Forget about buying preggo clothes: RENT THEM

If you're the kind of gal that likes the idea of designer fashion without the price tag, now you can hire boutique maternity gear from a new company that launched on Monday: Rent Maternity Wear.

Featured in the LA Times, the company has a limited collection of designer gear that you can rent starting from $35 per week. They also have lots of formal dresses which can cost up to $70 but in the end, I suppose it's cheaper than buying a formal maternity frock.

Would you hire maternity clothes?

Paula Radcliffe: pregnant and running

As an avid runner, Paula Radcliffe has always been one of my running heroines. I've written about her and running during pregnancy a number of times in the last few years. Well, she's pregnant for the second time around and the Daily Mail recently did a feature on her as she prepares for London 2012.

My girl Paula is still running 14 miles per day in her 5th month of pregnancy:

"I've been running around seven miles in about 45 minutes twice a day, combined with altitude and gravity training on a specially designed treadmill."

American marathoner Kara Goucher is also pregnant and she has been getting tips from Paula on how to proceed with training.

It is generally accepted that running in pregnancy is safe as long as you don't start running when you become pregnant or get too overheated. If you are a seasoned runner, there is no problem with keeping up your normal routines.

What worries me, however, is that in publishing her training regimen (even though Radcliffe is an elite athlete) there are still surely some women out there (who are not elite athletes) that will think that they aren't exercising enough or that they need to keep up with one of the greatest female marathoners in recent history.

What do you think? Are you proud of Paula for being a running queen? Or is it unethical to tell the world about her pregnancy training regimen?

IVF mothers should not be allowed to have abortions according to one British doc

According to a recent article in the Daily Mail (Daily Fail, if you ask me), "an average of 80 abortions are carried out in England and Wales every year on IVF babies." The author, Mohamed Menabawey, is a consultant infertility specialist at the London Bridge Fertility Centre and he is apparently appalled that women who have IVF abort the foetuses that they do not want to carry. According to Menabawey, if you are desperate enough to go through the pain and effort to conceive through IVF you should be thankful that you have any foetuses at all. 'Aborting' , according to this fertility doctor, is wrong and 'social abortion' (his term, not mine) is much different to 'medical abortion' (where physical abnormality is involved).

OMG this makes me so angry!

If Menabawey is a medical doctor, I find it extremely troubling that he would moralise about the personal choices of his patients in a national newspaper. I have no problem with doctors not agreeing with abortion but I do have a problem with forcing their own beliefs on patients. Under the Hippocratic Oath, doctors agree to do no harm to their patients. Encouraging women to keep foetuses that they do not wish to carry through into a full-term pregnancy or moralising about how these women are 'bad' is harmful and frankly, if a woman chooses to go through IVF and then changes her mind in the end, THAT IS HER CHOICE.

It is stunning that in 2010 we still have highly educated professionals placing limitations on choice. Whether a women chooses to terminate a pregnancy for 'social' or 'medical' reasons is NOT the doctor's concern. Menabawey seems to suggest that his IVF patients are 'bad' women for not consulting him before choosing to terminate an IVF pregnancy!

Thumbs down, no hugs.

Reflections on blogging and the world of mothers

Every wonder how I got into this whole blogging thing? I recently wrote a reflective piece on being a feminist, blogger and pregnancy researcher for Third Space:

"The mass media is a world without footnotes, where a phone call to an 'expert' constitutes 'research' and where using academic language is your death sentence..."

Intrigued? Read on and lend me your thoughts.

Bethenny Frankel: the ultimate post-baby 'skinny girl'

One of my favourite activities when I go to the US involves catching up on watching the 'Real Housewives' series. While I'm more of an Orange County kind of girl, every so often I dabble with the ladies of the New York crew. Bethenny Frankel, owner of Skinny Girl cocktails and cookbooks is now being slammed for her post-baby body which is featured in the new Us magazine. Apparently, Frankel lost 29of the 35 lbs she gained during her pregnancy in 3 weeks. Frankel had a Caesarean, five weeks early and her daughter Bryn was underweight(duh?).

The question now remains as to whether Frankel is sending a 'bad message' by being the ultimate 'skinny girl' two minutes after giving birth. This is my take: I don't think it necessarily sends a 'bad message' that women lose weight after giving birth. Some women shed weight quickly post-birth and to be honest, we have no idea how Frankel lost her weight. She is a small woman to begin with so it's entirely possible that the weight just fell off. Thus, I don't think it's fair to judge her straight away. On the other hand, given that her career as a chef has moved her into the market for diet cookbooks and various other bizarre 'skinny girl' recipes, I think it would be hard to say that Frankel isn't a little obsessed with how she looks and would probably go to great lengths to maintain her 'skinny girl' image. According to the New York Post, Frankel wrote in a blog post, "Growing up in an extremely dysfunctional and toxic series of households bred me for an obsession with food and diet and weight," Frankel wrote in a blog post on Bravo.com.

