Top 5 Reasons WIC Doesn't Work

WIC stands for Women, Infants & Children. It is a program designed to help low and no income mothers with feeding their babies and children under the age of 5 healthy choices. Sounds great on the surface. So why don't more women sign up for it? Why do so many women drop out of WIC?

5. EBT cards are easier - WIC is done be printing checks that may only be spent for the allotted amounts on the specified products. If you don't purchase the minimum or the right brand the check is no good. Each check is run separately at the register but the EBT card is one swipe.

4. EBT is more discreet - In this economy people who normally are working a high paying job are finding themselves on welfare. They are embarrassed and would like it if the people in their neighborhood did not know they were using public assistance. EBT is like any other debit card. WIC is painfully obvious. Though you are supposed to report it, the clerks at the stores treat you worse. When you need help finding something you aren't worth the time. People in line behind you huff and puff at you. You have these large pink and blue checks that everyone can see.

3. Shopping takes twice as long - With WIC you have to buy a specified amount of products. For example, if the check says "32 ozs of Cheerios" you can't buy 36 ozs, even if the only sizes are 18oz boxes. So you need 32 ozs but wind up with 18 because you can't afford to go over. Name brands are easy to find. The generic will have you pacing at least twice down an isle trying to find the items in the amounts that qualify for your check. With EBT, you can grab what's on your list and go.

2. Formula discrimination - WIC believes that formula is not good for babies unless there is a problem with breastfeeding. They will determine what is a problem. The moment you are no longer breastfeeding you are denied fruits, vegetables, and tuna. You are only given half of the formula your baby needs to survive to discourage formula feeding and encourage breastfeeding. You are then scheduled an unwanted visit with a lactation consultant who will not listen to what you tell her. You can say repeatedly that your baby is latching, that you are feeding regularly but that you need formula until your milk comes in. They won't listen. They will do all they can to force breastfeeding on you thus turning you against breastfeeding and WIC. Don't even bother to ask for a breast pump when you return to work. You will be told that you can handle breastfeeding if you do it right.

1. Double duty - You already have to take your baby to the pediatrician for regularly scheduled well visits. Your pediatrician has no need for blood tests unless your baby is showing symptoms that need further investigation. WIC demands blood work every 3 to 6 months. They also demand you bring your baby in to be weighed and measured. It's like having two pediatrician visits.


Moms everywhere truly need a program like WIC. However, the way WIC is designed it does more harm than good for many women. If you choose WIC, choose it with the idea that it supplements what you can already do on your own. Remember to go to the grocery store during the wee hours when all of the other WIC participants will be there. You won't have to contend with the dirty looks. Know that if you choose formula you will still need your EBT benefits to cover the difference. If you're still frustrated, you aren't alone.

Breastfeeding Fatigue

Breastfeeding Fatigue is a term you won't find in your fancy baby books or hear in your local WIC office. You can ask your OB/GYN or pediatrician and they will categorically deny it exists to encourage you to continue breastfeeding or simply blame it on post-partum depression. The fact is that breastfeeding fatigue is real. The denial of its existence is actually making new moms everywhere feel inadequate. It isn't depression. It isn't the "baby blues", such a cute term for such a sad state of emotions. Search internet mommy sites and you will find endless threads in countless numbers dedicated to moms who are so tired of breastfeeding they are ready to break like the skin on their nipples and arreolas. They're crying louder than their newborns and are being criticized for it. Meet a breastfeeding mommy in the park and she will likely have dark circles under her thousand mile stare.

Breasfeeding Fatigue is easily understood once you learn what breastfeeding really entails. I know your friends and husband think that you are a walking pair of convenient, money saving, milk bags. Breastfeeding is more involved than that. When you were pregnant you were eating for two. When you choose to nurse you are still eating for two. Babies can take half of the calories you take in everyday. This is both why you must continue to eat like a pregnant woman and why you lose so much weight after delivery. Imagine eating a basic meal of pasta, salad, water, wine, crusted chicken breast, dessert and coffee, all at about 6:30pm. At 7pm you nurse your baby. At 8pm you feel like you had absolutely nothing for dinner and start to microwave the same meal. The microwave wakes up the baby. The baby is now wet and hungry as newborn babies eat every two hours starting at the time their last feeding began. Yes, I said began, So in reality you are nursing almost once an hour to begin with. Feeling tired yet? Multiply this by 24 hours. Eventually what happens is that mom no longer has time to do anything anymore, let alone cook. So mom doesn't eat as well, which means baby starts taking half of what she has to give, calcium from her bones, protein from her muscles etc. But let's make this really interesting and add something called Cluster Feeding.

