MilwaukeeMoms readers have been offered special access to a Pretty City sample sale on Wednesday, Nov. 4, from 6 to 9 p.m. at SUITE Milwaukee, 1103 Old World Third St.

To attend the event for free (instead of for $20), simply enter "metime" without quotes in the section that asks for the offer code.

When you click on "apply code," the credit card field will disappear.

Here are more details. Enjoy!

By the way, we'll also be giving away freebies to our Facebook fans starting this month. Every Wednesday, check out our fan page to see what you could win. We'll be dipping into our stash of books for kids and parents, DVDs, CDs, toys and more.

As with any controversial issue in parenting, it seems, a discussion of co-sleeping is likely to bring out people who absolutely love and absolutely hate what you have to say.

I'm appearing on WTMJ 4's Morning Blend almost every Thursday now, and in last week's segment I talked about co-sleeping and the article I wrote for the November Metroparent.

Almost right after the segment aired, these two e-mails came in. I'm witholding the names because the authors did not officially submit them for publication:

I watched your episode on co-sleeping today and needless to say I am really disappointed that only one person with one opinion was on the show. There were some key points missing like always placing your infant on their back to sleep and the recommendations of the AAP in no bed sharing, but room sharing. Whenever a controversial topic is presented I would hope that more than one side of the story is presented. You began the topic by saying that we have been reading about the deaths over and over when in fact we have had little press about these deaths prior to 2009 and in 2007 there were 26 sleep related deaths. Let's consider the baby not having any choice and that they are counting on adults to keep them safe. I think we all do whatever is necessary to keep babies and children safe and the facts are that we do have infants dying in adult beds and these can be prevented by providing infants their own sleep place. LEt's advocate for the babies and not only provide one side of the story. For informaiton on the deaths in Milwaukee go to the Milwaukee.gov site under infant mortality.

Editor's note: I was clear that I wasn't promoting one way of sleeping and that I was representing a less mainstream opinion -- in fact, one that has been almost totally absent in the media. Five minutes is a short time, and I didn't feel it was necessary to spend a lot of time representing the view that's most prevalent. For more of my thoughts on this, see an earlier blog post.

I am so happy that someone finally addressed the important issue of co-sleeping. It always irritates me when I see a headline that says infant dies co-sleeping. The reason that it irritates me is that it never fails I get a call from one set of the grandparents, an aunt or uncle, or someone chastising me for co-sleeping with my children. I am happy that you addressed the issue because if done responsibly it can be a wonderful thing. I have even had people tell me that they hope my infant dies so that I learn my lesson. I am so pleased that you were able to talk about this on the show. This topic deserves so much more positive light put on it than we do in the US. I love co-sleeping. I love the bond I get with my kids. As parents you have to be safe and follow safe co-sleeping rules and it can be totally beneficial. Thanks again  :D

Interestingly, in a MilwaukeeMoms poll, more than half of the respondents either regularly or occasionally shared a bed with their infants. These numbers are borne out in national polls, as well. In my opinion, this means it would be a whole lot more helpful for media and public health departments to spend time on an informational campaign about *safe* co-sleeping rather than roundly condeming something women and babies from all cultures have done for centuries.

A week ago, our family was excitedly leaving the house for our first trip ever on the Lake Express Ferry.

We figured we’d give it a try because kids ride free for the rest of this season. My aunt and uncle live just an hour’s drive from Muskegon, the city the ferry docks at on the Michigan side.

It had been an odd morning. I spent the previous night up with a splitting earache (on day 8 of a cold that wouldn’t quit), and I made a quick trip to Urgent Care after getting the kids started on breakfast. I’ll spare you some of the details, but the cleaning/irrigation the nurse applied to my ear was no less painful (“oh, it isn’t supposed to hurt,” she said when I almost-screamed) than the pains that kept me up the night before.

And, oh yeah, she forgot to mention the side effects. A few minutes after my ear was partially cleaned, I broke out in a sweat and started to feel dizzy and nauseated. It was like my first two pregnancies all over again. I actually had to lay down.

On top of it, the doctor was sort of cold toward me. She made me feel wimpy, and I almost felt like telling her stories of un-medicated childbirth to prove otherwise. She asked if I needed something. “Maybe,” I said referring to a puke bowl. Apparently she was referring to a shot to calm my nausea, which I wasn’t about to pay for. (In retrospect, refusing that shot was probably a bad idea.) Finally, I got my vend-o-Augmentin and went home.

