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Strollerderby
It's hard to know what to say to the parent of a preemie.
Inspire.com, an online patient community, has published a report called Insensitive Comments and Their Impact on Preemie Mothers. “Out of 630 preemie parents who responded to an online survey, more than half said they had experienced insensitive comments about their baby, contributing to feelings of stress and isolation,” ABC News reports.
20 percent of the parents who responded to Inspire’s survey have “lost relationships with one or more people who were important to them” over things said after the premature birth of their baby. Before you stick your foot in your mouth, it’s important to understand how your words can affect the parent of a preemie, especially a mother, who is “at a much higher risk of experiencing postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress disorder” after giving birth prematurely and spending months in the NICU.
With that in mind, here are five things you should never say to the parent of a preemie: Continue reading »
A hospital in L.A. has been taken to task for offering salon services including “nail and eyebrow” treatments in it’s neonatal intensive care ward. The allegations of “waxing services of any kind” were just false, the county investigators found.
Staffers were giving each other the beauty treatments in their break rooms, and only once in awhile did the salon activities spill over into the ward itself, the report finds.
Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar haven’t ruled out Baby No. 20.
“We’ll just wait and see what God has in store,” says Michelle in the Feb. 8 issue of People magazine.
It’s hard to believe the couple would risk another — and another and another? — pregnancy after what they experienced with child No. 19, daughter Josie Brooklyn. She was born at 25 weeks gestation and weighed only 1 pound 6 ounces. She’s around 8 weeks old and is still in the NICU at a Little Rock hospital.
So what exactly makes the Duggars refuse to say no? TV contracts? Death-defying thrills? Continue reading »
Baby mama extraordinaire Michelle Duggar popped out number nineteen Thursday, but the fight isn’t over yet.
After being rushed to the hospital with gallbladder pains this week, Duggar gave birth to an extremely premature little girl. Continue reading »
This World Aids Day, author James Frey shares his devatation over losing his son and asks us to help all of the chidren who still have a chance.
On July 3rd, 2008, as my wife held him in her arms and I held his hand, my son, Leo Siddhartha Frey, died. We were in a small room in a hospital in New York, a room that was, and is, part of the NICU, a room where families who knew their children were going to die went to spend their last moments together privately and in some kind of peace, though I would never describe the time as peaceful. As we watched him, and told him we loved him, and cried, Leo took a final breath and his heart stopped beating and he passed, and part of me passed with him. Continue reading »
When Elizabeth Abraham began nursing her daughter, her breasts dwarfed the baby. Born at 32 weeks gestation, her little girl had a lot of growing to do before she was big enough to nurse.
Nursing a healthy baby is hard enough. As Elizabeth puts it, “Nursing my son was easy. I could just pick him up and cuddle him. There’s nothing cuddly about a Medela breast pump.”
When a newborn is too small even to take food by mouth, here’s some expert advice from moms and lactation consultants on how (and why) to breastfeed. Continue reading »
Friends show their support through a crisis in all kinds of ways. Some bring casseroles, some send nice notes to cheer you up, and if you’re Jason Sucharski, some grow beards.
Jason Sucharski’s son, Chase, was born months early, weighing only one pound and 7 ounces when he arrived in July. While he was being treated in the NICU at Sisters Hospital in Buffalo, Continue reading »
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