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I get a weekly e-mail from BabyCenter.com telling me how my baby should be developing for her age.  Today’s had several potentially helpful links.  The only one I clicked on, however?  “The telltale signs of a concussion.”

Kate just sent me a link to an article suggesting that maybe, just maybe, I’m not the worst mother of all time for putting my daughter in daycare. According to a study:

“Sending children to day-care at an early age could protect them against leukemia, perhaps by exposing them to certain infections, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.”

So wait, there’s a purpose to all this snot? Hallelujah. I’ll try to remember that next time I can’t sleep because Kaylee’s up all night coughing.

I saw this article late last year, and the topic is popping up on the news wires again this week: Baby bottles will irreparably damage your kids. Maybe.

Basically, a new study recently found that a chemical called BPA leaches from the bottle into the baby’s formula/milk/whatever when the bottle is heated. And here’s the problem:

Tests involving lab rats and mice have shown that even small amounts of exposure to BPA can lead to a range of serious ailments, says professor Frederick vom Saal, a biologist at the University of Missouri who authored the report.

“Very low doses [of BPA] – below the amounts that are present in humans – when, particularly, exposure occurs in fetuses and newborns, you end up with those babies eventually developing prostate cancer, breast cancer. They become hyperactive. They show learning impairment. It’s a poster chemical for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” vom Saal said.

Now, here’s the other problem: A number of other studies have been done on this concern in the past, and it’s been decided again and again that BPA doesn’t cause people any harm in the levels it is ingested. And keep in mind that 95 percent of people have BPA in our systems, and we’re all walking around just fine.

So who’s a mom to believe? We want to protect our kids from every danger in the world, and here we find out that those dangers might be lurking in the very food they eat?

Just to be safe, some people are recommending that parents switch to glass baby bottles to be sure they’re avoiding BPA exposure.

I don’t think these people understand how hard my baby can throw.

I think I have no choice but to reconsider the cabin-in-the-woods scenario.

On Thanksgiving day, I just barely managed to save Kaylee from a lifelong egg allergy because of my quick reflexes and obsessive observational skills. I was hanging out with my family when I looked up just in time to see that Rob had a little bit of deviled egg filling on his finger and was about to put it in Kaylee’s mouth.

The horror.

I smacked his hand away and informed him of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations, issued in 2000, that infants not be fed eggs, peanuts, etc., in an effort to keep them from developing allergies to those things later.

This morning, I read that I beat my husband for nothing (well, other than for sport). New findings from the AAP show that their earlier guidelines were pretty much useless. There’s no evidence to support the recommendation that parents avoid giving eggs and nuts to their infants. The only thing they still contend is that breastfeeding may reduce the risk of allergies.

I think there’s only one logical conclusion I can reach here: My family and I should move to a cabin in the mountains where I no longer have access to conflicting scientific studies and expert advice, where I’m free to raise my child in a way I know instinctively to be correct.

Yeah, who am I kidding?

If I didn’t have internet access, I’m pretty sure I’d shrivel up and die. And if our mountain cabin didn’t have the means to power a big TV and Guitar Hero, Rob would follow suit very quickly. Plus, if we left Kaylee alone to be raised by bears, that might make me feel more guilty than I do now when I ignore all the experts and let her watch a cartoon.

It doesn’t matter anyway. In a couple more years, there will be a study saying that kids who watch “My Friends Tigger & Pooh” with their moms on Saturday mornings have a four-word improvement in their vocabularies at the age of three.

And then I can finally feel like a good parent.

Until the next study comes out, informing me that watching cartoons causes ADD.

When Rob and I started planning our family, I knew I wanted to go back to work after the baby was born. There was no question in my mind that I’d be a saner person if my daily life included adult conversations and accomplishments that existed outside of my roles as a wife and as a mother.

And then Kaylee was born.

In the first three weeks or so, I was desperate to go back to work. This motherhood thing was a lot harder than I expected, and the idea of handing the baby to someone else and spending my day in a place surrounded by people who didn’t demand to be fed every two hours was the happiest idea in the world.

By the end of my seven-week maternity leave, though, I’d settled into deep pit of mommy guilt, and I couldn’t even think about going back to work without bursting into tears. (I was a joy to be around, let me tell you.) I felt like I was going to miss everything — her first word, her first step, the general joy of seeing her grow and learn. And I was inconsolable.

But staying home wasn’t an option for financial reasons, so I reluctantly started taking her to daycare. By the end of the first week, I was able to leave her there without crying. By the end of the first month, we’d developed a predictable routine and I’d settled into the role of a working mom.

BBC News recently published the results of a study that found working mothers to be happier than stay-at-home moms. (Kate discusses the results today in the Pikes Peak Parent News blog.) The number of hours worked outside the home doesn’t seem to matter, just that they’re working.

I can’t speak for all moms out there, but I can say this about myself: I’ve come to realize that I was right about myself, way back in the beginning before Kaylee even existed. I cherish every day that I get to take a vacation and hang out with my daughter, but I don’t think I could manage it every day of the week. She’s wonderful and I love her, but I can’t spend all day every day retrieving toys that she just chucked across the room and searching for pacifiers that she hid between the couch cushions. I have to spend some time doing things for myself, or I will simply go crazy. (Or more likely, get very depressed.)

