Tag Archives: giving birth

Are Push Presents Really Necessary?

Annika HarrisApril 22, 2011 //

I love receiving gifts, but even I’m a little confused about the phenomenon of the push present. As you might have heard, the push present is a gift, often a piece of jewelry, a new father gives to a new mother when she gives birth to their first child. If you’re a fan of “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” then you might recall that the newest cast member Peggy Tanous received a Bentley as her push present. Now, the push present sounds like a gesture of gratitude, but there also seems to be a thick layer of guilt surrounding it too. Moms seem to want some compensation for carrying a baby for nine months, getting sick, surviving labor, and losing their figure. But shouldn’t the new bundle of joy be the greatest gift? Also, the idea of the push present seems to be a marketing ploy by the jewelry and luxury brands industry. Of course, I wouldn’t turn away a push present from my future husband, but I also wouldn’t want us to go into unnecessary debt because we decided to start a family. How do you feel about push presents? Did you receive a push present after giving birth? Do you want one when you become a mother? Keep reading »

Girl Talk: Oops … It’s Almost Time To Give Birth!

Katrina DevoeApril 23, 2010 //

I’m now six days away from the official due date of my unplanned (but now certainly wanted) first baby, and I think I have learned what it might be like to be disabled in America. It’s not very pleasant. I am certainly a spectacle, but unlike other disabled people, the woman with a giant rotund belly warrants comments from nearly everyone she passes, whether it’s kind strangers who say “Congratulations!” on the street or the bitch who works at Target who warned me not to have my baby on the floor. And if I have to hear “OMG you’re SO pregnant,” one more time (from friends, family and strangers), I really might lose it. I’m hormonal, chunky and need a drink, so stating the obvious is getting plain annoying. Keep reading »

Is A Forced C-Section Akin To Rape?

Amelia McDonell-ParryOctober 19, 2009 //

In a story on The Daily Beast, Danielle Friedman writes about Joy Szabo, an Arizona mom who painted a message on her car window which read, “Page Hospital, enter my body without permission… Sounds like rape to me.” Szabo was pregnant with her fourth child and the local hospital (the only one she could feasibly get to when she went into labor) would only agree to giving her a C-section when the time came to give birth. Szabo has three other children — two born naturally, one born via C-section. “In June, Szabo’s hospital adopted a policy prohibiting women who had prior C-sections from delivering vaginally—from having what’s technically known as a VBAC, for ‘vaginal birth after Caesarean.’” Keep reading »

Taiwan’s Hello Kitty Maternity Hospital

Leonora EpsteinSeptember 14, 2009 //

Hello Baby! Just when you thought the Hello Kitty craze couldn’t go any further … oh, yes, they really went there this time. Case in point: the Hello Kitty maternity hospital in Taiwan, where moms-to-be are attended to by nurses in pink uniforms, the newborns are swaddled in HK blankets, and bubbly Sanrio images decorate the place. To add to the creepiness, babies also get a pair of whiskers as a souvenir. The cartoony facility is supposed to ease the stress of giving birth, but the first thing that came to mind when we saw this was the horrific image of an obstetrician wearing a giant Hello Kitty head sitting between your spread legs saying, “Here kitty, kitty.” Check out some more pics after the jump! [InventorSpot.com] Keep reading »