by World Moms Blog | Apr 30, 2014 | Maternal Health, World Motherhood

Have you ever had preeclampsia? Or know someone who did? Come learn more and help us raise awareness on this rapid disorder that affects moms and babies! Sarah Hughes, now a World Moms Blog contributor, once wrote a guest post for World Moms Blog, “What is Preeclampsia?”. We are honored to be holding a second annual twitter party with Sarah and the Preeclampsia Foundation to help raise awareness for maternal health!
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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by Elizabeth Atalay | Apr 29, 2014 | 2014, Health, Humanitarian, International, Social Good, Vaccines, World Moms Blog, World Voice

This week of April 24th through April 30th as we recognize World Immunization Week, the world is entering an exciting new phase. The upcoming expansion of vaccine programs will build on the momentum gained to this point against the most lethal killers of children in the world. Vaccine preventable diseases. According to GAVI Alliance 440 million children have been vaccinated since the year 2,000, saving around six million lives.
We now have a “historical opportunity to go even further and secure a healthy future for a generation of vaccinated children in developing countries, a generation that hold the keys to their countries’ futures.”- Dagfinn Høybråten, Chair of the GAVI Alliance
Each year this week serves to remind communities of the importance of vaccines and to spread the word that #VaccinesWork. Immunization has proven to be one of the best returns on investments in world health, yet one in five children will still die before their fifth birthday due to a vaccine preventable disease. According to GAVI Alliance there are still over 22 million kids who have little or no access to the vaccines that could save their lives. For those of us with access to vaccines the World Health Organization is promoting the campaign tag line to “Immunize for a healthy future – Know. Check. Protect.” By making sure that you and your family are up to date on all vaccines, everyone is given the best chance for a healthy future.

Vaccine cards have been around for a long time to help families stay on track. These days new methods and technologies are being put into play like the new mobile phone app by the WHO, or the bracelet reminders for the babies to wear in South America being developed by Alma Sana. No matter what the method used, keeping track of immunization schedules is an important part of ensuring good health.

To highlight the importance of global vaccines the GAVI Alliance has shared a photo gallery of vaccine cards from around the world, so we decided to share some of our World Moms Vaccine Cards here for you too. We would love to see yours! If there is one thing we are here at World Moms Blog, it’s well vaccinated! Share your vaccine card with us by Tweeting to #VaccinesWork #RUuptodate #WorldVaxCards, and check out the story of immunisation cards around the world hosted on the BBC.



Do you have a vaccination card for you or your children? If you’d like to share it just tweet or post it to #VaccinesWork #RUuptodate #WorldVaxCards
This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Elizabeth Atalay of Documama.org.

Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.
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by Fiona Biedermann (Australia) | Apr 28, 2014 | Awareness, Child Care, Childhood, Family, Health, Human Rights, Life Lesson, Loss of Child, Oceania, Parenting, Relationships, Safety, Tragedy, Uncategorized, World Motherhood, Younger Children
As parents I’ve always believed that all of us want our children to achieve their full potential and to do amazing things with their lives, we also never want for them to be fearful of anything, real or imagined.
But what happens when a child’s fear is not imagined and is in fact very real. When the one thing they’re most fearful of is the person who they should be able to trust the most?
A story in the news this week in Adelaide has parents—actually not just parents but every living, breathing individual—up in arms over the treatment of a four-year-old little girl in 2012, who died as a result of the cruel treatment dished out by her mother and her boyfriend.
As the story is told, they put this little girl on a 50kg motorbike and over a period of three days made her ride it around the backyard while they videotaped it for their own enjoyment. Despite her terror and numerous crashes, they kept picking her up and putting her back on.
A final crash into a tree at almost 40km/h caused serious injury and despite complaining of her injuries when they put her to bed they did nothing. The following day she slipped into unconsciousness and they waited a further eight hours before seeking help, turning instead to Google for answers about what to do when someone is unconscious. She died as a result of them not seeking medical assistance.
There are many more facts, there’s much more to the story and there’s also a history of social welfare intervention—but nobody actually stepped in and took this child away from her mother, nobody in fact did anything to save her despite their knowledge that things weren’t quite right.
This week, the mother and her boyfriend were both sentenced, with the mother receiving an eight-year prison sentence with a non-parole period of just under five years. That’s a measly year in prison for every year her child was alive.
It’s a pitiful and sad sentence but sadly I think it’s also indicative of the ‘hands off’ society that we’re now living in.
I understand that in this day and age we don’t want to get involved, we mind our own business and we look after our own. But I also think it’s a sad state of affairs when, as individuals, we shy away from getting involved when an innocent and trusting little girl is left in the clutches of such disturbed people.
I also think it’s a travesty of mammoth proportions that with all our laws and child protection agencies that nobody saved this little girl.
I know bad things happen to small children and it makes my stomach churn each and every time I hear about one of them. Little Chloe Valentine was just one of many, who as a society we all failed to protect. (Please be aware that I have not linked to any of the footage or the story as I find it too upsetting to watch or read about)
No I didn’t know her personally but as a parent who cherishes her own children and grandchildren it makes me sick to even hear about it. I will stand up and get involved when something is going on around me which I know to be wrong. These children are our future and just because they don’t have a voice doesn’t mean we can’t do something about it.
As a result of this case, Adelaide will see a total overhaul of child protection laws with an inquest into the failure of social welfare to intervene. For little Chloe, it’s a case of too-little-too-late, but one can only hope that we can all learn from this and prevent this kind of thing ever happening again.
I know that sometimes we should stay out of things which aren’t our business but in this case would you have gotten involved?
This is an original World Moms Blog post by Fiona from Inspiration to Dream of Adelaide, South Australia.
The image used in this post is credited to .craig. It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.