So if anything I guess I feel sorry for her. It sucks to live your life worried about what other people think of you. I hate that so many women get weighed down by all of this crap.

Pregnancy = no housework. Hooray?

A new study suggests that when women do 'boring' tasks like housework,
they are 25% more likely to give birth prematurely.

Apparently, such 'mindless' chores raise their level of stress hormones.

Maybe we can see this as a great way for women to heap all of their
undeserved housework on their partners.

Or maybe this suggests that it is problematic for women to be active
during their pregnancy and that they are too fragile to move around and do
things.

Or maybe it just means that foetuses are feminists and trying to save mum
from menial labour?

Kelly Preston: Having a baby at 47

So it appears that Kelly Preston, actress and wife of John Travolta (age 56), is pregnant AT THE AGE OF 47.

Today they have released a statement to People describing the pregnancy as a 'miracle'.

'Miracle', my arse.

Aside from all of the gay rumours circulating lately about JT, everyone with half a brain cell could probably figure out that they have probably been undergoing fertility treatments for quite some time now. As reproductive specialists suggest, it's a rarity for a woman to become pregnant on her own after age 45." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008 there were 0.7 births per 1,000 women ages 45 to 49, compared with 9.9 births per 1,000 women ages 44 to 40.

As much as Celine Dion makes my skin crawl, at least the gal has had the guts to be open and honest about her age and the fact that women over 40 don't get pregnant miraculously. I mean, seriously, that's like suggesting storks drop babies on your front porch.

What do you think? Are Kelly and John too old to parents again?

Celine Dion: her heart will go on x 2

Weeeelllll folks. What a long, strange two months it's been.

And what better way to re-enter the world of blogging than by posting about my favourite person in the entire world: CELINE DION.

No really, she's the devil but the lady has finally gotten herself pregnant after six attempts with IVF. And she's pregnant with TWINS.

"It's stressful but I'm relaxing. I look at my little belly. I do almost nothing," she says. "If you tell me I have to stay in bed, I will stay in bed until November, when the babies are born. To bring them into the world, there's nothing more important than that. It's incredible."

What I find interesting about the whole situation was this:

"My doctors had to constantly reassure me. I [wanted] to see the babies," she says. "Each week I had sonograms. I heard their heart beats."

Considering ultrasound still has not been proven totally safe (One or two is okay. Ten? Not so much), it is odd that she would have an ultrasound every week. It's all very Tom Cruise, if you ask me.

Anyway, glad to be back

Kendra Wilkinson has stretch marks *shock* *horror*

In an epic revelation, it appears that Kendra Wilkinson is starting to come to grips with the fact that motherhood changes your body. According to Us, in the second season of her reality show on E!, Kendra reveals that she has stretch marks and claims that she doesn't look 'sexy' anymore.

"What the hell is this?" Wilkinson asks her husband, as she lifts up her suit top to reveal her stretch marks. "I want to look sexy for you again!"

What bothers me the most about this is 1) she is feeling badly about herself after having given birth only three months ago (this is so sad!) and 2) she wants to regain her figure for her husband and not for herself.

While I rag on Kendra a lot, it's moments like these that I wish that average women saw more often. Celebrities are not 'perfect' and they work really hard to achieve slender bodies. What is particularly interesting about this snippet is that for someone so unfailingly vacuous, you have to feel a little bit sorry for her. I think there is genuine disbelief; for someone so used to managing her appearance and relying upon diet and exercise to keep herself thin, the very idea that somehow your body can change totally outside of your control is actually probably very difficult for someone like her to cope with. I wouldn't be surprised if the next thing we hear from her is that she's going to have plastic surgery.

It's bad enough to have your post-birth body judged when you are not a celebrity; it's even worse to feel horrible about yourself with the world watching your every move.

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt: 'gender bending' debacle

This is outrageous. We have definitely gone to the bad place if it is now appropriate 1) to make 3 year old children the subject of tabloids and 2) to attack 3 year old children publicly who have no means of understanding or responding to the things that are being written about them. If anything we should all be applauding Shiloh for her desire to look different than most girls her age (*cough* *cough* Suri Cruise).

"Shiloh is pushing the boundaries of a tomboy look and crossing over to cross-dresser territory," Alana Kelen, senior fashion stylist at VH1, tells Life & Style. Celebrity stylist Gili Rashal-Niv agrees. "I get that times are tough but does Angie really need to have Shiloh sharing clothes with her brothers? Hopefully we won't be seeing Maddox in one of Shiloh's dresses any time soon."

