You're Invited! Ultrasound Parties a Rising Trend in New Motherhood

Photo Credit: Maron

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes ultrasound parties? To add to the list of memorable events that come with building a family, new mothers are now sharing their ultrasound experience at home with guests looking on.

What would usually be an event taking place in a chilly doctor?s office with limited space is now at the forefront of pregnancy trends with moms bringing the experience to their livingrooms. With the help of new technology, 29-year-old Kimberly Enderle of Rodgers, Ark. and her husband, Jonathon, were able to invite their loved ones over to share their joy in watching and listening to their unborn baby boy in the comfort of their own home.

?Gender reveal is probably the bulk of our work,? Teena Gold, co-owner of Babyface & More said, referring to parties where parents and guests find out the gender of the unborn baby together in real time. ?It?s more of an experience and less of an in-and-out procedure,? she added, pointing out that medical ultrasound often does not allow parents to savor the wonder of the life growing inside them.

Companies like Peek a View and Miracles Imagining are helping expectant parents across the nation turn their scheduled procedure into a social gathering. However, not everyone feels the concept is a good one. OB/GYN of Bentonville, Ark., Dr. Amber Sills, points out the risk of sharing the very first ultrasound with friends and something being wrong with the baby. She recommends parents go through the procedure with a doctor first before scheduling such events.

?If the ultrasonographer at the party sees something irregular during the scan, they will likely not say anything due to the potential legal implications,? she said. ?It?s kind of a liability nightmare.?

For these reasons, doctors often prefer to perform the procedure after they have confirmed that everything is going smoothly with the pregnancy.

Read the complete article on NBC?s Today?site.

BMWK? What are your thoughts on ultrasound parties? Would you be interested in hosting one or do you think it?s doing too much?

About the author

Stacie Bailey is a student at Quinnipiac University pursuing her master?s degree in Interactive Communications. She has strong interests in relationships, health, social media and an overall love for sharing knowledge and information.

Source: http://blackandmarriedwithkids.com/2013/01/youre-invited-ultrasound-parties-a-rising-trend-in-new-motherhood/

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The Android mascot was not always a little green guy

17 hrs.

Rosa Golijan , NBC News

Before Android ever publicly launched, before the little green fella we know and love came into existence ... there were the Dandroids.

According to a Google+ post made by?Dan Morrill, who worked on the Android developer relations team when the mobile operating system was being prepared for launch, he drew the silly looking characters in order to add some "eye candy" to presentation slides in 2007.

While Morrill's creations did see "a brief flurry of minor popularity" among his team, they didn't manage to make a lasting impression. It was designer Irina Blok's work which became the Android mascot we recognize nowadays. (That one?is dubbed "Bugdroid," according to Morrill.)?Nonetheless, the Dandroids remain the "first proposed mascots for Android," as far as anyone can tell right now.

And as if Morrill's illustrations aren't already enough of a peek into an alternate universe, it turns out that we could've been referring to Android by the names of famous robots instead of desserts.?The internal developer launch of Android, Morrill explains, "was called 'R2-D2' which stood for 'Release to Developers 2,' as it was the second such internal event."

"This was, of course, before we abandoned robots as the naming scheme," he adds, "since they are mostly all trademarked."

Ah, well. We can always quietly refer to Android 1.6 (currently known as "Donut") as "Dalek."?

Want more?tech news or interesting?links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts,?or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/android-mascot-was-not-always-little-green-guy-1B7821893

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The December Jobs Report - Business Insider

The December jobs report came in right in line at 155K. That's exactly in line with expectations.

This was probably the least anticipated jobs report of all time. There was no political angle or economic angle that anyone was excited to see.

And the meh number justifies the lack of hype.

It's a fine, nothing special number that won't move the needle on anything.

Past revisions were slightly higher, but not that much.

The full report is here.

?

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Earlier: The granddaddy of economic data comes out at 8:30 AM ET: It's th December Non-Farm Payrolls Report.

