Are you planning to vaccinate your little one for H1N1?

Parents I talk to are 50-50; media coverage mostly terrifies me. I’m unclear about the baby, although I am definitely getting a regular flu shot. I’m so anxious about swine flu, regular flu, BPA in Sigg baby bottles. I love the baby to crawl on floors and build immunity, I hate that he might be ingesting carcinogens. I’m anxious household cleaning products cause cancer. That’s why a recent conference call with Dr. Ted Gensler, Director of Medical Content at the American Cancer Society, turned my thinking a little bit. We can prevent MOST of the most prevalent cancers. Tobacco, bad diet, obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle combined cause almost 70% of cancers. Dr. Gensler stressed that although we may tend to be anxious about environmental factors and other seemingly haphazard causes of cancer around us, like water bottles, what we need to focus on are the factors we can control. It's human nature to focus on the terrifying chance, not the vast majority of cases. An important lesson, I think. But I’m still using green cleaning products.

Speaking of cleaning products: my friend Casey gave me an equation that has changed my thinking about outsourcing household duties, repairs, etc. Such as, I am mostly catering Rosh Hashana dinner this year. Here is the equation:

Take your annual salary- say it’s $75,000. Subtract the last 3 zeros; you are left with 75. Divide that by 2= $37.50. This is your magic figure for determining whether outsourcing something is worth it. If the service costs less than this amount per hour, you should do it, and it is to your economic advantage to do so. I don’t know the math on this and I don’t know its origin. But I’m liking the concept.

Contrast birth, Mad Men style with Kim Clijsters’ victory at the US Open. Watching Betty give birth on Mad Men last week was a very sad experience. To leave her husband at the door, and venture into the journey of labor alone is too much. I felt Betty’s chronic depression meet her mounting anxiety, and I wanted to give her a hug, and more drugs. And then her dad, in a hallucination says to Betty, “You are like a house cat, you are very important and you have little to do.”

Allison Pearson, author of the working mother bible I Don't Know How She Does It, wrote of Clijsters’ amazing US Open victory, just back from maternity leave. Pearson writes of the combination of Clijsters’ gleeful toddler at courtside and great victory, “it looked for a moment as if at least one woman on the planet had pulled off the perfect work-life balance.”

Pearson continues, “The popular view remains that becoming a parent drains ambition and ability from a woman, though a man remains as virile as ever, maybe more so.”

In fact, not all moms lose ambition after having a baby. We need to fight back against that perception. A recent survey of 1500 recent moms found that a small but powerful portion (about 15%) said they sought out more responsibility at work soon after having a baby. One said, ““I’m more inspired to achieve my goals of a better career in a different industry.  It was more for both of us, not just for myself and I can envision my goal more clearly with my son in my life.”

Yes!