And yet you're completely missing the irony inherent in the juxtaposition of your oafishly worded comment with the OP's coruscating gem of phraseology up there. Point: Arnheim.

Cloth diaper people are insane, it's a cult. However there is a lot of excellent information among the cultish online drivel. Check out the forums on diaperswappers.com (yes, that's people trading used diapers!) for more information than you ever wanted to know.

We did cloth diapers, actually. Until the baby starts eating solids the poo is runny and really very inoffensive, you can just put the whole diaper with all the poo in the washer on a heavy cycle and it will be magically clean.

Being annoyed by toddlers? Totally normal, they're freaking annoying (that's why they're so cute, it's an evolutionary tactic to prevent us from booting them out the window when they start screaming about their doll being wrapped up the wrong way for the 15th time). Wanting kids to leave mom alone? Also totally…

My MIL showed us this great system where you hold the baby's tush under the tap and just wash all the poo down the drain. You have to be willing to tolerate the idea of poo in the sink (infant poo is not very offensive IME, it's not like laying an adult turd in the sink or anything) but it's so much easier than wipes…

My 2 cents, our family got progressively more fun as more kids showed up (I'm the oldest of three spaced over 10 years). Based on this we have two and are thinking about a third.

No, it's just that the whole story sounded a bit like the server was being hounded. E.g. I wouldn't place half of a dessert order and make the server come back to take more orders, it just doubles his workload for no reason. If some of the people hadn't decided what they wanted I would ask the server to give us five…

Whoa. I have to say my sympathies are entirely with the server in this story.

It just makes me think there is no information here about home vs hospital. You have the systematic differences of low-risk vs high-risk, and you have the systematic difference of obstetrician vs midwife, in addition to the systematic difference of home vs hospital. There are too many arrows going in different…

Very quickly: Do you not consider it odd that this study did *exactly* what you (incorrectly) suspected the de Jonge study had done? I.e. compare two incomparable groups (low risk out-of-hospital with high-risk in-hospital)? Why would one ever design a study this way? Normally one chooses two populations to compare…

They deal with it by analyzing the cohorts on the basis of where the birth was planned to occur (home or hospital), not where it actually took place. I will send you the pdf if you post an email address where you can receive it.

Not at all, I said training is irrelevant to this discussion, so let's set it aside and talk about the data. I mentioned my training because you are trying to play this 'I am an MD so my word rules here.' You're the one focused on the training. It's not about 'trusting my reasoning' at all. It's about examining…

By the way we had a iatrogenic maternal death on my Ob rotation when I was in med school. (AFE thought to have resulted from poorly timed amniotomy.) Holy shit, yes? Doubtless that has colored my perceptions of this issue to a degree, as have your clinical experiences colored yours.

Darling, I've got one of those too. Hence I know firsthand that the degree of training we get in epidemiology and statistics in med school is pretty minimal. It happens I also have a PhD (I'm in academic medicine) and I feel pretty comfortable with my ability to interpret the research literature. The studies I…

I completely agree with you and would never intentionally attempt an unassisted birth.

Well to be fair (not with respect to unassisted birth but with respect to home birth), numerous studies suggest the rate of baby death due to iatrogenic causes in-hospital approximately equals the rate of baby death due to being born at home, hence the neonatal mortality rates are essentially equal, at least for…

Aw shit, my mom said that too. I was hoping for those pain-free-childbirth genes but unfortunately they appear to have skipped me. Talk about a disappointment.

Does sunscreen stop you from tanning? What kind of skin do you have? I can wear SPF 50 and I will still have visible tan lines. Of course they would be much much darker without the sunscreen. (I'm of Mediterranean descent so an olive-toned white person.)

OK, I'll bite. Here's why I like Hillary:

I completely agree that dogs are smarter but they're just so fucking servile, it gives me the creeps. I don't want to live with a yes-man. I like it that cats don't revolve around their humans so much.