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I just put in a print order for these and will have them available at the Doulas For All meeting at Borders on Tuesday June 29th. Donations of $1 per card will benefit Doulas For All! Great idea for adding to a baby shower card, or to keep in your diaper bag to present to a nursing duo, or to help educate…write to info@DoulasForAll.org or call 661-DOULAS-1 to get yours today!
We want to hold a fact-gathering + opinion-generating meeting with area doulas, birth advocates, and maternity care-providers to help build our organization into something that will benefit families in the ways that really matter! So, put your thinking caps on and plan to join us on June 29th @6pm at the Millcreek Mall Borders! Our website exists (but has no content yet!) at DoulasForAll.org and you can always email me at Justine@DoulasForAll.org for info or questions about this project. We also have a new phone number: 661-DOULAS-1
Would you (or someone you know and love) like to have a doula provide one-on-one support through pregnancy and the birthing experience? Are you worried that the cost may be out of your budget though? State of the Heart is raising funds to help families afford doula services here in Erie! Stay tuned for more details or contact me if you are interested in learning more about this exciting opportunity to help families have the birth that they deserve!
"Your baby is so content! What is your secret?"
Parenting can bring out some pretty big emotions. Nothing kicks off a debate between adults quicker than the implication that YOUR/THEIR parenting philosophies might be half-baked…or wrong…or questionably legal…or safe. Say one of these words loudly at the mall, at your next family reunion, or at the office get-together: Circumcision. Co-sleeping. Breastfeeding. Spanking. Childbirth. These simple words can evoke so many different feelings depending on who you are talking to: Guilt. Pride. Jealousy. Regret. Joy.
But the feelings that I am trying to cultivate more in myself are: Empathy and Humility.
I recently watched the film Away We Go. Let me say first: I really loved it. Let me say secondly: I only knew the bare minimum about it, I had not read reviews or viewed any trailers for it. And finally, let me say: the scene about AP values really stung when I first saw it. Here is a clip from that scene. And another. Go ahead and watch them if you have not seen the film. Here is the trailer if you want to get an overview of the whole thing. I’ll wait.
The film depicted several families and several different parenting styles. There was the disrespectful family who seemed to believe that their children were deaf and dumb. There was the super-crunchy AP family. There was the open-arms adopt-a-lot-of-kids rainbow family. The single-parent family. It was very easy for Sir Hubby and I to scoff, guffaw, and feel superior when the disrespectful family was on the screen. What kind of jerks treat their kids like that! But there was an awkward silence in the room when the AP value family came on. Mostly it was quiet because Sir Hubby had fallen asleep. But also, because I could easily identify ALL of our AP values being depicted by these characters. At first, a sort of pride welled up in me…
Hooray for AP values being shown in a movie! Extended breastfeeding! Babywearing! Family bed! Doula’s! Yippeeee!
But then I realized that the film was not praising those choices, but depicting them as kinda crazy. Kinda over-the-top. Kinda awful. The pregnant couple shouts at the AP family, calls them horrible names, and finally flees the house.
Whoa. I start warming my fingers up to draft a strongly worded letter to the writers:
How dare you! Babywearing this! Family bed that! Baby-led breastfeeding this! Don’t you know that studies have shown that AP…
Wait a minute. THIS is what the writers of the film were making fun of! The passionately snobby caricature of AP parents. They were showing how non-AP parents are meant to feel when smug-AP parents berate them or humiliate them or shame them for not being superior enough to make the choice to AP immediately and instinctively. And maybe we don’t do it on purpose…but whenever we proclaim that our way is the best way– the ONLY way– if you want healthy kids, happy kids, gentle kids, smart kids, compassionate kids, then we have not turned someone on to AP…we have chased them away. They are fleeing the house just like the couple in the movie did. Continue reading 'Away We Go With Parenting!'»
The Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) released this warning today in response to infant deaths in last 20 years from the improper use of slings. However, there is no mention that they are specifically referring to bag-style slings– which are not what most dedicated babywearers would refer to as a sling, anyway. The Infantino Sling Rider in particular is one of the types of slings that are responsible for 14 infant deaths in the past 20 years. It is a poorly designed sling, and as Anne over at Dou-la-la points out;
“…these particular brands were created in a response to a trend, without much if any real research, and without a fundamental belief in babywearing as a practice.”