Back at home, we had about 45 minutes to finish packing before we had to leave for the ferry. I was bound and determined to will myself into feeling well enough to enjoy a short vacation that I’d really been looking forward to. But in the rush of it all, I forgot about my plan to take and distribute motion sickness pills in advance. I just sort of glossed over it in my mind.

It just so happened that the first trip that morning had been canceled due to choppy waters (I didn’t find this out until later). In fact, it was an unusually rough day on the lake. You probably can already tell how this is going to end up.

The ride there was rough.

I’m talking about both the water and how all six of us were feeling. I had two whole hours to rue the fact that I failed to provide my family with Dramamine for the trip. There were a couple of really incredible sympathetic stewards who saw us sitting there with pale faces and stopped several times to see what they could do to help. One of the men brought us Sprite, Ginger Gum and neat little barf bags, and we used all of them. My 3 and 4-year-old were both ill briefly, but I was the only one who had a double puke attack. I blame the ear procedure.

We sat in the middle of the ferry, not by the windows, in a kid-friendly area with two tables that had four seats facing each other on each side. The girls made some potholders for a little while before the movie started, and the little ones slept on me after initially feeling a little lousy, and the trip went fast for them. I don’t remember a lot of other things about the ride there, other than being relieved that “Up” was playing, because the older girls were entertained with no effort from me for a good part of the trip.

The ride back was night and day difference. The day was sunny and calm. The older four of us had taken the non-drowsy version of Dramamine. I hoped for the best for the little ones. And that’s exactly what we got.

As the ride got underway, I ordered an Alterra coffee at the little ferry café and cream-and-sugared it up. (I couldn’t even touch my coffee on the first trip.) Half an hour later, I was back for a refill.

I read book after book to my little girls, and they felt just fine. They kept asking to go outside on the deck, where the sun was mostly out and we could watch the water splash away behind the boat as it sped over the mostly smooth water.

I hope the next time we take that trip, it’s just like the second one.
 

Our family spent three days over the weekend at my aunt's log cabin house near Hudsonville, Michigan. Her family has several acres with lots of woods, and there are plenty of places for kids to run wild and do dangerous and unusual things.

Anneke and Claire got their frog-catching gear a few times and walked up to the pond, about 1/4 mile from the house. They weren't too successful because the frogs are getting really smart about avoiding small children.

The big hit this time was the chickens. My aunt has 24 chickens and one (mean!) rooster. The girls were absolutely enamored.

First thing each morning, Claire would run up to the coop and check for eggs, and she'd go back at least three or four times a day. She was usually pretty successful, finding 17 eggs in just one day's span.

Maddie and Kate mostly like to stand and watch through the wire, probably because they were warned in no uncertain terms about the mean rooster, who had pecked one of my cousin's kids a few weeks ago.

My aunt sent us home with a dozen farm-fresh eggs, which we took back with us on the Lake Express Ferry (more on that trip in an upcoming blog post).

We also came home with something else: kids who want urban chickens. Dan sort of likes the idea but is skeptical. After all, last winter we noticed a gray fox making regular rounds through the snow in our yard, and last night there were two raccoons peering into our back window as we were eating supper. Despite living in a city neighborhood, we have plenty of wildlife. We'd have some fierce competition for the eggs, if not the chickens.

But who knows? If we figure out a way to keep them safe, if we can justify the expense, if our neighbors can be bribed with occasional fresh eggs and, most importantly, if the City of Milwaukee decides to make it legal by passing enabling legislation (which seems to be on the backburner after Shorewood's chicken ordinance was defeated last May), we are going to have to consider raising our own.

My just-turned-three-year-old is generally a really good eater. She never hesitates to try something new, which apparently puts her in a very small minority among three-year-olds, based on what I hear from friends.

Yesterday, at a brunch party we hosted, she discovered that she likes anchovy-stuffed olives (shudder). Like I said, pretty adventuresome.

But she still is picky about some of the veggies she eats, so I'm always trying to get her to eat more. Corn and broccoli are her favorites, but she avoids carrots and beans. Tomatoes are hit-or-miss (I know, they're not technically a vegetable) but most fruits are acceptable.

I don't usually go out of my way to "trick" her into eating vegetables, but if you're one of those parents who does, there's a whole industry based around getting fussy eaters to try new foods. In fact, they send me regular e-mails about their products. So, I figured, why not give one of them a try?

Horizon yogurt sent me a sample four-pack of apple butternut squash yogurt last week, and I figured I'd put my three-year-old on the task. Keep in mind that she usually likes yogurt, which I assume is a necessary starting point if you plan to sneak veggies into yogurt.

To cut to the point, her yogurt was finished within a few minutes of me opening it. When I asked how it was, she gave a one-word review: "Good!"

