Sabine’s Blog

“Extreme cleaning” is a British show that we can see on Norwegian TV. Two cleaning women track down the most dirty households ever. Single people or married couple and even families. Disgusting filth covers absolutely every area of the household. After scolding them and making them feel bad, the cleaning squad set in to clean and scrape the filth. They send in samples of the floor and other areas to a lab just to discover, surprise, that they contain huge concentration of life hazardous germs!
Absolutely repulsive even for scruffy people (which I am not).
This speaks to me because it is during my various trips to England that I came across some of the most dirty houses ever. There was never any vacuuming, washing the floor, hardly ever any washing of dishes, ironing was done on the dirty carpet on the floor… The fridges were such high concentration of bacteria they could have been used to make a bomb!… Berk!!

I have a friend in Wisconsin. When he wrote to me he wondered who of us too had had the most snow this winter!
Again and again, people think that Norway is such a cold country. That polar bears walk in the streets and we are frozen most part of the year. Nonsense!
It was in Iowa City that I experienced the coldest winters ever with temperatures below -20oC during the day! This has not happened so far in Oslo.
Of course, Norway is experiencing the effects of climate warming like the rest of the globe. So like in Iowa, we hear stories of the locals who say that it used to be much colder for a much longer time and that Oslo used to have a lot of snow.
We bought some cross-country skis last year and would not have been able to use them more than a couple of weekends this year (if it wasn’t for the fact that I am pregnant).
Here we are, in the middle of February and it has been warmish, the snow bells are pushing up, the ice has mostly melted. In the south of Norway, the daffodils and crocuses are out!! I have seen small leaves on a bush yesterday. Amazing.

The old master of suspense used to define “suspense” as “when the audience knows what the character does not” (Hitchcock)
We went to see the latest Ang Lee movie yesterday. Lust, Caution. Although I do not really agree with the title of it, (lust is when your tongue is out and you cannot wait to jump on anything that stirs your hormones) I cannot remember seeing sex scenes that were so filled with a sense of the ominous and malaise… It was almost uncomfortable to watch because of the underlying violence, pressure and power relation. The music, very dark and foreboding at those moments helped to feel the tension. In fact, all the film was so full of this dark suspense that the sex scenes really were totally in fusion with the film. They did not function as arousing interludes but complemented the preying and entrapment aspect of the film. It was like danger could emerge in all the scenes. Needless to say I did notice that the film was 2h38 min!

This week-end, I finally saw Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight! For some reason, I had never come across it before, not even during my films studies years. I was enchanted. The film is sweet and sad, funny at times and nostalgic.
It seems rather low budget since many shots have a picture background and some even reveal a shadow on it. Maybe it was Chaplin’s desire to make it look like we could see the strings of the artifice since the film is about the making of dreams and fantasy in a cruel world.
It was also sweet to catch a glimpse in the very first scene, of two of his daughters. Then, his son has a big role in the film too. One of the key moments, is a scene towards the end where Chaplin and Buster Keaton perform a comic show that seems to emerge straight from the silent era. It works and is quite funny.
The film also made me think of a Norwegian film from 1954, two years after Limelight: Circus Fandango directed by Arne Skouen. There too, there is an old clown who dies.
Closer to us, the film is strangely linked to Almodovar’s Hable Con Ella, where we find Geraldine Chaplin too in a key role, a ballet dancer, injured and the making of the spectacle, esp. comedy…

5 months and two weeks or 25 weeks and 4 days:
There is something called “pelvis loosening” that consists in the loosening of the joints around the lower part of the back. It creates stretching pains and burning-like pain around the sacrum and the tail bone. I have been feeling it since last week. Last year, around that same time of year, I was learning to cross-country ski in Oslo. During our first outing in the forest, I fell on my behind on a rather flat but icy path. It hurt for at least one month and I ended up taking anti-inflammatory drugs to heal it.
The pain I am feeling now reminds me of that ski fall pain! It makes me cranky on a daily basis. I do not know how to sit not to feel it. Lying down is probably the best position so far. Then I think, of well, it could really be worse…:)
The positive moments several times a day and night is that I feel the little sweetie move and kick in me. It has become quite stronger now and sometimes it is possible to see waves on my belly! The future dad is all excited since he can really feel it and see it together with me now!

I have been feeling like listening to fairy-tale music these days. Rather I should say music that sound like lullabies. So I have concocted myself a little mix of songs and listen to them often.
They include: Bonnie Beecher’s delicious Come Wander with Me.
Marissa Nadler’s Fifty Five Walls. Vashti Bunyan’s Turning Backs. My Brightest Diamond’s Dragonfly. Holden’s Dès Demain. Bjørk’s Frosty and Unravel. Laura Veirs’ Ether Sings and Rapture. Bats for Lashes’ Bats Mouth. Low’s Silver Rider. Cat Power’s Metal Heart. El Perro del Mar’s Dog. Pj Harvey’s We Float. Once upon a Time there was a Pretty Fly from the delicious soundtrack of The Night of the Hunter.

