I don’t promise to actually be able to do this regularly, but I have some more links to share this week so thought I’d participate in Hobo Mama’s Sunday Surf.
Image credit: Louma Sader Bujana
First, you may have already heard of the plight of Habiba and Alma. Habiba (not her real name) left an abusive relationship and sought help at a shelter for mothers in Spain. She left her 15-month-old daughter in their care one day, and came back to find that not only had they decided to take her daughter away, they told her she could no longer stay there because she didn’t have a child anymore. The entire situation sounded pretty horrible, but I figured there must be more to the story than that. Then a medical report came out that basically stated that Alma was taken away because Habiba still breastfed her, refused to use pacifiers, fed her solid food from her own plate instead of purees, coslept, and held her too much. Lest you think it might be a scam, several eminent doctors in the country have interviewed Habiba and put themselves behind her. These doctors are prominent and putting their careers on the line, think Dr Sears in North America. To make the whole story worse, it is starting to come out that the organization behind it, the IMMF, has likely done this to other mothers who may not have gone and sought help, and that they may receive 3,000£ per baby they place for adoption. They give nursing mothers drugs to dry up their milk to force weaning as soon as they enter the shelter “just in case” the babies end up needing to be taken away and placed for adoption. They are a shelter basically preying on poor and abused mothers who need help. There is a petition as well as a Facebook page with lots of links to other blog posts about it for anyone who is interested in helping out or just finding out more.
In lighter news, the Child & Nature Alliance of Canada held a Nature Play Day on June 15th in an effort to encourage people to get outside and enjoy nature. We have been outside playing almost every day this week, so we didn’t do anything particularly different on Wednesday, but I did find this great list of outdoor activities at Living and Learning for anyone seeking inspiration for getting kids outside and just doing something! I love the secret garden idea and think maybe we’ll set something like that up for the girls in the future. A little corner where they can do whatever they want and go and hide away. When I was a child, I used to dream of having something like that after I had read the book.
Paxye wrote a great post about nursing in public and how it is so much a part of life now that she doesn’t even think about it. I can relate. I was once wandering around with a bunch of workmen at our co-op nursing Fiona the whole time. One of them commented on “how soundly that baby sleeps” and I hadn’t even really realized until then that I was nursing in front of them all! And I always have to make sure to check myself when I answer the door if I’ve been nursing.
At Un-Schooled, Kate writes about the skills unschoolers learn that carry them to the adult world.
This one is a bit off-topic from the norm, but I have been looking into a paleo diet (in fact, we’re currently on day six of grain, dairy, and sugar free, including honey and maple syrup), and came across this article about why there is little point in focusing on a target weight or stepping on the scale constantly. We aren’t doing it to lose weight (and in fact, I hate the word diet because of the connotations it has), but I still thought it was a great article.
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