Oprah: Please Do a Show on Plastic and Beth Terry!

Here is a heartfelt video post from Beth Terry, creator and author of Fake Plastic Fish. Beth has been a tireless crusader for companies and individuals to use less plastic, promote plastic recycling, and draw attention to our own choices and the actions they cause. She is a fellow member of the Green Moms Carnival, too. This video is personal and compelling. About a year ago, I wrote to ask Oprah to consider doing a show about toxic chemicals and children. I never heard back. I wish Beth better luck with this and hope she can reach more people with her personal mission to cut down on the world's plastic use.

Ricki Lake Speaks Out about Natural Child Birth in a New Book: Your Best Birth

I loved The Business of Being Born and was happy to read that Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein have a new book out called Your Best Birth: Know all Your Options, Discover the Natural Choices and Take Back the Birth Experience (if any publishers or PR people are reading this-- please send me a copy to review!).

Here is an excerpt from the book posted on the Today show where she was a recent guest. In it she chronicles her first and second birth experiences and how different they were. One took place in a hospital and one was at home.

Here is a quote from the except, where Ricki shares how she started feeling after her hospital birth did not go as planned:

"Most women don’t really want to dwell on their birth experiences. You get this amazing gift of the baby. You’re on a high and whatever happened in the hospital just seems to fade away. Even if it didn’t go as planned, it was a pretty amazing experience. I feel blessed that, considering it all, I had a vaginal birth for my first child. And although Rob and I are now divorced, the memory of how he was on that day is one of the things I can draw on when I need a little encouragement to get over one of our postmarital spats. When the mommy- bonding hormones stopped coursing through my veins, I started to think about the birth, not just the baby. How quickly everything had changed direction. At the hospital, I felt like a problem. I wasn’t progressing fast enough, they said, even though my baby was never in distress. I remembered how when my mom came to see us at the hospital, I introduced her to my midwife saying, “Mom, here’s the woman who delivered my baby!” Sandy corrected me, “Ricki, you’re the one who delivered that baby.” Why couldn’t I shake this feeling that my body had betrayed me? Hadn’t this crazy system betrayed me? Keeping my prenatal appointments, eating my green, leafy vegetables, the vitamins, the yoga, the visualizations — all of it built a sense that this would be a birth of my own creation."

Women need choices, and they don't need to feel like they are under an artificial time table based on anyone's schedule but their own. I'm glad that Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein are adding their voices once again, in support of natural childbirth, and the empowerment of women to make their own choices based on the health of their babies, their values, and the trust that they have in their bodies to birth.

Kiss My Face Giveaway Winner!

How can I possibly pick between all the comments on the Kiss My Face giveaway! I found deep solidarity in the comments-- us frumpy, busy, over-committed moms don't have much time or money to spend on ourselves.

I SO want to give this prize to EVERY one of you!

It literally pains me to pick. Seriously. You each deserve it, simply from being loving, selfless, hard working moms.

But a few of the commenters have had to face even more challenges. Ginger, whose daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia (and she writes about it here), has faced more than I could ever imagine. She's spent the last 160 something days in hospitals with her daughter, and is finally getting settled with her family back home.

Ginger, you got it sister! Congratulations and have fun with it. There are so many products to try and I hope you will enjoy them. I wish I could do more for you! Just send me your email address at non-toxic-kids(at)comcast(dot)net and I will sent it out to you.

Thanks, readers for entering and I'm sure there will be more giveaways to come. I might just have to pick randomly from now on because it is just too difficult to pick!

Young Girls, Makeup and the Media: How Not to Raise a Diva on Eco-Child's Play

Have you every seen the show Toddlers and Tiaras (I haven't, but the whole idea makes me sick)? Did you know that there are spas catering to young girls?

This week I wrote a post for Eco-Child's Play called Young Girls, Makeup and the Media: How Not to Raise Diva.

Now I know I am tempting fate. My girls are only 2 and 4, and are showing no diva like characteristics (other than wearing skirts and singing with reckless abandon). I do think this has something to do with how we are choosing to raise them. The article shares some shocking statistics about this generation of girls, and some tips for fighting back against the oversexualization and rampant consumerism they face.

Parents of young, tween and teen girls, how are you handling this issue? What are your tips for taming the barrage of impossible perfection our girls see in the media?