Infotips » Baby Names

Yummy Mummy Tummies

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:56:03 +0000

5 Minutes a day = Sexy Abs by May

INTRO

After pregnancy and the birth of a child your abdominals and back, referred to in fitness industry as your core, can be left weak and susceptible to injury. A heavy pregnant belly can cause arching and strain on the lower back. Strengthen your core and focusing on proper posture will help you avoid injuries and transform the shape of your body. Using this Yummy Mummy Core workout you will feel results immediately. As a beginner give yourself a goal of completing 5 repetitions each side and work your way up to doing 3 sets of 12 repetitions of each exercise. Whether you do 1 or all 6 of the moves, congratulate yourself on becoming a healthier sexier you!

Always consult a physician before beginning any new exercise program. Your 6 week postpartum check up must be passed before starting this program. Always have a rectus abdominous check to eliminate any questions of abdominal splitting that may have occurred during pregnancy. If you feel pain or experience spotting at any time during this workout stop immediately and consult your physician.

Exercise Descriptions

1.Oblique crunches

These amazing crunches can be done with or without an exercise ball. Oblique crunches are great for shaping the waist. Position the small of your back on the ball and bend your knees slightly greater than a 90 degree angle. Lead the crunch with your abs, not you neck. Flex your abs drawing your navel towards your spine and slowly lift your left shoulder across towards your right knee. Hold for a count of two and return to start position. Switch sides and always focus on a slow controlled movement. While performing these exercises remember to always exhale on the execution and to continue breathing.

To do these exercises without a ball lie on a mat with your knees bent and feet flat on floor. Flex your ab muscles and lift your shoulders a couple inches off the mat, all the while focusing on maintaining a flat back on the mat.

2. Bicycle crunches

The movement of bicycle crunches helps to tighten the abs while working your whole core region and hips. Begin with your legs into your chest and using your abs lift your shoulders and neck a few inches off the ground. Drop your right leg slowly and bring it back to the starting position. Switch sides. Hold the crunch through the repetitions and you will feel the excellent workout for your abs. Pause and be proud of what you have already accomplished.

3. Oblique side raises

Roll over onto your side and get ready for a new favorite. Begin with your elbow directly under your shoulder at a 90 degree angle. Knees should be at a 45 degree angle. While exhaling, use your abs and lift your hips off the ground. Your spine and hip should be in a straight line with your legs. Do not over lift as this could jeopardize

your back. Hold for a count of two and release. Repeat and switch sides.

4. Plank

Prepare yourself for the ultimate core strengthener and full body isometric move. Begin as if you were to do a push up. On your exhalation, lift your body and with your abs, move into a straight position to hold for a count of 10, release. Remember to continue breathing and preserve that straight back by holding your abs in strongly. For a modification, instead of a straight arm, rest on your elbows at a 90 degree angle.

5. Kick Backs

This one is great for strengthening a weak postpartum back. Begin on your hands and knees. Hands under your shoulders knees under your hips. On your exhalation, lift your right hand and left leg simultaneously until they are parallel to your spine. Focus on maintaining a straight back. Hold for a count of two and return to the start position. Switch sides. A bonus feature of this move will be the awesome workout it gives your gluts at the same time.

6. Cat Stretch

It is very important to start and finish every workout with a good stretch because flexibility will also help you avoid injury. Begin on your hands and knees. Your spine should be in straight and neutral position. On your exhalation, slowly draw up your spine, suck in your belly and relax your head down. Inhale and return back to neutral, eyes relaxed and looking forward. Repeat motion in a slow controlled manor.

Allow yourself a couple of extra minutes to perform more stretches and focus on your breathing. This will help you to relax and get ready for the physical exertion of being a mother.

Don’t forget your lower abdominal wall! Training these muscles is extremely important to having a strong core and eliminate loss of bladder control after labour and pregnancy. To learn how to perform a Kegel exercise, practice the first time while urinating. Flex your lower abdominal muscles to stop the stream and then release. You have just targeted your lower abdominal wall. It is very important that you do not continue to do Kegels during urination as the starting and stopping can introduce bacteria into your system and cause infections.

Yummy Mummy Tip: Remember to do your Kegels daily by doing them while driving or washing dishes. Make 24 Kegels a day your goal. You’ll be happy you did the day you sneeze in public!

About The Author

Monie Miller is named the specialist for Pre and postnatal fitness in Canada. Yummy Mummy Lifestyle Ltd. offers their celebrated mom and baby fitness classes that focus on the individual needs of a mother and the life she leads. Visit www.yummymummys.ca to find out more about Miller and how to become a Yummy Mummy with the fitness craze that has changed the lives of mothers across the nation.

You Want to be a Stay-At-Home Parent

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:55:07 +0000

The subject of stay-at-home parenting is touchy, and emotionally tangled up in a maelstrom of emotion, advertising, society pressure, culture demands, and personal beliefs. When you have a mixture of that many ingredients swirling around, the result is likely to be a mess unless both parents are in agreement.
One resource for current stay-at-home and those who want more information go on the Internet to www.athomeparent.com. There are other sites out there, I happen to think this one is a good resource.
I’ll start by examining the reason why many people struggle with the decisions around one parent staying home with their children or both parents working and placing the child in daycare. I would like to point out that due to limitations on the size of this article there is much material and many factors that will not be covered here.
This list of statements showcases reasons both parents work today. Unfortunately, many parents face this kind of pressure and a hundred more after the birth of their first, second, third or even fourth child. How many of these can you agree with?

A. You come from a home where both parents work.
B. You want your child to have more material objects than you grew up with.
C. All of your friends with children are working.
D. Your spouse says you have to work to support the family.
E. Friends and family ask what you will do all day if you stay at home.

Being a parent is a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week job. You will always be on call for your child, ready to comfort, feed, clothe, praise, encourage and love every time your child needs you. While working these long hours, you will receive no paycheck, no health insurance benefits, and no office conversations. You will soon learn that deadlines are for doctor visits, play dates, cups of coffee with other stay-at-home parents, and after school activities.
Why do millions of otherwise perfectly normal, sane, career track minded women (or men because the number of stay-at-home dads is growing), the majority of whom are women, suddenly put the career on hold for years and take on a full time job like I described? Where is the sense in subjecting yourself to the endless hours of lost sleep, deprived personal time, and the emotional roller coaster ride of being an always-on-duty parent living with your child?
It could be that these people have decided that money can not buy the benefits they receive by being with their child. During the years before school, their child will learn to walk, to talk, to count, to read, hop, skip, jump and climb. This once helpless baby will stretch out and grow bigger, exploring the world at every step. A step a parent helped them take; a world the parent is showing them. Staying at home with your baby is committing yourself to raising a future adult.
Or, perhaps a couple has calculated how much it really costs to have both parents working and decided the money was not worth the hassle of working and emotional stress of leaving their child to be raised by somebody else. Have you sat down with a pencil and calculator to find out just how much money that second working spouse brings home?
Allow me to use Sandy (not her real name) as an example: She and her husband Paul have sat down to decide if it was economically feasible for her to stay home after the birth of their second child. They wrote out a list of expenses associated with her working. The major costs include:
1. Personal Appearance – gently used or brand new quality clothing was bought frequently to maintain a good image at the office, some required dry cleaning and then she had a need for makeup and beauty products she wouldn’t normally wear except to work
2. Transportation – a second vehicle requires payments, insurance premiums, license plates, taxes, the occasional repair and plenty of fuel
3. Food – Sandy often ate at the corner food shop just down from her work
4. Daycare – since Sandy and her husband were both working during the day, the baby would have to be placed with a daycare, their first child was already in school
5. Taxes – this was a major hit to Sandy’s paycheck

