Despite the high profile careers of successful politicians such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), and of course the woman candidate most on people's minds these days, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), a recent report from the Brookings Institute says that women still are lagging far behind men when it comes to holding political office.

A new report out today from Public Campaign, All Over the Map: Small Donors Bring Diversity to Arizona's Elections, authored by yours truly, gives a hint of why small donor involvement in politics could change the flavor of elections. One stark example: single mothers are more represented among small donors than they are among big donors to privately funded campaigns.

Remember the farm bill? It's baaaaaaaaaack. I wrote this post today where I showed how Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) is raking in campaign cash from out-of-state sugar industry interests while stating that she wants to preserve the decades-old sugar price support program.

Maybe you are interested in doing similar digging into your representative's campaign cash--check here to see if your representative is, like Musgrave, on the conference committee to hammer out the final version of the legislation. If so, give me a shout--I'd love to help you along--and indeed, that's an official part of my job description in my new gig with the Sunlight Foundation.

Missing from most news reports on the debate over the State Children's Health Insturance Program (S-CHIP) is one reason why getting an override on the president's veto will be tough: tobacco money.

Tobacco campaign contributions, that is. The legislation pays for expansion of the children's health program with an increase in tobacco taxes, by increasing the levy from 39 cents to $1 a pack.

My maternity leave was not just about Anya Rose, of course. There's another kid in the house, and his name these days is "Big Dr. Mr. Mallard Goldbug Farmer Kittycat." That would be Leo.

Today marks my first at work following my combined maternity leave and sabbatical from Public Campaign. Unlike most working mothers in this country, I was lucky to have twelve weeks of paid time to get to know my new daughter. However, being the mother of a newborn and a toddler didn’t leave me with more than ten minutes at a time for the Internets, so I stopped posting for the duration. But now I have child care and I’m back at the keyboard.

These past twelve weeks have gone by in a blur. But here and there there are some sharp memories to share. Funny how most of them involve nursing, which continues to be my job it seems more hours than there are in the day:

She's finally here! Anya Rose Watzman Nitczynski made us pull an all nighter last Sunday night. We're hoping that's not a preview of how she'll be as a teenager. She cleverly avoided an April Fool's birthday and instead arrived at 7:11 a.m. on April 2. At six pounds, six ounches, she was a burly three ounces bigger than her brother, Leo, was at that age.

The new baby could be here any day. We're waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Tomorrow I'll be 38 weeks pregnant. Leo arrived when I was 38 weeks 5 days pregnant. It's hard not to get caught up in the statistics, even though as we all know babies come when they want to, unless there's medical intervention.

We're also finally over a big hump work wise. Mark had a brief due last Friday that had him working until the wee hours most nights. We both still have work to do but nothing quite as extreme as that.

We have gotten the house as ready as we're going to for the new arrival. We set up a pack 'n play in my office, where the baby will sleep when it's not with us and before it's ready to move into Leo's room.

And of course I'm terribly uncomfortable. I'm fatigued all the time, sleeping poorly, feeling all kinds of weird aches and pains.

Like Elisa, I'm dilating and effacing--2 cm and 70% at my appointment last week.
So, nu, when is the baby coming?

[crossposted at Muckraking Mom]

Greetings all you Mother Talkers out there, and apologies for being largely absent in recent weeks. I've been super busy with being very pregnant, with work, with the fact that my husband is cramming on several briefs that he needs to get done before the baby comes, with being a mom to two-year-old Leo, and of course the cat ate my homework, and oof, it's a bit tired making excuses. But today is a big day in the realm of Clean Elections, and I wanted to make sure you Mother Talkers knew about it. The post below is also at posted at Huffington Post.

What do being 37 weeks pregnant and Sen. Richard Durbin's (D-IL) and Arlen Specter's (R-PA) bold move this week in introducing legislation, the Fair Elections Now Act, to bring public financing to congressional elections have in common?

Ok, the impending birth of a bill may not be quite as miraculous and awe inspiring as that of a human baby. At least not from the perspective of this anxious (and oh-so-ready) mother-soon-to-be.

