Randoms: Things to Share

Well, nothing as awesome as the news in my last post, but hopefully these randoms are still interesting!

I went to an art museum this past week, and of course I had to take a photo when I saw artwork that included women breastfeeding! I should have written down the names of the works of art, because I can't remember them now. I know at least the first is of the Christian "Charity."

In other news, my favorite section in my Time magazine is the Health&Science briefing. This past week there were several interesting briefs of note:

• A noninvasive test of Mom's blood - which contains fetal DNA - can determine a baby's sex at as early as 7 weeks gestation. It performs more accurately after 20 weeks. The blood test could also help doctors identify babies at risk for sex-linked disorders like hemophilia and obviate the need for invasive procedures like amniocentesis. (Actually, Annie at PhDinParenting has an interesting post about it - check it out!)

• 45% of female scientists say they had fewer kids than desired because of their careers. For male scientists it was 25%. 

• Data show that soy supplements don't ease menopause - In this article they are referring to a study that finds that taking soy supplements, a popular alternative to hormone therapy, doesn't help relieve the symptoms of menopause or protect against bone loss (when compared to a placebo in a double blind).

A few others things I've been reading lately...

Kristen at Birthing Beautiful Ideas wrote a lovely blog post called Why I Love Being a Doula which sums up my feelings as well - Its not about the babies for me so much as its about helping the mothers!

A fascinating post called Doula Discourse: Ondaadiziike: Birth and the need for doulas in Native American communities

The Midwife at Birth Sense wrote a post about just how far off an estimated due date can be - quite chilling!

Some Robbie Davis-Floyd action on Mother's Advocate blog: Cultural Definitions of Motherhood

Donna at Banned from Baby Showers on why a fast labor may not be such a great thing.



Also, I got into a discussion with a friend this past week about whether Tangled was more feminist than other Disney "princess" movies (for more on what lessons the princesses teach, check out this link for some images, or this one for some commentary). I then found this article on the NOW blog called With Tangled, Disney Gets Closer to Embracing Feminism. Thoughts on how Disney did with Tangled?



Classes start next week - Hopefully I can keep up with blogging!