Chronicles of a “Mr. Mom”

An incredibly heart-warming story of courage and perseverance and strength. A must-read.

My daughter was born 33 years ago. I did everything more traditional. I worked full-time. My daughter had before-school and after-school care. She was a latchkey kid in fourth grade. We lived in a small block where everyone looked out for her. She went to private school and now is a nurse. It was more traditional for her; I was paying for child care where needed.

….

With my second daughter, my oldest was in her first year of nursing school; she was 18. I just knew that I didn’t want to do things the same way. I would turn 40 when she was born. I couldn’t see going through the same thing. I would have had to work a job and a half to put her through school and do the different things that I’d done with my oldest child, and I didn’t have the support I had with the oldest child. A lot of things had changed. Not as many women were staying home. Families had ventured out. Two to three generations were no longer living in the same house.

Full story: Lessons From a Single Mom

(ARA) - When Janeé Pedersen gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Noelle, last year, she was certain that cloth diapers were the right thing for her.

“I knew I would use cloth before I was even pregnant with my daughter. I did a lot of research online and by the time we came home from the hospital, I had my stash ready to go!” she says.

Pedersen, like many of today’s eco-minded new moms, is part of a growing number of women who are ditching disposable diapers for more environmentally-friendly diapering options. The influx of moms going green has been a key contributing factor to the booming resurgence of cloth diapering.

The good news is that there are many cloth diapering systems for a mom to choose from, however, this plethora of options can be overwhelming. Here is advice from three veteran cloth diapering moms on how to get started — and stick with — cloth diapering.

Get Educated  
“The first thing a mom needs to do is become educated on the different types of cloth diapering systems, from pockets to all-in-ones to fitteds,” advises Kelly Wels, who is expecting her third baby and is the founder of KellysCloset.com, a popular cloth diapering boutique. “After a little research, moms will realize that cloth diapering has nothing to do with pins, rubber pants or soaking and swirling dirty diapers.”

Wels also recommends that moms turn to the Internet, specifically the DiaperPin.com, to learn the cloth diapering lingo and read about the different cloth diaper brands.  

Try Different Types and Brands  
New mom Jesi Josten from Denver concedes that figuring out what type of cloth diaper to choose can be overwhelming. “I always suggest that you buy a couple of each kind of diaper, then sell off the ones that don’t work and go with the ones that do. Sometimes what sounds great on paper doesn’t really work for you in real life,” she counsels.

Go With the Tried and True  
With new diaper brands popping up every day, Wels advises that you can’t go wrong using the tried and true brands. “I usually recommend new moms use Fuzzi Bunz pocket diapers because they are so easy-to-use and wash at home,” she says. In fact, Wels has dedicated an entire online boutique, FuzziBunzOnline.com, to exclusively selling this type of diapers and accessories.

Other tried and true brands include BumGenius and Happy Heinys, which are popular one-sized pocket diaper brands available online at OneSizeDiaperStore.com. These diapers allow parents to squeeze maximum value from their investment because the same diaper fits most babies from newborn to toddler.  

Josten says when she first started cloth diapering her 16-month-old daughter, Violet, pocket cloth diapers were all the rage. However, these diapers just didn’t work for her daughter so she switched to Thirties fitted diapers. Josten is happy she made the switch rather than give up on cloth diapering altogether.

“I’ve learned that there is no such thing as one-kind-fits-all. There are literally hundreds of different brands and styles to choose from, so even if you have a hard-to-fit baby you can find something that works for you,” she says.

Follow Your Heart  
Josten believes that it’s important to make decisions that mean something to the world-at-large. “My husband and I try really hard to follow the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ motto in our daily life, and I just couldn’t see throwing away literally dozens of diapers a day into landfills. My research into cloth confirmed my beliefs that this was the best way to go.”

Don’t Give Up  
Josten also advises that moms shouldn’t give up if cloth diapering doesn’t seem to be working for them right away. She suggests getting support from a local mom who uses cloth diapers too. “It would have been great to have a mentor to meet with where I could actually touch and feel the diapers and ask questions about cloth diapers in real-life.”