Score one for Horizon, although I'll be more likely to buy the yogurt in the future if they offer it in the larger, family-size tubs as well. We go through too much yogurt in our household to buy the small, single-serving containers.

Every year on Sept. 11, I remember a few snippets of that day in 2001 in vivid detail.

Living in a little rear house we rented near Bremen and Clarke streets in Riverwest, I woke up a little before 8 a.m., looked at the sun outside and realized that my 5-month-old had finally let me sleep in. She was not the great sleeper her older sister had been, so I often was up feeding her three times a night. For that reason, we had moved her into our bedroom.

I sneaked out of the bedroom without waking her and was in the kitchen grinding coffee when Dan, still in bed, heard on the clock radio that a plane had crashed into the first tower. I ran upstairs turned on our old TV to find out more, and I watched in horror and disbelief as crews covering the first crash suddenly were showing a second crash. I had trouble peeling myself away from the TV.

For me, it was a tragic event that happened in a place far away to people I didn't know. Still, the immediacy of the coverage made it seem so personal and close. It made me stop and think hard about the people I love and the city I live in, and about what the family and friends of those directly involved must be feeling and trying to cope with.

The most powerful memory I have of that day, though, is the stark juxtaposition of dark terror with bright sunshine and how jarring it felt. Driving north on Humboldt Blvd. to the Friends Center for a La Leche League meeting with my 3-year-old and 5-month-old, I was in complete awe as I looked around at what seemed the most beautiful day of the summer so far.

I couldn't tell if the tears in my eyes were prompted by the terror and destruction or by the realization that the beauty and normalcy of my day was literally overwhelming in comparison.

I gave my girls a lot of extra hugs that day.

My oldest daughter, Anneke, turns 11 this week.

While our family tends to have pretty tight restrictions on TV time and computer use, there are a few sites the girls are allowed to visit, and the two oldest have their own gmail accounts.They use them primarily to hassle me and their grandparents while we're at work (and I say this completely lovingly). We allow them to chat only with friends and family we've already approved, and the girls know that we have their passwords.

Anneke also recently set up a virtual book club with a friend/pen-pal of hers in Iowa, which I find pretty amusing. They have regularly scheduled google chats to discuss the books they're reading.

So far, it's going well. Except when Anneke gets bored at home and fires off questions during the day that she should be asking her dad, who works out of his home office.

For your reading amusement, here's a chat transcript from last Friday. "Me" is my daughter. "Super" is me. (She gave me the nickname "Super Mom" for google chat purposes. She's good at this. For example, her uncle is "Ticklish Feet Guy.")

You'll note from my quick answers that I'm usually mid-task when she is trying to get my attention.

me: there is a yellow jacket in your room. what should I do?
Super: kill it or just get out of the room
me: how
Super: nevermind. just stay away. close my door and stay out
Sent at 9:23 AM on Friday

me: can i shave a stick outside with a knife?
Sent at 11:15 AM on Friday

Super: sure.
Sent at 11:16 AM on Friday

me: you got something from lands end in the mail
Super: don't open it
it might be a present for you
don't open ANY packages that come today, if any other ones come
Sent at 11:58 AM on Friday

me: claires coat did, and we did.
Sent at 12:01 PM on Friday

me: we already know what is in the lands end package, it isn't a birthday present, just school stuff, and for maddy and kate. grandma told us. can we open it?
Sent at 12:06 PM on Friday

me: can we?
Sent at 12:08 PM on Friday

Super: ok
me: thanks!
Sent at 12:11 PM on Friday

Super's new status message - decimating the to-do list 12:15 PM

me: mom the zucchini bread small pan didn't turn out good. you know why?
Super: um, because the pan was too small?
me: no...
Super: no butter in it?
me: we found a MKE pen in the oven!!!
I don't know how it got ther...
e
Super: oh, great. i bet the house smells terrible
me: but that is what i am guessing
actually, it doesn't
Super: ok, well, i am super busy and trying to finish stuff so I can run
me: the house does not stink
ok
Super: good, but why would it wreck the bread??
me: we got it out
i don't know
Super: it wouldn't
me: i am just guessing
the bread just sank
in
Super: that means it didn't cook long enough
Sent at 12:36 PM on Friday

me: where is my brown and pink stripped shirt with the white lace on th ebottom?
the bottom
?
?
"
Super: downstairs drying on the rack
don't keep sending QUESTION MARKS
me: okay
Sent at 1:43 PM on Friday

me: so, kate is going to pick me up in 15 minutes?
Sent at 2:45 PM on Friday
me: MOM!!!
Sent at 2:59 PM on Friday
Super: i don't know.
i can check
maybe earlier. are you ready?
Sent at 3:09 PM on Friday

A 2-month-old baby died this week while she was sleeping on a couch with her father.

