Edgy Breastfeeding Clothing Line

Breastfeeding gets such a bad rap these days. At least breastfeeding in public. It's ok for adults to eat in public, but not babies. I don't understand why people feel so uncomfortable seeing a woman do one of the most natural functions known to humankind.

When witnessing public breastfeeding, people seem so taken aback and flustered.

Many women are often met with "You should take that to a restroom!" 

Do we need to discuss public restrooms people? 

Half the time their unsuitable for peeing, let alone feeding an infant. Who the hell wants to eat in a room that smells like poop? Or worse?

Although this clothing line may not take away any of the stigma of public breastfeeding, it at least makes it easier for mothers to get their breast out and back in again quickly. A line equipped with numerous zippers and cool style, it's made public (and non-public) nursing  that much easier.

We all deserve to eat in peace. This includes the lil' bambinos who still need mommy's breast to survive. Way to go Leche Libre! You've freed the nipple all while providing a stylish way to do it. Moms everywhere take off their hats to you..

And their bras. 

- WTS

#freethenipple #feedthechildren 

Andrea Newberry didn't go to an expensive design school or work for years in fashion houses before starting Leche Libre. She felt the sea of stretch jersey and spaghetti straps among nursing tops and dresses left her feeling frumpy. As for style, nobody's out there winning awards for cool breastfeeding design. Up until now, nursing moms might as well put their personalities on a shelf. Refusing to lose her sense of self and personal expression, Newberry took on the problem using the fundamentals of pre-school education: if you can't go around it, and you can't go through it, you have to go over it — with really cool zippers.

And with that, Leche Libre was born.

For the past few years, Newberry has worked on perfecting Leche Libre, a hip clothing collection for breastfeeding moms. The innovation is simple, yet effective. Vertical zippers that run over the bust make it easy to comfortably nurse anywhere, any time. No more blankets over shoulders, no more bathroom stalls, no more awkward hiding in the corner. These designs are comfortable, chic, and functional.

Just zip and sip, baby.

Besides the technical triumphs of Leche Libre, the designs are just damn cool. Newberry's collection presents true closet staples — the little black dress, the structured black jacket/sweatshirt, the effortlessly cool tunic — that women can wear with confidence long after the baby's been fed. And this ain't no fast fashion falls-apart-in-one-wash rodeo. Moms deserve something sturdy and they get it with this line.

What you get with Leche Libre:

• BOTH stylish and functional nursing apparel with looks you'll want to wear whether you're breastfeeding or not. 

• Zippers along the bust provide easy and discreet nursing access so you can never worry about breastfeeding in public again. 

• Nurture yourself AND your baby at the same time with styles that allow you to represent your individuality while being the best mom you can be. 

• Versatile garments perfect for professional settings with easy pumping access! 

• Garments which are ethically manufactured in the USA to empower women on both sides of the transaction.

To support and/or order from Leche Libre:

https://leche-libre.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders and pre-order one of the new items in the collection.

I think this line is FAB! The holidays are among us. This would be a great present for any new or nursing mothers you may know. The combination of style and functionality is truly a gift.

Source
Author
Leche Libre Facebook

What Mother's Day was SUPPOSED to be..

Capitalism knows no bounds. Nothings is off limits. Nothing is sacred. Anything can be exploited, including the love one feels for their mom. I absolutely feel mothers should be celebrated, but I also feel every day is Mother's Day. I don't necessary care for the commercial aspect of the holiday as it compels people to spend on this day more than any other. But hey. People can do whatever flips their skirt up. 

Or Mom's.

I'm personally much more in favor of a "Mother's Peace Day" but that one didn't win out.

This lady's story seems like an episode of Seinfeld.

-WTS.

To all the mothers, and to those who might feel that this day, one when flower sales and brunch reservations go through the roof, is too overly commercialized -- you'll appreciate the story below.

  
Anna Jarvis (below) mothered Mother's Day a century ago. To see what her baby grew into would break her heart.

