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Live From Studio 1A: Babysitting Prescriptions

This morning, our diet and nutrition editor Madelyn Fernstrom was on the show to discuss some common confusion surrounding prescription drugs. She went through advice ranging from what to ask your pharmacist, to what foods to avoid mixing with what drugs. You can read more about this advice on Madelyn's blog on ivillage.com.The producer of this segment, Gretchen, left for vacation a week ago, and

This morning, our diet and nutrition editor Madelyn Fernstrom was on the show to discuss some common confusion surrounding prescription drugs. She went through advice ranging from what to ask your pharmacist, to what foods to avoid mixing with what drugs. You can read more about this advice on Madelyn's blog on ivillage.com.

The producer of this segment, Gretchen, left for vacation a week ago, and handed the segment off to me before she took off. When someone takes over a segment for another producer, and sees it through in the morning, we refer to it as "babysitting" the segment. So this morning, I was Madelyn's babysitter -- not that she needs one, after being on the show so often. But regardless, for a segment like this one which had lots of props and was mostly a walk-and-talk, it requires lots of double-checking. Madelyn and I were here yesterday to meet with the props department during their set-up session last evening. We checked on all the products that we had asked for, and made a few more additions and changes. You read about our art directors and props department in Kristin Costa's blog entry a few weeks back. They really do work magic. And for my first segment that involved lots of props, they made it so easy for us. Even at the last minute, we decided to add another piece of information about alcohol, and ordered up a wine and martini glass at the eleventh hour. (To the disappointment of the control room, the martini glass was only filled with water.)

Madelyn arrived this morning, and we chatted about the segment one more time to make sure everything was in order. We checked in with Meredith, who was anchoring the segment, and checked on the props one last time. Then it was in to hair and makeup for Madelyn, and before we knew it, they were zipping through all of the information. And just like that, a live segment that is scheduled for six minutes is over. And my first babysitting gig is a thing of the past.