Wels says that cloth diapering is so much easier than most people think and tells moms that they should at least give cloth diapering a chance if they are even remotely curious about it. “Give it a shot. You might just surprise yourself and become a fellow mom of the cloth.”

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Will someone please put an end to her misery?

Either get her help - or just leave her alone to do whatever she wants (even if that includes taking her own life).

How many more tens of thousands of our hard-earned tax dollars are going to be wasted in caring for this attention-seeking, two-bit, incapable, terrible-mom piece-of-you-know-what?

What is this world coming to?

Brit Heads to Hospital for Second Time This Month

…. Stress levels in foetuses only four months old — about the time the pregnancy starts to show — rise and fall in line with those of their mothers’.

The findings prompted calls for employers, family and friends to be aware of the risks and offer more help to moth-ers-to-be.

“For the first time, there’s solid evidence to show that an unborn child may be exposed to maternal stress as early as 17 weeks in development,” said Claire Friars, a midwife for Tommy’s, the baby charity.

Full story: Babies in womb feel mothers’ anxiety at only four months

“– And Every Mother Can Do It!

Breastfeeding isn’t only about providing mother’s milk. While seldom recognized in literature, doctors’ advice or common conversation, there’s a whole lot more to breastfeeding than nutrition and immunity.”

Full story: Nursing…

SAN DIEGO, CA — (MARKET WIRE) — February 08, 2007 — Popular family-fitness therapist Sara Holliday, MFT, CPT, introduces “Pregnancy Talk with Sara” — an engaging and information-packed weekly program for pregnant women. Each week, beginning February 10th, 2007, Sara and a “guest expert” will conduct a live conference call designed to help expecting mothers learn about and discuss the issues that are most important to their pregnancy. These include relationships, fitness and nutrition, makeup, skincare and fashion, how to prepare for labor and more. Participants will have an opportunity to listen and ask questions of Sara and her experts in the comfortable and familiar venue of a telephone conversation. The program is free and requires a simple registration via Sara’s company website, Fit By Sara, Inc., at FitBySara.com.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, “Pregnancy Talk with Sara” will kick off with “Be My Baby, Valentine,” scheduled for Saturday, February 10th, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. The program will highlight tried-and-true ways to keep passion alive during pregnancy, no matter what the mood. For many moms-to-be, pregnancy often coincides with feeling unattractive, uncomfortable and decidedly not sexy. This may create a conflict with the desire to be loved and comforted, leading to depression. Sara will discuss tips and techniques to help women overcome these feelings.

Sara says, “I wanted a way to bring pregnant women together from all over the country in a dynamic and relaxed environment while providing real-life answers to the most pressing questions about one of the most important events in their life — their pregnancy. The ‘Pregnancy Talk with Sara’ program is an opportunity for women to learn about and discuss pregnancy-related concerns and ask questions they may be afraid or reluctant to ask — all in an intimate and supportive environment.”

A licensed marriage-family therapist specializing in pre- and postnatal issues and a mother of two young boys, Sara looks forward to bringing her pregnancy-related expertise to pregnant women across the country. “Pregnancy Talk with Sara” programs are held each Saturday at 9:00 a.m. PST beginning February 10, 2007 and ending March 3, 2007 and will have a conversational-style format ranging between 30 to 60 minutes, including a question-and-answer segment. There will also be a weekly contest for prizes and a grand prize giveaway of an InStep stroller (SRP $99.95) from InStep for one lucky participant.

All information and registration materials for the “Pregnancy Talk with Sara” program can be found at www.fitbysara.com.

When you hear the words crisis pregnancy, you probably picture an unmarried teenager, too young to deal with the trauma of sin’s unexpected consequences. But according to a study compiled by the National Institutes of Health, up to 60 percent of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, affecting three million women and their families every year. And these are not just teenagers.

Picture the mother with a still-young infant and postpartum depression; or the family with three young children and a father who has just deployed to Iraq; or the parents nearing retirement and planning for their teenagers’ college funds. For these families, the expected bundle of joy can feel more like a bundle of troubles.

