The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has announced that pregnant women and those who plan to become so should avoid taking the antidepressant Paxil if possible because of a risk of birth defects. They also cautioned against pregnant women taking a number of other related antidepressants, but said cases should be considered on an individual basis.

It’s not always a simple matter of avoiding these medications, however. The ACOG says that “reproductive-age women have the highest prevalence of major depressive disorders. The benefit to the mother of treatment with any of the drugs may outweigh the risk to the fetus.” One more thing to discuss with your own health-care provider.

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted a travel-guide thread, so here it is. I chose Washington, D. C. because April sent me a great link of Free Things to Do there.

Please leave a comment if you have additional ideas for places and events to see in the area, especially, but not exclusively, LGBT- and/or family-friendly activities. The Air and Space Museum and National Zoo come to mind for me. The Zoo is good even for the youngest tots, who might easily be bored with many of the hands-off museums in the area. What other museums and attractions have you enjoyed, and with kids of what age? Any hints for best/worst times to go, or things to bring along?

LEGO Bricks were one of the favorite toys of my childhood. I can’t wait until my son is old enough for the gear-filled LEGO Technic sets. I therefore enjoyed reading Business Week’s recent article on The Making of a LEGO Brick (thanks, Slashdot), which details the precise production process (”only 18 out of 1 million LEGO elements produced is considered defective”) and other fun facts (”just six eight-stud bricks can be arranged in 915,103,765 different ways”).

It seems like I’m developing a theme this week, looking behind the scenes at popular children’s toys and characters. (See my previous post on Thomas the Tank Engine.)

“What does any of this have to do with LGBT parenting or lesbian culture?” I hear you ask. I was going to answer, “Not much, except that LGBT parents are still interested in general parenting and kids’ stuff, too.” Then I realized how rare it is for a girl to have played extensively with LEGOs, especially the more complicated sets that make motorcycles and construction vehicles and the like. My love of LEGOs was probably an early sign that I wasn’t going to fit into a traditional gender role—which might have given me a clue about other things, had I stopped to think about it. Ten years later, though, and the LEGOs were in the back of a closet somewhere while I was coming out, peg-in-hole paradigm be damned. The history of my life, from bricks to chicks. There you have it.

As both the mother of a train-obsessed child and a refugee from grad school in history, I was delighted to find a Wikipedia article on the history and geography of the Island of Sodor, home of Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s not quite world-building on the Tolkien scale, but it’s a step in that direction, and more than I would have imagined. According to the article, Thomas’ creator, the Rev. Wilbert Awdry, based Sodor on the British Isle of Man. Man is part of the Church of England diocese of Sodor and Man, but there is no real Island of Sodor.

Wilbert and his brother George worked our further details of Sodor, including language (”Sudric,” based in part on Manx), geography (Thomas’ branch line runs from Knapford to Ffarquhar), and history. They described it in The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways, which is unfortunately out of print. Wilbert’s son Christopher tried to cover some of the same material in his Sodor: Reading Between the Lines, which has not been published in the U. S., though Amazon.co.uk has it. (Amazon.com U. S. has a boxcar’s worth of Thomas items in their special Thomas and Friends Store, however.)

I also came across a site titled The Real Lives of Thomas the Tank Engine, which has a detailed history of Sodor and a number of maps, as well as a correspondence between the fictional engines and their real-life counterparts. The authors claim the material to be based on Awdry’s writings, which I have no reason to doubt, though I can’t verify it myself.

All of this information would likely overwhelm most preschoolers, but might interest older siblings (as well as history-geek parents like myself) who have outgrown the Thomas stories and shows.

It’s National Influenza Vaccination Week. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), rates of flu infection are highest among children. They recommend vaccination of all children between 6 and 59 months of age, as well as “all children and adults who have certain diseases that put them at risk of serious complications from the flu and for any close contact or caretaker of someone in a high-risk group.” As always, it’s best to discuss this with your medical professional if you have any questions. You can also use Flucliniclocator.org to find a flu clinic near you.

(On a side note, the one good thing about going through the egg-retrieval/IVF process to have our child is that neither my partner nor I has even the remotest fear of needles anymore.)

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) has launched an asthma friendly(R) Certification Program to help identify toys, pillows, bedding, and other products suitable for people with asthma and related allergic sensitivities. I imagine that most parents of children with asthma or allergies (or who have them themselves) are already aware of what to look for when they purchase products for their home. This labeling program may make the process easier, however, and should also help extended family and friends in their holiday shopping. Stores carrying certified products include Bed Bath and Beyond, Target, Kohl’s, Build-a-Bear Workshop, FAO Schwartz and Learning Express. Next year, the program will certify vacuum cleaners, paints, flooring and other items.

When Nina interviewed me for Queercents a few weeks ago, one of the questions she asked was “Does money buy happiness?” I answered “no,” though admitted that money can sometimes facilitate the things in which one finds happiness.