Cluster Feeding is when your baby is on a power feeding schedule. As they grow a quarter of an inch a week they hit growth spurts somewhere in between. The baby, the smart little science fiction creature that it is, starts to send signals to your body to make more milk to meet the up and coming demand. It does this by cluster feeding. Instead of feeding once an hour they start feeding every 30 minutes. If you're luck this will take place during the day. If not this will happen at night. No one else can nurse the baby but you. Bottle feeding during a cluster feeding is actually going to be a cluster f#$k in the long run. You won't have enough milk for the baby when she's hungry thus frustrating the both of you. So now that you know that breastfeeding fatigue exists and that you aren't crazy or a bad mother, what is the solution? I have more than one.

Hire a Maid

Get over the idea of a stranger in your house and hire help. Let someone else get the house together so you will have time to cook, feed the baby and yourself, run errands and sleep. Most women say that they do housework while the baby is sleeping instead of sleeping. Let the maid do the work while you sleep. The maid doesn't have to be a stranger. It can be a friend or family member. They all come by offering to take the baby for you so you can sleep and clean house. They aren't helping. This is your baby and your time to bond. It really does matter in a time like this when you are nursing. Tell the people around you that they can help by bringing by dinner or cooking it and leaving it in the freezer. Let them clean house and pick up the other children so you can sleep.

Turn to the Bottle

There are a bevy of bottle Nazis out there. I am not one of them. The truth is the bottle is only an enemy in three situations. The first is when you are still establishing a milk supply. Your baby needs to be at the breast to establish the right amount of milk. Once she can properly latch and your milk flow is steady, offer a bottle in the middle of the night. This way your husband, mother in law, teenager etc can pick up the slack late at night. The second is when you allow the baby to sleep with the bottle in her mouth. This leads to choking and tooth decay. The third is when people put things other than milk in the bottle like cereal. This messes with the baby's natural tummy sensor that tells the baby she's full. Try waking up at 2am to clean vomit from a screaming newborn. I know that the ladies at WIC will put you down for this but a happy, well-rested mother is a safe mother, not an Andrea Yates. Ask any Pediatrician and he will tell you that if there is breast milk in the bottle they aren't losing any benefits. It's when you switch to formula that they add multi-vitamins with fluoride. Make sure you have a good pump and that you keep it on a lower setting. You don't want to be too sore to feed the baby yourself.

Wake the Baby

I know that when your baby starts sleeping in 4 to 5 hour stretches during the day it's like Heaven on a silver platter. In reality it is making your bed time a nightmare. By resting up all day long your baby is wide awake to cluster feed all night long. Let her cluster feed during the day so you can sleep at night.

Binky, Nook Nook, Paci

No matter what you call it, your baby calls it relief. After your baby's 2 month immunizations you will notice that at certain times of day they are drooling and crying heavily as if in pain. You will also notice they are startling awake and blowing raspberries. Pediatricians deny this but I have yet to meet a mom whose baby didn't begin teething once their baby was immunized. Teething pain comes with the aforementioned symptoms. It also causes the baby to turn to the breast even more frequently. They may seem like cluster feedings until you realize your baby either isn't eating or is coming off and on every 5 minutes. This means you are officially a pacifier. Pay attention to the signs and give the baby a pacifier to give yourself a brake.

Hopefully I have informed your friends and family well about what you are experiencing. Feel free to add your own extra comments.

Spring Into Pier 1

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Pier 1 for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Outdoor furniture has arrived for spring at Pier 1. That's just in time to beat your neighbors to the most unique and versatile styles in outdoor furniture. Have you seen anyone in your neighborhood with a Swingasan? Neither have your neighbors but after they see you with one they will want one too.

All of the basic staples are available and are on sale. Check out these Rock Point outdoor chairs http://www.pier1.com/catalog/browse/0300.furniture/tabid/519/CategoryID/983/List/0/catpageindex/2/Level/a/ProductID/29058/ProductName/Rock-Point-Outdoor-Chairs/Default.aspx

My favorites are the Double Papasan, and the Swingasan chairs. The Swingasan s the perfect place to relax and read a book. http://www.pier1.com/catalog/browse/519.966.chairs-settees I'm looking forward to those warm, romantic days sipping wine in a Double Papasan with my husband. With the Double Papasan on my patio I would put the Swingasan and Papasan end table in my little reading nook in my living room.

The great thing about the outdoor furniture at Pier 1 is that it's actually indoor/outdoor. You can update any room in your home by adding the Azteca Settee and matching Ottoman. Or you can change the cushions and arrange the furniture outside on your terrace or in your garden if you choose.

Not every room needs new furniture to look updated. Go to the Accent Pieces section of the Pier 1 website and you'll find beautiful butterfly book boxes for only $9.95 as well as a flowers and butterfly clock that looks like it came straight from the recent version of Alice in Wonderland. It's only $50.

New furniture and accessories are added frequently. You can keep up by following Pier 1 Tweetups

Naked Preggo

The web is all a buzz with the nude photos of pregnant Mariah. As usual these naked memories were shared with the world and swiftly compared to the iconic Demi Moore poses when she was pregnant with Rumor. There's just one problem, Demi Moore wasn't the first. She wasn't even the second.



