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It Only Takes Seconds to Make a Child Autistic.

Posted on December 20, 2011 by brielena

If your child was normal and speaking before the age of three, and suddenly he withdrew and only made sounds… SOMETHING HAPPENED TO HIM.

Something so terrifying, so world shattering, so beyond his comprehension that he could not process it.

And you may not have been in the room.

From birth to two and a half, a child’s main focus, his every thought is to define and understand what is human.

The thing that happened to him is Television.  Not the programs, you can control that.  It’s the commercials quickly flipping on and off when a toddler walks by…

In the 1990s software appeared that could morph one thing into something else and it began… to accelerate.  Commercials where a man in a suit, talking has his head suddenly burst into flame.  Another where a man’s head becomes a cat.

The horrified child is thinking:  ”When will daddy’s head burst into flames?”. ” Will my head be a cat?”, “Is a cat really a person?”

More recently a man in a suit is talking and he rotates where you see the back of his head is gone and in the space is a band playing.  Now there are commercials where flames come out of a man’s body, again a man wearing a suit.  Another where there are big holes in a person’s body that you can see through.

We must begin talking about this, good sensible talking, sharing information.  No name calling, no ‘experts’ saying this idea is wrong.  Just common sense.  I can tell you the event that made my daughter autistic, not TV but something so terrifying to her that she changed.  I can tell you the date and time my son became gray, tachycardic, sweating with terror when he saw Captain Kangaroo’s Grandfather Clock, a clock with the face of a human.  His physical reaction happened instantly when the clock began to talk.  I turned the TV off but it was too late. He was two and a half and he changed in that minute, he withdrew and lost trust in humanity.  He would score in the Autistic Quotient test.

An infant and young child is not just a little adult and he is not a blank slate.  He has a brilliant mind involved in learning a language, often two, maybe three.  He is problem-solving constantly, defining a question  and working out the solution and he is learning how to please the parents (food source), he is figuring out what is human and how the world works.

So we as a society can just wait for studies to be done so experts can tell us what to believe or we can turn the television off and provide a gentle, safe surrounding for young children.

My baby was diagnosed at 11 months and ‘they’ wanted to institutionalize her.  I said: “Over my dead body.”  and the adventure began.  I did nothing for 2 years but work her out of it, and another 2 years to cement her sense of a safe world. She was severely Autistic and stared at lights, made the loud, monotone, no-tears cry that parents of autistic children know and dread, and she would not be touched or even approached.  Now she is perfect, beautiful, fully normal, genius mind and fearless.

This was in 1971..  Five years later the book Son Rise  by Barry Neil Kaufman came out and they had done pretty much the same thing I had and with the same result.

Just turn television off.  There is no way you can moderate what your child sees on the commercials and you cannot risk turning his life and your life into hell forever.

 

 

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Children’s Ear Infections, the Cause and Cure

Posted on December 10, 2011 by brielena

Don’t let young children blow their noses!

Sinus means cavity and our faces have 4 of them.  Two in the forehead and two large ones in the cheekbones close to the nose.  When born, these sinus spaces are closed and as the child grows to adulthood, the sinus’ elongate filling with air and the face lengthens.

The Eustachian tube  goes from the area behind the nose to the middle ear.  In children under 7, the Eustachian tube is short and more horizontal due to the compressed sinus.

Therefore, if the child has stuff running from his nose and he blows, the stuff (schmutz)  will be forced into the short Eustachian tube and into the ear where it multiplies, causing pain and bulging the eardrum, often with enough pressure to burst the eardrum.  Then the mucosa swells, closing the little hole that drains the ear.  (Bacteria need a perfect culture medium to multiply and this dark, moist, warm, sweet apace provides that.)

You can fix it.  A marvelous Pediatrician, Dr. Robert Day,  taught me this long ago, using nose drops designed to reduce swelling…

Privine is an over the counter nose drop that’s been around for a long time and it instantly reduces swelling..  They’re the only drops that work and hard to find.  Amazon has them also.  (Nose sprays don’t work for this trick.)

Open and drain the ear canal:

  • Lay on the the child on the bed with head slightly tilted back over the edge and put one drop into each nostril.  Wait a few minutes.
  • Now, still tipped back,  turn the head slightly to one side and put another drop into the nostril on that side.  Wait again.  He can feel a tiny pop as the sinus tract opens.
  • Repeat this with the other side.
  • Sitting up, he will feel the secretions running down the back of the throat.
You can get rid of the schmutz by just wiping the nose but that will make the skin sore.  Kid’s instinct is to eat it and this causes no harm (other than being disgusting).  Stomach acids will kill the bacteria.  Mucous in the stomach is not digested so if there is enough of it, the child may throw it up and that’s fine.

