We’ve got a guest blog from one of our own clients today, Dean & Steph from Daddynatal and Bump, Birth & Beyond. They’ve had a brilliant week, going from teaching local classes, to national coverage via a TV appearance. I thought it would be really helpful for other people who have small businesses to hear that opportunities for national coverage are out there, if you’re prepared to work hard and make the most of the opportunities available….. 

While everyone else seems to be winding down for Easter things have never been busier at Bump Birth and Beyond Ltd. It has been a hectic week, but a very positive hectic week!

Our busy week kicked off on Saturday, listening to the first interview Dean had recorded for The Baby Show broadcast on Star Radio. The interview was focused on the role of the dad in pregnancy, and very exciting for us, as it was the first ‘official’ interview Dean had done, and it definitely was a great learning experience.

Then, Sunday saw us officially announce our partnership with Peterborough City Hospital at Peterborough Baby Show. Bump, Birth and Beyond are now running DaddyNatal and Active Birth Classes, on behalf of the hospital, free to parents. How fantastic to have a Head of Midwifery who is so forward thinking, she really is one of the first in the country to recognise that fathers/birth partners have huge antenatal education needs which have never (until now!) been met.

There was an excellent response to the news of the classes, with signups both on the day and since. Both courses are already 10% full, and we are still awaiting the formal press release and for the community midwifery team to start promotion yet!

Sunday also marked the completion of the first part of training for our new Daisy Birthing teacher, Alison. Courses have been so successful that Steph cannot keep up with demand on her own, so we are extremely excited about Alison’s arrival. She will commence teaching in June which will allow us to offer more courses in even more locations.

On Monday and Tuesday evenings, Steph was out teaching her regular Daisy Birthing classes in Peterborough and St Ives. Steph teaches classes to around 40 pregnant ladies a week, as well as managing all the bookings and day-to-day admin of the company. And she looks after our two toddlers full time as well!

Little did we realise what more the week still held in store… At 10pm Wednesday evening, Steph arrived home from yet another Daisy Birthing class to the news that Dean had been invited down the next day onto The Vanessa Show on Channel 5 to talk about fathers at birth. Turns out a producer had heard his interview on The Baby Show website and wanted him there for a discussion segment about birth! How could we refuse…?!

So scrapping all previous arrangements for Thursday, Dean travelled to London to record the show. To say he was nervous would be a major understatement! He was petrified to be doing his first TV appearance only a few days after his very first ever live media interview! But, of course, he was also really excited. The people were brilliant and he had the pleasure of meeting and talking to Pearl Lowe and Christina Hopkinson, as part of the segment on the discussion of fathers at birth. They were lovely and certainly put Dean at ease (although nerves kicked back in once the cameras started rolling!). You can see his appearance here and judge for yourselves how Dean got on at The Vanessa Show.

Feel free to comment as we would love to hear your feedback. It was a long day though – Dean left home at 11.30am, and didn’t get home again until 8.30pm (luckily Thursdays are Steph’s evening off!)

But there was still work to be done… Friday saw us at a meeting at Peterborough Hospital to discuss some of the logistics of our partnership, and then followed by an agreement that we would produce contact and reference packs for the community midwives, so that became our focus on Saturday!

However, the support and excitement of what we are doing, coming direct from the midwives is so refreshing. It really is a pleasure to be working with them all.

And finally, we finished the week on Sunday with one of our Couples Antenatal Workshops in Kettering. Our classes are jointly run between the both of us, to make sure that we cover all the essential points from both the mum and birth partner perspective. It was a really great class – we thoroughly enjoyed it, and then arrived home in time to spend the remainder of the afternoon in the garden with our two children.

So a busy week made busier by some unforeseen media appearances! A great experience though and we look forward to seeing what the next few weeks brings us.

So that was our hectic week how was yours?

I read this article with great interest. A Manchester hospital is introducing tagging but security guards are no longer being employed or services decreased.

Is this another cost saving initiative that will go wrong or a clever idea?

My 3 day stay after the birth of my daughter was in a labour ward where visitors had to buzz to get in and staff had a code to tap in. To me this felt quite secure. Visitors had to report to a desk and I am pretty sure that a security guard was pacing the halls at night.

The tagging system discussed in the article does make me wonder how ‘safe’ this is, how secure and how reliable. Although the hospital still have their security measures, such as the ones I encountered above, how soon will staff become reliant or relaxed because they have this in place? Is this system really needed? No where are statistics shared on the effect this has on child abduction or the electronic waves pulsing next to baby’s skin.

