Parenting hasn't changed, just got a little more complicated

A friend just posted this on Facebook - and as a grandmother who spends 2 days a week with her grandchild - and is renewing her acquaintance with her days as editor of Australia's Parents magazine this is soooo relevant. Things haven't changed at all, just the focus in some areas.

You can't overfeed a breastfed newborn

A couple of weeks ago I became a grandmother for the first time!!What a buzz it is I hadn't quite realised how emotional I would feel and how I would fall in love with my little granddaughter at first sight!
However today I am quite cross! Not with anyone except the Early Childhood Nurse who is so ignorant of breastfeeding that she told Proud Mum, that she was overfeeding her baby because she had gone from 2.5 kilos at birth to 3.18 kilos after 2 and a half weeks. She was also told that the baby was snacking on the breast and a dummy was the solution! It makes my blood boil just to write this. How can someone who has the wellbeing of newborn babies in their control spout such rubbish? Our little Thumbling is not overfed - she is a hungry newborn who is thriving on her mother's milk. Her mother is a natural breastfeeder and she is loving it. Even with the total support she is getting from Big Daddy this sort of sh** is undermining. Could someone please tell me how a nurse gets into this position and how she can manage to stay so ignorant of breastfeeding??

Parental leave

Today my son sent me the link to Essential Baby explaining the new Maternity, sorry parental leave provisions! Fantastic that we have got somewhere... and in time for the arrival of my first grandchild. When this new father-to-be was at the same stage I too was looking forward to maternity leave... as it was called then. I was very lucky, I worked for the ABC and the leave I was looking forward to was 6 months on half pay or 3 months on full pay, plus any rec. leave I had accummulated and the rest of the 12 months on no pay. It was so good because I was a public servant and Gough Whitlam was prime minister! He was indeed years ahead of his time. I loved my 12 months off and when time came to go back to work and child care was so appalling, I chose to stay home and work part-time instead (as part-time was not a work option at the ABC then). They gave me 3 weeks rec leave that I had accumulated while I was on maternity leave. Australia did not keep these amazing provisions for leave for new mothers (fathers were not included) - which only applied to government employees anyway - and gradually slid back into the Dark Ages where women and their partners struggled to get a better deal.
I am very pleased for my family - but sad that parental leave, like giving birth, slid backwards so much!

Bleat, Say, Shove

After working in a book shop for a few weeks - and loving it (it takes me back to my days as a librarian) - I decided it was time I caught up with some of the popular fiction that is frequently asked for. My favourite genre is history and biography, so fiction is not always on my bedside table. Recently I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Eat, Pray, Love'. To be fair I must put this in perspective. I decided, long before I became a senior!, that there were not enough days left to read books I wasn't enjoying so I generally read between 25 and 50 pages before making a decision. I decided very early on that this was not a book I wanted to read, but I persisted through pages describing blubbering at night on the bathroom floor because she had realised she didn't like being married to a particular man... and pages of agonising about what she was going to do about it!
This is not a position I have ever found myself in! but generally I am interested in people and how they deal with their dilemmas and find it fascinating discovering how they work through them. Not this time. It has been described as a 'funny, tender, beguiling story about a woman's search for happiness' - but since I didn't actually like the woman in the first couple of chapters I decided I really didn't want to know about her travels as she came to move on in her life and find another course.
I may find the book by her ex-husband an interesting exercise. I would like to know what he thought about what to him must have been a sudden about-face on a relationship that seemed to be going where they both wanted it to. As someone who has been married to the same man for nearly 4 decades I know how difficult it can be to keep a relationship going, but I also know that frequently the rewards of talking something through with someone who is your best friend as well as your emotional support and your lover is enormously rewarding. Maybe that's why I thought the book would have been better titled ... 'Bleat, Say, Shove'

Right to choose your birthplace in jeopardy

I have just received an email from Justine Caines, found of What Women Want asking for membership of the political party she is setting up to work for women's rights in childbirth, especially homebirth. I have joined.
Justine was behind the campaign that lobbied the Australian Parliament earlier this year to keep indemnity insurance available to women want to birth at home. She writes:

"The campaign that many of you were part of achieved extraordinary things.
13000 signature petitions, a Senate inquiry with 2500 submissions (considered a Senate record) and amazingly over 3000 men women and children standing together in Canberra in support of homebirth choice.

...Despite this, the Government have placed this issue on the backburner by offering a 2 year exemption to indemnity insurance and the Coalition have lost interest in what was only a short game of political banter.

The on-going discussions with the Department of Health and others lead us to believe that the choice of homebirth will slowly but surely be extinguished.

For those who find this unacceptable one option is to become really political and place pressure directly on politicians in electorates across Australia. I hope to establish WWW as a real force campaigning for issues where ordinary people have been ignored.

Currently the WWW website is seriously out of date, but those who visit will understand what we are about.

My dream is to establish a 'coalition' of passionate people from various policy areas and establish a party with strong community links and coalface knowledge.

To maintain our registration as a political party, WWW needs 500 members by October 30, yes very soon!"

So if like me, you believe that women need to have the right to birth at home safely and with support, should they choose to do so you might like to follow this up.

Another parenting magazine hits the wall

A few months ago I wrote about the demise of the magazine I started in Oz in the early 1980s coming to grief. Sadly I believe it was simply used as fodder for the printing presses and lost its way in the noughties. And whose to say there is a place for so many magazines with so many other sources of information available to people.
Today a press release about the demise of Gourmet magazine in the US caught my eye. Any Aussie publisher would kill for a circulation of 980,000 - they wouldn't need any advertising, but the stakes are higher in the US - so it seems that the drop in advertising has been instrumental in the closing of this notable American magazine. Buried in the press release was the news that the publishers Conde Naste were also closing a parenting magazine called Cookie.
Unlike Australia's Parents magazine which lasted 18 years under my umbrella, then another 8 or so with the printers... Cookie was only around for 4 years. Begun as the "stylish parenting magazine for the new mom" it too has passed away through lack of advertising I would assume. 'Modern Bridé' and 'Elegant Bride' went too!
The history of magazine publishing is fascinating... they come, they go, they come again!

Homebirth: an essential choice

Better late than never! I have been following the political developments on homebirth but have not had time to post...nor was I able to join the rally in Canberra - so in a nutshell after a meeting of health Ministers in Canberra on Friday 4th we have
Health Minister Ms Roxon announcing a two-year exemption from holding indemnity insurance for privately-practising midwives who can't obtain cover for attending a homebirth. This means that there is still a fight to be won. Homebirth needs to be included in Medicare and women need to feel that they can choose homebirth as a birthing option knowing that there is support for themselves and their chosen carers from the establishment.
You can find out more from Homebirth Australia and the Australia College of Midwives