The surprising thing to Sandy was the cost of the little things. Morning

coffee, afternoon soda pop, a quick spin through a fast food joint to bring home supper, these and a dozen more ways to spend a dollar here and a dollar there added up.
When this typical middle class family deducted all the costs of having both spouses working, they were shocked to discover that Sandy was contributing only a third of her $14 an hour pre-tax earnings to the family. This amounted to only $4.5 an hour, or barely $36 a day to the family Spendable income. That amount calculates into $180 a week and $9000 a year.
Each family unit is different and you may decide that the money is worth the effort of leaving home to work everyday. There is no right and wrong answer as we traditionally think of right and wrong. Instead, I prefer to think of it as being a best and O.K. answer.
When thinking about adding $9000 a year to your family income, you must also consider the intangible costs for earning that money. Intangibles are the things that will cost you something, but are not measurable in terms of money.
Working parents miss most of the child’s firsts – first word, first step, first dirty diaper, first funny face, first four years. These things do not provide money, but they do give you sweet and kind memories to take with you through the troublesome teen years.
Being away from your child 40 – 50 hours a week and missing this kind of stuff is considered the emotional cost of being a working parent. When a child is at home with her mother or father, they will be learning about life from someone who loves them more than any outsider. Children are great imitators, and who can be a better role model than a parent?
Considering her career as a Customer Service Manager, Sandy knew she was topped out in both earnings and responsibility. Based on that, and her family’s finances, she decided to stay home when the baby was born. She and her husband worked up a Spending Plan and figured out areas where Sandy could decrease costs, like making home made meals and taking the time to find the best prices for things.

So assuming that you, as a parent who would like to stay home with your child, what steps should you take?
1. Take some serious time to talk with each other about this decision. Reducing your standard of living to fit within a single income can be difficult, and if both of you are not together on this, it will fail and the stress on your family could be catastrophic.
2. Plan what the two of you would like the future to be like. Write down your ideas, you know, live on one income, save for the future, pay off debt, enjoy being able to nurture your child at home during the early years, find a part-time job after your child goes to school. Write these plans on paper and hang them on your refrigerator door. Why the fridge? It is the only place in your house you are guaranteed to see them more than once a day.
3. If you have a time period of 2 – 4 months time before you will be ready to stop working, create a Spending Plan right away. This will allow you time to adjust to living on one income and make necessary adjustments to your spending levels such as cutting back on entertainment, or reducing monthly payments for little used services, etc.
4. The parent who will be staying home should prepare themselves for the change if they have been working. Start making contact with other stay-at-home parents, talk with your friends about your decision so they will not be giving your grief after the change occurs.
5. Keep clear communications open with your spouse, to make sure the two of you are in agreement.

Making the decision to leave the work force and stay home with your child can be daunting. If you prepare for it like you would for any other lifestyle change, this decision can work out well for everyone in your family.

About the Author

Roger Sorensen is a Financial Author and Speaker, and the editor of Money Basics, a monthly personal finance newsletter found online at www.brighterfutures.com. After filling in his own debt pit equal to 150% of his annual income, Roger has turned the experiance into Brighter Futures, a Financial Literacy company. “There is hope for you, no matter how large your debt load might be.”

You Might Be Pregnant If….

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:55:02 +0000

Your breasts are now twice their normal size.

One of the early trademarks of pregnancy are sensitive, sore breasts. This is caused by an increase in the level of hormones. However, this too will pass. Once your rising hormone levels have stabilized and your body adjusts, the tenderness will diminish. You should be feeling much better after the first trimester.

The monthly visitor has failed to visit.

This actually isnt one of the best signals that you may be pregnant. You may have some spotting due to implantation bleeding (although this is uncommon). Most women notice other symptoms before this one comes along. A pregnancy test is usually your best bet.

You suddenly crave apples and pretzels (or any other unusual food for that matter).

Many women claim to crave certain foods during pregnancy. Food aversions are also very common.
You may want to take a pregnancy test if your favorite food no longer lingers for your attention.

Your mornings are often spent over the toilet bowl (morning sickness strikes again).

Most women dont experience morning sickness until about a month after conception. These peak around 8 to 10 weeks into your pregnancy and then level off in the second trimester. A lucky few escape it

completely.

Exhaustion sets in after a normal day at work

The increased hormone levels and changes in your body can make you exhausted. Your energy should increase in the second trimester.

Aromas that are 15 feet away now seem to be invading your space.

Many newly pregnant women experience increased sensitivity to odors. This may be a side effect of increasing levels of estrogen in your body.

You sprint to the bathroom every five minutes.

#1 proof! Home pregnancy test declares that “Yes, you are pregnant.” Despite any
previous threats.

In spite of all of this, often when women are asked to name what the most empowering moment of their lives was, the most common answer is giving birth.

About the Author: Alli Ross is the webmaster at the Baby Names Box – http://www.babynamebox.com – Where you can explore thousands of unique and unusual baby names. Read articles on parenting, family, home and gardening. Be sure to say hi to GranMamma!

Source: www.isnare.com

You Can Have It All (Just Not At The Same Time)