Filed under: BABIES, CHILDBIRTH | Comments Off

End Winter Colds

Posted on December 1, 2011 by brielena

To prevent winter colds put water pans in bedrooms, under the beds is fine.  In one day, adults loose 200cc of water from breathing (one large glass full) and this must be replaced by moisture in the air.  If the air is dry, and it becomes dry with the heat on, the nasal and bronchial mucosa thickens to protect itself.  This thickness is the perfect culture media for the first bacteria that flies by!  It’s warm, sweet, dark and moist.  This is how colds begin.  Echinacea increases t-cells to fight the bacteria and Vit. C  kills it.  At one time in evolution these things were in our diets but difficult these days so they should be added.  The water pans should have a large surface exposed to air.  In Wisconsin, they were in everyone’s home.

I have had many beginnings of colds in the last 40 years but only one severe one.  (A co-worker came to work sick and spread it everywhere… in an NICU!  Employees who go to work sick ought to be punished as should parents who send sick children to school.)  At the first tiny glimmer of a cold, I fluff up the pillows, dress warmly, get a good book, some tea, take Echinacea (the root, not flowers, roots are concentrated) and drink Odwalla C-Monster.  The cold lasts 1 day, no green stuff, no coughing, no fever, just the tiny scratch to the throat that’s the first clue.

To fix chest congestion use Vicks Vapor Rub.  It contains Camphorated Oil, Eucalyptus and Menthol.  Camphorated Oil, (rubbed on the chest and covered with a little piece of cloth, wool is best,) acts as a counter-irritant, bringing greater blood supply to the outside of the chest (skin gets pink) but also the inside of the chest cavity.  This loosens the thicken mucosa and it’s coughed up.

Kids should be calm and quiet when they are sick.  Make them go to bed. The time when a cold is risky business is if the cause is a Strep bacteria and not a virus.  Strep creates debris and if the patient is active, that debris can get pumped everywhere in the body.  Streptococcus A causes Strep throat, an extremely sore throat with white things spotted on the back of the throat.  Those in turn can migrate throughout the body causing kidney damage, Rheumatic Fever or Sub-acute Bacterial Endocarditis, an infection inside the heart.  SBE produces bacterial debris plaques which stick to the underside of heart valves and can, with exertion, break loose into the blood stream and plug the first small size blood vessel which is often in the brain, causing a stroke.  Use the handle of a spoon and with a flashlight, check the back your child’s sore throat, maybe morning and night for white spots. This is the ‘cold’ that needs antibiotics.  Antibiotics do nothing for virus infections and simply sensitize the body to the medication, meaning that it loses the ability to kill bacteria. Strep is mostly seen in school age children.

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Rule Out Allergy Headache

Posted on October 20, 2011 by brielena

ALLERGENS:  Allergens enter the body through the nose, mouth and skin and they have a half-life  (the amount of time it takes the body to metabolize them out).  that can range from hours to days.  The diagnosis for allergy headaches is Claretin, an over the counter anti-histamine that will not make you drowsy.  If it’s a short term allergy, the headache will fade.  An allergy headache that lasts for many days or weeks may mean that it’s in the house or workplace, some toxin in the environment or walls that reinfects constantly.

  • Search your house for mold or call an expert with equipment to find hidden mold.  Glidden sells a vapor barrier paint that is rated to 2 mils of plastic.  There is another product, Ames Vapor-Barrier paint  that, with 3 coats gives a vapor barrier the thickness of a dime.
  • If the house is new construction, go to an ancient hotel for 3 nights and when the symptoms clear, go back to your house. If the headache returns the toxin is probably in the bedroom because it’s the place one spends the biggest block of uninterrupted time. A house built with particle board will have formaldehyde leaking through walls.
  • Food allergy diagnosis:  Make your diet very simple for at least 2 days.  Then add foods one at a time.  Start with dairy.  When a headache starts, stop eating the newest food added.  Shrimp /Shellfish has an allergy with very severe headache and it’s instantaneous.  MSG also.
  • Some perfumes, hair sprays, deodorants, lotions, body powders etc.  in America from the 1990s to about 2005 contained a chemical in the Butyric Acid family that caused the smell to remain in the room long after the person had left.  One breath of this chemical could be allergic in the form of asthma to an instant blinding headache that could last up to 4 days.  It was outlawed in European cosmetics and has, after lawsuits, been removed from American cosmetics.    French and European perfumes are made of flowers and they are expensive.  (It takes bushels of rose petals to make one oz. of perfume.)    The link Perfume Anaylsis  gives a gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analyzed list of ingredients of two popular American perfumes.  Not all American cosmetics contain  chemicals.  Essential Oils and organic perfumes are lovely and safe.