The first to pose naked was Patti LaBelle, Miss Lady Marmalade herself. The next to bare it all was Olympic Gymnast Nadia Comaneci. She posed with a large snake, possibly python or boa constrictor. Immediately following that then racy photo was Demi Moore, Lisa Bonet, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Claudia Schiffer, Orlando Bloom's wife (do we really care what her name is?), and Mariah Carey. I'm sure the order is jumbled after Demi Moore and I am positive I left out a few.

But it's time to stop giving Mrs. Kutcher all of the credit for these rarely tasteful, mostly gag worthy, profit mongering photos. It started with Patti LaBelle. God help us, let it end with Mariah Carey.





























Update, Thanks for your help Baby Bumpers and Gen Xers:
The first naked preggo cover as Patti LaBelle some time in the 60's.

Circa 1991 Nadia Comaneci posed nude with a boa constrictor. She was NOT pregnant. However, Lisa Bonet, the next in line was. There was an uproar about it because she was preggo and nude, a Cosby kid, and there was concern about the baby due to the way the snake was wrapped around her.

Next was Demi Moore covered in paint then Demi Moore preggo and nude...no snake.

Yet another update!
This is really fun now. There is an unofficial competition between the generations trying to prove who was first and who didn't pose at all. Here's what's new.

We have Melissa Gilbert in Us Magazine in May 1988, Lisa Bonet about 2 to 5 months along on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1988. Both were before Demi Moore in August of 1991. But Gen Xers had the Nadia Comaneci one wrong. It was Nastassja Kinski. How could we get that one wrong? I have no clue. Could it be that we were but tweens and were traumatized? Or could it be that she had black hair? No clue but we were wrong about that one. Now, could the Baby Bumpers be wrong about Miss LaBelle? To be continued...

Baby Making Playlist

By popular demand, here is the playlist that resulted in the creation of both my children.

Aaliyah: "Rock The Boat"

Beyoncé: "Speechless"

Bob Marley: "Turn Your Lights Down Low"

Boyz II Men: "Uhh Ahh (The Sequel)"

D'Angelo: "One Mo'Gin"

D'Angelo: "Untitled (How Does It Feel?)"

Faith Evans: "Come Over"

Floetry: "Say Yes"

Ghostface: "Camay"

Guy: "Tease Me Tonite"

India.Arie: "Brown Skin"

Janet Jackson: "Anytime, Anyplace"

Janet Jackson: "Funny How Time Flies"

Janet Jackson: "Rope Burn"

Jill Scott: "Imagination (Crown Royale Suite)"

Jodeci: "Come & Talk To Me"

Keith Sweat: "How Deep Is Your Love"

Kelly Price: "So Sweet"

Maxwell: "The Suite Theme"

Maxwell: "Sumthin Sumthin

Maxwell: "'Til The Cops Come Knockin'"

Prince: "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World"

Prince: "Do Me"

Prince: "Scandalous"

R. Kelly: "It Seems Like You're Ready"

Solo: "In Bed" SWV: "You're Always On My Mind"

Tank: "Slowly"

Teddy Pendergrass: "Turn Off The Lights"

Tony! Toni! Tone!: "Loving You"

Jodeci: "Forever My Lady"

R Kelly: Bump & Grind

Keith Sweat Ft. Silk: "Freak Me"

Case: "Happily Ever After"

Faith Evans: "Soon As I Get Home"

H-Town: "Knockin' Boots"

Shaggy: "Mr. Boombastic"

Etta James: "I Just Wanna Make Love To You"

Shania Twain: "From This Moment On"

Gary Allan: "Nothing On But The Radio"

Roger & Zapp: "Computer Love"

Roger & Zapp: "I Wanna Be Your Man"

Tevin Campbell: "Shh"

Missy Elliot: "Pussy"

Musiq.Soulchild: "Teachme"

Guy: "Let's Chill"

Changing Faces: "Stroke You Up"

Monifah: "Touch It"

Prince: "Get Off"

Tupac: "How Do You Want It"

Busta Rhymes Ft. Janet Jackson: "What's It Gonna Be?"

Petey Pablo: "Freek A Leek"

Chris Brown: "Poppin"

Patti LaBelle: "If Only You Knew"

Teena Marie: "Ooh La La La

Usher: "Nice & Slow"

And that's just a taste of over 150 songs in my real playlist.

Label Conscious: Recommendations

Every commercial or magazine ad that is aimed toward mothers or women comes with some sort of recommendation. Products made with babies and children in mind come with a pediatrician recommendation. Products about teeth come with dentist approvals. Even all of the cell phone companies all claim to be the fastest 4G network with the most coverage. How can that even be possible?