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:54:06 +0000

I was glancing at a local paper recently when an ad for a nearby health club caught my attention. There was a picture of an attractive, well-dressed woman who appeared to be pregnant. The ad started off by giving her first name and followed with a list of the essential elements of her life, including the fact that she has been married for 12 years, has 2 kids (with another on the way) and owns her own business. The message of the ad was that not only does she take care of her family, but she also makes time for herself by dropping her kids off at the health club’s kiddie room so she can Aqua-cise on a regular basis and treats herself to a massage at the club’s spa twice a month.
There was a time, not so long ago, that seeing that health club ad would have evoked in me a mixture of envy, insecurity and guilt. Those advertisements and articles used to make me feel, as I’m sure they do many women, that there was something wrong with me. As a professional woman with a law degree, a good job, stable marriage and a beautiful daughter, why did I feel miserable most of the time? Why did other women seem to juggle it all so effortlessly while I felt that the minute I stepped out of bed every morning I was in a race to beat the clock, a race which wouldn’t end until close to 18 hours later?
It wasn’t until I had a second child and slowed down for a while after her birth that I was able to recognize and come to terms with what I had been feeling for so long. I was also able to take a look around and what I saw was that the majority of women in this country seem to be feeling the same things I had. I heard and saw the same disillusionment from ordinary women such as myself and it didn’t seem to matter whether they had professional degrees or not. The hair colorist seemed to be just as disillusioned as the medical doctor. I also began to notice more articles about women choosing to leave the workplace to raise their children. I even read recent popular works of fiction in which the use of nannies and the struggle by one or more female characters to “have it all” was not portrayed as something to be desired.
It seems that a new word has even been coined to describe this phenomenon-it’s called “sequencing”. To my understanding, it’s supposed to convey the notion that at certain points in their lifetime women need, or want, to concentrate on different aspects of their lives and that once children enter the picture women should be able to step away from the workplace for however long they deem necessary in order to concentrate on their children and families. I knew that there must really be some mighty strong winds of change in the air when I heard a medical student state on a nationally syndicated program that once she was married her family and children would come first and that she did not intend on being a working mother. She went on to say that she saw her own mother do it and was placed in day care herself from the time she was very young and that she did not want to raise her own children in that way. She said that she felt so strongly about it that if she were to get married while she was still in medical school that she would drop out since it would be useless to pursue a medical degree if she was that close to starting a family.
I also read the now often cited piece by Lisa Belkin in the New York Times about all those professional women “opting out” of their careers to be stay at home moms. But I also saw many non-professional women doing the same thing. I think the article in the Times was only touching the tip of the iceberg. Yes, well-educated, professional women are giving up their careers to raise families, but so are women without advanced degrees. I think that this trend toward putting aside work to concentrate on family is about women in general in this country, not just about one subcategory of women.
According to the 2000 census, the number of children being cared for by stay at home moms has increased nearly 13 percent in less then a decade. Two-thirds of mothers aged 25 to 44 now work less then 40 hours a week. Fifty-five percent of women with infants were in the labor force in June 2000 (the most recent data), compared with 59 percent just two years earlier. That was the first drop in that number in a full quarter century. And as for the previously mentioned professional women, between a quarter and a third are out of the work force.
My informal education about the topic seemed to indicate to me that contrary to what women in their 30s had all been raised to expect, it was nearly impossible to have a career, a contented marriage, children and time for yourself all at the same time. Not in a 24 hour day anyway. I still don’t know how those supposed “superwomen” that I mentioned in the beginning of the article do it, but I am certain that they are in a very small majority. And I definitely know that I no longer feel either envious, insecure or guilty. As a matter of fact, the first word that comes to mind when I see those ads and articles nowadays is pity. No matter how easy those women make it look, no one can keep all those balls in the air for very long before getting very, very tired. Not even Superwoman.
It also seems that public opinion supports the novel idea of people actually raising their own children. A Gallup survey last year found that only 13 percent of the respondents thought that the ideal family situation was for both parents to work full time outside the home. Forty-one percent believed the ideal situation was for one parent to work full time while the other worked either part time or at home. And another forty-one percent felt that one parent should stay at home solely to raise the children while the other parent worked to support the family. Surprisingly, the Department of Labor ranks full-time homemakers as the largest single job category in the country. And the numbers are probably even larger then we know, since mothers who do any paid work at all out of their home, even if just for a few hours a week, aren’t even considered full-time homemakers by the government, even if that’s how they categorize themselves.
Before going any further, let me say that I wholeheartedly believe in all the feminist principles and ideals that women fought so long and hard to achieve. I think that women absolutely should be free to pursue whatever path they choose and be able to do so without being pigeonholed by their gender. However, I also think that women for a long time felt that they had to be exactly like men to be considered equals with them. After the feminist movement, women entered the corporate world and began to compete on a man’s playing field. For decades now, women have been attempting to compete, achieve and succeed in a man’s world. But it seems that we women have forgotten that we are very different from men in some very real and important ways. But that in no way makes us less equal. While men and women are very different, those differences, on the whole, are complementary. I think that for too long now women have been trying to push their femininity to the background in order to compete in a man’s world. Isn’t it time we simply acknowledge the very real differences between the sexes and be proud of them? Women shouldn’t have to be carbon copies of men in order to gain equality. Different doesn’t mean better or worse-it just means different.
Consider a rather thought provoking theory propounded by the authors Coney & Mackey in their 1998

article “Cultural Evolution & Gender Roles: Advantage…Patriarchy.” In it, they state that evolution is not in favor of females overtaking the work force. They note in their study that across the world the female is expected to be the primary caretaker. This notion arose out of the fact that in the past “if a job or task interfered with mothering, then that task was given to men.” This would explain why women are genetically programmed to be caretakers. Coney & Mackey go on to establish that the expansion of opportunities, both in education and other areas, for women is correlated with a reduction in fertility in that cultural group. Consequently, they conclude that groups which expect and emphasize women to take on the mother role will eventually replace other societies. That’s a pretty powerful theory, but their hypothesis is based on solid research and data.
I also know that there are plenty of examples out there of men raising children and same sex partners adopting children and having families of their own and I have no doubt that they do an excellent job of caring for those children. I simply think that as a society maybe it is finally time for us to acknowledge that women on the whole do tend to have an inherent caretaker instinct that does not exist, at least not in the same way, in men. I mean, from the beginning of time women and men have just been put together differently, both in a physical and mental/emotional sense. Even in our earliest days, men were the hunters and gatherers and women were the ones who did the nurturing. I don’t think it was an accident that society, on the whole, tended to organize itself around the family as the central unit with the male partner providing for the family in an economic sense and the female partner tending to care for the home and family in the domestic sense.
Again, I am not trying to perpetuate stereotypes, but simply trying to acknowledge the very real reason that women today feel torn between their families and work lives in a way that very few men do. Instead of demanding equality on our own terms it seems to me that women have demanded equality on men’s terms.. No wonder women now feel such conflict in their lives. They are attempting on one hand to do everything a man has traditionally done and at the same time they cannot give up the real sense of obligation they often feel to be the nurturer and caretaker of their home and family. So they end up taking on both roles and soon realize that there is not enough time in the day to do both. And when you add children to that mix, the conflict becomes even more apparent.
Men, on the other hand, don’t face the same sort of conflict in their lives since they have never, as a group, attempted to take on two roles at the same time. Sure, there was a time when men were encouraged to “get in touch with their feminine side” and there is no doubt that as a result of the feminist movement men are much more hands on around the house and with the kids then they once were, but men have never felt the need to take on the caretaker role in order to prove themselves entitled to anything.
With women, however, it’s a different story. We go into the office and work hard at showing the corporate world qualities that are traditionally considered masculine in nature such as competitiveness and winning at all costs and then have to do a 180 degree turn at the end of the workday when we go home to our families who are expecting to see a wife and mother walk through the door and fix a tasty, nutritious and well-balanced dinner.
Let’s face it, very few men have qualms about using slice and bake cookie dough for their child’s annual school bake sale or being too overscheduled to make every dance recital, school play or PTA meeting. When a woman frets about these things her husband will tell her not to worry, no one could possibly expect a woman with a full time job to worry about baking home made cookies or attending every school function that’s scheduled smack in the middle of the day. What the men don’t get is that WOMEN do expect it. As a matter of fact, working women expect it of themselves more then anyone else. We feel guilty because we see those domestic functions as being our area of expertise and god help any husband who innocently suggests that he step in to help out with one of these tasks. Women may complain that they need more help or support from their husbands, but they also don’t want any of the traditional job responsibilities that go with the “mommy” title being appropriated by them either.
I made the decision to be a stay at home mom after my second daughter was born. Once I committed to the decision I felt like the weight of the world had suddenly been lifted from my shoulders. For a short while, I felt like I was betraying the entire feminist movement, which in earlier days I had quite vocally supported. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that more then anything else, I finally felt like I was being true to myself. And isn’t that what the real goal of the feminist movement was all about? I don’t need to prove to myself or any man that I can earn a paycheck and “make it” in a man’s world. I’ve already “made it” in my own world. I’m surprisingly content being the domestic caretaker of my family. I revel in trying new recipes and doing all those other domestic tasks that I never had time for before I made my decision to be a full time mom. I will even admit to having spent hours making cranberry and popcorn garland for the family Christmas tree this past holiday season, a task which I previously wouldn’t have even considered given my former notorious lack of spare time. But you know what? I’m not ashamed of that one little bit. And you know what else? When I fall into bed every night absolutely exhausted from taking care of my two toddlers, at least I know that I have spent my day making a difference in their lives, no matter how insignificant that day’s activities may have been. When I worked outside the home and fell into bed exhausted every night I felt miserable because I had spent my day doing a variety of completely mind numbing activities for a faceless corporate entity and working my tail off to put a couple more million into some CEO’s pocket whose name I can honestly say I don’t even recall.
I’m not trying to make women who work outside the home feel guilty or ashamed for their choices either. I am perfectly aware of the harsh realities which dictate some family situations. All I’m trying to say is that I think women have painted themselves into a corner. We can be our husband’s equals without having to live in their world. Women should learn how to celebrate and be proud of the differences between the sexes. So go ahead and be that domestic goddess if that’s what you truly want and don’t let anyone make you feel anything less then proud for having the courage to live the life you want! I absolutely love this quote from an unidentified woman who was interviewed for a book entitled “And What Do You Do? When Women Choose to Stay Home”. She said that her favorite answer to ” And what do you do?” was “I’m changing the world………one child at a time.” We’ve come a long way, baby!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Hayhurst is a freelance writer who specializes in writing articles about family and womens issues as well as fiction novels. The author can be contacted via email at ahyhrst12@aol.com for further information.

