With all the comments under the GBMC parent education thread this weekend, I thought I'd give a call to Dee Dee Franke, who left the hospital recently after running new moms' groups there for years.

Franke said she would like to find a way to keep ministering to new parents. When she does, she said, she'll let me know what form it's taking, and I'll let you know.

In the meantime, she said to thank the parents who have commented here -- and the others whom she worked with over the years -- for their support. "Tell them I really miss them," she said. "I learned as much from them as they did from me."

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

So the word is that Angelina Jolie's twins are due....sometime soon. She's checked into a French hospital, as we all already know, but her doctor is mum on exactly how soon she's due. So all that's left for us is to name her new babies.

Here's your chance to suggest that perfect name you never got to use for the girl you never had, or the boy's name your sister took first. Nobody seems to have a firm bead on the sex of the babies, so feel free not to let gender limit your suggestions.

Just so there's no duplication, here are the names of the four other Brangelina kids: Maddox, Pax, Zahara and Shiloh.

(AP Photo/Evan Agostini)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

My poor expecting friend. She started her maternity leave two weeks ago today, a week before her due date, and only now is she showing signs that labor has started. I urged her to start her leave early, knowing that it would really be the last chance she had to do some of the things she likes to do, like go to big-people movies and eat in restaurants without springing for a sitter. Or just to sit and enjoy silence.

Then again, both my kids were a little bit early -- one by several days -- so I never really got that time. Now I suspect she's gotten too much. Then there's the discomfort factor of being that pregnant; how much fun can you really have? Maybe the distraction of work would have made the time go faster.

So it's time for....a Guilty-Mom poll. You have until 9 p.m. Sunday to give advice to the other expecting moms out there.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
                    

Need dinner delivery after your own delivery? Let's Dish!, the meal-assembly company, has an offer for new moms -- free delivery of its 8-meal DishDelivery orders for up to three months after a baby is born.

Details and rules of the offer are on the Let's Dish blog.

If you know someone who's expecting, a nice group gift might be to spring for the meals, then take advantage of the offer for free delivery of them. I know that when I had babies, all I really wanted was for dinner to be taken care of (and cleanup too!).

When my first was born, one of our favorite gifts was a big spiral sliced ham with biscuits, with a tray of fresh fruit. Whenever we were hungry and had a moment to eat, we'd grab it.

What food gifts have you received in the early days of having a baby that you liked best?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

This ABC news piece brings some discouraging news for expecting parents: Just 16 percent of employers offer fully paid, six-week maternity leaves, according to a study by the Families and Work Institute -- compared to 27 percent a decade ago.

The study also found that despite technological advances that might make more working from home and job-sharing possible, employers aren't offering more of those options. One upside: employers are becoming more accommodating to mothers who need private spaces to breastfeed (or pump, I gather).

As our economic picture gets bleaker, I imagine it will be harder for some employees to feel they can leave their jobs for long to have a baby or care for a family member. In retrospect, I feel supremely lucky to have been able to take 6 months or so with each child. Yet I would love to have been able to take more time.

How much time did you take for your maternity leaves?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
                    

Thanks for all the great comments, gear recommendations and other pieces of advice for Amy and other moms (and dads) to be. I'm sure we all appreciate them, with the possible exception of Amy's friends and relatives, who will now have to deal with a supersized registry of all your suggested items.

Even with all those recommendations I found myself wanting to know more about some of the gear (Lea Orlando, what's a bumbo seat?). So I'll do a little more research and save that list for later. Meanwhile, with your comments and some advice I've been thinking about, there's more than enough for a tip sheet on Things We Wish We'd Known before that first baby came.

Here goes. (Click below for the list and see why in the world Coco Chanel is pictured in her little black dress. ...):

Continue reading "Tip Sheet Thursday: Advice for the expecting" »

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
                    

It's time to suggest topics for the next Tip Sheet Thursday. This week I've been trying to come up with ways to help Amy, the mom-to-be who wrote in to the blog several weeks ago.

Here are some of my ideas for a new-mom-themed list. Let me know what you think of them, and also pass along your suggestions for what items should be on each list.

--Ten pieces of baby gear you'll actually use.

--Ten bits of most useless advice we've ever heard about having a baby.