Don't Read Between The Lines

All Free and Clear comes with a label that says dermatologist recommended. This doesn't say which dermatologist recommends it. Is it a staff dermatologist? It also doesn't say what about the detergent is recommended? Is it the lack of dyes and perfumes that is recommended? There are dozens of detergents like that. Is it the brand itself? There are no specifics. Don't create them.

Tested And Approved

Durex condoms are tested for quality according to the packaging. What are the perimeters? What were the results. What standards of quality are in use? Tested does not mean approved. Even approvals are vague. The "meat" at Taco Bell is FDA approved. Knowing that the FDA Standard is 40% meat is enough to call a product "meat" you may think twice about the weight you give the FDA approvals.

Recommendations

What constitutes a recommendation? My pediatrician has a free sample basket. In it are a variety of lotions and baby washes. My pediatrician knows the parents of his patients love samples. When the sample vendors come in he lets them leave their samples. A week later he is simply asked if he would recommend that his patients take the samples. The answer is, "yes." He has never tried it or tested the products but would recommend parents who want the samples take the samples. Is this a recommendation?

Numbers Game

4 out of 5 dentists recommend Crest. 4 out of 5 also recommend Colgate. So which one is better? These statistics don't bring you any closer to figuring that out. There are a couple of ways to decipher this data. One way is to know only 5 dentists were interviewed by each company. Another is to refer to the "sample example" I gave above. A third way is to consider the loser. 4 out of 5 dentists chose Crest, over what? Read the fine print and you may find an uneven match-up that includes words like, "versus non-fluoride toothpaste". Well, duh. The real question is who was the 5th dentist that disagreed?


Don't buy a product based on claims from the company. Read the labels and do your product review research.

Break Up Playlist

• Forget You - C-Lo
• I Miss You - Klymaxx
• Send Me An Angel - Amanda Perez
• Cry Me A River - Justin Timberlake
• Who Knew - Pink
• With or Without You - U2
• Cry Me a River - Justin Timberlake
• Don't Speak - No Doubt
• Ex-Factor - Lauren Hill
• I Miss You - Incubus
  
• I Would've Loved You Anyway - Trisha Yearwood
• In the End - Linkin Park
• Goodbye Earl - Dixie Chicks
• Miss You Like Crazy - Natalie Cole
• My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion
• Not Goin' Cry - Mary J. Blige
• Please Remember - LeeAnn Rimes
• Tyrone - Erykah Badu
• You Oughta Know - Alanis Morrisette
• You Were Meant for Me - Jewel
• Hurts Like Hell - Aretha Franklin
• Wake Up Call - Maroon 5
• Nothing Compares 2 U - Prince
• Karma - Alicia Keys
• Tori Amos-- Precious Things
• Pat Benatar-- Love is a Battlefield
• Ben Folds Five-- Song For the Dumped
• Black Eyed Peas-- Shut Up
• Ray Charles-- Hit the Road Jack
• Sheryl Crow-- Anything But Down
• Ani DiFranco-- Outta Me, Onto You
• Elton John-- Love Lies Bleeding
• Evanescence-- Call Me When You're Sober
• Fleetwood Mac-- The Chain
• Fleetwood Mac-- Go Your Own Way
• J Geils Band-- Love Stinks
• Green Day-- Good Riddance
• Greg Kihn-- The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)
• Avril Lavigne-- So Much For My Happy Ending
• Pearl Jam-- Black
• Tom Petty-- You Got Lucky
• The Police-- Can't Stand Losing You
• REM--The One I Love
• The Beatles-- Yesterday
• Michelle Branch-- Goodbye to You
• Toni Braxtron-- Unbreak My Heart
• Coldplay-- The Scientist
• Neil Diamond-- Love On the Rocks
• Guns N Roses-- November Rain
• Thelma Houston-- Don't Leave Me This Way
• Carole King-- It's Too Late
• Barry Manilow-- Can't Smile Without You
• Sinead O'Connor-- Nothing Compares 2 U
• Righteous Brothers-- You've Lost that Loving Feeling
• Roxette-- It Must Have Been Love
• Roy Orbison-- Crying
• Elvis Presley-- Heartbreak Hotel
• U2-- With or Without You
• Usher-- Burn
• Wham!-- Careless Whisper
• Cher-- Believe
• Cher-- Strong Enough
• Christina Aguilera-- Fighter
• Destiny's Child-- Survivor
• Lara Fabian-- I Will Love Again
• Gloria Gaynor-- I Will Survive
• M People- Moving on Up
• Scandal-- Goodbye to You
• Nancy Sinatra-- These Boots are Made For Walkin'
• Rihanna-- Murderer
• Rihanna--Take A Bow
• Madonna--Take A Bow
• No Woman No cry--Bob Marley
• Back Off Bitch--Guns N Roses
• The More Boys I Meet--Carrie Underwood