Your Baby's Nursery – What You Will Need

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:53:01 +0000

As an expectant mother, you are full of excitement and anticipation for the arrival of your little baby. You are picking out names, attending baby showers, and learning all there is to know about being a mother. One good and productive way to channel some of this excitement is to prepare the nursery in advance. Some items you will need are listed below.

Furniture
When choosing furniture, you will want to think about items that can grow up with your baby. You will need a crib and mattress along with sheets, a mattress cover, crib bumpers, and a mobile to hang from the crib to keep your baby entertained. If your room is large enough, you may want to get a changing table with a diaper pail nearby. The baby bathtubs are very useful as is a high chair, bouncer seat, stroller, and play pen. You will also need a car seat, and most

mothers feel better using a baby monitor.

Clothing
For outfitting your little new born, you need a take home outfit, receiving blankets, socks or booties, sleepers, various other clothing pieces, and mitts to keep the baby from scratching itself.

Basic Necessities
Among the items you will need to care for your baby include diapers, baby wipes, diaper rash ointment, diaper bag, baby shampoo, and baby body wash.

In addition to the things listed above, there are many, many more items available to make your life with a baby easier.

Words of Wisdom for Single Parents

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:52:01 +0000

The cost of being a parent and raising a child in todays world is constantly increasing. The risk of your child becoming involved in problem behaviour is also greater. Parents must work together as a team to ensure the brightest future for their children. But what if there is no team. No other person to rely upon. This is what millions of single parents deal with everyday. But it is not only the parent who sees this as a gloomy situation. Children are quite often left thinking that they are the reason for a separation or divorce. It is the child who must attend father and son day at school without a dad. They have to grow up with all the stigma attached to coming from a “broken home”. These are just a few of the many potential problems that a single parents household are faced with. This article is aimed at providing single parents with some strategies for raising a good child despite what other people may say.

Concentrate on the positives

Although it may be impossible to see at first, there are some positives for single parents. The main one being less fighting, bickering and tension around the house. This will benefit your child in the long run as it becomes a more child friendly environment. Try to see your situation as a new found freedom and feeling of independence.

Develop a new relationship with your child

A child must obviously be comforted at such a time, but also made to see that you are the boss. Do not let your child think that because there is now only one parent around, they can do whatever they please. Children need rules and routine, regardless of how many parents are around.

Ask for help if you need it

Suddenly single parents will probably find that their workload doubles or triples at first. If your children are old enough, be sure to set them some chores around the house each day to take the pressure off yourself a little. Speak to other parents as much as you can. You will be surprised how often they will be happy to help out. It may just be taking your child to the movies or to a sports game on a Saturday morning, but every little bit helps. Above all, dont feel as though you have to do absolutely everything on your own.

Do not use your children for emotional support

Children need to have fun, play with their friends and enjoy their youth. Do not become

overly possessive of your child or look to them for emotional support. This quite often leads to the child feeling as overwhelmed as you are. Although you may not be ready for another romantic relationship, try to talk to other adults about your emotions.

Kids react best to routine

In order to create a stable household envirnonment with children, their must be rules and routine. Simple things like having dinner at the same time each night, bed time, homework time etc… If you can provide a schedule for them, they will feel a sense of security. Of course, the correct dosage of attention and affection will also provide and sustain a nuturing environment, but a combination of the two will always work best.

Dont forget about you

For single parents with a house full of kids and only one parent to do all the work and all the worrying, it may be easy to forget about ones self. It is crutial to the well-being of your children, that you stay healthy. If you feel run down, ask another parent or relative to mind the kids for a night or two. Try to remember the things you enjoy doing and dedicate a little bit of your time to do these things. The way a parent feels is quite often reflected in a child. If you are stressed out all the time, then this may directly or indirectly affect your child. So, try to stay calm around the kids when you can. Take a deep breath, or wait until the kids are out of the car before you start screaming!

Try to remember that it is all about quality not quantity. There are many two parnet households out their that are doing a much worse job than yourself. Just beacause a parent finds themsleves on their own, doesnt mean that things wont work out. Remember, not just anyone can run a house, raise kids and do a thousand other things all at once. Give yourself a pat on the back once in a while. You have a lot to be proud of. Best of luck to you!

Article written by Sarah Mitchell of NamesToBe.com. Article free for reprint as long as this info box is present and all hyperlinks remain active.

Baby names and meanings at http://www.namestobe.com.

Single parenting at http://www.namestobe.com/singleparenting.html.

Women's Intuition

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:51:02 +0000

WOMEN’S INTUITION:

The propaganda against the Jews may have originally been fomented by the Benjaminites who had been thrown out of the Holy Land by the people of Israel. The House of Judah or Merovingians had their Phoenician (Hyksos) kin-folks take these elite overlords to Arcadia in Greece and they went many other places where their trading empires were already established after that.

The Golden Bough is a central resource for any student of religion and magic. In it we see Plutarch and other scholars were convinced that the bulk of the eminent male gods of the Mediterranean were imitations of Osiris and the original colonizers of Egypt. Apollo, Dionysius and the rest of them also started to have red-headed people offerings at the graves of Osiris and these gods, at frequent rituals. I believe this reflects the growth in colonial independence and the willingness of various colonies to stand up to the Hyksos (Phoenician Kelts) ‘foreigners’. It also leads to a lot of Red Heads going back to places like Ireland. The increasing fortifications and indoor Temples also were ramping up as the Druidic influence became lessened and regional priesthoods sought greater power.

Then there came the desire for man to proclaim himself Divine while still alive. Many scholars say Alexander was the first to do this but I see Akhenaton/Nefertiti/Moses as a single person at one point in time (a possibility supported by Gardner and the actual bodies in the sarcophagi) who clearly had such an ego. It is therefore my belief that most nations are a result of ego and not a desire to improve government as we are often told with great certainty. Those who tell us government has been improved are paid by government as part of the trickle down that flows from sovereign nations rather than personal growth and empowerment of people. Who really benefits from borders and secret service agencies or war? Yes, this is an over-simplification.

One of the purposes of the Dionyistic or other religious cults was sexual gratification and some may have grown soulfully through that process. The Bacchanals were probably into the Tantric sexual system and we can assume there were many who never really had the right motives just as is true today with the Thelemics like Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard. There is a lot of evidence in Fraser’s great book that deals with prostitution enforced to benefit the coffers of the Temple and we can be sure some of the priests enjoyed the opportunities at no cost. It is such a sickening program and one might wonder how concubinage was allowed in the Catholic Church until recently, given that they were also supposed to be celibate. My God! What a farce, and they have the audacity to Inquisition others or proclaim certain groups as heretics!

There is a lot to be learned through sexual union; and Tantrism or Wicca with their ‘working-partners’ can provide great insight. Kundalini and Bhakti are very spiritual uses of sexual and chakric energy. There are many Neolithic Libraries or stelae and bas-reliefs that show various sexual or Sutra-type positions. There can be no question that people have learned through these human experiences for as long as man has existed if not before. You do not need to be literate to become a ’sensitive’ or adept seer. Even as women were made slaves or harem baby-factory chattel the experiences of sex still brought great understanding and wisdom to women. But we suffer a repression of such potentials to this very day.