Anna Reeves Jarvis

Mother’s Day is a holiday honoring motherhood that is observed in different forms throughout the world. The American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar. Jarvis despised attempts to commercialize the "holy day" that she launched in memory of her mother, Ann. She fought tenaciously until her death to shield Mother's Day from "the hordes of money-schemers" that were hawking flowers, cards and candy.

Jarvis "is probably spinning in her grave," said Katharine Antolini, a board member and historian for the International Mother's Day Shrine in Grafton, West VA where the first celebration took place. "What we have today," said Antolini, "is not what Anna wanted." Not even close. Jarvis envisioned a day marked by hymns and prayers. She called for intimate family gatherings to "revive the dormant love and filial gratitude we owe to those who gave us birth." She wanted the focus and attention on a mother's devotion and sacrifice. It didn't take long, however, before some merchant got the idea of tossing up a SALE sign.

MOTHER’S DAY: EARLY INCARNATIONS

The roots of the modern American Mother’s Day date back to the 1800s. In the years before the Civil War (1861-65), Jarvis helped start “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” to teach local women how to properly care for their children. These clubs later became a unifying force in a region of the country still divided over the Civil War. In 1868 Jarvis organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” at which mothers gathered with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation.

Another precursor to Mother’s Day came from the abolitionist and suffragette Julia Ward Howe. In 1870 Howe wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” a call to action that asked mothers to unite in promoting world peace. In 1873 Howe campaigned for a “Mother’s Peace Day” to be celebrated every June 2. Other early Mother’s Day pioneers include Juliet Calhoun Blakely, a temperance activist who inspired a local Mother’s Day in Albion, Michigan, in the 1870s. The duo of Mary Towles Sasseen and Frank Hering, meanwhile, both worked to organize a Mothers’ Day in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some have even called Hering “the father of Mothers’ Day.”

THE OFFICIAL MOTHER’S DAY

Following her mother’s death in 1905, Anna conceived of Mother’s Day as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children. After gaining financial backing from a Philadelphia department store owner named John Wanamaker, in May 1908 she organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration. That same day also saw thousands of people attend a Mother’s Day event at one of Wanamaker’s retail stores in Philadelphia.

Following the success of her first Mother’s Day, Jarvis—who remained unmarried and childless her whole life—resolved to see her holiday added to the national calendar. Arguing that American holidays were biased toward male achievements, she started a massive letter writing campaign to newspapers and prominent politicians urging the adoption of a special day honoring motherhood. By 1912 many states, towns and churches had adopted Mother’s Day as an annual holiday. Her persistence paid off in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Jarvis' Mother’s Day involved wearing a white carnation as a badge and visiting one’s mother or attending church services. But once Mother’s Day became a national holiday, it was not long before florists, card companies and other merchants capitalized on its popularity.

While Jarvis had initially worked with the floral industry to help raise Mother’s Day’s profile, by 1920 she had become disgusted with how the holiday had been commercialized. Jarvis seethed at what she perceived as corruption of the day. She was tenacious, if not "a little bizarre," in her efforts to ward off profiteers, Antolini said. In 1923, for instance, the New York Times reported that Jarvis crashed a confectioners' convention to issue demands. But, hard as she tried, she could not stop the cash registers from ringing. . . and ringing . . . and ringing. She outwardly denounced the transformation and urged people to stop buying Mother’s Day flowers, cards and candies. Jarvis eventually resorted to an open campaign against Mother’s Day profiteers, speaking out against confectioners, florists and even charities. She also launched countless lawsuits against groups that had used the name “Mother’s Day,” eventually spending most of her personal wealth in legal fees. By the time of her death Jarvis had disowned the holiday altogether, and even actively lobbied the government to see it removed from the American calendar.

Jarvis -- who never had a child of her own -- died bitter and destitute in 1948, her last days spent in a sanitarium.

Legend has it that florists, forever thankful for what Jarvis created, paid for her care. After all, one never forgets.

WTS.