--Ten things we wish we'd known when having our first babies.

Please vote below.

 (Photo of Scandinavian furniture collection by Babi Italia and Mod Pod bedding set from Babies "R" Us, distributed by the Associated Press)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
                    

Parents have been talking today about increasing evidence that a chemical widely used in plastic baby bottles and other food and beverage containers can cause harm to humans.

Here's our story from yesterday, in which the federal National Toxicology Program reported that the compound bisphenol-a, or B.P.A., could be linked to precancerous prostate tumors, early puberty and urinary system problems in rats injected with it. The New York Times report today that Canada is about to label B.P.A. as toxic was the second most-emailed story on the Times' Web site when I checked just now.

We talked a bit earlier about glass baby bottles making a comeback, and now there's more reason for a parent to fret about this. When I saw one of my best mom pals this morning, it was at the top of her list of worries.

What do you think? Have you combed through your house to get rid of plastics you're worried about?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
                    

I've been meaning to get a chance to read the new book Parenting Inc. and tell you what I think about it. So I was glad to see this excerpt on NPR's website, which will probably be all I -- and you -- will have time to read this week. Judging from the beginning, the book looks promising, though just reading about the financial binds facing parents today is enough to make my head ache. And that's even knowing these problems quite well from my own experience.

I'm sure we'll talk more about the book in general, but there was one thing at the very beginning of the excerpt that interested me. The author, Pamela Paul, talks about anguishing over whether she should enroll her baby girl in baby sign language classes to help her communicate before she learned to talk. You'll probably remember that baby signing was all the rage a few years ago, but Paul reports that after doing lots of research, she concluded that having her daughter learn sign language wouldn't be worth the effort; some research told her it could even do more harm than good.

I've been wanting to ask about your experience with baby sign language classes. (Neither of my children took them, and fortunately both learned to speak on a normal schedule.) Did your children learn to sign, or are you considering signing up a baby? What went into your decision? Did you see benefits?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
                    

There's an interesting story on the Los Angeles Times web site today about parents wrestling with the circumcision decision. It's interesting to read the statistics behind the debate: In 1965, the story says, 85 percent of boys born in the U.S. were circumcised. In 2005, slightly more than half were.  

How did you make this decision for your son/s? And if you're expecting a boy, is this a topic of debate in your house as birth approaches?

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
                    

The Chicago Tribune reports that by tricking the body with medication, herbs, or pumping, adoptive mothers can breastfeed a child without giving birth. The newspaper included stories of mothers who made it work.

This Web site is dedicated to supporting the practice. Here's an older story about adoptive breastfeeding from the Web site of Mothering magazine.

Have any of you readers who've adopted tried to breastfeed? Were you successful? I'm interested in the pros and cons.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

The Associated Press reports that because of concerns about a chemical used to make plastic baby bottles, glass bottles are making a comeback. But there are concerns about those, too -- they're breakable, for one thing, and more expensive.

Have you used glass baby bottles? Let us know the pros and cons, and if you have any local sources for them, please share in a comment below.

(Associated Press photo of Dr. Brown's Natural Flow glass bottles)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Now that the celeb mother of four has shown off another baby bump, her growing brood with Brad Pitt is the subject of more discussion, such as this one on The O'Reilly Factor the other night. A psychotherapist came on the show and said that some women having so many children close together are "trying to fill a void."

Funny, I didn't read anything in the transcript (which veers off halfway through into the Eliot Spitzer case) about whether Pitt has any voids to fill.

What do you think?

(Photo by Gabriel Bouys, AFP/Getty Images)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
                    

Yesterday's post about the new multimedia symptom tracker at parenting.com sent me digging into the album for this picture last night. Baby girl was just 9 months, and my parents, bless their hearts, had treated my family, my brother and his wife to a Caribbean cruise.

The first or second night, my folks had offered to babysit while the two younger couples enjoyed a rare evening out sans kids. We had just climbed into the hot tub with our little umbrella drinks when my dad ran up in a panic.

Seal cough.

We raced down and found baby barking up a storm. I'd read about croup, but to hear it, in a baby so many miles from home, was really scary. I did remember the advice I'd read about getting the child some cool night air (just as Christine mentioned in her comment).