Some propagandists of the time of Christ and the Gospels, which were written 30 to 70 years after his death, would have us believe Mary was a prostitute and that Jesus was the Dark Prince because he associated with her and drank fermented grape. As I have pointed out, the idea that Jesus had a co-equal mortal mate is problematical to the proposition that he is ‘the only begotten’ and it is even more divergent from Augustine’s creation of the ‘Original Sin’ with women as ‘the harbingers’ thereof. There are many Divinely Inspired authors in this tacky propaganda scenario. Jerome and the Vulgate, Philo the Jew, Josephus, and Paul, just to name a few. I prefer the anti-Semite Origen or Clement who

refused to be bought by all the power this deceit brought to the newly burgeoning plagiarization fomented by Rome. The Dead Sea Scrolls show us a leather scriptural document attributed to Abraham. Such an old document would have impressed the impressionable who would not have known it was a fake. In the science of today it is carbon-dated to make it clear this was just another fraud.

In a more speculative vein we have the Rennes-le-Chateau artwork that shows Jesus in PLAID swaddling clothes. There is a great deal about the natural pentagram that the Pyrenees form in this area that would make a whole book on its own. Nostradamus was born near here and there was a Druidic University in very early times. Tartessus and the Phocaeans of Massalia and archaeology including mines off the coast of present day Marseilles, would have to be considered. We will only touch upon these things including the pentagon-dodecahedron but the Earth Energy Grid that is so important in the evaluation of the ancients and their use of the Harmonic. The Harmonic is a vital issue we must consider quite fully.

The Cathars and the Templars as well as the treasure(s) of Solomon and the Phoenician drug trade, that may be part of why the present Marseilles still plays an important part in this enterprise; joins with the ‘nuraghi’ and the Shardana or Legurians who are all Kelts in the Phoenician Brotherhood. Rennes-le-Chateau is important to Mary and the family of Jesus as anyone who has read anything about it will know. In fact one can wonder about the Magdalenian culture and the part that the Basque play in the route that existed via island hopping from the Bay of Biscay to Bimini before the Straits of Gibraltar formed. It is a very ancient place of human culture and there are archaeologic proofs of homes here going back to almost 500,000 years ago.

I have seen a picture and read about bagpipes on the Great Pyramid from its early construction days. The Egyptians never made or played these eerie instruments of my forbears. Given that there are no evidences of Cheops except a cartouche in the time of reconstruction crews, and MacDari’s linguistics about Cheops being a reversal of the Irish (which of their languages and scripts I do not know) for ’spirit’ (Spoehc), I think these bagpipes are meaningful. I think the Giza Pyramids and the funerary stories of the Pharaoh’s were a fabrication by later people who knew little about their real purpose and the knowledge required to build them. Certainly there is ample proof that ego and leaders often seek such immortal monuments to associate themselves with; and why are there no human remains in these Pyramids? The lid of the supposed sarcophagus isn’t even there. This bed situated in the King’s Chamber, as it is called, has 1/150th of an inch fit and tolerances. This could not be done without ultrasonic drills or some very advanced technology. Such technology is not likely given to ‘hunters and gatherers’ such as the Egyptians were. But, I do not believe it was an alien influence in any way.

You may have seen the movie WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF yet not remember anything she wrote, so here is a sample of her great insight on nations.

“Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‘our’ country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect myself or my country, ‘For’, the outsider will say, ‘in fact, as a woman, I have no country, As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.’ And if, when reason has had its say, still some obstinate emotion remains, some love of England dropped into a child’s ear by the cawing of rooks in an elm tree, by the splash of waves on a beach, or by English voices murmuring nursery rhymes, this drop of pure, if irrational, emotion she will serve her to give to England first what she desires of peace and freedom for the whole world.” (3)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Please visit World-Mysteries.com for more of my work.

Women Are More Powerful

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:50:04 +0000

WOMEN ARE MORE POWERFUL

Thought forms, biological ability to endure pain and a lot of other reasons make women more the cause of man’s insecurities than he would like to admit.

This article will focus on the psychic nurturing side of women that the vernacular lingo calls ‘women’s intuition’.In the early first millennium B.C. when writing was made popular by the Phoenicians giving an alphabet to her Greek and other trading colonies there was already a vengeful nature to the relations between man and his ’sister’. Misogynists like Hesiod were the stars of the lyric stage. It would be interesting to speculate about the female superiority in personal combat as part of the reason for this now that archaeology has proven a great deal of the Amazon legend is real. Women don’t faint like the weaker sex when they lose blood. Their lighter bodies and more body fat when fit, allowed for endurance of themselves and their horses that no average man could equal. Clearly if women were shorter among the Kelts who grew to seven feet tall, then the horses would appreciate a six foot tall rider. These things would have been paramount when tanks and airplanes weren’t in use.

Could Hesiod have been recording the dangers of women based on years of Scythian domination? This would be counter to the compassionate qualities of women but it is possible they had to do this in order not to have done to them what was occurring in other parts of the Mediterranean. The Scythians can be shown as part of the Druidic pan-tribal council of six king-bairds in the pre-Christian era. In fact this Hyperborean, Thulean and Scythian legend is all about the same ancient League of Nations. The words all mean ‘northerner’. But the Amazons made the men serve them in degrading ways and though some scholars think the Dryads are the originators of the Druidic or Bardic Tradition I believe it was not a matriarchy. So how did the Amazons act so bodacious in the midst of the Scythians?

It is purely speculative to go much further than saying the Scythians had used these shock troops of dedicated warriors; and the warriors had demanded more respect than other male tribal elders were willing to give them. How long they maintained their dominion is not known to me, but it seems reasonable to suggest that it was a thousand years or more while the rest of the Mediterranean was engaged in forcing women into a position of mere chattel and worse. The word bodacious is derived from the dying embers of this culture in the acts of Queen Boadicaea as she burned London during Roman times.

In many classical civilizations of the second millennium B.C. leading up to the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D., women were feared for their psychic power. The program of “women as the harbingers of the ‘Original Sin’” was championed by St. Augustine or Augustine of Hippo; I get confused when they all honour each other by using the same name. Anyway he wrote his deviate designs in his own book ‘Confessions’ that the American Psychoanalytical Association had a field day with. The use of the word ’sinister’ is instructive in our quest to understand the certain uncertainties that all true knowledge of the soul will obtain. It is quite likely the Amazons were ambidextrous in training; although there is proof many had to cut one breast off in order to shoot the bow and arrow most efficiently.

I think they were creative psychically endowed women who many feminists today (including liberationists like me) would love to see raised to the level of role-models. The Bacchanals or Dianistic cults also saw a certain female adaptation to the gender issues. One need look only at the position of women within any given culture to extrapolate its ability to co-exist with other cultures. The more narrowly defined a womans role is within a culture the more likely it is that culture will also try to discriminate against other eco-systems and the beings who populate it.

The Council of Carthage in 397 A.D. was the formalization of the diminishment of women to second class, in the Roman Church which was about to expand when the Empire was deemed unnecessary. These historic facts are yet to be fully fleshed out and may never hit the mainstream of society that is averse to sex, religion and politics or the discussion thereof. There were still strong opponents to the Romish plot against women and the soul of mankind long after the Council of Carthage. Celtic Christianity spread by the monastic orders such as Iona to far away islands named after their Irish homeland existed into the Eighth century. Antioch and Acre as well as heretical groups like Arianism continued to keep a separate attitude within Christianity until the present day. But the 6th Century is regarded as the period when Rome became ascendant. There were colonies established throughout the world by conscientious objectors or those who came under ever increasing Inquisitorial control or oppression.

