Delivery

One of the many questions a pregnant mom is likely to be asked by her doctor before she has the baby is whether she wants to bank or donate cord blood after the birth. "I've been thinking about this for months now. I'm having my first child, and I wanted to bank because I thought it was [a] cool and beneficial idea. However, if I'm having a healthy baby is it necessary? Should I just donate?" asks Circle of Moms member Ashley B. 

Cord blood is helpful in transplants for patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and many other life-threatening diseases, according to the National Marrow Donor Program.

Despite the life-saving opportunities, however, I decided to forgo banking or donating my children's cord blood when they were delivered. Here are five reasons why.

It's no secret that Burger King's been struggling to keep its number two spot at the top of the fast-feeder chain. Perhaps its latest strategy will create some much-needed buzz: the chain is testing out delivery in America.

Burger King's currently testing delivery service with four restaurants in the Washington DC area, and will quickly expand to 16 different stores before the end of this month. Customers can place orders both by phone and online at BKDelivers.com.

Given Burger King's plan to overhaul just about everything, perhaps this pilot heralds the possibility of a nationwide delivery rollout, akin to what pizza chains like Domino's and Pizza Hut have been doing all along. After all, the fast-food chain has offered delivery in various South American countries for years. Could you see yourself ordering a delivery of Whoppers and fries?

There's an amazing tale to be told of how each baby enters the world. We've been following along with CherylDee's pregnancy. She presents her lil one's birth story on the latest post to her Lipsticks to Baby Bottles blog. Here's an excerpt.

So the best friend and her sister met me at the clinic for my checkup. (It's great to have your best friend by your side!) My doc had to check how dilated I was to determine how soon or how late my delivery would be.

Dr. Heng: Hmm...you're only 1cm dilated. Don't think baby is coming anytime soon. Also your baby's head is very low. I can feel her head. Quite a bit of hair.

Cheryl: So nothing to worry about yeah?

Dr. Heng: Nope. I'll see you again next week okay! Eat healthy! See you next week!

So we decided to go get our nails done. Typical girlie thing to do. I started to feel some pains. Like I felt constipated. But I knew it was coming from the baby. So I called my mum to tell her and she was all, "Maybe you're being paranoid." So I decided to just not panic and carry on doing my nails. The best friend noticed that I was starting to get uncomfortable and said we can leave if we wanted to, but I though, heck, must be my imagination. After getting our nails done, we had our dinner which I felt I was dying already, so we quickly rushed home to my place and I plonked my butt in bed squirming in pain.

Thank goodness the best friend decided to stay with me at home, because I would have died in the pain I swear! She helped call Sham who was still at work to rush home. By the time he got home, I told him we needed to head to the hospital. Something was not right. The pain was nothing I had imagined. Good thing Sham's cousin lives across the street from us, because he offered to drive us down to the hospital and thank goodness that the hospital was literally 5 minutes away by car from our house.

So we get to East Shore Hospital and they immediately put me in a wheelchair and I get pushed up to the Delivery ward. (It started getting so real at this point of time!)

My doc happened to be in the next room delivering another baby so she came to check on me right after, and broke my water bag for me and in a span of just an hour, I dilated from 1 cm to 3 cm. No one prepares you for the kind of pain you go through for labour. The starting was not so bad. But then it started to get more pain as the contractions became more frequent. They gave me laughing gas to help with the pain, but that made me puke heaps. I remember my doc saying, "Baby won't be arriving till about 7/8 am. So I'm going home to sleep. See you later!"

Continue reading about Kiara Eve's arrival here. Have your own birth story to share? Share your child's story in our Birth Stories group over in the LilSugar Community.

By now, you've probably heard that thousands of post offices are set to close this year. About 2,000 closings will start in March (in addition to the 491 the USPS said they would shut down last year), and another 16,000 are in review, according to the Wall Street Journal. For some, this may mean a minor inconvenience of having to travel a little bit further to mail packages, but for the elderly in rural areas, it's akin to cutting off one of their main lines of communication as there are those who still don't use computers.

One of the main reasons why the US Postal Service is in the red is because of the generous benefits package it offers to employees. Instead of closing postal offices, Sen. Susan Collins says, "It needs to tackle a benefit structure that is too expensive, and it needs to look for ways to stay in business and deal with the digital age."

Read my tips to better prepare for the postal closings.