Great Quote

An amazing quote from Gretchen Humphries, the ICAN Advocacy Director.

"Lying at the start of a fundamentally business relationship is never ok, it's fraud. Manipulating a woman to agree to something she's already said she doesn't want by making unsupportable and vague accusations of danger to her unborn child is inexcusable."

A little about Gretchen : Gretchen Humphries is the Advocacy Director for ICAN, the ICAN email list administrator, and co-leader of the ICAN of Ann Arbor Chapter. She is also a Veterinarian, working in emergency and critical care at the Animal ER Center in Southeastern Michigan. She has written extensively on birth topics and many of her essays can be found at Birth Matters. She’s the mother of 4 wonderful children and the wife of a man who realized how much they’d both lost with the cesarean, after his third child was born at home.She’s had one cesarean for breech twins and then 2 wonderful HBACs.
http://ican-online.org/community/users/advocacy

ICAN of Connecticut News!

As everyone knows, Chapter leader Danielle Elwood is very close to welcoming her second child, so we are on baby watch 2009! She is anxiously awaiting her opportunity to have a beautiful and empowering VBAC. Wish her luck and keep her in your thoughts.

News News News!

We are scheduled for the Griffin Hospital Baby Fair on Saturday May 16th. I am very excited about it, last year over 500 mothers were in attendance and we got to reach out to a lot of moms in the area. This year we are taking a different approach to the baby fair, and will also have more than one person manning the booth, so it will give us a greater opportunity to speak with more moms!

We have a couple meetings set up for the next couple months. I know summer time is VERY busy for a lot of moms, and families, so I am not really banking on anyone coming, but we will have some neat topics.

May : Birth Story Night - We will be meeting Next Tuesday the 17th at 7pm like normal at Dr. Jenkin's office in Milford.

June : Changing Provider Mid Pregnancy - We will be meeting on Tuesday June 16th, at 7:00pm again at Dr. Jenkin's office in Milford. This will be a lesson on changing health care providers mid pregnancy, how to, why would you, and what should prompt you to change.

July : Breastfeeding after a Cesarean - The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, August 22nd at 7pm. We will be having a special guest speaker (Local Lactation Consultant who is TBA) speak about breast feeding after a c-section, tips, help, and problems cesarean section mother may face. It should be a great evening! Please invite all Moms you know who could benefit!

August : Fathers Night! - August 12th, 7pm at Dr. Jenkins office in Milford. We will be opening the night up to fathers! Sharing their experiences and stories of birth experiences. We will be welcome a special guest speaker, Dr. Jason Jenkins, and of course my husband Will to speak of our birth experiences from Dads point of view. All dads, and dads to be are welcome and encouraged to come!!!

I hope to see a lot of you ladies over the summer! Remember, we have our great ICAN e-mail group you can join at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/ICANofConnecticut/

And we also have our online forum, http://icanofconnecticut.yuku.com/