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And the slightly shameful celebrity crush of the day award goes to… Us, for having developed a bit of a thing for Ricky Gervais’ other comedy half, Stephen MerchantContinue reading...
Monday, February 18, 2013
Stephen Merchant on The Graham Norton Show in London
And the slightly shameful celebrity crush of the day award goes to… Us, for having developed a bit of a thing for Ricky Gervais’ other comedy half, Stephen MerchantContinue reading...
Blur, Stone Roses to headline Coachella 2013
Blur and The Stone Roses will headline Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival 2013 in California, it has been confirmed.Continue reading...
Taylor Swift at the 40 Principales Awards in Madrid
Taylor Swift wears a white KaufmanFranco dress at the 40 Principales Awards in Madrid - vote on celebrity fashion, style and red carpet looks in GLAMOUR.COM’s Dos and Don’tsContinue reading...
James Arthur leaves the Groucho club in London
Meanwhile, in other X Factor-related news, we spotted a certain 2012 champion who goes by the name of James Arthur leaving celeb haunt Groucho after enjoying drinks with...Continue reading...
25 Ways to Handle the Stress of a New Baby
Bring some calm to the chaos with first-year survivor strategies that work.By Suzanne Wright
WebMD FeatureReviewed by Melinda Ratini, DO, MS
WebMD FeatureReviewed by Melinda Ratini, DO, MS
Jen Singer, author of You're a Good Mom (and Your Kids Aren't So Bad Either) andcreator of MommaSaid.net, isn't particularly fond of babies. "That's because both of my sons' first years were the most stressful for me," she says. "They were colicky, one had reflux, and neither one slept through the night for a whole year."
Tammy Gold understands Singer's sentiments. Gold is a New York-based psychotherapist and a certified parenting coach and mother. She launched Gold Parent coaching in November 2007 to help distraught parents like Singer. "There are nannies, doulas, and lactation specialists," she says, "but no service helps parents with this gigantic change. Everybody's learning, everybody's struggling."
"It's not just the actual time and effort involved in caring for this tiny creature that makes it so tough to find time for yourself," says psychologist and mom Pamela Freundl Kirst. "There's also an instinctually based psychological drive called primary maternal occupation that focuses your life on the relationship with your infant. Appreciating this can help you find ways to nurture and care for yourself directly."
One minute, you’re child-free, and the next your life is 12 diapers a day, cuddles, cries, coos, and a fuzzy memory of what life was like BB -- Before Baby. It might be a shock to the system, but having a few basic guidelines can help ease your mind.
1. Establish a Parental Plan
Gold recommends parents discuss how they will address a wide range of issues. How are you going to handle visiting in-laws? Who's going to get up in the middle of the night? And how does each of you feel about letting a baby cry?
"Once you get on the same page physically, emotionally, and philosophically," Gold says, "things will be smoother." But, she says, "you must do it before chronic sleep deprivation and physical and emotional exhaustion set in."
2. Postpone Energy-Draining Projects
"I would warn that extreme demands like marathon training should be put on hold by both parents until after the baby's first year," one mom, who requested anonymity, says.
"The combination of new baby and his training schedule did not mix well. I did a lot of single parenting, felt lost as a new mom, and had no time for taking care of my own exercise needs post-pregnancy. It takes time to adjust. And if that adjustment is not a team effort, it can cause tension that will impact the whole family for years to come."
3. Plan for Baby's Arrival -- Now
Before the baby is born, create a schedule of day care drop-offs and pick-ups, planned down time, and date nights. "It sets the pattern for the next 18 years of schedule juggling," one mom says.
Make Your Kid's Bedtime Battle-Free
Fix your child’s bedtime routine once and for all.
Most parents can trade war stories about their kid's bedtime. Christine Althoff sits in her daughter Claire's doorway every night until she falls asleep. She's been doing this for more than five years.
Before her twin sisters were born, Claire, now 7, was rocked to sleep. In an effort to get Claire to fall asleep on her own, Althoff began sitting at her bedside. Time passed and she tried to work her way out of her daughter's bedroom, but the doorway is as far as she got.
"I don't like it," Althoff, a Little Rock, Ark. attorney, says. "But I know that I created it."
Jennifer Waldburger, co-founder of Sleepy Planet, a Los Angeles-based child sleep consultation firm, says a battle-free bedtime is every parent's goal. But, she says, many parents fall short because they don't see the bigger picture.
The key in establishing a child's bedtime routine is to delineate between what your child needs and what she wants. Waldburger says, "What she needs is some time with you and good sleep. There's a whole war between a parent's head and heart that keeps them from doing [what needs to be done]."
