated and slightly heated), tea, fruit drink or herbal decoction, every 10-15 minutes. As for food, here any easy-digestible food, not irritating mouth and stomach mucous membrane, is ok, little by little, but more often (milk, yogurt, semi-fluid porridges), on no account force your baby eating. You can not only cause negative emotions in him, but also worsen course of a disease, making sick organism spending precious strengths on digestion of food, not for struggle with infection. When a child’s condition improves and temperature normalizes, a baby will ask for food and, be sure, will repair an omission with interest. In conclusion, we would like to say again that strong wish, common sense and good patience will help growing your baby strong and healthy. We wish you good luck in the most difficult (but gratifying) labour. (remember about patience and endurance). Source: Baby-Health