Relying on electronics where a person can do a job is not always the way forward. Failures in systems, false alarms happen and although I am sure that the tags are probably put through their paces we cannot rely on them fully.

In the long run will this only cost more money?

Beautiful mum and her new baby

On the one hand, I think this story is quite funny, because I don’t know many people who would consciously try to get pregnant again within 6 months of a baby arriving… So there’s lots of “uh huh, not a problem here as we aren’t having sex” lines. But as people who wanted a small ish gap between children, it’s interesting reading to hear that the “risk of complications is higher among women who conceive another child soon after a birth”.

Dr Sarah Brewer has a book out, about pregnancy so I appreciate that she wants to make headlines and get media coverage. She reported that “women who conceive within six months of giving birth face a 60 per cent higher risk of delivering a low-birth-weight baby compared to women whose child was conceived between 18 and 34 months since last giving birth. Furthermore, the risk of premature birth in increased by as much as 40 per cent.”

The comments come after a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics found that children who are born after shorter intervals between pregnancies are at an increased risk of being autistic.

Dr Brewer advised: “In an ideal world, it’s best to recover from the rigours of pregnancy and childbirth. It takes at least nine months to build up nutritional status again, as pregnancy increases your requirements for vitamins A, B1, B2, C, D and folic acid.”

I’ve heard people talk about a window where ‘mother nature’ makes you not want to have sex, because it’s not good for you to be pregnant again quickly. I’ve also heard people talk about ‘mother nature’ kicking back in again when your baby is around 18 months old, as that’s when your body is ready to do it again. So this seemed quite interesting to me.

What do you think of it? What gap do you have between your children? Would you have the same gap again, or longer or shorter?

The original text can be found here:

ALERT: THIS IS A SALES PITCH. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BENEFIT FROM ACCESSING FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN LOOK AWAY NOW ;)

Young Families Bump, Baby and Toddler Shows are brilliant

I’m so sorry. I’ve been doing that thing again of thinking that everyone has telepathy. Which of course I know we don’t, even though we are all parents extraordinaire…

So I’m now officially telling you that the next Young Families Bump, Baby and Toddler Show will be held on Sunday 27 March 2011, at Watford Leisure Centre. I’m in trouble because I’ve not been telling everyone about it enough… So here goes….

Do you have a business that would benefit from meeting 750 people who are either pregnant, new parents or parents of pre schoolers?
Would you like to meet them in a family friendly environment?
Do you want to be seen as a supporter of your local NHS Maternity Unit and benefit from them promoting attendance at the show as being a good thing?

Well, the Watford Bump, Baby and Toddler Show is the place for you to exhibit at…

The early bird deadline official finished on Friday 14 January, but we’ve had a rush of enquiries this week and some of them ended up in our spam folders, so we are telling everyone about it again, and extending the early bird deadline until next Friday, 21 January 2011. This will give everyone who wants to, opportunity to book at the early bird rate of £150 instead of £175. We’re biased, but we think that our Bump, Baby and Toddler Shows are great. But rather than sell the benefits of exhibiting to you ourselves, we like to let other people do it for us!

In light of our previous “baby show” experiences, your show was fab, your team were on hand if we needed anything and we didn’t feel that anything was too much trouble.  We had a really good day, were extremely pleased with our sales and bookings. Thank you for organising such a great event. Debi Hogston,www.waterbabies.co.uk

“We attend a number of ‘baby shows’ across the South of England but none of them compare to the Young Families events. We have now attended two Young Families events and they are extremely well organised, well advertised and well run. The team behind Young Families are second to none. We will not miss a Young Families event.”  Emma, www.waterbabybirthingpoolhire.co.uk

What does it cost?
Early Bird, single pitch (2x2m), with quarter page colour advert in Show Guide = £150.00

Benefits for Exhibitors at the 2011 Shows.
A quarter page colour advertisement within the Show Guide, at no extra cost.
If you need electricity, contact us and we’ll do our best to help, at no extra cost.
If you need a wall behind you, let us know and if we can arrange this, we will, at no extra cost.
We provide one 2m x 2m pitch, two chairs and a table.

New partnerships
We have teamed up with the Maternity Unit at Watford General Hospital, who will be promoting the Show via their antenatal and outpatients clinics with flyers and posters. This exclusive arrangement for our Show is a significant new promotional vehicle and we will make the most of this opportunity with our design and print offering for it. The Maternity Unit will also be attending on the day with Midwives and their Infant Feeding Co-ordinator hosting a drop in, informal clinic for anyone and everyone who wants to ask questions, get information or find support. It will be a huge draw for pregnant women and their families and we expect a high volume of footfall on the day.