The stakes are high. Insufficient sleep not only affects a child's development, behavior, and emotions, Waldburger says, it has been linked to a greater incidence of obesity.
Here are 10 tips for creating a bedtime plan that can help take the battle out of your kid's getting to bed on time.
Make Sure Your Child's Bedtime Is Early Enough
Parents will often tell Waldburger their child doesn't seem tired at bedtime so they allow him to stay up longer. Big mistake, Waldburger says. "Once a child is overtired," she says, "a stress hormone called cortisol is released, which makes it hard to settle in and causes a child to wake up more throughout the night and wake up too early [in the morning]."
If your child is overtired, Nicholas Long, PhD, a child psychologist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, says, it may actually take her longer to fall asleep. Moving her bedtime up by 30 minutes may get your child to bed before she becomes overtired.
Keep Your Child's Bedtime Consistent
Don't stray too far from what you establish as the appropriate bedtime, Waldburger says. Consistency is crucial. That means that bedtime stays the same even on the weekends and during the summer when days are longer.
And when your child does go to bed later than usual, try to get him up about the same time. Long says it's important not to let your child sleep in sometimes and not others so he doesn't start shifting his sleep pattern.
Let Your Child Wind Down
People With Egg Allergy Can Safely Get Flu Shot: Experts
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Flu vaccination is safe for children and adults with an egg allergy, according to new research that is especially timely in light of the current widespread flu.
"The influenza vaccine is grown in chicken eggs; therefore, it contains trace amounts of egg allergen," Dr. James Sublett, chairman of the public relations committee at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, said in a college news release.
"It has been long advised that children and adults with an egg allergy do not receive the vaccination; however, we now know administration is safe," Sublett said. "Children and adults should be vaccinated, especially when the flu season is severe, as it is this year."
A study published in the December 2012 issue of the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology concluded that flu vaccine contains such a low amount of egg protein that it won't cause an allergic reaction in children with an egg allergy.
"The benefits of the flu vaccination far outweigh the risks," Sublett said. "The best precaution for children that have experienced anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction, after ingesting eggs in the past is to receive the vaccination from an allergist."
Each year in the United States, the flu leads to the hospitalization of more than 21,000 children younger than age 5. But up to 2 percent of children may not receive the flu vaccine this year, and egg allergy is a major reason, according to the ACAAI.
Egg allergy is one of the most common food allergies in children, but about 70 percent of children outgrow the allergy by age 16.
More information
The Nemours Foundation has more about egg allergy in children.
Smokers Die About a Decade Earlier on Average
Jan. 23, 2013 -- Women who smoke are now just as likely to die of lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases as men -- and smokers of both sexes die, on average, about a decade earlier than non-smokers.
These were among the findings from two major studies examining death rate trends among smokers published in The New England Journal of Medicine."The studies highlight the fact that cigarette smoking remains a leading cause of death in the U.S.,” says Steven A. Schroeder, MD, who directs the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California, San Francisco.
“We tend to think of smoking as a done deal because most upper class, educated people no longer smoke or know people who [no longer] do,” he says. “But it still exerts a huge toll, and the influence of the tobacco companies is still strong.”
Michael J. Thun, MD, of the American Cancer Society, led a study that tracked smoking deaths over three time periods during the last 50 years. He says the new data confirms that women who smoke have the same risk for death as men.
The analysis included about 2.2 million adults who were age 55 and older.
“When women smoke like men, they die like men,” Thun says.
Women started smoking cigarettes in large numbers in the 1960s, about two decades after men had large smoking rates. Smoking rates were among their highest late in the '60s, when around 1 in 3 adult women smoked, according to the CDC.
Thun says it is no accident that this is when tobacco giant Philip Morris introduced its Virginia Slims brand, the first cigarette marketed solely to women.
The study shows a 23-fold increase in the risk of dying from lung cancer among women smokers between1960 and 2000.
“It takes about 50 years for an epidemic to really get going, and we are just beginning to see the impact of the increase in smoking among women during this time period in terms of deaths from smoking,” he says.
In a second analysis, researchers determined that people who smoke into middle age lose about a decade of life to the habit, but smokers who stop before the age of 40 regain most of these lost years.
The researchers examined data on about 200,000 men and women over age 25 interviewed between 1997 and 2004, and identified about 16,000 who had died several years later.
They found that:
Smokers who quit in their mid-30s to mid-40s gained about nine years of life. Those who quit from their mid-40s to mid-50s gained about six. Those who quit later than this, but before age 65, gained about four additional years.Smokers between the ages of 25 to 79 were three times as likely to die as non-smokers in the same age group.People who never smoke are about twice as likely as smokers to live to age 80.
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