Breastfeeding Banned at the Pool

Okay so an Ann Arbor YMCA says no more breastfeeding at the pool. Their reasoning? It’s distracting to the life guards. Hmm, hello? What kind of life guards must you have if me feeding my baby is more distracting than the hordes of 18 year old females in barely covering bikinis?

Try not thinking of them as breasts. They are bottles I have had attached to my chest for ease of feeding. Any better?

Go vote in the poll on the subject.

Best City to Have a Baby?

Let’s hear it for Oregon! They are the best place to have a baby according to Fit Pregnancy. Unfortunately I live in a city where we didn’t score so well on lots of fronts and have a lot of OBs. Articles like this is good and bad. I love that we have access to this information! I wish we had more and more detail about practitioners and hospitals. I just dislike what it says we are currently doing.

How does your city rank?

Write Grey’s Anatomy to Say “Have Dr. Bailey Breastfeed!”

I’ll admit it, I love watching medical dramas on TV. A lot of us do, that’s why they are so popular. Grey’s Anatomy actually has a surgery resident who is pregnant on the show. I’d love to see them promote breastfeeding, since it’s good medicine, right? Heck, even the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says that breastfeeding is the best thing for mom and baby.

The writer’s of Grey’s Anatomy have their own blog. You could also write ABC in general through their website at: ABC.com

Let’s tell them what we want to see: a powerful, female, surgeon breastfeeding her child!

Woman becomes quadruple amputee after giving birth in the hospital…

http://www.wftv.com/news/6253589/detail.html

This is unbelievable. I have nothing more to add.

On Being Mother Friendly

If you’re interested in changing the birth and parenting scene, maybe you’d like to hang out with some like minded individuals? I’d like to recommend The Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS) event in Boston this February. I’ve attended these in the past and they are amazing! It was so nice to be with people who understood where I was coming from and who were working for change locally and internationally. Wouldn’t you like to be in that type of group?
This year the keynote speaker will be Dr. Christiane Northrup. Then there will be lots of discussions and activism planning events through out the weekend long conference. I hope to see you there!
If you’re sitting here scratching your head wonder what the heck I’m talking about check out this site: http://motherfriendly.org

Pregnancy Discrimination

Can you imagine getting fired because you’re pregnant? I like to think most of us don’t work for places where getting pregnant gets you fired. But then you’ve got the actresses in Hollywood who make a living based on their looks and thin, attractive bodies. So what does that say about how we veiw pregnancy? Are we all destined to become slovenly and horrible looking simply because we carried a child? It really doesn’t matter why we have our jobs or what the jobs our. Our right to have a baby shouldn’t infringe upon our employment against our will.

Traumatic Ending

In the February 2006 issue of Child Magazine, there is a letter to the editor, “Childbirth Choices.” The author of the current letter (JM) is basically rambling on about the dangers of homebirth. [British Medical Journal Article on the Safety of Homebirth] You’d think Child could get it’s act together enough to publish letters that actually do something other than call names - which is what this letter basically is doing. It’s that neener neener neener, I am right and you are wrong kind of letter - with absolutely no science behind it. Umm, guess what, JM, actually you are wrong.

Let’s save the debates for your forums and keep this type of letter out of your Mail Center. You’re just opening yourself up to a huge mess and think of the page views you’ll get!