Eva is 2 and We are Celebrating!
Welcome to our new customers and hello again to our old friends. Congratulations to you on the impending or new arrival and for being wise enough to subscribe to our newsletter in order to receive exclusive announcements, sales, coupons and discounts for items all over the store, as well as other useful info.
Eva Turns 2 This Week - 2 Hour Sale
Eva Lillian (the namesake, not the store) is 2 on August 24th, and I decided we would have a 2 hour sale in honor of her birthday. 2 weeks of prodromal labor, 2 hours of "real" labor, 2 pushes... and 2 years of the bubbliest "Eva the Diva" (as her friends and loved-ones like to call her) the world has ever seen. Happy Birthday, baby!
(For anyone interested in reading her drug-free, waterbirth birth story pop on over to http://www.evalillian.com/JessicaHBirthStory.aspx .)
On Wednesday, August 24th, from 12:00-2:00 pm EST (that's 2 hours only), enjoy 20% off anything in the store. No coupon needed, your discount will be taken at checkout. There will be no extensions or special exceptions, so make sure to clear your calendar for this, the last planned sale of the year!
(Subject to availability. Not combinable with any other offer, including any free shipping promotion. Not applicable toward gift certificate purchases.)
New Stuff
Long and 3/4 Sleeve Slogan Tees (with many more coming in the next few weeks)
Eveningwear and Daywear by the absolute Top Maternity Designers
Subscriber Exclusives
Free Shipping
Free shipping on every order Sept 1st through the 15th, with coupon code (sorry, you have to sign up to get the goods). (USPS Ground shipping)
OR...
Gift Certificate
Enter (sorry, you have to sign up to get the goods) in the Special Instructions area, on the last page of checkout, and we'll issue you a gift certificate worth 10% of your merchandise total. Use it on your next order or gift it to a friend! Christmas is coming sooner than you'd like...
Interesting Info
As always, we have got some very interesting info on our site. Here is a sample of one of our articles:
Vitamin K at Birth: To inject or not
by Linda Folden Palmer, D.C.
Newborn infants routinely receive a vitamin K shot after birth in order to prevent (or slow) a rare problem of bleeding into the brain weeks after birth. Vitamin K promotes blood clotting. The fetus has low levels of vitamin K as well as other factors needed in clotting. The body maintains these levels very precisely.1 Supplementation of vitamin K to the pregnant mother does not change the K status of the fetus, confirming the importance of its specific levels.
Toward the end of gestation, the fetus begins developing some of the other clotting factors, developing two key factors just before term birth.2 It has recently been shown that this tight regulation of vitamin K levels helps control the rate of rapid cell division during fetal development. Apparently, high levels of vitamin K can allow cell division to get out of hand, leading to cancer.
What's the Concern?
The problem of bleeding into the brain occurs mainly from 3 to 7 weeks after birth in just over 5 out of 100,000 births (without vitamin K injections); 90% of those cases are breastfed infants,3 because formulas are supplemented with unnaturally high levels of vitamin K. Forty percent of these infants suffer permanent brain damage or death.
The cause of this bleeding trauma is generally liver disease that has not been detected until the bleeding occurs. Several liver problems can reduce the liver's ability to make blood-clotting factors out of vitamin K; therefore extra K helps this situation. Infants exposed to drugs or alcohol through any means are especially at risk, and those from mothers on anti-epileptic medications are at very high risk and need special attention.
Such complications reduce the effectiveness of vitamin K, and in these cases, a higher level of available K could prevent the tragic intracranial bleeding. This rare bleeding disorder has been found to be highly preventable by a large-dose injection of vitamin K at birth.
The downside of this practice however is a possibly 80% increased risk of developing childhood leukemia. While a few studies have refuted this suggestion, several tightly controlled studies have shown this correlation to be most likely.4,5 The most current analysis of six different studies suggests it is a 10 or 20% increased risk. This is still a significant number of avoidable cancers.6
Apparently the cell division that continues to be quite rapid after birth continues to depend on precise amounts of vitamin K to proceed at the proper rate. Introduction of levels that are 20,000 times the newborn level, the amount usually injected, can have devastating consequences.
The Newborn's Diet
Nursing raises the infant's vitamin K levels very gradually after birth so that no disregulation occurs that would encourage leukemia development. Additionally, the clotting system of the healthy newborn is well planned, and healthy breastfed infants do not suffer bleeding complications, even without any supplementation.7
Farewell
Lastly, we always welcome feedback from our customers and potential customers. If there is anything we could improve, if there is anything we don't offer that you would like to see us offer, if there is anything we can do to make your shopping experience at Eva Lillian more pleasant, please let us know immediately.