Baby Slings & Sitters & Networking...

Now that I'm in empty nest, seeing things on the mom  blog sites makes me think how networking online has socially changed us.

My new mom friends and I would, at in-person meetings, talk about our favorite baby things. If you had asked me for the one thing as a new mother that I couldn't live without, it would have been the baby sling I had.  After work I would walk off my pregnancy weight and keep a fussy baby quiet.  I loved having her close and I think it was a better way to mother, keeping an infant at the heart beat of mom.  So I saved it to pass down.  Now I come across online these darling baby slings that are so fashionable and it makes my old thing look downright uuuugggly.

Finding a babysitter?  Checking out Cool Mom Picks, which one of my younger blogging friends, Nancy out of WDC supports, I found SitterCity -- A way to find babysitters in your zip code.  I was surprised to find a good number of options in Santa Fe.  They also have pet sitter listings, fyi.  One of my nightmares as a new mom was finding a sitter when I returned to work six weeks after my oldest was born.  Sourcing and networking had to be really worked hard, person-to-person.

Face-to-face time with friends or phone calling was a long and tedious way to network to find the best baby things and names of babysitters.  We are changing, certainly and here is an example. New York University's Assistant Dean, David Schachter, talks about the "live networking" undertaken as part of orientation for this year's freshmen.  It was called "Facebook in the Flesh" and he had to describe to students the benefits of live interaction. If you are interested you can read more about it in Michael Schulman's September Social Study article in the New Yorker.

The more things change, the more they remain the same?  Maybe even that phrase needs an update.

Oh so cool?  Who needs cigars to announce the new baby's arrival? Robert Scoble caught his baby's first cry and saved it as a twittergram and wrote how he did it with links. And to think I waited six weeks for engraved invitations to arrive. 

Comments

[SusieJ]

I love this... Such a perfect time to read this -- breastfeeding as taboo, and I just heard there are now laws that we can't even hang our clothes on the line anymore.