That said, Sen. Durbin's decision to take on the money culture of Washington, DC, to do something positive to make elections about voters instead of big money donors requires courage, a whole lot of nurturing, and a leap of faith in the future. All these are important elements in deciding to become a parent.

I'm 33 weeks pregnant today and cranky much of the time. I wouldn't want to be around me. I feel badly for both Leo and Mark.

Case in point: yesterday, when I picked up Leo from daycare, he was dawdling as usual on the long sidewalk that stretches around the house. Devorah, who runs the daycare, has put little figures of different types of garden ornament animals along the way--frogs and butterlies and turtles and ladybugs--fascinating to a two year old.

Every time we passed an animal, Leo had to stop and converse with it, place it slightly differently on its perch, and talk some more.

"Hi laughing frog," he said.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi sticky frog," he said.

"Hi," I said.

Then we got to the lizard. "Hi lizard," he said. "Lizard wants to be over here." (He moved the lizard a few inches.)

"Ok, now say bye bye to the lizard," I said.

"NO! The lizard wants to be on the ice."

"Ok, move the lizard to the ice."

(Leo moves the lizard to the ice.)

"Ok, bye bye lizard."

Leo's face melted with tragedy. He looked at me and sobbed, "NO mommy! Don't say bye bye to the lizard! Talk to the lizard!"

So I proceeded to have a conversation with the lizard.

I don't know how we did it, but eventually Leo got in the car so I could drive him home. I was exhausted.

When I told the story to Mark later he said, "That sounds really fun."

I looked at him and said, "but the problem is, I'm no fun. I just wanted to get in the car."

I am trying to remember what it is like to have energy, seemingly boundless energy, enough to talk to lizards with my son. Maybe in a year or two, I'll be more fun? I can hear all the mothers and fathers out there laughing at me, even as I type this.

[crossposted at Muckraking Mom]

I'm 31 weeks pregnant today. I feel enormous. I'm having trouble getting a deep breath. I'm tremendously fatigued yet feel incredibly antsy with nervous energy. I can't sit still. I shift and squirm (well, in honesty I've always been a shifter and squirmer.) Nine weeks seems like a long, long time to go, and I find myself hoping that this baby will come early as Leo did. He was born at 38 weeks 5 days, but who is counting?

At least this week dawned warm and sunny. The whole city of Denver, I'm convinced, has been suffering with seasonal affective disorder. We've had snow on the ground since before Christmas, and our street has been deeply rutted with ice since that time, making a simple trip to the grocery store feel like a roller coaster ride. We are spoiled in Denver, used to relatively mild winters with lots of sun. We cold snaps and snow for sure, but the sun soon comes out and melts the stuff away. Not so this winter.

For us pregnant women the weather has been particularly tough to bear. On the snowy days--and there have been all too many--it's been hard to get outside for any fresh air. People are getting desperate not to let the snow stop their activities. Last week, when yet another snow storm hit Denver on Thursday night, the prenatal yoga class drew four or five enormous pregnant women. We all were practically in tears thanking the teacher for not canceling. "If I couldn't do yoga tonight, I think I'd kill somebody," said one of the women.

But today the sun is shining, and the thermometer is supposed to climb to the mid-50s. We still have a lot of winter to go, but this is wonderful hint of warm days to come. With spring also comes the arrival of this baby. It all seems fitting, if a long time away.

[crossposted at Muckraking Mom]

Consumer Reports made a huge mistake when it did not carefully check the study design for side impact tests on car seats before it reported that several leading models were unsafe--claims that it was forced to quickly retract.

But the bigger scandal is that the tests required by the U.S. government are entirely inadequate, writes Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen (and my former boss) in today's New York Times:

As it often does, Consumer Reports was attempting to fill a void in the government's work. In 2000, Congress instructed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to issue within two years a new standard to improve the safety of child restraints. One requirement was to minimize head injuries from side-impact collisions.

In May 2002, the safety administration announced it needed more research and testing information before it could design a test for the new standard. While some research is being conducted, the agency has not taken any further steps on side-impact protection for infants and children. As a result, there is no government-approved side-impact crash test for infant car seats as there is for frontal-crash testing.