17th May
I recently wrote an article about birth marks called ‘stork bites’, which often appear on newborns but usually fade before they turn three. It got me wondering where the whole ‘storks carrying babies’ legend comes from. What’s the origin of storks carrying babies?
I mean… why not an owl, an eagle, an albatross?
Thank goodness for Google – my curiosity has been piqued. I thought I’d share.
As you can imagine, there are various tales of mythic origin that explain why the stork is the bringer of babies but the most common seems to be one of German ancestry. According to this folk tale, “the souls of unborn children live in watery areas such as marshes, wells, springs and ponds. Since storks visit such habitats frequently, they were believed to fetch babies’ souls and deliver them to their parents.
An alternate version of the storks carrying babies tale tells of storks finding human infants called “stork-children” dwelling in rocky caves called “Adeborsteine” or “stork-stones” and carrying them to expectant parents.”
Here’s another cool one – Polish in origin – “Frogs, lizards, snakes, and other similar animals became so numerous and caused so many problems that God put them all in a sack to get rid of them. He gave the sack to a human, with instructions to empty the sack into the sea. Curiosity overcame the weak human, who opened the sack to see what was inside.
All of the animals escaped and hid, so God changed the man into a stork to hunt them and clean up the mess (Knab, 1996).
15th May
Guess what ladies!? That horrid biological clock that ticks ever so loudly in the back of our minds, increasingly so with age, may hold no weight. It’s not yet entirely certain but research is promising.
In the latest breakthrough in fertility treatment, American scientists have used stem cells from human ovaries to produce lab-grown egg cells.
Women are born with a supply of egg cells that must last throughout life. But if these cells can be regenerated, then time is no issue. Our biological clocks will be rendered redundant.
Written by: Andrea Zanin
14th May
A stork bit my baby – not really! But it looks like one did.
Heard of a birth mark called a ‘stork bite’? What is a stork bite birth mark? It’s one that appears on the forehead, eyelids, nose, upper lip, and on the back of the neck or head – just like a stork picked your baby up by the head and dropped him/her on your doorstep… as the story goes.
Soon after my baby girl was born, I noticed a faint pink patch on her left eyelid and just above her nose on her forehead… and also on the back of her head. Strangely, she wasn’t born with the birth mark; it appeared maybe a week after she popped out (well… not quite ‘popped’). Her stork bite is a flat, irregularly-shaped pink patch on her face – it’s unobtrusive and quite sweet really.
Apparently, a stork bite affects a third of newborns, and is usually temporary (a friend’s baby had just about the same birth mark as my babs, which eventually faded).
The scientific name for a ‘stork bite’ is “nevus simplex”, and it is also called a ‘salmon patch’ or ‘angel’s kiss’. It’s caused by the stretching (dilation) of certain blood vessels.
Written by: Andrea Zanin
11th May
Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how young our children really are. With kids growing up with computers and mobile phones – things that were new to us just a few years ago – and seeming to take to them like ducks to water while we still struggle to set the Sky+, it can occasionally seem like we are the children and they are the adults!
Even the youngest children seem so grown up at times – my 4-year-old daughter diligently brought me a glass of water every 12 hours while I was ill in bed recently, and each time, she asked me how I was feeling and told me I was a good girl for drinking up the last one she brought!
And yet, I am regularly reminded of just how young she still really is, when I go into her room put her to bed only to find her hidden under the duvet, feet and hair sticking out, giggling audibly before she eventually tells me where she is as I dutifully pretend to look in all the wrong places.
Written by: Claire Smart
9th May
We are currently without a safety gate at the top of our stairs. It is the result of living with young children in an old house – our first-born decided to swing off the gate and the ancient plaster around the screws literally crumbled under the pressure.
It takes 24 hours for the new plaster to be drillable, so in the meantime, we are freewheeling when upstairs. Needless to say, the youngest is never allowed up there unaccompanied and never let beyond a closed bedroom door, but even the rest of us feel a bit of a flight risk as we walk past the gaping hole and sheer drop that we are so unaccustomed to.
I almost feel that a safety gate should be compulsory regardless of how old the occupants of the house are. What if we stumble whilst on a dark, sleepy trip to the bathroom?
It makes me think of what other children’s neccesary items we have adopted since having children that we should consider keeping even after they grow out of them.
Maybe we should keep the latches on all the kitchen draws and cupboards – they stop you being able to get to the bottle opener or munchies cupboard when you’ve had one too many glasses of wine to be able to resist the temptation on your own!
And baby wipes will almost certainly stay with us long after there are any babies around – they are just so useful…
Written by: Claire Smart
Written by: Andrea Zanin