One of them was Rhoda. This site saw top scholars do the excavations in 1929 and thereabouts. The tablets found do mention issues with mingling or marrying Toltecs. I think it was a Jewish community that tried to keep its religion pure through controls. The Toltecs are members of the Druidic Brotherhood. Could Rhoda have been a female in the heritage of the Phoenician founder of Carthage named Dido that top experts now can confirm did found Carthage in 814 B.C.? It is interesting that the Bogomils are associated with the remnants of the Cathars lead by the great female general Esclaramonde du Foix who I think we all could learn a lot more about.

I love to think about Hypatia of Alexandria and why she scared the intelligentsia of the Catholics in Alexandria around the time of the Council of Carthage too. But you will hear very little about these great women. Why was knowledge so fearful to this Church of MEN? Certainly the Balkans today shows few signs of the Bogomil internationalism of the time of Esclaramonde; but after seven centuries of oppression it is no small wonder that knowledge is lost in places like Ireland and the Ukraine or Thracia.

The Hemispheres of the Brain – Learning from ‘Within’ Neurophysiology has contributed the left-right brain modality that was always understood by ‘dualistic’ observers such as the Taoist ‘Yin and Yang’. Tantrism is just one of the many sutras or disciplines that will teach the things women and men can soulfully acquire. The greatest adept I met was a developer of a mountain climbing sutra. You would not believe the things she taught me do exist. People on the street have the impression that all things other than Christianity are some kind of weird cult just because certain deviates like Crowley have abused them or their country of origin is in turmoil. There is a need to understand each other in these countries to be sure.

What can be more deviate than what the Catholics have admitted to when the Pope asked for “forgiveness and renewal” in the bi-millennium period of his great faith. A great deal more than just the Cathar genocide has yet to be admitted. I have developed a good case for the Catholic use of the Plague as a bio-weapon against Europeans and Indians. I even have found a quote from Churchill that confirms this; which we will see in other articles or chapters. Sainted Catholic Bishops and pompous asses like Clement had a role in seeing Hypatia torn limb from body, by an angry mob just as the Catholic (and their partners the Anglicans) were blamed for the genocide in Rwanda by a recent International Commission. Those who are ‘true believers’ in this ghastly cult will see karma has truth beyond mere personal acts such as suckling at the spigot of the table washings left by greedy power-mongers.

There is no proof man is innately created as such a negative animal. No other beast is so highly organized in its crime. Yet they are often found to not even have to pay taxes! I agree with those who say they’ll believe the Churchians when they have a day care center in the Vatican and a woman Pope. Neurophysiology has contributed the left-right brain reality of our physical make up. It also includes a separation of the hemispheres that differs between men and women. Some 80% of women have a larger separation above the Corpus Collosum and all important Pineal Gland or Third Eye. These are the women most innately attuned to the spiritual reality now being explored (as in the Chaos Science of 13,000 years ago) by the Quantum Many Worlds Interpretation of Physics. Of course there are some men in the same kind of 20% proportion who get to be so ’sinister’ or nurturing and what some regard as passive even though it requires more courage to be giving.

The books dealing with these practical and real opportunities are varied. Martin Mull is an actor/comedian and creative genius that such a profession requires. His book is simple and straightforward with drawing exercises. The Wonder Child by Peter Lorie and other scientists of the mind is a rediscovery of beauty once fostered in the ancient extended family. Joy can come by learning from the baby rather than trying to make it in your own imprinted image. There is more wisdom in the freedom of ‘following your Bliss’ than most linear logically oriented education imagines. Over 350,000 neural connections can be utilized but about half that many become atrophied as we ‘learn’ to reject the spiritual reality. There are at least six very different learning styles and geometric combinations thereof. The linear logical approach that has been emphasized since macho man took control or some of the needs associated with industrial age sweat shops including time clocks are less mutable to the soul and its purpose, collective and otherwise.

Many social ‘needs’ are not healthy for the whole person addressed in the Mayan saying “Do not put yourself in front of yourself”. The creative spatial insights afford greater productive applications of the soul and ‘women’s intuition’. Jungian archetypes or akashic records contained in what the Director of the Human Genome Project calls our “history book” will provide exciting continuing confirmation of ancient knowledge. It can lead to an illumination called Divine Inspiration or direct cognition. Dyslexics like Einstein or Spielberg are good examples of the potential we all can work to develop.

The Bardic Institute has a homepage of the educationally emancipating World Wide Web that includes a quote from Einstein that deals with these potentials.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

The Catholic Encyclopedia would have its readers believe Yoga is translated as ‘yoke’. That is a joke they must have some fun fomenting. It means ‘union’ and focuses on the soul! Through the ‘union’ or personal knowledge of how thought energy passes between the hemispheres of the brain man becomes wholistically more able to cope and ‘cognize’ what V. Hugo called “the waves of the marvelous

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
You can find more of my work as a guest writer at World-Mysteries.com.

Womens Health – Pregnancy Nutrition Is For All Women Of Child Bearing Age

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:49:03 +0000

During pregnancy your nutrition needs are going to increase. Even before becoming pregnant it is a good idea to make every effort to start eating healthy and taking a women’s multivitamin. A prenatal multivitamin is a better choice during pregnancy.

Let’s start with the recommended daily intake of food during pregnancy.

DURING PREGNANCY :

7 or more Fruits and Vegetables (3 fruits/4 vegetables)
Fruits and Vegetables high in vitamin C are the best. These include strawberries, melons, oranges, papaya, tomatoes, peppers, greens, and broccoli.

9 or more Whole Grain Products
A fortified breakfast cereal containing iron and folic acid is the best way to start each day. Enriched bread, rice, pasta, and any whole grain product are your other choices.

4 or more dairy products
Low-fat milk or non-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese are the obvious choices.

60 grams of protein (two or more 2-3 ounce portions of lean meat)
Other sources of protein include eggs, nuts, dried beans, and peas. Do not eat undercooked or uncooked meat or fish. (NO SUSHI) Do not eat deli luncheon meats

PREGNANCY NUTRITION FACTS

Fish
Some fish are higher in mercury content than others. Mercury can cause problems with your growing baby’s brain and nervous system. Fish to avoid completely: sharkswordfishking mackerelgolden snapper white snapper

Fish eating limitations: Limit your intake of fish to 12 ounces a weekLimit your intake of white tuna or tuna steak to 6 ounces a week Safest fish to eat:shrimpsalmoncatfish light tuna

Weight

Calorie intake should only be increased by 300 a day during pregnancy for the average woman.Weight gain should be around 28-40 pounds for women that are underweight at pregnancy.Women that are overweight at pregnancy should gain only 15-25 pounds.Weight gain should be around 2-4 pounds the first trimester and 3-4 pounds a month for the remaining time.Excess weight gain is hard to lose after pregnancy because your body’s fat increases up to one third during pregnancy.Breast feeding burns 500 or more calories per day making it easier to lose weight.Consult your health care provider for your specific healthy weight gain.

Vitamins and Minerals

Check the RDA chart for your needs during pregnancy.

Folic Acid is a special concern because a deficiency can lead to neural tube birth defects. Your multivitamin should contain 400 mcg of folic acid. Birth defects happen before you even know you’re pregnant so always take a multivitamin with folic acid during child bearing age.

Vitamin C taken in doses over 500 mg/d can lead to your baby being born dependent on large quantities of vitamin C.

