NEWS: BPA Linked to Baby Breathing Issues

So all that water I was drinking while I was preggo could lead to my little one wheezing, how sad. :( I hope not! I was good and bought a metal water bottle, but I quickly found it wasn't dishwasher safe (the exterior) and wound up reverting back to my plastic water bottles at least three out of the five work days. Hopefully nothing will happen to the little one because of it, but researchers from Penn State University Hershey Medical School, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Simon Fraser University found that exposure to BPA while in the womb could lead to childhood wheezing. Yikes!

[What is BPA? Click here]

The study reads that 398 children and their mothers were studied and 99 percent of the moms had detectable BPA levels during their pregnancy. The higher the level of BPA the more wheezing. Although this is far from a large study, the presence of wheezing definitely begs the question, what is happening to the development of the lungs in these babies? That much is unclear and what's also strange is the wheezing did appear to diminish with age (after 6 months).

My daughter doesn't wheeze, thankfully, and besides water bottles there are a number of ways to get BPA in one's system, so hopefully if I had any it wasn't enough to amount to much. Hopefully for you all too!

PERSONAL: TV and Babies

I always get into tiffs with my mother about my infant daughter watching "Sesame Street." My mom seems to think it's educational, while I have repeatedly heard that ANY TV for an infant does no good whatsoever. It actually harms their language development and distracts them, making them less interactive with their caregivers (whether parents or day care workers, nannies etc...) and their environment, which is where the real learning comes from.

However, I have to admit, the last few months have found me losing my sanity more and more at home and turning on the morning TV news for about an hour or two. Hopefully it's not too damaging but I just can't imagine now not having at least some time to watch the news. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there...