Boiling Your Baby's Bottles? Think Again! (new BPA research)

BPA is making headlines again as a new study is released in the scientific journal, Toxicology Letters. The findings of a recent study suggest that BPA is released from plastic bottles up to 55% faster when exposed to boiling water.

Researcher Scott Belcher (University of Cincinnati) examined the effect of a bottle's age, under normal use conditions, on the amount of released BPA. He found that age was not a factor, however bottles that had been exposed briefly to boiling water released the chemical up to 55% faster than before exposure. Other researchers confirm that Belcher's findings are intuitive. (US News and World Reports article)

You can avoid the potentially harmful effects of BPA by using glass bottles or BPA-free bottles and sippy cups (reviews here).

Best Cities to Have a Baby: Where Does Yours Rank?

Fit Pregnancy Magazine has ranked the best cities to have a baby from the 50 largest cities in America. Portland is at the top of the list with San Francisco, Denver, and Boston also making the top 10.

From Fit Pregnancy:

1. Portland, OR
2. Minneapolis
3. San Francisco
4. Seattle
5. Denver
6. Boston
7. Omaha, NB
8. Virginia Beach, VA
9. Austin, TX
10. Albuquerque, NM

Want a more personalized list? They've also generated a tool that allows you to specify criteria most important to you, then recompiles the list accordingly.

The magazine took into account information from numerous organizations and assessed each respective city's affordability, birthing options, child care resources, safety, and many other factors.

Baby Birthmarks

My three month old was born with an "Angel's Kiss," which is a warm and fuzzy way of saying that she has a birthmark between her eyebrows that kind of looks like someone with too much lipstick gave her a big smooch on her head. It's barely noticeable now, except when she get's really mad and her whole face gets red, but shortly after her birth I remember my mom asking me how it got there. All I remembered was the midwife saying something about blood vessels.

She's had some other abnormalities, too, including a white spot in the center of her pupil which we later learned is a type of cataract and will most likely be harmless.

As a mother, I have always wondered if there were things that I did during my pregnancy that may have led to these various imperfections. I know I was much more conscientious during my first pregnancy, and that baby came out fine. But, I didn't smoke, didn't consume any alcohol, rarely drank soda, and exercised occasionally. True, I had an insatiable sweet tooth that I kept feeding, and I did enjoy some green tea occasionally.

This evening I happened across an article citing research suggesting that lack off oxygen to the placenta may be the culprit behind my baby's birthmark. Aha! So it is my fault. Did I not sleep on my left side enough? What did I do wrong?

My baby is still beautiful, and I'm swear she is absolutely the sweetest baby on the planet...always smiling and cooing. But, I feel tremendous guilt that I didn't take better care of my body, and my baby, during my pregnancy. No, I can't go back in time and try to do things better. In fact there's nothing I can do now except feel like crap.

Bye Bye Plastic!

According to a recent Newsweek article, more and more parents are opting for "greener" bottling alternatives, such as glass, rather than the popular plastic ones used most often today. A major concern is that Bisphenol A (BPA), which is found in many plastics, may have long-term health consequences in young children.

Manufacturers and retailers are responding to this new demand by including more bottling options in their product lines and on their shelves. Evenflo and Dr. Brown's are both currently offering glass bottles. Or, if you can't get passed the idea of using something as old-fashioned as glass, BornFree bottles are plastic bottles made without BPA. Not surprisingly, these alternatives come with a higher price tag (not that you can really put a price tag on the safety of our little ones).

So far, the jury is still out on whether or not the levels of BPA exposure from using plastic bottles are high enough to do any harm, but the CDC has found that children incur the greatest amount of exposure to the chemical, followed by adolescents and then adults.

I'm not usually one to run out and follow the latest trends, but suddenly glass bottles don't seem like such a bad idea.

New Toddler Sleep Study

Scientists at Brown University are researching the sleep habits of children aged 2 to 5. Because this is the time when most young children stop taking a nap during the day, the researchers are interested in how the kids will function without one. Apparently some are wondering if preschoolers and kindergartners would be better off not having nap-time at all. After all, that's time taken away from learning.

So far they have found that while children tend to differ in what time of day they need their sleep, most respond similarly to missing a nap or staying awake past their bedtime: they become disengaged.

Kids grow up so quickly and it saddens me that anyone would want to rush things along even more by taking away their nap. I'm sure there are some three or four-year-olds out there who would function just fine without a mid-afternoon snooze, but there's still so much going on in their little worlds at this age that I think a little down time in the middle of the day is very appropriate.