Turns out I was wrong. According to economist Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick, “There is overwhelming evidence that money buys happiness.” He studied British lottery winners and concluded they were happier two years after they won than two years before.

OK, it’s really not as simple as that, and economists (including at least one Nobel Prize winner) are still debating the exact connection between money and mood. What really caught my eye, however, was Oswald’s admission that despite his findings, money may not be the prime driver of happiness: “The quality of relationships has a far bigger effect than quite large rises in salary. . . . It’s much better advice, if you’re looking for happiness in life, to try to find the right husband or wife rather than trying to double your salary.”

Funny. That reminds me of a passage from the ruling in Loving v. Virginia, the U. S. Supreme Court case that struck down race-based restrictions on marriage: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

Legal marriage, however, isn’t free, further confusing the issue of money and happiness. It cost my partner and I nothing to consider ourselves married for the many years that we could not legally do so. We had to pony up $99 to get hitched in Massachusetts, however ($24 for the license and $75 for the Justice of the Peace). Are we $99 happier now? We were pretty happy before, but there is a certain joy in knowing that my partner’s employer will now cover my medical insurance, and we’ll get the various other benefits of marriage in the Commonwealth, so in that sense, yes. I’ll stand by what I said to Queercents, though, which is that happiness isn’t inherent in the things and events we buy. We have to create the happiness from them.

I should also point out a study from the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, which found that if every state legalized same-sex marriage, it would generate $2 billion for the wedding industry alone. “More than $74 million would be spent in Massachusetts if half the domestic partners there marry,” they claim. “In New York, it would be more than $175 million.”

Sounds like the legalization of same-sex marriage would make a lot of people a whole lot happier, one way or another.

Thanksgiving and the pending winter holidays are for most of us a time to be with family. As we enter into this season of love and light and kinship, it seems appropriate to reflect on the changes propagating through society’s traditional view of families. As LGBT parents, we are reminded every day that we must create our own definition of family—not by redefining the old meaning, but by expanding it, stretching it to include us. The fundamentals—a group of individuals bound by love and commitment—remain the same. Luckily, too, children are often quicker than adults to understand that different families are not necessarily bad, as Jennifer Gruskoff relates in the Huffington Post.

The changes affecting families go beyond same-sex marriage and LGBT parenting rights, however. Read more »

Last weekend’s Saturday Night Live show featured a skit about Olivia Cruises. It’s crude and obvious, revolving around the ship captain’s prurient thoughts regarding lesbians. Still, the women get the final word, and Olivia itself is promoting the skit via its e-mail list. I figure that being made fun of on SNL connotes a certain level of acceptance, and that’s a good thing. Have a look, if you’re not easily offended. (Some language may not be appropriate to play at work, or in front of children.)

• Speaking at the International Gay & Lesbian Leadership Conference, Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean said his party needs to work harder to get more LGBT candidates on the ballot.
• Lambda Legal submitted papers to a California Court of Appeal, urging them to uphold a jury decision that found former Poway High School students were severely harassed because they are gay and lesbian. The jury had found that school officials took “minimal or no action at all” when the students reported the incidents, and determined the harassment was so “severe and pervasive” that they awarded a combined $300,000 to the plaintiffs.
• Eight gay and lesbian couples in Connecticut appealed to the state Supreme Court for the right to marry. The Court may or may not hear the case. A lower court had dismissed it earlier this year, saying the couples already had equal rights under the state’s civil union law.
• The Butler County Court of Common Pleas in Ohio dismissed a lawsuit brought by a legislator seeking to take away the domestic partner benefits of employees of Miami University. Lambda Legal argued that Ohio’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not apply to the university because it concerns only marriage and not domestic partnership benefits.
• A Rhode Island lesbian couple who were married in Massachusetts are seeking a divorce in their home state. They married just before Massachusetts banned out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying there. It is unclear whether Rhode Island courts have jurisdiction in this matter, as Rhode Island law does not specify whether it bans or allows same-sex marriages.
• In another case showing inter-state legal tangles, a lesbian who fled Vermont for Virginia to avoid a court order granting joint custody of her daughter to her former partner has been fined by the Rutland Family Court in Vermont.

Around the world:

• A judge in Sao Paulo, Brazil has let two gay men adopt a child for the first time in the country’s history. (Lesbian couples have been granted adoption rights twice before.) One man had already adopted the five-year-old girl, and the name of his partner was then added to the birth certificate.
• Same-sex marriages are increasing in Canada, according to new statistics, even as the government moves ahead with a promise to allow a vote on whether to reconsider the 2005 marriage legislation.
• The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the government must register same-sex marriages of Israeli citizens performed abroad, giving them the same rights as other married couples. Same-sex marriages still cannot be performed within Israel itself. Religious liberals hope the ruling will reduce the power of rabbinical leaders in a country where the only recognized marriage ceremonies are religious ones.
• Less than two weeks after South Africa’s National Assembly approved same-sex marriages, the country’s constitutional court ruled that same-sex partners should have the same inheritance rights as opposite-sex couples. The law takes effect immediately.