This week we officially bid A Momma Grows in Brooklyn adieu and wish her well on her new adventure. She and her family moved to Boston because Momma got a new job. Visit her blog to read about what went on during the big move.
This story really shows us how powerful social media is. Five-year-old Alexis Blackburm, who was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at age 3, had surgery to remove her colon on July 12. After the surgery, her father posted a photo of her on Reddit with the caption: “My daughter had her colon removed 3 days ago. She found the strength to walk to the playroom yesterday.”
The next day, Alexis had received 136 “Get Well” cards from Reddit users—the hospital has a digital greeting card service where well-wishers can design a card online and it is printed at the hospital.
Are you worried about what genetic traits you will pass on to your child? In her post “Rolling the Dice of a Genetic Legacy” on the New York Time’s parenting blog Motherlode, Ellen Painter Dollar talks passing the osteogenesis imperfecta—”brittle bone disease”—gene to her oldest daughter and what she and her husband went through when they decided to have more children.
“The weight of those questions, combined with the financial and emotional costs of PGD, was too much. We did not do another cycle.
Instead, we conceived another baby naturally. I knew we could very well end up with another fragile baby. I also knew I could not stomach the sickening lurch of uncertainty I had felt during my oldest daughter’s earliest days, when we suspected she had OI, but did not yet know for sure. This time around, I needed to know, from the beginning, exactly what we were dealing with. I had an amniocentesis done.“
Did you know that children’s books can easily be described in nine words or less? NickMom recently posted a list of “Classic Children’s Books In 9 Words Or Less,” including “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” described as “bugs eat their feelings, too.”