That said, I don’t think our current situation is ideal, either. I spend about nine hours a day away from my child, and I only see her a couple of hours a day when she’s awake. All the “experts” say that Rob and I should plan a regular date night to keep the romance alive or whatever, but that means handing Kaylee off to someone else AGAIN. It’s hard to convince myself that a date night is worth it when it means that the only time I get to see my baby is when I kiss her sleeping head at the end of the night.

So, in case anyone wants to do me a big favor, here’s what I need: A part-time job making just as much money as I make now. I could work either four hours a day or two full days a week. And just to make it easier on this imaginary employer, you could pay me a little less to offset the slight savings in daycare I’d receive for only using it part-time.

Any offers?

Hello?

Anyone?

I didn’t think so.

I can barely keep my eyes open today. That clatter you keep hearing? That’s the sound of my face hitting my keyboard every ten minutes when I doze off at my desk. I’ve had my morning hit of caffeine, but it’s just not enough. Is it possible to die of exhaustion?

Kaylee woke up about every hour last night because she’s congested and has a hard time breathing through her nose. But she also has a hard time sleeping without her pacifier in her mouth. A combination of problems that means Mommy has to get up regularly to replace the pacifier and/or suction the snot out of her nose. Between 11:30 and 12:30, she woke up every five to ten minutes. (And I’m not even exaggerating. I never exaggerate. See the first paragraph as an example of something I’ve said that is TOTALLY TRUE. aldkjf m.xd,cm vri. Sorry, dozed off again.)

I called the pediatrician’s office a few weeks ago to ask if I could give her any over-the-counter decongestant. (If you’re thinking, “What? She was sick a few weeks ago and now she’s sick AGAIN?” then you’ve never put a baby in daycare.) If I’d called a couple of days earlier, I would have been advised to go to the store and pick up an infant cold medication. But I happened to call the day after news broke that pretty much every infant cold medicine available had been pulled from the stores because they may not be all that safe for kids after all. AND, I was told there’s nothing I can give her until she’s six years old.

SIX. YEARS. OLD.

Do they know that’s five and a half years from now?

Until then — or until they figure out a safe medication — I have to use the old ways: a humidifier in her room, steam from a hot shower, saline nasal spray and the nose-sucker thing, which makes her give me withering looks full of pure loathing. And those methods help, but not as much as I’d like them to. She’s still somewhat miserable, and she still can’t sleep soundly.

And neither can I.

oaievikjej sldkofjie vm …. … …

My mom called me yesterday afternoon to let me know that Bumbo chairs have been recalled because some people are claiming they’re unsafe for infants. Several children have wiggled their way out of the chairs and fallen from tables or counter tops, leading to serious head injuries.

My reaction to this was basically this: Um, yeah, kids can fall out of the chair. That’s why it says right there on the back of the seat not to use it on an elevated surface.

Bumbo has issued a safety recall of the seats and temporarily stopped selling them so they can put bigger warning labels on them. I guess because the completely obvious, not-at-all-vague sticker that’s currently on the seat should have involved flashing lights and/or a buzzer that sounds if you place the Bumbo on a table.

I agree that it’s terrible that some children got hurt, and very badly, by the misuse of these chairs. But it bothers me that the parents of those children have chosen to sue the company. (I can’t say I’m surprised, as we do live in the United States, where people sue if their coffee is hot, but I am bothered.) If those parents chose not to heed the warnings on both the box and the back of the chair, they have no one to blame but themselves.

I read this article the other day about a couple who is angry with the New Zealand government because they weren’t allowed to name their son 4Real. (The government – for some reason – refuses to acknowledge names that have numbers in them.)

Since they can’t use their name of choice, they’ve gone with their runner-up name, which is Superman.

I … I … I really don’t know what to say about that. So I’ll use my friend Kate’s words instead: “This kid will need no other grounds for divorcing his parents.”

And to think I almost lost sleep over the Kaylee/Emily conundrum.

I just found this article about a pregnant cow who terrorized Hanover, Germany, after escaping from her farm.

I have to say, I really sympathize with that poor cow. Being pregnant definitely makes me tired and crabby, and if I were being followed around by emergency workers, camera crews and gawkers, I’d probably get a little destructive, myself.

The poor thing.

Like most women, I started my pregnancy wanting to do my best to ensure that my entire gestational experience would be 100% healthy. I vowed to follow all of the rules so my baby would have the most nurturing environment possible.

What nobody tells you is that the rules keep changing. You can’t follow all of them, because many of the rules contradict each other.

This morning, a friend sent me a link to an article about a study on pregnancy weight gain. According to the article, researches have found that women who gain more weight during pregnancy – even if they stay within recommended guidelines – run the risk of having overweight toddlers later on.

So, does this mean pregnant women should strive to gain less weight? Well, um, no. The article also mentions that women who gain too little weight risk having low-birth-weight babies. And if you live in El Paso County, you may have seen the health department’s recent campaign, called “A Healthy Baby is Worth the Weight,” encouraging local women to gain more weight during pregnancy to combat a low-birth-weight epidemic in our area.

Is this making anyone else’s brain hurt?

There also are contradictory studies about caffeine consumption, eating fish and every other recommendation out there. For women who are just trying to do the best they can for their unborn children, it’s enough to make you crazy.

This leads me to a suggestion for another scientific study: Which is more harmful to your baby, gaining a few too many pounds or spending your pregnancy stressed out about all the ways you could already be failing as a mother?

I suspect I already know the answer, at least within my own not-so-scientific study, in which I am the only participant.

According to the results of that study, I should toss all of those articles in my fireplace, relax on the couch and have another cookie.