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A Very Bad Pacifier

Posted on October 20, 2011 by brielena

This pacifier creates problems with feeding, tongue and teeth.

About 20 years ago, a new pacifier came into production designed for babies in NICU.  It was completely latex free which was it’s feature.

It is OK for very small NICU babies… definitely not OK for bigger babies.  This is why.

Teaches bad sucking:  There are 2 ways a baby gets milk out of the bottle or breast; by sucking, an event that uses tongue, palate and cheeks to pull a stream of milk out and by chewing the end of the nipple which only empties milk at the end of the nipple into the baby’s mouth.  A full term baby is born knowing how to suck, he has probably been sucking a thumb for months, but not so the preemie.  Sucking occurs at the back of the tongue and he must be taught.

Keeps the tongue in the front of the mouth or sticking out of the mouth: There is not enough of a hub on this nipple to capture for sucking or to keep the pacifier from falling out of  the mouth when at rest. Therefore the baby must press it against the top of his mouth with his tongue, and this is a mistake.  You can understand the problem if you put this pacifier in your mouth and attempt to hold it in place without using bottom teeth.  Then try sucking on it, there is no bulb to keep the back of the tongue down and curled… no way to engage it to suck and therefore it essentially blocks the throat.

Risking ‘buck teeth’:  The basic physical things a baby learns remain his preference for a lifetime.  Learning to apply pressure with the tongue against the upper ridge of teeth will possibly cause him to tongue-thrust during deep sleep.  This applies heavy pressure against the back of his upper teeth, pushing them outward.  Braces will change it but his tongue thrusting will continue recreating the problem.  The tip of the tongue has a normal position, gently resting against the upper palate.

For more pacifier tips and tricks see PACIFIER posts on sidebar.

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Stay Warm at Night

Posted on March 18, 2011 by brielena

Staying warm is a matter of heated air (heated by the body) contained in a space surrounding the body. When blankets lay on a bed undisturbed for days, they loose all of the air between them and there is nothing for the body to heat.  After crawling into bed at night, put an air layer back into each space between the blankets and don’t forget to do it for your children also.

Beginning with the first blanket, just flap it, (lift and let it fall back down.) capturing air, then do the same with the next blanket until they are all flapped.  When layering blankets, put the down comforter near the top and as a barrier of heat loss by conduction, cover everything with a thin Polar Fleece blanket.

Body heat is captured by the kind of covering.  Fur is warmest because there are thousands of tiny air pockets, (hair is the perfect example, your head stays warm at night).   Polar bears walk on ice because the bottom of their paws are covered with fur. Wool has little barbs on the fiber that capture air.  Alpaca is not wool, it’s actually fur. Feathers capture air in the same way and the down in comforters is the fluffy little under feathers of ducks and geese.

A modern fabric that’s as warm as fur is Polar Fleece… it’s made from recycled plastics and has the added warmth of a heat loss barrier.

Mattress pads of wool, sheepskin or feathers also retain body heat and add a barrier to conduction heat loss.

Camping and survival gear includes a foil sheet.  Wrapping in this locks body heat into the spaces and, with little cost,  prevents heat loss by evaporation and convection.

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Fix Rotator Cuff and Frozen Shoulder

Posted on March 14, 2011 by brielena

TORN ROTATOR CUFF

  • A sharp, intense, straight line pain on the outside of the arm, just below the bottom of the shoulder bone that hurts when the arm is raised.
  • Caused by a sudden, pulling trauma to the arm.

Stop the pain, and protect the joint:

  • Fasten your arm down at night.  During sleep, rolling over onto the arm in bad alignment causes extreme pain and more damage to the cuff and the  joint.  The OTC Shoulder Immobilizer with sling and swathe is the only style of sling that correctly splints the shoulder, fastening the upper arm to your side and holding the wrist firmly, reducing abduction and arm rotation.
    No other type of splint works.  Photo is below and it’s available at Walgreens and Amazon.