Full story

New York, NY (February 1, 2007) — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, the seventh and final book in the best-selling series, has been scheduled for release at 12:01 a.m. on July 21, 2007, it was announced today by Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company.

In making the announcement, Lisa Holton, President of Scholastic Children’s Books said, “We are thrilled to announce the publication date of the seventh installment in this remarkable series. We join J.K. Rowling’s millions of readers – young and old, veterans and newcomers – in anticipating what lies ahead.”

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling’s sixth Harry Potter book, was released on July 16, 2005, and was the fastest-selling book in history, selling 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours. All six Harry Potter books, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince have been number one bestsellers in the United States, the U.K., and around the world. There are currently over 120 million copies of the Harry Potter books in print in the United States alone.

Scholastic will publish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (ISBN: 0-545-01022-5 ; Price: $34.99) in hardcover under the Arthur A. Levine imprint with interior and cover art by Mary GrandPré, who has illustrated the previous six books. The deluxe edition (ISBN: 0-545-02937-6; Price: $65.00) and reinforced library edition (ISBN: 0-545-02936-8 ; Price: $39.99 ) will be published simultaneously.

Scholastic is the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books and a leader in educational technology. Scholastic creates quality educational and entertaining materials and products for use in school and at home, including children’s books, magazines, technology-based products, teacher materials, television programming, film, videos and toys. The Company distributes its products and services through a variety of channels, including proprietary school-based book clubs, school-based book fairs, and school-based and direct-to-home continuity programs; retail stores, schools, libraries and television networks; and the Company’s Internet site, www.scholastic.com

By 2010, over one fifth of pregnant women in the UK will be obese at the start of their pregnancy, according to scientists from the North East Public Health Observatory (NEPHO).

The Teeside-based researchers studied 36,821 women who had attended a local maternity unit between the start of 1990 and the end of 2004 and found that the proportion of women who are obese at the start of their pregnancy rose from 9.9% to 16.0% in the 14-year period.

Results also showed that mums-to-be were more likely to be overweight if they were at the older end of the fertility spectrum and lived in a deprived area.

Full story…

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in this present day and age. Women around the world are susceptible to breast cancer while men are prone to develop prostate cancer. Let us focus our attention the most common form of cancer in women, and one of the most common types of cancer in general.

Research statistics indicate that one in every seven women who live up to the age of 90 will develop breast cancer. However, the statistics are a bit skewed because this disease is especially prevalent in some families. Women who have a family history of being afflicted with this type of cancer have a greater chance of developing this disease. You should stay especially vigilant for breast cancer symptoms if the women in your family have a history of breast cancer.

In general, breast cancer symptoms manifest themselves once the cancer is already in its later stages of growth, and may have already metastasized to other more vital areas of the body. This means that it would be healthy for women to get checked for tumors regularly. Late stage breast cancer symptoms are much more unpleasant than the mammograms they have to endure during a check up.

A lump in a woman’s breast is one of most common breast cancer symptoms than may indicate the presence of this illness. Of course, not all lumps are cancerous. Most women will develop numerous lumps in their breasts throughout their lives. Lumps are especially common during periods of rapid hormonal changes such as puberty and menstruation.

Some women who suffer from this illness often experience pain in their breasts. This painful sensation is one of the more severe breast cancer symptoms. A cancer that has grown large enough to impinge on nerves will be a noticeable lump in a self check or mammogram. Once again, pain in the breast are does not necessarily mean that a woman has breast cancer. Women usually experience tenderness of the breasts during puberty and periods of hormone fluxes .

Cases of breast cancer are usually diagnosed in women over 40, but women in their teens and twenties can be afflicted with this disease as well. If you are a woman, then it would be good idea to start checking yourself for lumps from puberty. However, do not forget that you’ll probably find a lot of lumps that are harmless during this period. You’ll soon get an idea of the kinds of lumps that are normal, and the kinds of lumps that may be breast cancer symptoms, with some experience and some consultation with your doctor.

By: Morgan Hamilton

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Morgan Hamilton offers expert advice and great tips regarding all aspects concerning Breast Cancer Symptoms. Visit our site for more helpful information about Breast Cancer Symptoms and other similar topics.