It’s been a while since I’ve shared a Parent Story and now we have a great one! I met this fabulous mom (Kerry Reynolds), who also happens to be a doula, on twitter. I was introduced to her by none other than her mother, Susan Reynolds, of Frozen Pea Fund and Boobs on Ice fame! Check out the post I did on the Frozen Pea Fund back in December 2007.
Stories like these are what keep me going and and make all the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur building Babble Soft all worth while!
Mother: Kerry (SAHM/Birth Doula)
Father: Mike (Project Manager)
Baby: Emma
Born: April 2008
Place: Burke, VA
Browser: Mozilla Firefox v2.0.0.11
Website: www.birthinbloom.com
Kerry’s story
Emma is my second child and her birth was long awaited as she was seven days overdue! Labor lasted 20 hours and was exhausting. In the process I was up for 50 hours straight and was so ready to come home. After Emma was born we brought her to her first doctor’s appointment only to discover she had a worrisome case of baby jaundice. We were concerned about her health and the doctor told us to make sure we kept careful watch of her weight gain, feedings, and diapers. We were very worried about little Emma but little did we know at that time, jaundice would be the least of our concerns.
When Emma was one and a half weeks old she had a frightening episode which resulted in a trip to the emergency room. We discovered she has a heart condition called Wolffe Parkinson White and learned she would need to be on a heart medication until she reaches three years old, when her heart will be large enough to have a surgery to correct the defect. After three nights in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) we arrived home frantic and sleep deprived, her medication schedule had to be so exact that we needed Baby Insights to help us keep track of every detail of her routine. In addition, her dosage was on a schedule to increase as her weight increased so it was imperative that we monitor it closely.
Babble Soft helped us through some challenging times
The information I got from using Baby Insights was and continues to be extremely useful! It helped us think in a time we could barely add two plus two or string coherent sentences together. The ability to go to one place and see all of Emma’s information was a life saver. I use Baby Insights to:
- Keep detailed notes on how often and when she was eating, which helped us track improvements in her jaundice and report feedings to her pediatrician and cardiologist.
- Monitor her diaper changes so that we could feel comfortable she was in fact absorbing her food and that all was working well.
- Monitor her heart medication which helped us remember the exact time and dosage as that is a critical part of keeping any further episodes at bay.
- Keep track of how much breast milk I was pumping to make sure we had enough to give to baby Emma and to ensure my milk supply would stay steady and increase over time.
- Stay aware of any decreases in her appetite as this could be a sign of another episode with her heart.
—End—
If you are interested in participating in your very own user story, please activate a FREE Babble Soft Trial. All you need is an email address! If you find that Babble Soft applications work for you and you want to tell the world about your great experience, please email us at info at babblesoft dot com for more information.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: babble soft,
baby insights,
breast milk,
breastfeeding,
case study,
parent stories,
parenting,
pumping |
Tags: babble soft parent testimonial,
baby heart condition,
baby is overdue,
baby jaundice,
birth in bloom,
firefox,
jaundice,
susan reynolds,
Wolffe Parkinson White |
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Those of us who live in Austin, Texas love talking about how great it is here. On top of the perfect ‘winter’ weather (it’s 7o degrees in February), great people, and great tech community, we have a top ranking state university (The University of Texas at Austin) and awesome Twitter members. 🙂
Yesterday, we took the kids to see the UT Austin Longhorn football team practice in the morning. Hook ‘Em Horns! The weather was around 6o degrees and because it was a morning practice there weren’t nearly the amount of people there that my husband said were there at the one evening practice he went to before. Our son loved getting close to the players and our daughter had fun rolling down the hills. Our son held his hand out as some of the players were moving from one practice field to the next and they touched his outstretched palm which made his day! He gets his love of college football from his dad. I’ve been known to watch a game from time to time. We then went to Shady Grove for lunch which is near Lady Bird Lake and enjoyed the sunny day by eating outside.
For dinner we met up with some Austin tweeters who I had never met before except of course for Connie Reece who got me started with blogging and probably first told me about twitter! Oh and Thom Singer who we have known for several years…well before I forayed into blogging. We met at Waterloo Ice House on Loop 360 and at 7:00 pm and it was still 70 degrees! The kids had a blast playing on the playscape and in the sandbox.
The Austin Tweet-Up was organized by Kim Haynes for Susan Reynolds and Bryan Person who were in town visiting from DC and Boston. It was great fun meeting several people I’ve gotten to know via tweets on twitter and meeting new people in Austin. What is it about those magical 140 character tweets?
For some other write-ups on the Austin Tweetup check out Kim Haynes’ and Thom Singer’s posts, here and here.
Picture by Kim Haynes of @agentgenius, @LaniAR, @mikeneumann, and @susanreynolds.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: Just For Fun,
random stuff |
Tags: agent genius,
austin,
austin tweet-up,
kim haynes,
lady bird lake,
longhorn football,
mike neumann,
shady grove,
susan reynolds,
texas,
thom singer,
twitter,
UT Austin,
ut longhorn football practice,
waterloo ice house |
3 Comments »
A fascinating thing happened to me and many a folk on Twitter last week. I went from 30 followers to over 175 followers worldwide in just over 24 hours all because of a woman known as @SusanReynolds. Susan blogs at Artsy Asylum and started a new blog called Boobs on Ice to document her journey fighting breast cancer. A woman who I have mentioned frequently on my blog, Connie Reece, helped start a campaign called the Frozen Pea Fund. You can see a great interview of Connie on this particular topic called PEAS and Passion on Thom Singer’s blog. Connie also helped start Frozen Pea Friday where people change their twitter avatars to “peavatars” in support of Susan Reynolds and to build awareness of the Frozen Pea Fund.
As I mentioned in my Social Media Mania – What’s A Gal to Do? post I joined Twitter on December 13, 2007. Near the end of last week, I saw @lizstrauss, @princess-belle and others making challenges that they will donate money to the Frozen Pea Fund if twitterdom would help them get to X number of followers within a certain time period. I decided to join in late on December 27 and put forth the challenge of 175 to donate $50. I had 30 followers at the time. It was down to the wire but just as midnight was closing here in US CST on December 28 a tweet went out to some Aussie twitter folk and I ended up with close to 180!
I would have donated even if I didn’t make it to 175. I was having so much FUN seeing people take action based on 140 character or less tweets to help fight cancer, a worthy cause. Talk about instant gratification for almost all parties involved! I donated my $50 right then and there. To me, the Frozen Pea Fund endeavor has been the best example of a social media campaign I have seen or been a part of. Kudos to people like @conniereece for taking the time to show us how social media can be used to make a difference!
Now I’m going to see if twitter can help me find a good reference for a beginner yoga class to take in 2008. I’ve got a lot to do in 2008 and Yoga will be a big part of it. I even saw that they are offering a Deepak Chopra Center Yoga Retreat at the Crossings in March.
If you’d like to follow me on twitter, you can find me @aruni. If you’d like to see how I figure out how attempt to use social media to help build awareness of my company, Babble Soft, you might want to subscribe to this blog’s feed. If you have any suggestions on how to reach our target market, please don’t hesitate to send me your ideas…they are always welcome!
Happy New Year! Oh and don’t forget to donate to the Frozen Pea Fund…
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: charities,
social media,
social networks,
twitter |
Tags: american cancer society,
breast cancer,
connie reece,
frozen pea friday,
frozen pea fund,
frozen peas,
peas,
peas and passion,
social media,
social networks,
susan reynolds,
twitter |
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