Apply Kinesio tape

  • The world was introduced to Kinesio tape while watching American Keri Walsh playing beach basketball at the Bejing Olympics with a torn rotator cuff.  She showed no sign of pain, no hesitation in movement and great strength.
  • You can apply Kinesio at home, shower with it and bathe with it on for 2-3 weeks each application.  It’s available on Amazon and some sporting goods stores.  There are now copy tapes on the market but they do not have the same effect.
  • Before applying the tape, have the skin clean and dry.  Then round the corners of each piece of tape so it won’t begin to roll off.  I put a great deal of traction on each piece.  Lift the arm out to the side, shoulder high, shoulders back and straight. Put the 2 shorter pieces on first and then the longer piece over top. Illustrations below.
  • How does Kinesio work?  The sticky side has waved ridges in a diagonal pattern and with every movement, the ridges lift the deep layers of skin to allow continuous drainage of lymph.  There is no other tape that does this.

Kinesio is also used to reduce lymphoedema.   There is a how-to book on Amazon.

FROZEN SHOULDER

  • Not raising the arm and bracing it reduces the joint’s ability to continue a free range of motion and it rapidly becomes a ‘frozen shoulder’, a joint that has become so solid a mass from adhesions (tough fiber bands), created by inflammation that one can no longer put a shirt on or get a fork to the mouth. When the shoulder joint is frozen, lifting the arm comes from the collar bone, ‘hunching the shoulder’  and has no effect of loosening the shoulder.
  • If the shoulder is frozen, you must break the adhesions.  Injecting the joint is fantastically painful and it doesn’t work.  (Be careful of your memories!).   These adhesions can be broken under general anesthesia but there is a poor man’s way, no more painful than the shoulder in general.  Choose a very strong friend.  Sit on the floor, back against the sofa, legs crossed.  Have the friend put his knee on your shoulder, (between the shoulder and your neck), firmly grab the arm close to the shoulder and quickly force it all the way up straight.  When it’s up straight, have him rotate the arm through the full arc of the socket.  Give him great thanks and undying gratitude and head for a hot shower.  With hot water beating on the shoulder joint, put your hand against the wall and walk it up, slowly higher and higher.  The heat allows you to go beyond the limits of pain and it chelates lactic acid from the muscles.  Do this twice a day if you can.  There may be little residual pains in the rotator cuff but ignore them, they will vanish.
  • You must keep the shoulder moving in a full range of motion frequently during the day so new adhesions won’t form.  Rotate the arm, pull your arm over your head,  walk the hand up a wall often, leaning into it to stretch the muscles.  It feels so very good.
  • Note:  It’s important that you don’t have the friend yank on the arm. You don’t want the adhesions to pull off of the bone because that will cause bleeding into the joint and make further adhesions. It’s the thing that caused them in the first place. Have him hold the arm close to the shoulder (holding it further down will risk breaking the bone) and without pulling, quickly bend the arm straight up. This will hurt you much less than the pain you have now. (adhesions have no pain receptors).

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Cell Phone Fall in the Water?

Posted on February 3, 2011 by brielena

Put the cell phone into a baggie filled with rice and seal the bag.  Then don’t open it for 24 hours.

The rice will absorb all the water.

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NICU and Divorce

Posted on December 9, 2010 by brielena

Parents of small, sick  preemies  can, for many reasons, loose each other.

Parents in NICU have a scenario that the normal newborn family, home in 3 days, never has.  Because of the construct of the small space for isolette and chair etc., parents come into the unit and the mom absolutely zeros in on the isolette,  (Reptilian brain again.). Her body completely fills the space at the isolette and there is almost no way around that.  The father sees her back and little else, and again and again, he eventually sits in a chair and reads a book, appearing as uncaring and calus.  Sometimes the mother will hand the wrapped baby to dad but it’s still an offering from her, not ownership by him which is a must in a happy partnership.

I would tell this to all the parents of long term little ones and now, fifteen to twenty years later, I’m learning that the majority of our families are still intact so this may be the core problem.

Now for the bad news.  The divorce rate in families with long term NICU babies is believed to be 97%.  Tulane calls it 100%.

I believe the father as ‘left out’ is the major cause.

There is an easy way around this for fathers and I have seen many do it.  They come in alone, often before work for the 6AM bath and feeding.  It seems that this experience creates a sustained bonding.

We are enculturated to focus on ourselves with such intensity that everyone else is left out.  Intimacy is frightening and humans no longer look each other in the eye.  They don’t even look their pets in the eye.  It’s too much giving up control and allowing vulnerability.  Force yourself to do it.  Begin with a child or maybe the cat.  Talk to this spirit as independent from yourself.  When brave enough, look an adult you love (and trust) in the eyes… it’s a soul to soul experience.

