family life

If you and your children head to a public pool this Summer, there's a good chance that you might be swimming in something unexpected. In a recent sample of public pool water, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 58 percent contained E. Coli bacteria — a sign of fecal contamination — and 59 percent contained P. aeruginosa, the Huffington Post reports.

Researchers explain that sometimes people have "fecal incidents" in pools, or if someone enters the pool without showering first, the bacteria sheds off the body and into the water. "These findings indicate the need for swimmers to help prevent introduction of pathogens (e.g., taking a pre-swim shower and not swimming when ill with diarrhea), aquatics staff to maintain disinfectant level and pH according to public health standards to inactivate pathogens, and state and local environmental health specialists to enforce such standards," the researchers said.

Do your kids shower before getting in the pool?

Nursing moms have a new reason to celebrate. In a surprising about-face, Walmart has gone from refusing to print a photo of mom Kayla Andre breastfeeding, to allowing her to host a nurse-in demonstration in its Alberta, Canada, store.

Earlier in May, Andre's husband headed to Walmart to print out a photo of his wife nursing their young son as a Mother's Day gift. To his chagrin, the store refused to print the breastfeeding image, saying it violated the mass chain's anti-nudity policy, the Huffington Post reports.

Andre was shocked and protested to local media that the image should have been printed, saying it's a natural occurrence — despite debates over breastfeeding in public. So she organized a "nurse-in" to be held in the store, to protest the store's decision in shaming her for breastfeeding.

Walmart quickly recognized the flaw in its action, however. It apologized and clarified the store's policy for employees so that they would know breastfeeding photos are acceptable. So Andre quickly turned her protests into praise, and re-dubbed her nurse-in as "a celebration of the fact that Walmart recognized its mistake."

Andre applauded the store for being "a reasonable company who listens to their customers," and noted the chain offered gift certificates for photo printing to nurse-in participants. "They have clarified their policy, and that is something to celebrate!" she says.

Would you protest or participate in a breastfeeding event at Walmart?

Are you losing friends on Facebook, but you don't know why? Maybe you're a "vaguebooker." Maybe you share way too much information. Or could it be that you post so frequently that people can't stand you clogging up their Facebook feed? Here, moms share the top ways to go from friend to unfriended.

While some girls might consider Barbie's Dreamhouse fit for a princess, some feminists in Germany are protesting the life-size replica of the toy estate, CNN reports.

Located in Berlin's Alexanderplatz, the 27,000-square-foot Dreamhouse is supposed to showcase Barbie's Malibu lifestyle, with makeup, kitchen, and wardrobe rooms, plus a runway and real cafe in which visitors can dine. But protesters complain that Barbie contributes to sexism, racism, and body issues for girls.

The house "is the expression of a conventional role model that isn't OK," Socialist Alternative editor Michael Koschitzki said.

In addition to the protest, the buzz in Berlin has yielded an "Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse" Facebook page, which features a dark-haired girl saying "I can't stand pink!"

The "Barbie the Dreamhouse Experience" in Berlin is the first in what is planned as a European house tour. A US Dreamhouse opened last week in Florida, CNN reports.

Many a mom puts off creating their child's baby book, as assembling an album of baby's first year often takes a backseat to parenting. But a start-up called Blinkbuggy aims to simplify the process, helping moms and dads put together the traditional piece of memorabilia online, TechCrunch reports.

Google ad sales manager Emma Weisberg says she recognized the need for a virtual baby book because so many baby photos are captured by mobile phones and shared by family and friends via email, Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube. Thus, she designed Blinkbuggy to allow parents to record all of their memories — photos, emails, notes, artwork, milestones, etc. — with one cloud-based service. Parents can categorize items for multiple children, as well as control privacy settings, depending on what content they want to make public and share with friends and family.

If all that sounds like a great way to organize and preserve memories of your child, then stay tuned. Weisberg says the ability to print albums and use a mobile app is in the works.

I got my tubes tied when I was 33 years old, right after the birth of my daughter. She was my third child, and even though I wasn't entirely sure that I was "done" with the whole baby-making thing, I knew that my husband and I couldn't handle any more.

I became pregnant the first time while I was on birth control. I did not know that antibiotics and birth control didn't like each other, and I unwittingly asked them to play nicely. They didn't; the antibiotics won, and I found myself in an ER in the middle of the night, writhing from the sharp pain of a kidney infection, and thinking that surely I was hallucinating when the nurse told me that I was six weeks along.

Keep reading.

A 16-year-old girl's life has been saved, thanks to the online detective work of Cathedral City, CA, resident Jackie Rosas and police.

Rosas is no stranger to the blogosphere, as she frequents Tumblr, a social networking site. On May 6, she saw a posting on a teen blog discussing suicide. Rosas told USA Today she had previously followed the teen's depression on the girl's blog, so she knew the suicide threat was serious.

Keep reading.

Would you let your child poop in the potty in a restaurant?

That's just what one Manhattan woman did at an outdoor restaurant, allowing the boy to do "No. 2" right next to the table while others were dining nearby, Today reports.

Even if you needed to keep your child on a strict schedule, Today show hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb suggest moms choose less offensive options, like taking the potty to the bathroom and having the child use it there.

After all, Gifford says, "Children on a potty are adorable, but . . . "

"Not what happens after, which is the wiping portion," Kotb concludes.