In support of the Mothers Act

It was just recently that during a talk with JP's sister, Sabee, she told me she was depressed for about a year after her son was born. Our Adorable Nephew is seven years old now.

I was a little surprised to find out she was suffering from depression, but not shocked. JP and I had noticed a change in her, but I never considered depression. After all, she still smiled. She still sent cards. She took excellent care of our Adorable Nephew. That didn't spell out postpartum to us -- because we didn't really know that it can be different for each person. We just didn't know.

I'm blogging about postpartum depression today as part of BlogHer's Mother's Act Blog Day, to spread the word about postpartum depression and support the Mothers Act bill. According to BlogHer, the Mothers Act bill would "provide for education about postpartum mood disorders for new mothers and their families, require healthcare professionals to screen new moms for postpartum mood disorders during the first year postpartum, and train those professionals on how to conduct proper screenings and care for women who are diagnosed with these illnesses." This could save lives -- half a million, BlogHer says. (I don't know if this is the same as the bill, but last Friday, ABC News reported on the U.S. House of Representatives approving spending $3 million on postpartum depression.)

Mothers -- families -- deserve this.

You asked for it, you got it

After my Breast Fest post last week, some of you blog mamas suggested you'd love a "I love the smell of breast milk in the morning" T-shirt.

Well, guess what?



It's a reality.

Click on over to the Growing A Life Cafe Press shop for a bib, onesie, T-shirt or mug with the "I love the smell of breast milk in the morning" line. What do you think? Is it ugly? Too plain? Would you like a picture? Feel free to leave anonymous comments.

All profits are going to help breasts everywhere (lactating and non-lactating) in the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization.

Parents save the planet!

Blog Action Day is today, when bloggers are posting about saving our environment.

The idea of saving the whole Earth is overwhelming, and that's why people love those lists like "10 Easy Things You Can Do to Save the World." Items on those lists are practical and do make a difference.

But I believe parents will (or have the chance to) make the biggest difference, just in raising our children to care about the nature of our world. That's why I take Fly and his friend into swamps, kayaking and camping. I want Fly to learn to love creation. I believe for him, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" won't just be a catch phrase, but a way of life. He and his peers might be inheriting a planet that's worn around the edges, but I think things are improving because we're more aware. Our society knows now things we have done have been bad mistakes. Fly's generation will have technology to correct these mistakes and improve our air, water and land. But they won't know what to do with that technology, or that our environment should be improved and preserved, unless they learn to love it first.

----

"For in the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught." -- Baba Dioum

Responding to the hard questions with a way to help

As hard as it is sometimes to take care of a baby around the clock, I know times are coming when parenting will require more than that. I know Flybaby will have problems or decisions I won’t be able to help him with, and he will ask hard questions I don’t have answers for. And other times, he may have questions I do have answers for, but I will squirm as I respond to him.

My mother, Cammy, may have squirmed one time when as a kid, I asked her about the “holes” in her face dotting her cheeks like a sponge.

Cammy never did and still doesn’t talk much about her childhood. Her father died when she was a girl, and her stepfather was abusive. She answered me that one time, she said something smart to her stepfather, so he grabbed a pot of hot water off the stove and threw it at her. She was burned. She had several skin treatments of some kind, but she stopped going before her skin could be restored because the treatments were so painful. So Cammy was left with a pocked appearance.

In that time and place, social services didn’t really exist. If “spare the rod and spoil the child” meant excessive punishment, then people reasoned the child probably deserved it and would be better off having been “corrected.” People didn’t question authority, and parents were authorities. So my mother lived with the abuse.

It’s so hard for me to hear in the news about a child who has been abused -- even more so now that I’m a mother. Child abuse is still a huge problem today, but there are more places that offer help to abused children. One of them in my area is Kids In Distress, a private, nonprofit agency. It offers abused, neglected and abandoned children a place to stay and a therapeutic preschool. Kids in Distress also offers programs for families to prevent abuse -- that is huge!

When the Parent Bloggers Network wanted to help spread the word about iBakeSale, a new way to raise funds for your favorite charity, I knew I wanted to donate to Kids In Distress. As a nonprofit, Kids In Distress relies on community help. Signing up at iBakeSale is such an easy way to give to the kids who are hurting in my town. I signed up for a fast, free account, selected Kids In Distress as my cause, and got shopping!

Yes, shopping! Whoever first thought of cash-back shopping as a way to donate money to a worthy cause gets a gold star. The way it works is online retailers (big ones, too, like Macy’s, Disney, Wal-Mart and Hallmark) offer a percentage of your spending total to your chosen cause. All you have to do is shop! If you’re going to buy online anyway, it might as well help someone out. If you’d like to join me in donating to Kids In Distress, please click here and join my group:



Once you’ve signed up for your account (it takes less than five minutes), you can choose other groups to donate to -- like your children’s school or even yourself, if you want that spending to come back to you. With so many retailers on board offering money back, it doesn’t even make sense to shop at those online stores without someone getting a kickback. I’m happy to make sure Kids In Distress gets some benefit from this easy way to raise funds.

When Flybaby gets to the stage when he asks me the hard questions and he asks me why some people are so cruel, I won’t have an answer for him. However, I plan to tell him we can help alleviate suffering and help make others’ lives better.