We at Colum­bia Cen­ter are cel­e­brat­ing Boss’s Day in a big way! Our CEO/President, Candy Casey, receives an award today as runner-up in the iBoss­Well, Inc. 2011 Great­est Boss National Con­test. There is no cash prize, but I am cer­tain that the love we are send­ing her way will be priceless.

Candy is not one for the spot­light but it is our chance to tell you that Candy is the vision­ary behind so many of the things you love about Colum­bia Cen­ter: the can-do atti­tude, our doula pro­gram, all of our won­der­ful ameni­ties, our ongo­ing edu­ca­tional offer­ings for staff and fam­i­lies, the whim­si­cal car­pet and rib­bon run­ning down the hall, and, of course, the excel­lent care that you receive when you are here to have your baby. And, did I men­tion, she bakes for the staff!

Today, please give your baby a big hug from us to cel­e­brate your place in Colum­bia Center’s suc­cess story. We are so glad that you are a part of us. And you have been touched by Candy, whether you have actu­ally met her or not.

Well, it’s hap­pened again. On Sun­day night a Delta Air­lines flight atten­dant told a pas­sen­ger to either cover up or stop breast­feed­ing her 8-month-old baby. All the other pas­sen­gers were seated. The only ones who could tell what she was doing were the woman, her hus­band and the flight atten­dant. The woman explained that in Indi­ana (they were get­ting ready to fly from Indi­anapo­lis to Raleigh) she had the right to breast­feed in any place that she had the right to be. The flight atten­dant threat­ened to have the woman removed from the plane for giv­ing her a hard time. Seri­ously. For sit­ting in her own seat and breast­feed­ing her baby. The more detailed account can be found here.

I fly. A lot. Of all the things that I have wit­nessed on my flights in the last year: (more…)

Happy World Breast­feed­ing Week! Wait, did I just hear you say that you didn’t know that there even WAS a World Breast­feed­ing Week? Let me enlighten you …

World Breast­feed­ing Week is cel­e­brated in 170 coun­tries world­wide. The goal is to pump up (no pun intended) the moms who are nurs­ing and to raise aware­ness that breast­feed­ing can mean the dif­fer­ence between life and death in some countries.

Does that mean that by our cel­e­brat­ing WBW that we don’t sup­port mom’s choice in how to feed her baby? Absolutely not. We always want to make sure that we not only sup­port fam­i­lies, but also pro­vide them with accu­rate infor­ma­tion regard­ing feed­ing.

So, here’s to you who are cur­rently breast­feed­ing, have breast­fed in the past or who will be the breast­feed­ing fam­i­lies of tomor­row! We honor you and your sweet babies.

The July/August issue of Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can Mind blew my mind (every pun intended). The focus is on what hap­pens to the brains of men and women when they become par­ents. Now I know that many of us feel that we’re fog­gier (lack of sleep, any­one???) but it seems that a lot is hap­pen­ing inside our noggins.

Par­ent­hood rewires our brains so that car­ing for a baby becomes eas­ier. We’ve actu­ally known some of this about moms for awhile now and it’s excit­ing to see that the baby stim­u­lates dad’s brain, too. And for the cherry on top: babies stim­u­late our brains and we stim­u­late theirs.

So the next time you’re play­ing with your baby, remem­ber that you’re grow­ing your brain — and hers!

Ok, now I’ve seen it all. Really. I mean it.

I love my iPhone. I love it a lot — ask any­one who knows me. And I reg­u­larly review apps for par­ents and expec­tant par­ents. But even I never thought some­one would let the iPhone name their baby.

In the Apple App store you can find the “Kick to Pick” app. For just 99 cents your lit­tle one can choose his/her own name by kick­ing the phone when the phone is held near mom’s belly. There are old-fashioned names, mod­ern names. Some that may even ter­rify you. But you might just get a laugh out of it.

What will they think of next???

Ever have one of those moments when you were feel­ing a lit­tle sorry for your­self, wish­ing that life was a lit­tle more in align­ment with your expec­ta­tions and hopes? Then have you had some­thing smack you right between the eyes that caused you to thank your lucky stars and won­der at the tenac­ity and sheer love that some folks exude? That was me this morning.

I saw a story on The Today Show about Nathan and Elisa Bond and their 18 month old daugh­ter, Sadie. The Bonds are in their 30s, liv­ing the Amer­i­can dream in Brook­lyn. On Valen­tines Day Nathan was diag­nosed with Stage 3 col­orec­tal can­cer. That’s enough to rock anyone’s world, right. Just 13 days later Elisa was diag­nosed with Stage 4 breast can­cer, which has spread to the bone. This kind of moment is so unjust that it’s hard to even write it, let alone believe it.  (more…)

Yes­ter­day I received a post­ing that Time Mag­a­zine had writ­ten about its “Top 10 Breast­feed­ing Con­tro­ver­sies”.