Fiona at Inspiration to Dream is a married mother of three amazing and talented MM’s (mere males, as she lovingly calls them) aged 13, 16 and 22, and she became a nana in 2011!
She believes she’s more daunted by becoming a nana than she was about becoming a mother! This Aussie mother figures she will also be a relatively young nana and she’s not sure that she’s really ready for it yet, but then she asks, are we ever really ready for it? Motherhood or Nanahood. (Not really sure that’s a word, but she says it works for her.)
Fiona likes to think of herself as honest and forthright and is generally not afraid to speak her mind, which she says sometimes gets her into trouble, but hey, it makes life interesting. She’s hoping to share with you her trials of being a working mother to three adventurous boys, the wife of a Mr Fix-it who is definitely a man’s man and not one of the ‘sensitive new age guy’ generation, as well as, providing her thoughts and views on making her way in the world.
Since discovering that she’s the first blogger joining the team from Australia, she also plans to provide a little insight into the ‘Aussie’ life, as well. Additionally, Fiona can be found on her personal blog at Inspiration to Dream.
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by Meredith (USA) | Apr 25, 2014 | 2014, Awareness, Communication, Education, Family, Gun Violence, Kids, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, Safety, School, Tragedy, USA, World Motherhood, Younger Children

Growing up in Illinois, when I was in elementary school, it was commonplace for our school to have several emergency drills in case there was a tornado. We knew to hide under our desks and cover our heads with our hands and wait until the drill was over. The thought behind the drill was that we would be ready if a disaster ever struck. We followed up with fire drills as well. We prepared for what we knew could happen but hoped would never happen to us… (more…)
Meredith finds it difficult to tell anyone where she is from exactly! She grew up in several states, but mainly Illinois. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana which is also where she met her husband. She taught kindergarten for seven years before she adopted her son from Guatemala and then gave birth to her daughter two years leter. She moved to Lagos, Nigeria with her husband and two children in July 2009 for her husband's work. She and her family moved back to the U.S.this summer(August 2012) and are adjusting to life back in the U.S. You can read more about her life in Lagos and her adjustment to being back on her blog: We Found Happiness.
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by Tina Santiago-Rodriguez (Philippines) | Apr 24, 2014 | 2014, Inspirational, Philippines, Tina Santiago-Rodriguez, World Motherhood

Dear Mom Who Wants To Do It All,
I’m writing this as much for myself as for you. I sense your worry. I feel your fatigue. I can see the endless to-do lists in your notebook and the jam-packed schedules in your planner. I can hear you cry out with frustration, wondering “How.in.the.world.can.I.do.it.all?! There’s just too much to do and too little time!”
I don’t have the answer to your question but I do know this. You…and I? We don’t really have to, you know, do it all. We don’t! Really.
The world may tell us otherwise though. But I’m here to remind you (and myself) that we don’t. Yes, we may want to do it all but most of the time we don’t have to. Sometimes, all we have to do is just be. Just be a wife. Just be a mom. Just be yourself. Just be.
Strip down your to-do lists to the bare essentials.
Simplify your schedules to make more time for the essentials that make life truly rich and worth living. The essentials like your family.
Today, I challenge you (and myself!) to embrace the fact that you really can’t do it all… But you can do any or all of the following:
Say yes to your child when she asks you to play with her.
Read not just 1, but 3 (or more!) books when your child asks you to read to him.
Hug your spouse/partner and whisper sweet nothings into his ear.
Take 5 minutes to just breathe…deep breaths.
Give thanks for all the blessings you have but may take for granted.
When you really think about it, not doing it all seems so much more attractive, doesn’t it? So how about it? Will you join me in my quest to focus on ‘the essentials’ of life? To try to not want to ‘do it all’ but do what’s needed? I hope we can ‘talk’ about this in the comments!
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Tina Rodriquez-Santiago, Truly Rich Mom, in The Philippines.
Tina Santiago-Rodriguez is a wife and homeschool mom by vocation, a licensed
physical therapist by education and currently the managing editor of Mustard, a
Catholic children's magazine published by Shepherd's Voice
Publications in the Philippines, by profession. She has been writing
passionately since her primary school years in Brunei, and contributes
regularly to several Philippine and foreign-based online and print publications. She also does sideline editing and scriptwriting jobs, when she has the time. Find out more about Tina through her personal
blogs: Truly Rich Mom and Teacher Mama Tina.
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