Fortunately, my folks had sprung for a balcony. The little girl and I stayed out there all night, and in the morning, my husband snapped this picture.

For me, it captures what parenting is all about. It's an image of an exhausted mother, to be sure, but she's in a beautiful place with a child who, so sick hours before, appears miraculously healed in that way only young kids do. What could be better?

Do you have pictures you love with your kids of times that were hard -- but worth it? Please send them to me in an email and I'll post them here. And do tell us the stories that go with them, either in a comment below or with the pictures.

(Photo courtesy of me)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Parenting.com has a great new resource for parents -- an online symptom checker, developed in cooperation with the faculties of Harvard and Dartmouth medical schools, with audio and video of children with common illnesses. You can hear what croup with stridor sounds like and watch how a child with a stiff neck (a sign of meningitis) behaves.

It's painful to watch the videos of these sick children (though they are later seen getting better). But I suspect this will be valuable for many of you, especially when a child suddenly gets sick in the middle of the night. Sometimes all the books in the world just don't really tell you what you're looking for.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

The Consumer Products Safety Commission yesterday sent out a reminder to parents about crib and play yard safety for babies. The CPSC reported that of the 97 crib deaths it recorded between 2002 and 2004, half occurred in cribs containing pillows, quilts and other bedding.

Thirty percent of the deaths involved problems with old cribs that were in bad condition, and babies becoming trapped in spaces between the sides of a crib and an ill-fitted mattress. The rest of the deaths "were associated with accessories situated in/around the crib (such as window cords or curtain tie backs), falls out of cribs, alterations made to cribs, or entrapment when the child became wedged between the crib and other furniture or a wall."

Here's a link to the full release. Also yesterday, the CPSC announced a recall of Munire Furniture wooden cribs sold at specialty juvenile product stores nationwide from November 2005 through November 2007 for between $400 and $600. They were sold under the names Majestic Curved Top and Flat Top Cribs, Essex Cribs, Brighton/Sussex Cribs and Captiva Cribs.

Those of you with children probably already know about putting baby to sleep on her back without a pillow, but the information is so important that it bears repeating. If you know somebody who's about to become a mom for the first time, please pass this on to her.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Newly available from eLUXURY.com -- Fendi Baby accessories. "Now, new moms can dress their tots in adorable fashions and accessories from the line fashionistas have loved for years," says a press release.

These are Fendi Baby "Memory" Shoes. (The web site doesn't explain what "memory" means, but for $150 I'd want them to come with a built-in digital recorder to preserve all the memories of the few months my baby would wear them.)

You can also purchase an $80 bib with the Fendi logo (keep the pureed sweet potatoes away from that, mister!) and a four-way convertible baby carrier for $325.

Hey, if you're invited to a shower for the latest addition to the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt brood, you know just what to bring.

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 6:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

The folks at MomLogic recently sent me a link to their post on naming babies, which quotes the CEO of babynames.com, Jennifer Moss. (Who knew this was so complicated?)

Here are Moss's tips, straight from the MomLogic press release:

    * "Use the 'introduction test': Look at the name from the perspective of the child. Pretend that you're introducing yourself with each possibility on your list. How does it sound?
    * "No expectations: A lot of people choose names like 'Chastity', 'Peace' or 'ESPN' (for boys), says Moss. What if the daughter you name 'Chastity' turns out to be, um, not so much?
    * "Short and sweet: if you have a long and difficult-to-spell last name you might want to stay simple with the first. Walk in the footsteps of your child with that name--don't make it impossible for a 5-year-old to write her name.
    * "Common, Weird and Transgender: If your daughter is one of 20 Avas, she may get confused, says Moss. (From KS -- I assume she means confused with other Avas.) Avoid oddball names, which might cause interesting reactions from those that hear it. And if you're looking to bend the rules, it's more accepted for a male name to be applied to a female baby than the other way around."

According to babynames.com, the most popular name for boys born in 2007 was Aidan, and it was Ava for girls.

I always liked my sister-in-law Nancy's naming rule: Pick a name your baby will feel great having his best friend call him, and that will still sound appropriate when he's running for president.

No pressure or anything.

How do you pick a baby's name?

(Photo courtesy of the Chicago Tribune)

Posted by Kate Shatzkin at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)