We will donate 100% of the income from the door entry to the Maternity Unit at Watford General Hospital.

We know that you are busy, so we don’t do 20 page booking packs. We enjoy what we do, and it shines through in our attention to detail, from our pre show communications, to providing people to help  you unload on the day of the Show. Our brilliant re booking rate and out of area exhibitors demonstrates that our Shows really are the way to meet your market. We expect at least 750 people on the day, based on footfall at our previous shows, and hope that you will be with us to meet our visitors.

The Watford Young Families Bump, Baby and Toddler Show booking form can be downloaded here. We look forward to receiving your booking shortly

If you have any questions, please call or email as is easiest for you: 01223 501520 | 07515 910231 | liz@westoncommunications.org.uk

PS. The website is now in being updated for the new show and will be live shortly. But please check it out in the meantime, so you can see how we run our other shows.www.youngfamilies.co.uk

A new baby is a wonderful thing. New baby twins are a double blessing and generate disproportionately more interest. #CambridgeMummyFact  Whether you’ve had the birth from hell or a “perfect birth”, (whatever that means to you), your hormones will still play havoc with you and your body in the days, weeks and months afterwards. So I thought it was brilliant to hear Celine Dion saying that she basically didn’t know what had hit her in the first few days and weeks after her twins arrived recently.The UK Press Association has even put something out there about it…

“Dion has revealed she is knackered by her newborn twins, but finds them “an intense joy… I am changing nappies and breastfeeding and that’s something where no one can take my place – it’s tiring but an intense joy.

“I didn’t have these children to not take care of them, [but] to give myself to them 200 – 300 per cent,” she added. Celine – who is also mum to nine-year-old son Rene-Charles – has not had much time for herself.

“In reality, I’ve had almost no time getting a shower and feeding myself. My preoccupation has been eating sensibly,” she admitted. “My only worry has been to be able to open and close [my tops] quickly for breastfeeding. It’s been out of the question to even wear a blouse!”

Since giving birth, the 42-year-old lost her appetite and suffered from mood changes. “Some of the first days after I came home, I was a little outside myself. I had no appetite and that bothered me. My mother remarked that she noticed I had moments of lifelessness, but reassured me that this was entirely normal,” she recalled.

“One moment, tremendous happiness; the next, fatigue sets in, and I cried for no reason, and then that took care of itself. It’s for things like that after having a baby that mothers really need emotional support.”

BRILLIANT. Someone who has lots of help admitting that it’s not all roses and lovely moments in the first days, weeks and months, whether you are becoming a mummy for the first or fifth time…  I wasn’t going to comment on her quotes, until I saw other agencies picking it up and extrapolating from this, that she has post natal depression. Misery and fear sells, for sure, but to me, it just sounds like she’s telling it like it is, as a new mum. PND, what a load of hooey. Not on the basis of these quotes alone….

I don’t for a moment think  this was a plug to selling anything for her. But if it was, she’s succeeded. Why? Because honesty is much more appealing to me. Particularly when I can relate to it… It’s similar to my other post on how I view my clients I suppose. But I tell you something, it’s making me think I want to check Celine Dion out more, so kudos to her for being honest about her new life experiences. In doing  so, she’s bringing a whole new demographic of previously disinterested women into her sphere. A Smart Bird In Every Respect eh?

I’m off to find some Celine on itunes ;) What are your memories of life with your new baby? Those first few days, weeks and months? The high points? The low points? Would love some comments on this.

*image courtesy of www.dailystab.com

Help me with this one please. Who has time to video the arrival of their baby? Which bloke out there is not being subjected to having the pain ‘shared’ with him, at the most special (and painful) moment of the birthing process?

Someone is, because some doctors overseas have started objecting to births being videoed.

Why? To encourage maternal bonding with new babies? To involve men in the birthing process more? Nope. So that the footage can’t be used should anything go wrong with the birth. I know.

For the file, if you are a bloke and reading this, I do not think that your Mrs will want you to be holding anything other than her hand, mopping her brow or doing whatever she damm well tells you to at the point of birth.

I haven’t seen a baby marketing campaign yet where the photo is required to be the moment of birth, or videos of babies arriving. I suppose someone will go and do it now. Yuk.

Did you have photos of yourself giving birth? Literally giving birth? Who wants to see your lady bits at that point? Did you have someone video it? Who? Show me how it’s a good thing, I like being proved wrong….

Baby birth payments?

