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Strollerderby
A naturally beautiful new mom.
Somewhere in a box in the attic, there’s a photo of me taken shortly after giving birth. My face is puffy and shiny with sweat, my eyes are tired and my hair is damp and stringy. Cradling my newborn baby girl in my arms, I look like I just ran a marathon in the Texas heat. While it is certainly not the most flattering photo ever taken of me, it is one of my favorites because it truly captures one of the most important moments of my life.
Now, I suppose that moment could have been captured just as well a few minutes later after I had given some attention to my appearance. I could have combed my hair, powdered my face and put a little color on my lips. But I gave birth before Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Nobody outside my immediate family was ever going to see that picture and besides, I was really tired and couldn’t have cared less how I looked.
But times have changed. With the advent of the Internet and social networking sites, it’s not enough to come through labor and delivery with a weary smile on your face. These days, modern moms know they will be facing an Internet-ready camera immediately after giving birth and are arriving at the hospital prepared for their close-up. Continue reading »
Surgical Delivery
Being a mother who has given birth twice via a cesarean section, when I saw the title of this article in my in-box I couldn’t skip over it. Are c-section babies happier kids? My interest was sparked!
Over on BabyCenter, Author Marcella Gates reported a new Chinese study reported by Reuters yesterday. According to the study – babies who undergo a difficult vaginal delivery are more likely to develop behavioral problems over children born via c-section. Continue reading »
Would you tweet your baby's birth?
When Twitter was first launched back in 2006, I didn’t exactly rush to create an account. I honestly didn’t understand what the point was and felt certain that nothing that happened in my personal life was tweet-worthy.
Eventually, curiosity got the best of me and I signed on. It was then that I realized that having something important to say is not a requirement when it comes to tweeting.
But if Twitter started out as a place for bored people to share the mundane details of their lives, it has evolved into something much more. The ability to communicate in real time with total strangers has brought out the exhibitionist in some.
It would seem that a desire to fill that little “what’s happening” box at the top of the Twitter page with something interesting has resulted in a whole lot of over sharing.
Take, for example, a woman who tweets her labor and delivery. Who does this and why? Continue reading »
If you’re pregnant, you’ve probably given a lot of thought to how you want your birth to go. You might even be one of the many women who has drafted a birth plan to record her preferences on things like pain management, medical interventions and breastfeeding.
But what about the guest list? BlogHer’s Melissa Ford asks if you’d let your mother-in-law watch your birth. Who do you think belongs in the delivery room with you?
The stories of dads delivering their own babies in a snowstorm are a dime a dozen, but one dad New Jersey dad wasn’t going to let the East Coast’s “snowpocalypse” keep a doc from delivering his little boy.
Dad-to-be John Elwood hopped in the car and drove to the home of his wife’s doctor, delivering the OB/GYN to her at the hospital, so he could deliver their son. Continue reading »
A father delivering his own baby is nothing new, but Madeline Howard wasn’t born in a car or at home. She was born in the maternity ward at a local hospital, but hospital staff never answered her dad’s calls for help.
The Sun reports Thomas Howard was banging on the emergency buzzer in his girlfriend’s room, but the midwife was too busy too answer. By the time she came to the room, Howard had already caught Madeline. Continue reading »
When my water broke at 4 a.m. a week before my due date, I called my OB right away.
“Are you sure it broke?” she asked.
“Uhhhh, yeah. Pretty sure.”
“I just saw you yesterday, and I told you that you wouldn’t be ready to go for at least another week.”
I contemplated and rejected at least three different responses before taking a very deep breath and saying, “Should I come to the hospital now or wait until my contractions start?”
“FINE. Come in,” she grumbled. My second daughter was born 12 hours later.
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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