High end strollers have become all the rage in the last few years. They are the way of showing your status while shopping at the mall or out at the park with your friends. Years ago it was Silver Cross, now parents flock to the Bugaboo, Orbit, icandy and the newly introduced Mutsy.

All four strollers look basically the same with a removable bassinet and reversible handlebars, but each one has something that gives it the edge of the other.

The Mutsy Urban Rider offers a truly unique concept in steer ability; an articulated device that sits between the wheels and allows the front and rear wheels to move independently, so you can corner with ease and move around pedestrian traffic with the finesse of an F1 driver.

With the Urban Rider you can also convert the front wheels between small unidirectional wheels for manoeuver-ability and large air tires for that extra off road capability. Both are included as standard, as is a bassinet, a stroller seat, and cool clip on diaper bag.

The optional accessories are unique and all encompassing and include a footmuff, a Graco car seat adapter, a seat frame to create a rocker, a high chair/food tray, a step up board (for an older child to ride on) and a duoseat for a second child (not yet available in Canada).

The development of each Mutsy product involves devoting a great deal of attention to ergonomics and the safety of the child. For the welfare of your child it is important that the back and footrest of the seat are adjustable. It is important that the buggy seat be horizontal when your baby is sleeping. You can even adjust the depth of the Mutsy seat and mount the seat onto the frame facing either direction. It is very easy to adjust the height of the push bar.

Available at babyguru.com for $899 CAD

Toronto should guarantee a mother’s right to breast-feed “anytime, anywhere,” according to the Medical Officer of Health.

The board of health will next week consider a report from Dr. David McKeown that calls upon Toronto to “develop a policy that affirms the right of breast-feeding mothers to breast-feed in all public places controlled by the municipality.”

Joanne Gilmore, a manager with the healthy families division of Toronto Public Health, said establishing an official position would eliminate some of the stigma associated with breast-feeding. “We don’t want mothers who decide to breast-feed their babies to feel they have to stay in their homes all the time,” Ms. Gilmore said.

“We’re not saying to every mother that you have to bare yourself in public. Some women choose to do it more discreetly, in a private place, and that’s their right. But it’s also their right if they choose to sit on a bench and do it.”

A controversy erupted in 2005 when a volunteer asked a woman to stop nursing her baby in the rink house at Dufferin Grove Park. The volunteer said she objected to the degree to which the mother had disrobed and not the breast-feeding itself. City staff eventually apologized to the mother.

Toronto already has rules that allow municipal employees to breast-feed on city premises. Indeed, a policy enacted in 2001 guarantees both flexible hours for mothers to give them time to nurse as well as access to a “designated private space” if they want it.

However, the policy does not currently extend to the general public. Despite the Ontario Human Rights Commission protecting a mother’s right to nurse, some women are still challenged if they decide to do it in public, according to Ms. Gilmore.

“It’s considered a staff policy and does not extend to the general public,” she said.

I think most women would prefer to have more discreet spaces provided for breastfeeding.

City Hall needs to revisit their staff/public policy on breastfeeding. What is good enough for your employees should also be just as good for the general public.

SOURCE:CANADA

Doctors were stumped. Tests for meningitis, cancer, a list of other diseases all were negative — yet just days after a sudden high fever sent eight-week-old Anthony James Mingione to the hospital, he died.

An autopsy uncovered the lethal secret: Anthony was born without a working immune system. A rare genetic disorder known as the “bubble boy disease” rendered him vulnerable to the most minor of germs.

Now Wisconsin is about to begin the nation’s first experiment at testing newborns for this killer, officially named SCID (Severe Combined Immune Deficiency), in hopes of giving babies like Anthony a chance at lifesaving treatment — even as scientists ask how many infant deaths attributed to infections really might be due to the immune destroyer.

Babies who are hit with this disease look normal until they get sick. Doctors are more concerned than ever that a lot of these babies never make it to the pediatrician, much less an immunologist.

Between 40 and 100 U.S. babies are estimated to be diagnosed each year with SCID. The best-known victim was Houston’s famous “bubble boy” who lived in a germ-proof enclosure until his death at age 12 in 1984.

“We think there’s a lot more out there and that the infants just die,” says Dr. Jack Routes, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. He is heading the newborn-screening experiment, with funding from a parents’ advocacy group, the Jeffrey Modell Foundation, that may help answer that question.

Catching the disease before a baby gets sick means a far better chance that treatment is successful, explains Dr. Jennifer Puck of the University of California, San Francisco.

Puck developed the first screening test that promises early diagnosis. This winter, Wisconsin’s state laboratory begins the first phase of its pilot project, practising with Puck’s test on anonymous newborn blood samples. If no problems crop up, later this year Routes and colleagues will begin a study that attempts to screen all Wisconsin newborns for SCID — to see how accurate it really is, and track what happens to those diagnosed.

“I know this will change the course of SCID,” says Anthony’s mother, Tara Mingione of Long Island, N.Y., who has pushed for screening since his death two years ago. “Anthony had absolutely no chance to live unless he was tested at birth.”

Today, all U.S. newborns are tested for a variety of rare but devastating genetic diseases — using a single spot of blood from the baby’s heel a day after birth — to catch the few thousand who need fast treatment to avoid serious problems.

Not yet on that list: SCID and other “primary immunodeficiency” diseases, meaning children are born with faulty immune-system genes. There are different SCID subtypes, but the result is that babies can’t produce important disease-fighting cells called T cells.

Without treatment, they usually die before their first birthday. Bone marrow transplants can provide them with stem cells that take root and begin producing T cells after all, curing some children and greatly extending the lives of others.

There is a reported 95 per cent survival in SCID babies transplanted before they’re three months old — almost always those born to women who know SCID has struck a relative, and thus seek at-birth testing. After that age, survival plummets because the babies are so sick going into surgery.

Moreover, total costs for transplanting a baby shortly after birth are about $100,000 US, Buckley says, compared with bills that can reach $1 million after they get sick.

I cannot understand why only one state is experimenting with these tests. They should have at least 4 states involved in the process to increase their findings and give it’s implementation a better chance.

SOURCE:CANADA

A second of the six babies born earlier this month in a Vancouver hospital in Canada’s first delivery of sextuplets has died, a Vancouver radio station reported yesterday.

CKNW Radio reported that another of the babies born prematurely after 25 weeks of gestation and in intensive care at British Columbia Women’s Hospital had died. The station, which on Jan. 15 reported that a first sextuplet had died, did not reveal its source.

Officials at the hospital declined to comment, citing the family’s request for privacy since the four boys and two girls were delivered. The family’s name has never been made public

As with the report on the first sextuplet death, CKNW did not say whether the child was a boy or girl.

Our prayers go out to this family. We hope the others stay strong and that the NICU is able to perform some miracles to keep them alive.

SOURCE:THESTAR