Here's what the Journal Sentinel article says about it:

A 2-month-old girl who was found dead Tuesday after sleeping with her father on a couch could be the sixth Milwaukee infant since March to die as a result of co-sleeping.

The article ends with a list of deaths attributed to co-sleeping. Most of the "co-sleeping" deaths listed involved one or both of these elements: sleeping on a couch or sleeping with a caretaker or parent who had consumed alcohol. They also tended to involve babies that were younger than 3 months old.

For me, a mom who's done some form of co-sleeping with three of our four children, this article raises all kinds of questions:

• Should this really be called co-sleeping? Co-sleeping advocates recomend never to sleep with babies on couches. 
• How do infant mortality figures for infants sleeping with adults compare to all infant deaths (including those in cribs) during that time period?
• What percentage of parents sleep with their infants compared to putting them in cribs? If, for the sake of argument, 1/4 of all parents sleep with their infants, but only 1/5 of all infant deaths occur in babies sleeping with parents, wouldn't co-sleeping be safer?

Nobody wants to endanger their children. Fearmongering doesn't help parents make good decisions. Data does. Until I know the answers to those questions, it's hard to say what's riskier. Even then, it's clear that nearly all alleged co-sleeping deaths seem to be prime examples of unsafe sleep environments.

If a parent piled soft pillows in a crib and and a baby suffocated, would we blame the crib? No. The parent was not following safe sleep practices. A sensible conclusion to draw might not be that co-sleeping itself is the problem. Instead, it might be that safe sleep education does parents a disservice if it focuses only on guidelines for crib-using families.

Co-sleeping can be a confusing term, because some families use it to describe their decision to sleep with their babies, while some use it to describe an arrangement where the baby sleeps in the same bedroom or in a co-sleeper next to the bed.

Most public health departments recommend against bed sharing in no uncertain terms, rather than acknowledging that many families will do so either for reasons of personal choice (breastfeeding and attachment parenting) or poverty (there simply aren't enough beds to go around).

It's an imperfect analogy, but consider this: Most public health departments would never dream of doing abstinence-only sex education, even if they believe that's the best health choice for teenagers. In the same way, why not acknowledge that, even if they are against bed-sharing, some families will do it and might benefit from education on how to do it more safely?

Little infants are more fragile than older children, and babies under 6 months old are at the highest risk for SIDS deaths, no matter where they're sleeping (90% of SIDS deaths happen by 6 months).

Following sleep guidelines such as keeping blankets and fluffy pillows away from infants and making sure they have a safe sleep environment and a firm surface (i.e. not a couch) to sleep on is important. Alcohol consumption also is a big no-no if you're caring for a small infant.

Most parents I know are not solidly in one camp or the other but have tried a variety of sleep options to see what works best for their families. What do you think? Have you ever used a family bed?

Co-sleeping resources:
Dr. Sears online
Milwaukee Health Department
Web MD
KidsHealth.org
American Academy of Pediatrics
Cosleeping.org
Baby Bond
 

It's the end of my first week after stepping into Jeanne's shoes at MilwaukeeMoms, and I'm exhausted!

Starting a new job is a little like becoming a new parent: It's hard for someone else to teach you everything you're going to need to know, because many things simply need to be learned or acquired along the way. I can say from experience that's true even with your fourth child (or fourth job, as the case may be).

It's also really exciting to start something new, because the possibilities and potentials are great. I'm enjoying getting to know our bloggers, forum members, community partners and the coworkers I depend on for support.

I'm looking forward to re-launching a blog that I kept for about three years when I was assistant editor at MKE. Called "Look What I Made!", it was named after a favorite phrase of my oldest daughter, now almost 11, who was the most prolific child artist I knew. Eventually I even learned to not feel guilty about not keeping every single one of her drawings and paintings, because they would have filled our house.

Plus, with two girls born during that time period, the title almost became prophecy. Now, my husband and I have four daughters ranging from 3 to almost 11.

So, welcome. Please have patience with me and with our site over the next week or two as we go through this transition and I get up to speed on everything I need to learn. In my previous work as letters editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board, MKE and the Riverwest Currents, I enjoyed the dynamic of community conversations about topics of local importance. I'm looking forward to more of that here.

I'd love to hear from you about what you'd like to see us do with MilwaukeeMoms: constructive criticism and new ideas are always welcome.

Sonya