I took a gan­der to see what all the fuss was about and some of it was pretty inter­est­ing.  And I enjoyed read­ing about how some of the sit­u­a­tions had turned out. Time (no pun intended) is a great lev­eler. I mean, Face­book is still try­ing to remove breast­feed­ing pho­tos from its home, Delta lost some $$ after kick­ing a breast­feed­ing mom off a plane, etc. I actu­ally missed one of the events: I had no idea that Old Navy in 2009 sold one­sies that said, “For­mula Pow­ered”. And I know that what Time Mag­a­zine said was about breast­feed­ing is not always about breast­feed­ing in my own thoughts.

I guess there’s a part of me that finds it funny that any­one sees breast­feed­ing as con­tro­ver­sial. I know I shouldn’t be sur­prised but I am a lit­tle. It’s good for us to dust off our issues and see them with fresh eyes every now and again.  And I’m try­ing to do the same. Enjoy the look back.

Last fall we learned that the IRS had dis­al­lowed breast pumps to be a tax-deductible item. The out­cry that went out from work­ing fam­i­lies, lac­ta­tion con­sul­tants, birth work­ers and family-oriented orga­ni­za­tions was deaf­en­ing. Con­gress heard the call and the House and Sen­ate each issued a let­ter to the IRS regard­ing their decision.

On Thurs­day we learned that the IRS reversed their deci­sion and pumps are once again allow­able. How often does that kind of thing hap­pen? They. Just. Reversed. It. The sheer amount of online pres­sure on Face­book and blogs and other sites allowed those who cared about this topic to swiftly unite.

If you read the let­ters from the House and Sen­ate it’s heart­en­ing to see that the argu­ments they use in favor of breast­feed­ing are the ones we’ve been stat­ing for­ever. It did my own heart some good to see this kind of dec­la­ra­tion come from elected officials.

I have to say, though, that no Wis­con­sin Sen­a­tors signed the let­ter. And only two Wis­con­sin reps from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Tammy Bald­win and Gwen­dolyn Moore, signed.

Even with that, I’m choos­ing to accept the Valen­tine that’s been offered. Breast milk for everyone!

These days folks know me as a child­birth edu­ca­tor, doula and lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant. Twenty-three years ago I never dreamed I would be any of those three. Ter­ri­fied of nee­dles and uncer­tain of hos­pi­tals I gave birth to my first child, Alyson. My hus­band wanted me to breast­feed. His mom had breast­fed all of her chil­dren and she said it was great. I grew up in a fam­ily where no one breast­fed and it seemed strange to me and I wasn’t sure. I thought I’d try.

My baby was born early and due to some con­cerns she was in the NICU. It was really scary to see her in an iso­lette with an IV in her lit­tle head. My hus­band made her new “home” cozier by plac­ing a sign there that pro­claimed: “My name is Alyson Ruth Grauer” so that every­one knew who she was, not just that she was a baby. She was given for­mula for three days in hos­pi­tal because of her stay in the NICU. I could only hold her for short peri­ods of time but my heart longed to be there with her always. I thought of her as I pumped my breasts to get my milk in, alone in my post­par­tum room. (more…)

Wow. When I read Amy Chua’s arti­cle in the Wall Street Jour­nal that was my reac­tion. Wow. On the one hand, she upholds some sterotypes that are out there of Asian moth­ers. On the other, she tries to let us see the rea­son­ing behind the behav­ior. The one thing she does not do is to cut Amer­i­can moms any slack. At all. Period. I think the word that comes to my mind is “wimps”.

This is pretty hot stuff right now. There has been much talk about Ms. Chua’s new book on the topic, “Bat­tle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and I sus­pect she prob­a­bly feels that her words have been mis­in­ter­preted  by some. She has voiced her view­point and I am tak­ing this oppor­tu­nity to address some of the issues in hers that are caus­ing me the most difficulty.

1. “ What Chi­nese par­ents under­stand is that noth­ing is fun until you’re good at it.”

I strug­gle with this because I don’t believe it to be true. Life is about the jour­ney, not just the end result. And we can’t all be good at everything.The strug­gle to learn some­thing new and to mas­ter it can be fun as well as chal­leng­ing. And I can have fun at bowl­ing or scrap­book­ing or what­ever even if I’m not great at it. Doing some­thing just for the expe­ri­ence is enlight­en­ing and enrich­ing. (more…)