Only the last years in NICU did I begin looking newborns in the eye and talking to them as an adult (and what was looking back at me was very adult… try it.)  I’d say to the boys:  ”You are born onto earth and have parents who are going to give you a great childhood.  And you are quite handsome, like your father.”  And they smiled!

The notion that newborns smile is gas is complete nonsense, driven by those who have no experience.  We in NICU see it all the time and a classic example is the photo called  Laughing Premie from Loma Linda.

So, how can parents avoid divorce after NICU:

  • Chose a baby sitter.  Have the person take a CPR class for infants.
  • Include Dad in the daily care of the baby.
  • Do not focus completely on the baby.  It’s hard on the marriage and hard on the baby.
  • Make some feedings by bottle so Dad can see the curve of his baby’s cheek, that beautiful corner of the baby’s mouth where tongue, bottle and cheek meet.  So he can feel how strong the baby’s pull on the bottle is.
  • Don’t always hand the baby to Dad, he must be a full partner, not a participant.  There’s a difference.
  • Do not criticize parenting of the other.  It turns the critic into everyone’s parent, not a nice place to find yourself.
  • Once a month, go to a restaurant with booths (so no one can shout and no one can cry) for a family meeting. Bring notes if you want to.  The agenda is to be objective and to answer the question:  ”How’re we doing?”.  This way, gripes don’t ooze out and ruin the time at home.  Just put it into the notes and save it for the family meeting.  Home must be safe for everyone, always.
  • Plan a date.  Once a month, every other week, you each plan something very special that will please the other and make good memories.  Not a dinner and movie date.  Something like sitting on a dock in morning mists, with a thermos of coffee and breakfast treats.  Feeding ducks in a rose garden pond. Visit art galleries on a First Thursday.  Sit on a bench and guess what passerby’s do for a living.  Visit a toy train store. Go to garage sales or a flea market.  It need not cost money.  The upshot of this is that you know your mate is thinking of how to please you and you are thinking of your mate in positive, loving terms.
  • Learn Partner Yoga.  Do it with your mate.  Do it with your children.
  • Become romantic.  Set up candlelight dinners.
  • Look into your partner’s eyes.

Filed under: BABIES, FAMILY, LIVING TOGETHER, NICU, PARENTING, POSITIVE THINKING | Comments Off

Types of Autism and the Causes of it.

Posted on December 8, 2010 by brielena

I believe there are two entirely different phenomena lumped into Autism.

  • Brain damage with symptoms of Autism.
  • Fear based, autism acquired between the ages of  6 months to 3 years.

Brain damage includes  powerful tongue thrusting during sleep, causing a deformity, a pushing out  of the teeth.  The fear based autistic child does not tongue thrust and has normal appearing teeth.

This is about fear based Autism.  A huge, overwhelming fear /depression in a pre-verbal child.

The infant and young child is not a blank slate.  Not at all.  He is learning a language and learning how the world works.  His brain is assessing and sorting and storing information continuously, brilliantly and with accuracy.

Between the ages of 8 months to 3 years, the child is sorting what is human and what is not.  Every thought has this at it’s center.  It’s his primary function because it’s essential to survival.

If something happens during that time that is so far off of reality and so terrifying that it can’t compute, the child retreats into his own world and locks everything else out.  Because he is essentially pre-verbal, he can’t tell you what frightened him.

Some years ago, software appeared that gave the ability to morph a face into something else and television changed.  Parents can control the TV shows for what the child sees but not the commercials.  A child could walk past a TV left on and see a man in a suit, talking and smiling and suddenly his head morphed into a ball of fire.  Terrifying.  When was daddy’s head going to burst into flame?  Would mine?

There was one where the man’s head became a cat’s head.  Recently there was one where, again, a man in a suit slowly rotated to show the back of his head missing and a little group of people inside.  Terrifying to a toddler.  Absolutely terrifying.

Maybe the toddler was in the room seeing this with parents there and the parents were not reacting to what he was seeing with horror.  Does that mean this happening to a man was normal?

My son at two and a half watched Captain Kangaroo for the first time and turned purple with tacchycardia when Grandfather Clock began talking.  This brilliant, happy child changed forever at that moment but never became fully Autistic.

My 4th child did.

 

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Severe Headache. Causes and Solutions.

Posted on December 8, 2010 by brielena

While it feels like headache pain is from the brain, our brains have no pain receptors.  The tough covering of the brain (the meninges), however, has very sensitive pain receptors, as do the blood vessels on the meninges. Any traction on the meninges causes pain.  The outside of the skull also has blood vessels and musculature which reacts to tension from tight neck muscles.