Cross-dressing? Are you f-ing kidding me?! What pisses me off even more is that Angelina is being blamed for her wardrobe. Anyone with a 3 year old knows, children are more than capable of choosing their own clothes at that age and most parents also know that it is almost impossible to force a 3 year old child to wear something that they don't want to wear.

Life and Style you should be bloody ashamed of yourselves.

Pregnant women banned in Vegas

Talk about hypocrisy!

Bravado, the manufacturer of cleverly designed breastfeeding bras, has recently run into some trouble when it comes to showing off their wares. Since 2008, the company has been entering trade shows in order to expand their market. Their 'booth' at the trade show features a runway with pregnant models wearing the bras. The 'models' however are not 'models' in the traditional sense; they are the company's typical customers at various stages of pregnancy. In an interview with the NYT, Kathryn From, chief executive of Bravado, noted that every so often a small percentage of people complain about their decision to feature pregnant women. Ironically, the company was recently prohibited from staging their runway show in Las Vegas at Blush Boutique Nightclub, owned by Wynn:

“We did not feel it appropriate to feature a very pregnant model in a nightclub, at midnight, where alcohol was being served,” Jennifer Dunne, a Wynn spokeswoman, wrote in a statement responding to questions. “Our team made a judgment call which we feel was correct given the environment and circumstance.”

In a city where day and night collide, where prostitution, gambling and inebriation are the orders of the day, one wonders how on earth a nightclub in the city of sin could possibly get on their high horse about a few pregnant women flogging some maternity bras.

I am consistently amazed by the ways in which pregnant bodies continue to cause moral panic in spite of the fact that it would appear that we are so inundated with naked female bodies in general.

Octomum dropping bombs: not good

Geez Louise.

We haven't heard much from Octomum lately but she's back in full force on two fronts 1) admitting to Us mag that she lost all 145 pounds of baby weight 'for the money' and also saying that she's not ruling out another baby in the future and 2) showing up on The View acting crazy like she hadn't taken her meds. She's so hyper on the show that Whoopi Goldberg asked: “Do you understand that some people think… maybe you’re not quite all there?” The audience applauded.

“I love your question,” Suleman responded.

OMG!

Leather leggings, maternity unitards and stilettos OH MY.

Okay so as many of you know, following in the footsteps of Nicole Richie, Heidi Klum is doing a maternity line for A Pea in the Pod called Lavish. Now, Klum was quoted recently in Us mag as saying that her pieces would be a bit edgier and she was including, among other things, leather pants and glitter tops. But seriously, while I'm all for looking stylin hot when you are preggers, can you seriously envision yourself wearing LEATHER LEGGINGS when you are knocked up?! Or what's worse, could you picture yourself wearing a maternity unitard? I mean it's like if you don't have an absolutely flawless figure without an ounce of fat on you, how on earth could you possibly wear either of these pieces? And by the same token, leggings/leotards DO NOT (I repeat, DO NOT) qualify as being fully attired. Leggins are not trousers, by any stretch of the imagination. Leotards cannot replace tops/dresses without some kind of bottoms. So if you stay with me and my logic, a unitard is not a suitable replacement for a top and trousers. In fact, I'm not sure a unitard should be seen anywhere outside of a dance performance, and even then I think we're skating a fine line between 'too much information' and camel toe.

I rest my case.

EPIC FAIL.

Keep the egg timers in the kitchen

As if there aren't enough women in their mid-late 30s with a biological clock the size of Big Ben....

And now we have something called the 'egg timer', a simple blood test provided by IVF Australia that will allow women to know just how fast their biological clocks are ticking....for $65 you can find out how many eggs you have left...

"I think this is a big step forward," medical director of IVF Australia, Assistant Professor Peter Illingworth, told The Sunday Mail.

"For a woman who is facing decisions about how active they should get about chasing her fertility in one way or another, it's information about what the future may hold for her.

"For a 30-year-old woman, it gives her an idea of whether she's at risk of having an early menopause or she's got plenty of time to carry on and have a baby."

I'm not impressed..or at least I'm of two minds about this. For women who have been struggling with infertility, knowing exactly what kind of situation you are facing in trying to get pregnant can be extremely useful. What worries me is that this sort of 'fertility alarm' only contributes to the cautionary tales fed to women at increasingly earlier ages about having children (which perhaps coincidentally comes at a time when more women are being educated and are working in the paid workforce than any other time in history).