This is another one of those articles where I can see both sides of the coin. Parents to be in places outside of the UK are experiencing the seas of change financially. Women in Spain are reported to be keen to deliver their babies before midnight on 31 Dec 2010, to receive the last of the government’s €2,500 (£2,128) “baby cheques”. Apparently, they are seeing increasing numbers of women coming in reporting spotting and other early labour indicators. The payments were brought in, in 2007, to provide an incentive for  people to have more babies to improve the nation’s birth rate. But now that they payments are about to stop, it’s causing some women to want to bring their birth days forwards…

“What we’re seeing in the public sector is that women who are due to give birth in the first fortnight of January are coming in and saying they are spotting blood or that their waters have broken,” a midwife in a Seville hospital told El País newspaper. ”They don’t dare say so openly but we know they want to bring the due date forward. We examine them and send them home.”

Sounds like sensible stuff to me. But the article then went on with the Guardian quoting José Ángel Espinosa, Associate Head of Gynaecology at the Quirón hospital in Madrid, as saying that he would induce women early. “If they’ve reached 38 weeks and they ask us to do it, we will,” he said. But the doctor warned that he would not induce anyone who was not ready. “It’s my watch on the 31st,” he said. “And I’m not going to let anyone put one over on me.”

Surely a woman’s body usually tells her when she’s ready to give birth? I thought we always had the debate about how pregnancy is actually usually more like a 42 week experience and that we should not be inducing women before then? To induce women at 38 weeks, purely so they get a cheque, feels like a big step to be taking. Having said that, I can see why women are so keen on it – a cheque for £2K would come in hand in those first few months as parents.

What do you think of this? Is it ok to induce someone early so they get a cheque for £2k?

When you are pregnant, your mind is usually filled with thoughts of how to save money and do things at as little cost as possible. The one thing I recommend, as a mum of two myself, is to go to antenatal classes. To make this blog a bit less biased, I asked Laura Hackett, an experienced antenatal teacher, to tell us a bit more as to why they are such a good thing.

 1)      The classes are usually fun and informative.
I use humour to help learning and make classes enjoyable. Attendees can have concerns or worries that they don’t feel able to bring up in class, so it’s my job to lighten the atmosphere and make people feel relaxed and comfortable.

2)      Dads learn loads.
My classes focus on the role of the Dad as the birth supporter  - why are they at the birth?, what is expected of them?, what can they do to help?, and will they be a good Dad?  This is the sort of thing that men tell me they want to learn and women want their men to know too!

3)      Mums make new friends. 
I find that mums who attend my classes forge good friendships no matter what the course format, whether it is 2 whole days or a series of evenings. Whichever the format, there will be opportunities to get to know the others on the course. These friendships are very useful postnatally.

4)      Practical Skills for labour.
You’ll learn coping skills including breathing techniques, massage, positions and simple comfort measures for labour. 

5)      Practical Babycare skills.
Want to know how to change a nappy, how to bath a baby and how to put  baby down for sleeping? All of these practical skills and more are covered

6)      Manageable labour.
Women who attend my classes very often report back that the labour wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be. With an increasing number who birth at home or who are 7-8cm when arriving at hospital, they truly use the skills learned in classes on how to “manage” their labour.7)      Using water for labour.
My classes always include a session with a birthing pool so women and their partners can get into the pool, experiment with positions and learn about the benefits of labouring and birthing in water. It’s always good to practise.

8)      Increased satisfaction after the birth.
From speaking to many parents after the birth of their babies a large number are very satisfied with their birth experience and transition to parenthood. This is true  even when the birth did not go to plan. My no-nonsense approach in classes to what the early days may be like and strategies to cope are found to be useful.

9)      Ongoing support.
Most teachers offer ongoing support. For example, after the set of classes is completed those attending know I am only an email or phone call away. I have attended women in early labour while their partners travelled home, I have helped Dads at the hospital with asking about potential options in care and frequently visit new mums on the postnatal ward or at home if asked. I feel very privileged to be part of the couple’s life at this important transition point and this shines through in my commitment to anyone who attends a class with me.

10)  Because you don’t know what you are missing out on if you don’t.
First time parents tell me that they only realise the value of their classes after they’ve attended and gone on to become parents.  Those who don’t attend do not know what they missed and those that do attend find them invaluable.

Laura Hackett has taught almost 1,000 pregnant couples about pregnancy, childbirth and beyond. To see why people like Laura’s classes so much, visit www.bumpsandmore.co.uk . The site also has details of courses, events and services available from Laura at Bumps and More.