Causes of migraine type headache:

  • True migraine with aura,  and sensitivity to noise and light.  Vomiting.
  • Tension headache.
  • Caffeine withdrawl headache.  If you have a family member who drinks coffee or coke in the hospital, unable to talk, tell the doctor about the violent headache he must be having from sudden loss of caffeine.  Caffeine can be given IV to wean the patient.
  • Allergy to scents.  Allergy to Butyric Acid additives in American perfumes and cosmetics.  This can cause a violent migraine that lasts for days.  Not found in French perfumes.
  • Cluster headaches, an intense headache lasting for days,  may be caused by allergens that have a 3 day half life… the time it takes to metabolize out of the body.
  • Heavy metal toxicity.  Lead paint removal, Mercury fillings. Long half-life, severe headache may last for weeks.
  • Menstrual headache at onset of period.  Several day cluster headache caused by fluid retention, softened cartilage and straining upper back scenario.
  • Grinding or clenching teeth during the night.  Wearing an Invisalign type retainer will prevent them.
  • Cervical spine injuries.
  • Bright sun.
  • Low calcium.
  • Allergy to Codeine.
  • Sinus blockage.  See post in archive.

Solutions:

  • Reduce or remove stressors.
  • Take supplemental calcium
  • Excedrin Migraine contains acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine in unusual dosages that work when taken at the first hint of headache.  In the UK, Nurofen Migraine a somewhat different ibuprofen, Ibuprofen lysine, works very well.
  • Do stretching exercises of the neck and back in a hot shower
  • Sleep it off in a dark room… take muscle tension off the neck and back with pillows.  Put pillows under the knees in bed and pull your head pillow well up under the neck.  Listen to the music of PACIFE.
  • Use the Omni Massage Ball or your fingers to apply Shiatsu type pressure to contracted muscle points.  See tension headache posting in archive.

Filed under: HEADACHE, STAY HEALTHY | Comments Off

Stop a Sinus Headache

Posted on November 6, 2010 by brielena

Sinuses are cavities in the face with holes that drain them.  Headaches happen because the holes get plugged or swollen shut and fluid builds up inside, pressing on  the nerves.  The pair of sinuses that cause headaches are in the cheekbones and there’s a way to open these holes that have been closed by swelling.

Privine is an over the counter nose drop that’s been around for a long time and it instantly reduces swelling..  They’re the only drops that work and hard to find.  Amazon has them also.  (Nose sprays don’t work for this trick.)

Open your sinuses:

  • Lay on the bed with your head slightly tilted back over the edge and put one drop into each nostril.  Wait a few minutes.
  • Now, still tipped back,  turn the head slightly to one side and put another drop into the nostril on that side.  Wait again. Sometimes you can feel a tiny pop as the sinus tract opens.
  • Repeat this with the other side.
  • Sit up and you can feel the secretions running down the back of your throat.

Thanks to the brilliant doctor who taught me this trick so long ago.

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Beliefs That Hurt Our Lives

Posted on October 7, 2010 by brielena
  • Life is fair.
  • Everyone must like me.
  • Everything is supposed to be good all the time.
  • Nothing should change.
  • There is an ideal daddy.
  • Daddy will always take care of me.
  • There is only one way of doing things.
  • Wasting time is bad.
  • Beautiful people are also good people.

A story:

Our Pediatrician, Dr. Lendon Smith told me when my children were little that a boy of 4 pees, in the toilet, 25% of the time and on the floor 75% of the time.  By age 8, it was toilet 35%, floor 65% and on up to the adult male, toilet 75%, floor 25% and my daily anger at them all just vanished. It was just one of the bad percentage days in the routine of things.

Same holds true with life being fair.  As soon as one understands that life is not fair, the stress and angst vanish.  Fair is a precious gift and deep love is due to those who work to be fair.  Unfair is a rock in the road to get around, learn from and disengage from.

And when stress is going to wreck yet another day, find a favorite spot, curl up with a cup of something hot and listen to PACIFE Music to Calm, it’s magic.

Filed under: LIVING TOGETHER, PARENTING | Comments Off

Preemies are Survivors

Posted on October 1, 2010 by brielena

Comments we get from parents of children who were very tiny preemies are ‘he is so feisty’. The baby is thinking and problem solving all the time. He’s going through Rites of Passage  events akin to the Indian boy in the Sweat Lodge, the African boy with tribal scaring  a first skydive or standing on a mountain top.  But he is going through it at 1 pound. He will come out, smart, fearless, and happy. These kids are always happy. Think of it. Life is just getting better… all the tubes are gone, he is held by those he loves dearly, he rides in a car, home is wonderful and he spends time outdoors. Every day is better for him and he is learning to expect that in his entire life.