Une tragédie évitable

Chaque année en France, naissent 700 à 2 000 enfants victimes du syndrome d’alcoolisation foetale (SAF) et certaines régions telles que l’Ile de la Réunion, le Nord Pas de Calais ou encore la Bretagne semblent plus particulièrement touchées. Ce syndrome, peu connu des futures-mamans a pourtant des conséquences dramatiques. Il se caractérise par des malformations cranio-faciales, un retard de croissance et des handicaps comportementaux et cognitifs.
Il faut savoir que les risques de malformations sont majeurs au cours du premier trimestre de la grossesse. Au deuxième et au troisième trimestre, l’alcool poursuit ses sinistres ravages et peut être responsable d’un retard de croissance et d’un accouchement prématuré. De même, il exerce un effet toxique sur les neurones, pouvant entraîner des altérations du développement psychomoteur, avec des troubles du comportement et un déficit intellectuel. Si les conséquences de l’alcool ne sont pas toujours aussi tragiques, une étude de l’Inserm1 a permis de mettre en évidence une diminution du quotient intellectuel de 5 à 7 points chez les jeunes enfants dont les mères avaient consommé au moins 2 à 3 verres d’alcool par jour pendant leur grossesse. Selon les résultats d’une autre étude qui a permis de suivre les enfants jusqu’à l’âge de 14 ans, ces jeunes rencontrent, pour la plupart, des problèmes de mémorisation et d’apprentissage.
Pourtant, ces drames pourraient être évités en proscrivant totalement la consommation d’alcool. En effet, les “buveuses régulières” ne seraient pas les seules à faire prendre des risques à leur enfant. Car on peut considérer qu’une femme enceinte qui consomme de l’alcool occasionnellement mais de façon excessive (par exemple 5 verres à une occasion) met également en danger l’enfant qu’elle porte. Pourquoi ? Parce que l’alcool traverse aisément la barrière placentaire et que les concentrations d’éthanol dans le liquide amniotique atteignent alors des valeurs comparables à celles mesurées dans le sang maternel…
Source: doctissimo.fr

Grossesse, alcool et tabac : le tiercé perdant

Toutes les femmes enceintes le savent : l’alcool et le tabac ont des répercussions néfastes sur la croissance de l’enfant à naître, qui persisteront après sa naissance. Pourtant certaines continuent à fumer, d’autres à boire. Des habitudes difficiles à changer.

Les messages concernant les effets de l’alcool et du tabac sur la santé sont relativement bien perçus par la majorité des femmes qui acceptent de faire des efforts pendant les 9 mois de leur grossesse. Néanmoins en 1998, 3,9 % d’entre elles déclaraient continuer à boire un verre d’alcool par jour et près d’un tiers des fumeuses de 25 et 35 ans n’avaient pas renoncé à la cigarette.

“Quand la maman est gaie, le foetus est ivre”.

Tabac, alcool et grossesse:
S’il est largement admis qu’il ne faut pas mettre d’alcool dans le biberon de son enfant, nombreuses sont les femmes qui ne perçoivent pas l’impact de leur propre consommation sur l’enfant qu’elles portent. L’alcool passe en effet directement du sang maternel vers le sang du foetus, à travers le placenta ce que le pédiatre Philippe Dehaene exprime en une formule : “quand la maman est gaie, le foetus est ivre”.

Ainsi, il faut savoir que même une consommation modérée prise au cours d’un repas a des répercussions sur le développement du foetus tout au long de la croissance, tout particulièrement pendant les 3 premiers mois de la grossesse. Des études récentes ont révélé une augmentation des avortements spontanés et des accouchements prématurés à partir de seulement 1 à 2 verres par jour. Au-delà de 21 verres dans la semaine, on observe l’apparition du syndrome d’alcoolisation foetale qui touche plus d’un enfant sur mille à la naissance. Ces nouveaux-nés sont victimes de retard de croissance (taille, poids, périmètre crânien), d’anomalies du crâne et du visage (face moyenne aplatie, yeux petits et écartés), et connaissent de problèmes dus à l’atteinte de leur système nerveux central. Les effets seront persistants jusqu’à l‘âge adulte et peuvent se traduire par des difficultés d’apprentissage, des troubles du langage et du comportement (impulsivité, distraction, difficultés à intégrer les règles sociales).

Source: Doctissimo.fr