This report hasn't gotten that much attention, in part due to the holiday week, and also because the political implications have gone down.

But it's still the jobs report.

Analysts expect 152K new jobs.

The unemployment is expected to stay flat at 7.7%.

We'll have the number here LIVE.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-december-jobs-report-2013-1

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Chicago Real Estate Affordability| CNN Cost of Living | Chicago ...

Interested in relocating to Chicago? Then use the helpful CNN Cost of Living Calculator to figure out just how much Chicago real estate you can afford.

Type in your current salary and the calculator will compare price differences between two cities in the following areas:

• Groceries
• Housing
• Ultitiles
• Transportation
• Health Care

Want to know the cost difference if you move to Chicago from New York City on a median household income of $50,000?

Here are the results:

Cost of groceries: 23 percent less
Cost of housing: 68 percent less
Cost of utilities: 32 percent less
Cost of transportation: 7 percent less
Cost of health care: 16 percent less

Illinois residents can find cost of living comparison estimates for Champaign-Urbana, Danville, Decatur, Joliet-Will County, Quincy, Peoria, Springfield and Rockford.

If you?re looking to move from Champaign-Urbana to Chicago on a median household income of $50,000, your cost differences would be as follows:

Cost of groceries: 23 percent more
Cost of housing: 48 percent more
Cost of utilities: 13 percent less
Cost of transportation: 17 percent more
Cost of health care: 2 percent more

Using the CNN Cost of Living Calculator can be really interesting and eye-opening, so be sure to check it out if relocating to Chicago is part of your future plans!

Source: http://www.chicagolandrealestateforum.com/2013/01/04/how-much-chicago-real-estate-can-you-afford/

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Exports of U.S. Gas May Fall Short of High Hopes

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Global demand for natural gas ? which would be shipped from the United States in a condensed form ? could taper off by the time new and costly export terminals are operational.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/business/energy-environment/exports-of-us-gas-may-fall-short-of-high-hopes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Health union alliance could threaten larger rival

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Two health care unions are joining forces in a move that could threaten a powerful rival's dominance and fuel a new round of labor tensions.

The 85,000-member California Nurses Association is forging an alliance with the 10,000-member National Union of Healthcare Workers to form a new union made up entirely of health sector workers.

The alliance announced Thursday renews a bitter rivalry between the nurses' union and the powerful 2 million-member Service Employees International Union, the nation's dominant health care union and a major force in Democratic politics.

It also points to a trend that could see unions increasingly compete against each other for a dwindling pool of new members as the ranks of organized labor continue their steady decline. Health care has been one of the few areas of growth for unions in recent years.

About half of the SEIU's members are in the health care industry. CNA is part of the 185,000-member National Nurses United, the largest nurses' union in the country.

A top priority for the new alliance is to lure 43,000 unionized workers at Kaiser Permanente in California away from the SEIU and into the new union, to be known as NUHW-CNA and based in Oakland, Calif. That would deprive SEIU of more than $40 million a year in membership dues.

"It increases our power and experience exponentially," said Sal Rosselli, president of NUHW. "We will now have the resources to compete with the SEIU's millions and millions of dollars."

Rosselli, a former SEIU leader, founded his upstart union in 2009 after he was ousted by the larger union in a bitter power struggle. Rosselli claimed the SEIU granted too many concessions to health care corporations at the expense of union members, while SEIU leaders alleged Rosselli was simply making a power grab.

In 2010, NUHW lost an election to woo 43,000 Kaiser workers away from SEIU. But the National Labor Relations Board later ruled that the election was tainted and ordered a new vote. The do over of the nation's largest private-sector union election since 1941 is expected to take place later this year.

SEIU spokesman Steve Trossman said he's not surprised by the agreement because the nurses' union has been working closely with the smaller NUHW over the past few years.