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Teaching a Preemie to Suck

Posted on October 1, 2010 by brielena

There is only one pacifier shape that teaches good sucking.  All others, except the Nuk, work against it.

Because of prematurity the baby is born before the full, strong sucking reflex was established.  He must be taught to suck,  to gain cheek muscles,  to learn the correct combination of sucking and pulling without air leaks and to transfer these skills from the bottle to the breast. Working in NICU for 20 years, I’ve used this system of teaching sucking efficiency with hundreds of babies and it works every time.

  • Hold the bottle near the neck with the thumb and middle finger and using your last 2 fingers, support him under the chin, then when he starts sucking, put traction on the bottle. The chin support  brings the jaw forward and the tongue forward and his response to the traction is to curl his tongue around the nipple. This with the ring of the nipple against his mouth gives a firm, efficient package and he will begin to build up strength, cheek muscles and stamina.  He will take a few sucks and then stop to rest.  This is hard work for him in the beginning.  Some nurses twist the nipple repeatedly in the baby’s mouth, others pump up and down or back and forth. The baby will not learn to suck if that’s the case. They are simply expressing milk into it’s mouth. (and it makes me crazy)
  • The Pacifier. There is only one pacifier that teaches them to suck correctly. It’s the original Binky (pink image below), a rather large, rounded bulb with a stem fitting into a curved mouthpiece. This thing is magic.  It will teach him to suck at breast like a normal newborn. Email Binky (Playtex) and ask where to buy them near you.  The NUK pacifier was designed by a German orthodontist to bring a receding chin out and it does not strengthen the tongue.  Other pacifiers are either too short, too straight or too flat, preventing the infant’s learning a good tongue curl and grip.

 

 

 

 

Gerber is again marketing the original Binky for which every parent should grateful.  It’s called First Essentials and if not in your grocery stores, it’s available on Amazon.

Filed under: BABIES, PACIFIERS, PARENTING, PREEMIES | Comments Off

Start a Baby Sitting Co-op

Posted on September 29, 2010 by brielena

The Capitol Hill Babysitting Co-op has been working for 50 years.  

During the Kennedy years, we lived in Washington, D.C., just behind the capitol dome, an area of old row houses, some restored and known as Capitol Hill.  Scattered about were  young eager professionals in the new Administration, and someone began a baby sitting co-op which is now famous.

Capitol Hill Babysitting Co-op – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is how it worked:

People joining the co-op were friends of those already in it.  No money was exchanged.  Instead we used theater thickets (script), each one representing 15 minutes.  So for a six hour evening, you left with 24 tickets, giving you 6 hours worth of sitting from someone else in the co-op.  There was a phone list and when you wanted a sitter, you began calling.  Within months the group of parents grew into two groups, four by the end of the year.

Returning to Portland and living near our beloved Reed College, I began the co-op.  Sometimes the dad would be the sitter, sometimes the mom.  I remember every one of the houses.  How lovely to sit in a different house, listening to their music, quiet hours of reading.  occasionally new friendships were made but most often the social exchange was business-like and polite.

Would you worry about becoming stuck with children who won’t go to bed?  Take your copy of the PACIFE Music to Calm CD.  They will fall asleep.  Quickly.

Rules of the co-op can be expanded to taking your children to someone elses house during the day. This probably needs a bonus such as double or triple scripts depending on the number of children.

Add another twist.  Include grandmotherly types who can exchange their script for some garden help for example.  Or for cat sitting.

Co-ops need a set of rules, a board and one person for oversight. All paid by script.

Filed under: BABIES, CHILDREN, FAMILY, PARENTING | Comments Off

Emergency Rooms Must Fix Themselves

Posted on September 8, 2010 by brielena
A Story:
  • I went to the ER of the hospital in which I worked as ICU nurse, with a 3 day migraine so severe I couldn’t stop vomiting.  I was seven months pregnant.  My husband was a lawyer and a DA.  
  • The receptionist took me to the janitor’s closet.  So there I was, sitting on the floor with the door closed, vomiting in the slop sink.  I hauled myself up and went to the receptionist’s desk:  ”I’ve been sitting on the floor of the janitor’s closet for 20 minutes, throwing-up and I don’t like that so I think I’ll throw-up here for awhile.”  And vomited all over her desk. They got me on a stretcher and into an ER bay quickly.

I know of no-one who does not have hospital horror stories.

