by Carol (Canada) | Feb 24, 2012 | Breastfeeding, Canada, Education, Health, Motherhood, Nutrition, Parenting, Post Partum Depression, World Motherhood
I love research.
I think it comes as part of the “I-have-an-anxiety-disorder” package that I research things obsessively. Getting a dog? Buy ALL the dog books. Having a baby? Spend hundreds of hours trawling through research study abstracts.
So when I saw a notice at the Reproductive Mental Health Centre looking for participants in a study on infant feeding in mothers with depression and anxiety, I volunteered. Why not give back?
Infant feeding and maternal mental health are slightly controversial topic. Research has shown that mothers with post partum depression are more likely to be formula feeders than breast feeders.
What no one really knows is which causes the other.
Does breastfeeding make you happier? Does formula feeding make you miserable? Or does post partum depression just wreck your chances of breastfeeding success? (more…)
Carol from If By Yes has lived in four different Canadian provinces as well as the Caribbean. Now she lives in Vancouver, working a full time job at a vet clinic, training dogs on the side, and raising her son and daughter to be good citizens of the world.
Carol is known for wearing inside-out underwear, microwaving yoghurt, killing house plants, over-thinking the mundane, and pointing out grammatical errors in "Twilight". When not trying to wrestle her son down for a nap, Carol loves to read and write.
Carol can also be found on her blog, If By Yes, and on Twitter @IfByYesTweets
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by Ecoziva (Brazil) | Jan 25, 2012 | Brazil, Food, Health, Motherhood, Nutrition, Parenting, World Motherhood
Image provided by the author.
Once, when our son was 2 ½ or so, we were having lunch at a “self-service” – a widespread type of restaurant here in Brazil where you serve yourself and pay according to how much your plate weighs. To this day I recall what was on his plate: the common Brazilian rice-and-beans duo, mashed potatoes, corn, a slice of pineapple, and an assortment of leaves and veggies.
Shortly after we started eating, a little girl sat down with her mother at the table to our right. They each had a dish with a large slice of chocolate pie covered with whipped cream. It didn’t take long for the girl – who seemed to be slightly younger than my son – to notice him and his colorful plate. (more…)
Eco, from the greek oikos means home; Ziva has many meanings and roots, including Hebrew (brilliance, light), Slovenian (goddess of life) and Sanskrit (blessing). In Brazil, where EcoZiva has lived for most of her life, giving birth is often termed “giving the light”; thus, she thought, a mother is “home to light” during the nine months of pregnancy, and so the penname EcoZiva came to be for World Moms Blog.
Born in the USA in a multi-ethnic extended family, EcoZiva is married and the mother of two boys (aged 12 and three) and a five-year-old girl and a three yearboy. She is trained as a biologist and presently an university researcher/professor, but also a volunteer at the local environmental movement.
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by Lady Jennie (France) | Jan 11, 2012 | Exercise, France, Health
In France, perineum strengthening goes way beyond your classic Kegels, and it’s taken very seriously by the doctors.
I remember, after having given birth to my daughter in NYC, the doctor saying that nothing “goes in” for six weeks following the birth. No bath, no tampons, no nookie, no nothin’. Here, in France, the story is a little different.
No advice on what goes “in” or “out” following the birth, but it’s out of the question to do any sort of physical activity until you have first done your perineum reeducation, and then your abdominal reeducation.
In other words, if you’re French and if you’re up for it, you can jump right back in the saddle the same week you gave birth (why deprive yourself or your partner of l’amour?), but you must complete your 20 sessions of perineum and ab work before you contemplate, say, bending at the knees. (more…)
Jennie has lived in Taiwan, New York City and East Africa, and currently lives just outside of Paris with her French husband. She speaks rudimentary Mandarin, passable French and has had a varied career in Human Resources, Asian financial sales and humanitarian work. She is currently a mother to three young children, with writing and teaching gigs on the side, and blogs at A Lady in France.
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by Maman Aya (USA) | Dec 26, 2011 | Cooking, Family, Food, Health, Motherhood, USA, World Motherhood
I should preface this by saying I am not usually a baker. Don’t get me wrong, I love to cook almost everything, but I didn’t grow up in a home that always had baked goods, so I was just not accustomed to it.
Then, a few years ago, I decided to try to bake muffins as a rainy day activity for my 2-year old son and I. They were super easy, healthy and delicious. I found that most of the recipes were similar, just substituting different fruit from one to the other.
My son went apple picking with his class a few months ago. What a wonderful fun, fall activity and a great way to spend a day, but I found myself holding a rather large bag of apples.
“What do you want to do with all of these apples?” I asked. “You can only use them in my apple cinnamon oatmeal, Maman”. Somehow, we were supposed to manage to keep these apples from going bad, and only use one a day….that’s not what I had on my mind. So we made muffins 🙂 (more…)
Maman Aya is a full-time working mother of 2 beautiful children, a son who is 6 and a daughter who is two. She is raising her children in the high-pressure city of New York within a bilingual and multi-religious home.
Aya was born in Canada to a French mother who then swiftly whisked her away to NYC, where she grew up and spent most of her life. She was raised following Jewish traditions and married an Irish Catholic American who doesn’t speak any other language (which did not go over too well with her mother), but who is learning French through his children. Aya enjoys her job but feels “mommy guilt” while at work. She is lucky to have the flexibility to work from home on Thursdays and recently decided to change her schedule to have “mommy Fridays”, but still feels torn about her time away from her babies. Maman Aya is not a writer by any stretch of the imagination, but has been drawn in by the mothers who write for World Moms Blog. She looks forward to joining the team and trying her hand at writing!
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by Maureen | Dec 22, 2011 | Health, Indonesia, Parent Care, Scoops of Joy
These past few months have been really stressful in this household. Yes, I live with my parents and my two younger brothers. It’s considered common, here, in Indonesia, for children to remain living with their parents until they get married – or in my case, until they get divorced and move back home.
Late October my father fell ill due to twenty-something years of dealing with Type 2 Diabetes. He got so sick from gangrene on his left foot that he had to fly back to Jakarta because he didn’t want to have his surgery in Zambia alone. It was by a pure miracle he made it back to Jakarta after such a long flight.
We took him to the hospital immediately, and the doctor said surgery was the only way out. (more…)
by Jennifer Burden | Nov 12, 2011 | Health, Motherhood, Saturday Sidebar, Social Good, World Voice
Why write about World Pneumonia Day? I mean, pneumonia is curable, right? What’s the big deal?
Yes, pneumonia is often curable here, in the United States, but did you know that around the world a child dies from pneumonia every 20 seconds?
EVERY TWENTY SECONDS.
Dies. Dead. Stops living.
Did you know that pneumonia is the world’s biggest curable health problem?
Are we doing enough????
I was invited by the Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia to take a conference call this past Thursday that included Dr. Richard Besser from ABC News, Dr. Orin Levine of the International Vaccine Access Center of Johns Hopkins University and 6 fellow bloggers. We listened and discussed the global problem of pneumonia, one of the leading causes of death in children under 5 years old.
During the call I found my eyes tearing up at parts, (more…)
Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India.
She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls.
Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.
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I love research.