Source

Source 2

Elle Does Well

Bravo, Elle.

When Mom is an Artist..Baby Pics

What do you get when you take a gifted artist who just became a mother?

GENIUS.

Artist and new mom Amber Wheeler took ordinary pics of her son, and transformed them into adorable artworks dripping with cuteness.

If these pics don't make you smile, you must be viewing them from a psyche ward.

Kids with moms like this are really lucky. Can you imagine all the [art] projects they'll come up with during his lifetime?

Creative moms rule :)

Mom turns simple pics of her baby into snapshots of wonderful, imaginary adventures 

The Cuteness

New School Curriculum: Responsibility Classes

A few thoughts from Neal Donald Walsh on how to better educate our precious offspring. We are living in a world where women are under constant attack. Why not help raise boys who don't hate women the way mainstream society teaches them to? With so many families being headed by single women, we have a responsibility to raise boys (and girls) who understand and respect the power of the Feminine, not resent it. Below I found these suggestions to be very enlightening and potentially paradigm shifting. We must teach children to VALUE, not VICTIMIZE.

Some suggestions from CWG

How, then, should we educate our young?

 

·         Treat them as spirits.

·         Introduce them to the world you have created with gentleness and care.

·     Why do you place your children in schools where competition is allowed and encouraged, where being the “best” and learning the “most” is rewarded, where “performance” is graded, and moving at one’s own pace is barely tolerated?  What does your child understand from this?

·       Allow your young ones to learn logic, critical thinking, problem solving and creation, using the tools of their own intuition and their deepest inner knowing, rather than the rules and the memorized systems and conclusions of a society which has already proven itself to be wholly unable to evolve by these methods, and continues to use them.

·       Teach concepts, not subjects.

·        Devise a new curriculum, and build it around three Core Concepts:

1.      Awareness
2.      Honesty
3.      Responsibility

 
  Then, take the values and concepts ... and teach them in your schools.

  Courses such as:

 

•  Understanding Power
• Peaceful Conflict Resolution
•  Elements of Loving Relationship
• Personhood and Self Creation
• Body, Mind, and Spirit:  How They Function
• Engaging Creativity
• Celebrating Self, Valuing Others
• Joyous Sexual Expression
• Fairness
• Tolerance
•  Diversities and Similarities
• Ethical Economics
• Creative Consciousness and Mind Power
• Awareness and Wakefulness
•  Honesty and Responsibility
• Visibility and Transparency
• Science and Spirituality

Not sure about you, but I think this sounds good.


Of course, if we really want to create a 'happy kid curriculum,' this did it for me :-)

 The Electric Company

 

Kenya Hospital Imprisons New Mothers With No Money

by Jason Straziuso, Associated Press | December 28, 2012 at 11:24 AM

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he’s accused of: detaining mothers who can’t pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it’s the only way he can keep his medical center running.



Margaret Anyoso, 35



Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn’t let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn’t afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women’s behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

“We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient,” Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. “The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers.”

“They stay there until they pay. They must pay,” he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. “If you don’t pay the hospital will collapse.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi’s poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi’s slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn’t pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

“We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four,” she said. “They abuse you, they call you names,” she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor’s 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family’s 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi’s mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

“I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me,” said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn’t have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

Maybe I'm just too compassionate, because this story has me all kinds of sad. Where do I even start? To beat a woman is awful, but especially a new mother? A woman's body after giving birth is especially vulnerable. And wouldn't it be cheaper to let them go? Holding the  mothers and their babies in the hospital surely adds to the electric, gas, heating, water and food costs, no? Of course I'm sure there are a billion reasons why they don't do this, but how bout either A) billing them afterwards or B) having them pay little by little BEFORE the due date so that when it's babytime, the money (or some of it) has already been collected? However naive my suggestions, there's a better way for this hospital to do business and treat women. This is disgusting. I hope all this new wave of thinking shit everyone's saying 2013 is bringing starts rubbing off soon. Being a woman in this world has become harder than ever, especially if you're poor..