There is a huge percentage of these stories that are absolutely unnecessary and are caused by ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ and you can become a force for change.

These postings will be published as a series of 3 books called Stay Healthy.  They will be spiral bound with a series of care plans that can be easily Xeroxed.  Here is an example of the problem and the solution. Nurses cannot effect even the smallest changes in hospitals.  They are fired for trying.  But when the first patient hands a care plan to the doctor that has ‘My baby will not be weighed on a scale without a head and foot barrier.’  checked, those scale trays will be replaced with the safe ones. Or: ‘My baby will not be placed within 25 feet of a blue bili-light.’  Bingo, they are gone.

Filed under: HOSPITALS, STAY HEALTHY | Comments Off

Shaken Baby Syndrome

Posted on August 23, 2010 by brielena

Shaking a baby that won’t stop crying may be an instinct of frustration. Even the saints among us have been to that point and somehow stopped themselves.

PACIFE Music to Calm stops the crying minutes after the screamer takes a breath and is quiet enough to hear it.  The mathematical character of this music along with the primal tunes Bernstein talks about quickly engage them.

Newborn drug babies, after the third day, begin a terrible and violent drug withdrawal.  The muscles in their legs undulate and cramp (we can see it and feel it), they purple cry nonstop, they shake, they have explosive diarrhea that eats their bottoms raw and they are beyond comfort.  This is the comment of one NICU nurse about a baby in drug withdrawal…

“I found a tape player and began to play the PACIFE music for him… I’d no sooner put it into the tape player than he stopped crying. It’s instantaneous. He’s looking around with a relaxed, peaceful face.”

- S. S., NICU Registered Nurse

Almost all babies have periods of long, loud, non-stop crying in the first months, Purple Crying.  The PACIFE CD, information about the startle reflex and instructions for swaddling  should be included in a Purple Crying package given to every newborn leaving the hospital.

Filed under: BABIES, CHILDBIRTH, HOSPITALS, PACIFE Music to Calm, PARENTING, STOP PURPLE CRYING, STRESS | Comments Off

Watch a Child’s School Experience Carefully

Posted on August 18, 2010 by brielena

Several years ago, in a Portland middle school, a little girl did not have a food voucher at the end of the lunch line.  Her mother forgot to renew them.  The cashier scolded, berated and humiliated the child, took her food tray and threw the food into the trash.  The nightly news reported it and interviewed the principal who defended the cashier.

A similar experience of public humiliation from a kindergarten teacher, has left me with a lifetime of horrible consequences.  And because children are cheerfully sent off to school by parents, they believe that the parents are in agreement with everything that happens to them.

Parents need to keep an open, clear conversation with children, every day, about what happened in school that day.  Pay full attention, careful to not blame the child for anything or become overly agitated as the story unfolds.  You don’t want to shut this communication off, children are literal, they only learn embellishment and lying later, embellishment if they are not listened to and lying to avoid bad consequences to what they are saying.  Then go to that school and raise hell!

One of my children did not bring an expected drawing home from her small religious school that day. When asked she said the teacher threw her drawing into the garbage. I took the book Picasso’s World of Children,  went to see the teacher and told her she would have thrown away Picasso’s work and that she had no business being anywhere near a child. Then I joined the Board of Director’s of this school and fired her. As an adult, this child of mine was blessed with the entire gene pool of generations of portrait painters, she could draw as a photograph looks. This could bring hours of delightful magic to her life but she will not draw or paint.

Teachers, nurses and police are professions that appeal to the same segments of society, the supporters and the controllers.  Because exchanges between them and client patients, students and the public are essentially private, the controllers can be as nasty as they wish.  Watch out!

Filed under: CHILDREN, FAMILY, PARENTING | Comments Off

With Children, Our Goals Change

Posted on August 18, 2010 by brielena

When our children begin to venture beyond home, our goals are that they have wonderful experiences and remain happy always. Then in school the goal changes to ‘may their quest for knowledge not be harmed.’, then as middle school rears it’s ugly head the goal is singular… that they come through it without a drug or alcohol addiction.  In high school, black parents goal is that their child live through it.

Parents however have no idea what is happening to their child’s self esteem, his confidence and his view of the world. In his very special book, Real Boy’s Voices, William Pollack interviewed boys from ages 10 to 20 around America asking them about their lives and learning they’re being taught a formula of secret angst and fears which evolve to rule their behavior and preoccupy them constantly.  Who is saying these things to boys? Who cultivates these fears?  Teachers.  Women teachers! Why?

Filed under: CHILDREN, LIVING TOGETHER, PARENTING | Comments Off

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