Iron is also of special concern because the average American diet does not provide enough iron during pregnancy. If your prenatal multivitamin does not contain enough iron your doctor will prescribe an additional supplement. Iron is

needed for you and the baby to have healthy teeth, bones, and blood.

Water is often overlooked during pregnancy but it is vital for you and your baby. It carries the nutrients from your body to the baby and it helps prevent constipation, hemorrhoids, swelling and urinary tract infection. A minimum of 6 eight ounce glasses a day is required. Juice can count toward your 6 glasses but be careful of the added calories. Any drink containing caffeine actually reduces the fluid in your body and cannot count towards your 6 glasses.

Calcium is needed by you and the baby for strong teeth and bones. During pregnancy you need 1,000 mg/d and 1,300 mg/d if you are less than 18 years old.

Alcohol Consumption

There is no safe time or amount of alcohol to consume during pregnancy. No alcohol is the only way to insure the health of your baby. Alcohol you drink goes to your baby through the umbilical cord. Alcohol affects the baby’s growth, the baby’s brain, and can cause birth defects. These effects will remain with your unborn child for his/her entire life. FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders) is the name given to anyone affected by their mother’s alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Problems learning, memory retention, and hearing are just a few things that alcohol can do to your child.

Caffeine

Caffeine in large quantities can lead to low weight babies. It also reduces the amount of vital water in your body. Although not yet proven, some studies suggest that it may harm the fetus. While not as dangerous as alcohol it should still be avoided.

Diabetics

Diabetics can have perfectly normal babies like every other woman. There are a just a few things you need to be careful of.

1. Keep your blood sugar under control for a minimum of 3 months before becoming pregnant.

2. Make sure you get enough folic acid at all times during your child bearing years (400 mcg/d).

3. Don’t let your blood sugar get too high during pregnancy. This can lead to birth defects or your baby having blood sugar level problems

Ways To Control Morning Sickness

*Eat 6 small meals instead of 3 large ones
*Don’t go without eating for long periods of time
*Don’t drink fluids with your meals
*Don’t eat greasy, spicy, or fried foods
*Avoid unpleasant smells
*Don’t get over tired

About the Author: Hello, my name is Frank Keller and I am the owner of the Women’s Health Supplements website. Don’t be fooled by the name, we are not another vitamin retailer. From artificial sweeteners and bottled water to pregnancy nutrition every word is written to help you make an informed decision. Please visit us at http://www.womens-health-supplements.net

Source: www.isnare.com

Will Your Children Take a One-Way Ticket to Needle Death?

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:49:01 +0000

On 1 November 2002, my beautiful 20-year-old son Kristian died from a suspected Heroin overdose. There is no such thing as taking a test drive with Heroin. It’s a one-way ticket. Dont let it happen to your child.
On 1 November 2002, my beautiful 20-year-old son Kristian died. Whilst the Post-Mortem results were inconclusive and we now have to await the results of the blood toxicology tests, the police are convinced that they will show that he had a lethal dose of Heroin in his body. Two suicide notes and a syringe were found by the side of my son’s favourite coat, which had been placed neatly outside the door to his girlfriend’s flat. Kristian was found in the corner of the stairwell landing, a few steps down from the flat on the morning of Friday 1 November. He had been there all night and was severely hypothermic. A neighbour had walked passed him twice on Halloween night and, assuming he was drunk and ignoring his own conscience, left him there. Would my son still be alive had this neighbour not turned a blind eye? I don’t know.

My son never admitted to me that he was taking Heroin. Of course, he wouldn’t, would he? As with most events in his life, he only ever told me what he wanted me to know. After his death, I realised that I had known so very little about his life over the previous four years since he’d left home, much of it shrouded in secrecy. On the day of his funeral, I was surrounded by a sea of strange, nameless faces from the other world in which he lived and died.

There is no such thing as taking a test drive with Heroin. It’s a one-way ticket. Many addicts continue their journey to the next station, often against their will. The next station is Death. This can be achieved through accidental overdose, intentional overdose, or by contracting other potentially fatal illnesses such as various strains of Hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV through needle sharing.

Those offering Heroin to a newcomer will say, “Here, try this – it will make you feel good.it’s the answer to all your problems.” What they don’t say is, “Here, try this – even though it will probably make you violently sick the first time you use it, it may still create the desire to take it again and again and again, until the needle is your best friend. After a while, you will no longer achieve the same high and will need to increase your dose until your body needs Heroin just to enable you to function with relative normality on a day-to-day basis. You will lie, steal, scrounge and cheat to fund your addiction. You won’t care who you tread on and hurt en route to your next fix – even your family and closest friends. You may contract Hepatitis or HIV if you share needles and because you never know exactly with what the Heroin has been cut, you’re playing Russian Roulette every time you use it.”

I was ignorant in my complacency, believing that because my children had been raised in a strict, non-smoking, drug-free, middle-class home environment and had been lectured on the dangers of such, that they would become victims of smoking, alcohol and other illegal substances. I was so wrong, in the same way that many other parents are sitting at home now, confident in the false knowledge that there is no way their children will fall prey to the evil world of drug abuse. Once your children walk out your front door – and more especially when they leave home – you have absolutely no way of monitoring or influencing their thought processes and actions.

Like many other parents, I was optimistic about my son’s future. At the age of 14, he won a competition to spend Christmas in the Antarctic. The competition was organised by the Swindon Evening Advertiser in conjunction with the explorer David Hempleman-Adams. It was the trip of a lifetime and after meeting Sir Ranulph Fiennes during the journey, Kristian was inspired to return to the Antarctic in the future and had plans to join Adventure Network International when he finished his education. Instead, six years later, he ended up in a grave at the local cemetery.

Although Swindon, like so many other towns, has become a Class A open drug market, I still believed that you would only find Heroin if you were actively looking for it – and only then in total secrecy behind closed doors. I had little knowledge, even at the time of my son’s death, about the sinister operations to target youngsters literally outside the school gates and how you could walk through the centre of town in broad daylight and purchase a bag of Heroin as easily and openly as a bag of sweets. A friend of mine, who lives a few yards from a local secondary school, has witnessed these deals taking place a few feet from her front door and another friend who teaches at a Swindon school confirmed that children as young as 11 are being targeted by pushers.

Drug abuse penetrates every socio-economic group, political system and nation. In order to cure the current epidemic of narcotics’ addiction, the Government needs to implement realistic strategies to reduce the supply of illegal drugs and disrupt the money-spinning operations of the big boy dealers, rather than setting the unachievable goal of eradicating drugs altogether. In the more deprived areas of many towns, drug addiction, the prison experience and the occasional drug-related death seems to be a normal part of everyday life. Cheap Heroin is also rife, but since many users do not hold down regular jobs, they are still forced to finance their habit through drug dealing, criminal activities and prostitution.

The physical dependency that Heroin causes overrides a user’s conscience and certainly any fears of the very real risks of dying through injecting a “bad batch”, or from unintentional overdose. “Curing” existing users is not an option. It has been proven that rehab programmes have a very high failure rate, because the addiction never leaves a user. Heroin use alters the physiology of the brain and proteins that accumulate in the brain remain there even after an addict has detoxified. This accounts for the cravings that persist even years after a user has stopped taking the drug.

One ex-Heroin user I spoke to said, “To say that I am ‘cured’ will never be true. Although I have been clean for seven years now, the craving still remains. I might do the things normal people do, but in reality I will never be normal. I alienated everyone, except those acquaintances who were in the Heroin pit with me. Heroin robbed me of everything that I had to live for – my job, my pride, my self-esteem and, most of all, all those I loved”.