Researchers say that this test relieves women of the 'anguish' of 'uncertainty'. Yet, isn't this what reproduction is fundamentally about? Lots of social commentators have been banging on about how this tests gives women 'choices'. Well, as you all know, 'choice' for me, is a big yay. But, on the other hand, what kind of 'choice' is this really? You either get pregnant because you are 'running out of time' or you have to live with the knowledge that your clock is ticking sooner than you may be ready to shut it off. I think it's a loaded 'choice' and puts a lot of pressure on women who are already feeling it without having a test tell them they are getting older.

Chiarakruza lands at Target!

Guess who's landing at Target stores on 15 Feb?

That's right. Chiarakruza, maternity designer to all the celebs. This is the first time that Target is branching off from Liz Lange (the doyenne of celeb maternity fashion).

So hurry up and get knocked up because these pieces will be going fast!

Kendra does Ok! (again), debuts post-baby bod

Okay so I have a few things to say:

1) Surprise, surprise. Kendra is on the cover of Ok! again. I think she must be on contract with them.

2) ALLEGEDLY, she's lost 25lbs in 8 wks (that is, she gave birth 8 WEEKS AGO) after gaining 55lbs during her pregnancy AND having a caesarean.

How has she done it?

Kendra says she’s doing “45 minutes of hardcore training and weightlifting” followed by running and walking on a treadmill until she’s tired.

How has she really done it?
Crash dieting and ridiculous eating regimens (or perhaps by eating regimens I should say not-eating regimens). Everyone knows that you're supposed to wait about 6 wks post-caesar before exercising, which she clearly hasn't done. And hello? What about breastfeeding? If in fact, she is breastfeeding, losing that much weight so quickly can't be good.

Is anyone else sick of this? FOR REALS. I haven't even had a flipping baby and already I'm feeling the pressure.

Say bye bye to bras?

OMG. So I went to Phuket, Thailand in 2008 for a story that I writing for a magazine here in Melbourne. I watched some Aussie mums have post-baby breast implants and, let me tell you, it looked pretty gosh darn painful.

Apparently, there's a new surgery using Breform which is a breast enhancement that functions like a sports bra under the skin or as the manufacturer says it's an 'internal bra system' (yikes, a 'system'...sounds like a machine from the future). The benefit of this new technology is that it prevents the skin from stretching or sagging unlike traditional implant surgery. The Breform is made of a special mesh which, upon being placed underneath the skin, will over time become incorporated into the breast tissue.

The Breform has been licensed in Europe but the USFDA says it will be about 10 years before Breform is approved; it needs to undergo lots of testing but preliminary studies show that it's pretty safe thus far. In spite of the good results, some experts are concerned that the Breform will be dangerous or present a cancer risk for pregnant or breastfeeding women whose breasts might outgrow the internal bra.

Hmm. Impants that leak or mesh that you can potentially outgrow? Can you think of anything worse?

Photo credit: www.Breform.com

Feeding tops that are fabulous

Stop what you're doing.

I just found a breastfeeding top with FLUTTER SLEEVES.

Oh so stylish, not too expensive and with hidden slits for easy feeds.

In a word, awesome.

Duggars need to invest in the Pill

So this week in People, the Duggars are back and talking about the 'emotional' birth of their 19th child (as I type this, my heart stops for a minute...NINETEENTH CHILD! O.M.G.). Born at just 25 weeks, this latest addition, Josie, was so premature she now is suffering from a cascade of health problems.

What kills me is that in spite of the fact that this little baby has been teetering on the brink of death and considering Michelle herself suffered from preeclampsia in this pregnancy, the Duggars are still going on about how Josie isn't necessarily going to be their last child. According to People:

"[The Duggars] remain committed to their belief that "each child is a gift from God" and are open to having more. Michelle knows how their position is likely to be viewed, particularly following Josie's arrival. "When I say we would love more children, we open ourselves up for attack," she admits.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Aside from the fact that having 19 children is insane (I'm sorry, it is. End of story). All of the stories written about her bang on about her being a 'miracle baby' yet no one has even bother to question the mental health of a couple who would potentially risk the life of another child in this way. I mean how selfish can you be? And while all of us are reeling and even a little giddy with the prospect of the Duggars becoming parents to a 20th, no one seems to even care about the fact that Baby Josie is barely hanging on to life in a bad way.

19 children = EPIC FAIL.

Tips for young players

Gisele Bundchen: if you're out there, read this.

Seriously, you've been a mum for 5 minutes. Just because your birth was 'painless' and you supposedly didn't gain any weight during your pregnancy and your baby is a 'little angel' doesn't mean you have to be so smug. We know you're a supermodel, you have shiny hair and you get paid to put your clothes on (and ironically, more often to take them off).

Motherhood is not a competition.