I completely agree that they are probably an ignorantly-executed attempt to get the Big Box Store Crowd on the sling bandwagon after some junior executive saw a picture of a celebrity wearing their baby in a sling on some magazine at the checkout line.
Most upsetting was the steaming pile of crap that came out of the mouth of Don Mays from Consumer Reports on CBS’s The Early Show:
“Don’t use slings at all,” Mays recommends. “There are safer ways of carrying your baby than in a sling.”
Mr. Mays. Ahem. You might want to get your facts straight. For the 10 year time period between 1995-2005, there were 22 stroller-related deaths for children under the age of 5 reported to CPSC. A majority of these deaths involved suffocation, entrapment or positional asphyxiation of an infant. 3x the amount of death in less time. And the leading item that injures and kills babies? INFANT CAR SEATS AND CARRIERS (and that EXCLUDES automobile accident related incidents). 14 deaths in 20 years from slings…meanwhile 182 children were KILLED by improper car seat/carrier use in only 2 years. And 65 infants died from CRIB related accidents. So it sounds to me that slings might be one of the most safe ways to carry your baby.
The CPSC does clarify that:
many of the babies who died in slings were either a low birth weight twin, were born prematurely, or had breathing issues such as a cold. Therefore, CPSC urges parents of preemies, twins, babies in fragile health and those with low weight to use extra care and consult their pediatricians about using slings.
By all means, let’s please include warnings that your sling is a parenting tool, not a replacement for common sense and observation…but saying that no one should ever use a sling is NOT a reasonable recommendation on the part of the CPSC or Consumer Reports. Shame on them.
It is well documented that baby wearing has numerous benefits for both babies and parents. Babywearing is a world-wide parenting tool. Babywearing is a centuries old tradition. Yet, we wore our baby to the grocery store early today, and I could feel people’s eyes on me…sending out judgey vibes…trying to warn me that I was KILLING MY BABY by giving me withering glares because they watched a 1-minute spiel on The Early Show and can now smugly claim to have been schooled in babywearing by the incredibly informed Mr Mays. Sigh. Usually, I love educating people about the benefits of slings, and usually my happy babies are the best endorsement for them. Now I will have to spend my time convincing people that my baby can breathe and that I am coordinated enough to avoid walking him face-first into the steam table at the Hot Asian Food Bar at Wegman’s. Dammit.
Well, I can just show them this vide0…or invite them to come to a babywearing seminar. What babywearing seminar, you ask? The one that I will offer for free to anyone who wants to learn more about slings. Call me. Text me. Email me. Facebook me. SERIOUSLY.
Erie Times Announcement
I am sure that it would come as no surprise to anyone to hear that our family doesn’t usually read the newspaper. Reading the news online just seems so much easier these days. It is greener. No stacks of newspapers to store until recycling day. I can choose what kinds of news (regional, national, international, politics, health…) I want to read and just skip over the stuff that doesn’t interest me (sports, comics, obituaries…) So why would we care about going through all of the steps to make sure that our birth was listed in the newspaper?
Well, frankly, let me just say that I am a bit ashamed that we don’t read the newspaper. I think that our children could probably benefit from seeing us reading it and become inspired to read it themselves. Finding creative ways to reuse the newspaper seems like something our kiddos would be into as well…we just saw a PBS special in which grade school kids made a fairly complex engineering project with newspapers and masking tape. Not to mention the glass cleaning properties or using it to stuff into wet boots in the winter. But I digress. Continue reading 'Home Birth In The Newspaper!'»
Homeschool Perk--Getting the playground all to ourselves!
Along with our unexpected pregnancy, we have also been gestating another new little life these past few months: the life of a homeschooling family (or maybe we are more technically an “unschooling” family).
As the back-to-school frenzy surrounded us here in our part of the country, our school year had already been in session for nearly a month. We didn’t have to buy a thing to get started. There were no uniforms to buy, no back-to-school haircuts, no competing with the mom next to me at The Big Box Store to get my hands on the very last purple glitter pencil box*
Let me tell you about our first day of homeschooling this year: Continue reading 'Why We Have Decided to Homeschool'»
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