Some might say that drug users know the risks that they are taking and that they deserve to die. Some might say that these people don’t have the right to medical attention and are taking up resources that should be used to treat those who do not have self-inflicted conditions. The same can be said of any addicts, like smokers and alcoholics who develop cancer and liver disease and yet, to a certain extent, many of us are addicts in one way or another, whether it is caffeine, chocolate or other allegedly harmless substances. However, in the eyes of the medical profession, everyone has an equal right to live and I shall be eternally grateful to the doctors and nurses who fought in vain for two-and-a-half hours to save my son’s life.

We know that it is not possible to totally prevent the traffic of Heroin into this country, nor to round up all the big boy drug dealers, so what is most likely to discourage young people from taking drugs? What role can the Government play? The methods currently employed clearly fail to discourage young people from experimenting with drugs. Tackling the problem simply by preaching is not sufficient and solving the worldwide drug problem requires international co-operation.

It is evident that many young people are not influenced by the law and the possibility of jail sentences, or the even more likely probability of accidental and fatal overdose. If their attitudes are to change, they must be influenced in some other way.

As far as legalising any drug is concerned, what sort of message does this convey to youngsters? That drug use is socially acceptable. It would do little to undermine the illicit market and, more dangerously, would introduce people to drugs who would not otherwise have tried them. Although not everyone who uses Cannabis will move on to harder drugs, it is

inevitable that some will – and some of these would not otherwise have tried drugs had they not been available through legal channels.

The cost to this country of treating drug users is colossal. It’s like locking a very expensive stable door after the horse has bolted. Preventing drug use in the beginning is the only answer. If there were no Heroin to push, drug dealers would be out of business, innocent children would not be targeted and we would not have a drug problem. Although it is unrealistic to suggest that we could prevent Heroin from coming into the country altogether, we could certainly do something to reduce the amount crossing our borders. It would be cheaper to burn all the major white poppy crops in places like Afghanistan and to give money to the farmers to feed their families, than to pour funding into rehab programmes and waste valuable hospital and police resources.

I cannot even begin to calculate the cost of my son’s death. If you attempted to determine the amount of time and money taken up in terms of the necessity for paramedics, the hospital staff, hospital resources, the police, the coroner, the autopsy, the funeral and the long process of the Inquest, it would run into many, many hours and thousands and thousands of pounds, minimum. Naturally, the emotional cost is even greater and cannot ever be quantified.

Although Kristian’s death points to suicide, I still felt that there was something within his notes that my son had not revealed; names and situations and the answers to the many questions that arose, both at the time of his death and in the weeks since that tragic day. In one of the notes that was addressed “To Whom It May Concern”, he wrote: “I am not a skag head who od’ed on drugs. This was just the easiest way to kill myself, so make sure it doesn’t get printed in the paper, ‘Junkie overdoses on Heroin”. According to his girlfriend and other close friends, he had only been taking Heroin during the past week of his life after a nine-month period of being “clean”.

In my opinion, my son made the ultimate sacrifice to protect those nearest and dearest to him – his own life. I cannot rule out the possibility that he killed himself before someone else did. My son was still a young, naive boy trying to play nasty big boys’ games, trying to fit in with his alien peer group for whom he had deserted his decent, law-abiding circle of friends. Why else would he kill himself just ten days before his daughter Kayla’s first birthday and twelve days before his youngest sister Lauren’s third birthday?

Nothing can bring Kristian back and although I am walking around with a heart so badly shattered, that it will never heal completely, if I can at least do something positive to prevent just one other parent from enduring the same tragedy, then his death will not have been in vain. Personally, I would not hesitate to shop a drug dealer to the police, even if it were a child of mine, a relative or a close friend and I would appeal to the conscience of other parents to do the same.

I had never seen a dead body before and I never expected the first one I was asked to identify to be that of one of my children. I remember collapsing at the door to the room where he lay in the Accident and Emergency department at Princess Margaret Hospital. I couldnt believe that my little boy was dead, that his brain and other vital organs had ceased to function. He looked as though he was asleep and I expected to see his chest rise and fall. I remember asking the nurse whether I was allowed to touch him before I held his baby soft hand, stroked his angelic face and ran my fingers through his perfectly groomed hair. I spoke to him through my sobs and kept asking him over and over again, “Why? Why Kristian, my darling little boy, why?”

My son looked so peaceful, but I desperately wanted him to wake up. I would never have the chance to tell him how much I love him, or to tell him that everything would be alright, or for him to have the same chance to tell me all the things that he had been afraid to tell me over the last few years of his life for fear of worrying me. He would also never be able to tell me why.

When we visited Kristian at the funeral parlour following the Post-Mortem, although he still looked like my little boy, there was no doubt that he had changed. Although his lips were still so soft and his face was perfect, his neck was purple and swollen and foul-smelling fluid was seeping from the stitched incision around his neck onto the oyster-coloured satin cloth that lined his white coffin. His hands had turned pallid, waxy and wrinkled, almost as though he had taken a long bath and his body felt rigid and inhuman. At the back of his scalp there were crude stitches running up and over his head from ear-to-ear where I presume brain tissue samples were taken and his beautiful hair was matted together in stiff clumps around the slit. My beautiful son’s body had been violated and treated like a slab of meat on a butcher’s block, even though in life he had violated his own body with drugs.

One of the most painful sights was re-visiting him the day after family photos and unopened Christmas presents had been laid on him, together with a small, cuddly Christmas dog that I had placed in his left hand. To see the presents untouched and the dog resting in exactly position beneath his fingers was heartbreaking. His inability to see, to open, or to hold and appreciate these gestures of affection hit me with forceful and excruciating reality. He would never move again, nor laugh, nor hug those dear to him, nor watch his baby daughter grow, nor say to me as he always did when he phoned, “Love you mum”. At least he would never cry again.

When my older daughter Anneliese managed to retrieve some of Kristian’s belongings from a friends flat, I remember the intense pain of removing each item, one by one, not just holding on to what I had left of him, but searching for the smallest clue about his recent life and perhaps a reason for his death. Even the smallest piece of paper was something that he had touched and something that I could never part with.

As Kristian faces his first Christmas in Heaven, we face our first Christmas in Hell. As life continues with one less person on our gift list, we now have to endure the agonising process of an Inquest, with many questions we still want to ask and many more that we and others need to answer.

Unfortunately, my son was not the first victim and will not be the last. Unless more effective measures are taken to prevent youngsters from experimenting with drugs in the first place, then other parents will be spending future Christmases with one less family member, gazing at Sympathy cards and asking that eternal question, “Why?” Whenever I see a huddle of adolescents awaiting their school bus in the mornings, I wonder how many of them will be lured towards the same grim underworld in which my son circulated. I wonder how many of their parents will experience the same agony and grief that we are currently suffering. Hopefully none, but almost certainly some. However, by uniting against the illegal drug industry, every parent could help to prevent their children from taking a one-way ticket to needle death.

Footnote:

Do You Know Someone Who is Dealing Drugs? Phone Crimestoppers (UK) anonymously on 0800 555 111

Update: On 11 January 2003, Kristians best friend also took his own life via a Heroin overdose.

About the Author

Jan Andersen is a British freelance writer and mother of four children. Her youngest three children are aged 17, 15 and 3. Jans eldest son, Kristian tragically died on 1 November 2002 at the age of 20, as a result of which she has just launched a new supportive website for families who have lost a child to suicide: http://childsuicide.homestead.com Jan specialises in humorous, satirical and thought-provoking articles, essays and columns on diverse topics, from relationships, parenting and womens issues, to psychology, health and social issues. She also owns and run Mothers Over 40, an inspirational and supportive site for older parents and those considering midlife pregnancy. www.mothersover40.com http://worldwriter.homestead.com