Category: The Life of Lara

Birth Options

There is a review of maternity services in Australia, and soon private indemnity insurance will not be available to homebirth midwives, and the Government has decided not to cover them.

Essentially, this rules out homebirth as an option for Australian women.

Now, you might think, “who would want a homebirth, it’s dangerous!”, but in European countries where homebirth is routine (about 30%), maternal and infant mortality is the same (or lower) than it is here.

I would not have been able to give birth to Inigo at home, and if I ever had another child, I don’t think that homebirth would necessarily be the right choice for that birth, but I definitely want that choice to be available to other women. Birthing in a hospital definitely makes you appreciate “what could have been”.

So if you have a minute, please sign the petition here.

Thanks to Big Green Coat for reminding me to post about this.

iPhone Software Upgrade

Macworld wrap-up of the Apple media event here.

But my burning question – will it support text via mac, ala Blue Phone Elite? Or even a bluetooth keyboard? (Though I much prefer using the Mac itself, and the phone as a dumb transmission tool). I’m too old to train my thumbs like the young people, just so I can send a text message of more than one syllable.   

More Booby Stuff

I’ve hesitated about posting this, because I really feel strongly that women should not be made to feel guilty about the choices they make to feed their children. But on the other hand, if everyone shies away from making this sort of information public, we’ll have yet another generation of babies fed on artificial milk because there wasn’t enough information and support for their mothers.

‘Silence’ on risks of baby formula

Advertising

I do hope you guys understand, but I have been thinking about putting advertising on the blog. The hosting is costing about $15US a month, and anything that goes towards helping to defray that cost is going to be a big help.

For a long time I resisted (mainly because I didn’t think I had enough traffic), and ads on personal sites look really tacky. But hey – mine already looks tacky, how much worse can it get? Besides, Her Bad Mother has advertising, and I don’t think of her as tacky. Well, just a little bit, but in a good way…

A few months ago, I was farnackling about on tha interwebs, and found a link to the BlogHer ad network. They weren’t looking for any more sites, but I added my name to a waiting list. And a few weeks ago they contacted me, letting me know that they had seen the blog and were inviting me to apply. I’ve been approved, and pending some final paperwork (which has to be printed, read, signed, scanned, and emailed back), I’ll be officially prostituting myself.

Unless the outcry from “my public” is deafening of course 😉