"They are pursuing a losing strategy that is bad for the labor movement that they claim they are all about," Trossman said. "We are not in a position where we can waste precious resources on internal fights instead of using those resources to organize workers who are not already in unions."

The SEIU and the nurses' union have operated under a noncompetition agreement since 2009. That agreement followed months of bitter clashes over organizing workers and accusations from both sides of sabotage and interference. Under the pact, the nurses' union would focus only on recruiting hospital nurses, while SEIU would target other health care workers.

But the noncompetition agreement expired at the end of 2012, and the nurses' union has no intention of renewing it. On Thursday, the nurses' union accused SEIU's California local, United Healthcare Workers West, of collaborating with hospital chains Kaiser and Sutter Health to reduce health coverage, pensions and workplace standards for unionized workers.

"Nurses in the Kaiser system are seeing the erosion of patient care standards as a result of the SEIU regime," said CNA co-President Deborah Burger.

The SEIU's Trossman says his union has bargained "the best contracts in the country in the worst economy of the last 70 years."

Burger stressed that her union's main complaint is with the SEIU's California local and that she hopes to keep up the good relationship with SEIU nationally.

___

Follow Sam Hananel on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamHananelAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-03-Union%20Merger/id-6f8eb1614d0c48a29d9639fd061d4aa3

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Sandy Hook kids head to school for first time since attack

NEWTOWN, Connecticut (Reuters) - Hundreds of the children who escaped the harrowing attack on their elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, last month head back to classes on Thursday for the first time since a gunman killed 20 of their schoolmates and six staff members.

School officials are preparing for droves of anxious parents to join the fleet of buses carting children to a disused middle school in the neighboring town of Monroe. Chalk Hill Middle School, closed about a year and half ago, has been hastily refurbished in the three weeks since the December 14 attack and renamed Sandy Hook Elementary School.

With their children's safety foremost on parents' and officials' minds in the wake of the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, the school has been outfitted with a new security system. Monroe Police Department officers will patrol the grounds, and all outside doorways and sidewalks will be under surveillance.

"I think right now we have to make this the safest school in America," Monroe Police Lieutenant Keith White said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Parents wishing to remain with their kids, ages 5 to 10 in kindergarten through grade 4, will be allowed to accompany them to their classrooms and afterwards may stay in the school's "lecture room" for as long as they like, according to a memo to parents on the school's website. Counseling will be available for students and parents at the new school, about 7 miles south of the scene of the shooting.

"I'm not sure I'm ready yet to totally let them go," Sandy Hook parent Sarah Swansiger said on CNN about her trepidation over the return to school.

When the students return around 9 a.m. Thursday, they will find all of the belongings they left behind when teachers and police evacuated them from Sandy Hook nearly three weeks ago after Adam Lanza burst through the school doors and opened fire.

They will be welcomed to a building that has been decked out as a "Winter Wonderland" with the help of thousands of kids from around the world.

"This does not look like the other elementary school," Newtown School Superintendent Janet Robinson said emphatically.

In the meantime, no new details have emerged to explain why the 20-year-old Lanza, armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle, two other firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, targeted the school.

Described by family friends as having Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their home about 5 miles from the school before driving to Sandy Hook and embarking on the massacre, police said. He then took his own life as police were arriving at the school, which had an enrollment of 456.

Police have offered no firm motive for the attack, and state police investigators have said it could be months before they finish their report.

The massacre in Newtown, a rural New England town of 27,000 residents about 70 miles northeast of New York City, stunned the nation, prompting President Barack Obama to call it the worst day of his presidency and reigniting an extensive debate on gun control. Obama has tasked Vice President Joe Biden with assembling a package of gun-control proposals to submit to Congress in the next several weeks.

The National Rifle Association, the most powerful gun-rights lobby in the United States, has rebuffed calls for more stringent firearms restrictions and instead called for armed guards to patrol every public school in the country.

(Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sandy-hook-kids-head-school-first-time-since-050335929.html

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