I thought I would throw this out there in case anyone is interested. He is running a $299.95 special, which includes….
1) A web site template of your choice.(Currently we have 2,000+ templates to select from.)
2) Custom Designed Logo.
If you already have a logo, we will color match the template you select to your existing logo.
3) Five Pages of Content.(This includes the front page.)
You must provide us with all of the content for each page of your web site and we will input it for you.
4) Select up to two of the three options below.(This is optional.)
This is part of the five pages offered above.
a. Contact Us – Interactive contact form to allow your visitors to contact you directly from your web site.
b. Calendar - Ability to add/edit events and display them to your visitors.
c. Subscriptions and/or Single Product Page. - This consists of subscriptions or buy now buttons generated with your PayPal account.
** eCommerce is available at an additional fee. **
Add $100 if you want all three of the above options and we will add an additional two pages on top of the five offered, for a total of seven pages and all three options above.
If all graphics, logos, page content, copy and information for your web site is provided up-front, we can complete your web site within 5 business days, from the time we receive your web site information and payment.
** This package does not include a domain name or web hosting for your web site. **
Domain names are $10 a year and web hosting is $4.99 a month.
We are currently running a special on web hosting; a 1 for 1 match is available up to 12 months. Pay for a month, get a month, pay for a year and get a year, or anything in between.
** All payments are due up-front before any work is to be started. We accept credit cards and PayPal. **
If anyone is interested, here is his contact information…
Mike Bowden
Cell: 678-207-8092
Email: mike@bygeekz.com
Here is a gallery where you can view some of the other work he has done…
http://designs.bygeekz.com/content/gallery
He also did the new Georgia Birth Network website, for those of you who don’t know, but it isn’t in the gallery yet… www.gabirthnetwork.com
Atlanta, GA- The newest online resource for Atlanta parents has recently debuted, fulfilling a long time need for the region. This is a new resource for information regarding pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and everything in between.
Better Birth Atlanta is a comprehensive website for parents wanting to learn more about their options for labor and the birth of their children. The website offers information about local resources available to parents as well as different viewpoints and strategies for labor and birth. Some of the resources include: a local events calendar, parent forums, informational articles written by local professionals, and a glossary of pregnancy and childbirth related terms. Also available are listings for local childbirth educators, doulas, midwives, hospitals, lactation consultants, nutritionists as well as prenatal fitness, massage and alternative therapies.
BetterBirthAtlanta.com is a website that is committed to educating parents about the options regarding the birth of their baby. We believe that informed parents can make the best decisions for their families. Better Birth does not necessarily mean un-medicated birth, but it does mean that parents have a source to research many different options to guide them to a Better Birth experience,” states Jackie Belau, founder of Better Birth America.
January 11th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Crystal Bowden
WASHINGTON (January 7, 2009)—Despite best evidence, health care providers continue to perform routine procedures during labor and birth that often are unnecessary and can have harmful results for mothers and babies. The Centers for Disease Control9 9s (CDC) most recent release of birth statistics reveals that the rate of cesarean surgery, for example, is on the rise to 31.1% of all births—50% greater than data from 1996. This information comes on the heels of The Milbank Report’s Evidence-Based Maternity Care, which confirms that beneficial, evidence-based maternity care practices are underused in the U.S. health care system.
Research indicates that routinely used procedures, such as continuous electronic fetal monitoring, labor induction for low-risk women and cesarean surgery, have not improved health outcomes for women and, in fact, can cause harm. In contrast, care practices that support a healthy labor and birth are unavailable to or underused with the majority of women in the United States.
Beneficial care practices outlined by Evidence-Based Maternity Care, a report produced by a collaboration of Childbirth Connection, the Reforming States Group and the Milbank Memorial Fund, could have a positive impact on the quality of maternity care if widely implemented throughout the United States. Suggested practices include to:
* Let labor begin on its own.
* Walk, move around, and change positions throughout labor.
* Bring a loved one, friend, or doula to support you
* Avoid interventions that are not medically necessary
* Choose the most comfortable position to give birth and follow your body’s urges to push
* Keep your baby with you – it’s20best for you, your baby and breastfeeding.
“Lamaze is alarmed by the current rate of cesarean surgery, and furthermore, by the overall poor adherence to the beneficial practices outlined above in much of the maternity care systems in the United States,” says Lamaze International President Pam Spry, PhD, CNM, FACNM, LCCE. “We are continuing to work to provide women and care providers with evidence-based information to improve the quality of care.”
Lamaze International has developed six care practice papers that are supported by research studies and represent “gold-standard” maternity care. When adopted, these care practices have a profound effect—instilling confidence in the mother, and facilitating a natural process that results in an active, healthy baby. Each one of the Lamaze care practices is cited in the Evidence-Based Maternity Care report as being underused in the U.S. maternity care system.
Debra Bingham, MS, RN, DrPH(c), Chair of the Lamaze International Institute for Normal Birth says, “As with any drug, we need to be sure that women and their babies receive the right dose of medical interventions. In the United States we are giving too high a dose of cesarean sections and other medical interventions which are causing harm to women and their babies. Yet there are many countries where life saving medical interventions are under dosed which can als o cause harm. Every woman and her baby needs and deserves the right dose of medical interventions during childbirth.”
The research is clear, when medically necessary, interventions, such as cesarean surgery, can be lifesaving procedures for both mother and baby, and worth the risks involved. However, in recent years, the rate of cesarean surgeries cause more risks than benefits for mothers and babies. Cesarean surgery is a major abdominal surgery, and carries both short-term risks, such as blood loss, clotting, infection and severe pain, and poses future risks, such as infertility and complications during future pregnancies such as percreta and accreta, which can lead to excessive bleeding, bladder injury, a hysterectomy, and maternal death. Cesarean surgery also increases harm to babies including women giving birth prior to full brain development, breathing problems, surgical injury and difficulties with breastfeeding.
For more information on the Six Care Practices that Support Normal Birth, finding a health care provider and how to give birth with confidence, visit www.lamaze.org.
About Lamaze International
Since its founding in 1960, Lamaze International has worked to promote, support and protect normal birth through education and advocacy through the dedicated efforts of professional childbirth educators, providers and parents. An international organization with regional, state=2 0and area networks, its members and volunteer leaders include childbirth educators, nurses, midwives, doulas, lactation consultants, physicians, students and consumers. For more information about Lamaze International and the Lamaze Institute for Normal Birth, visit www.lamaze.org.
December 31st, 2008 / No Comments » / by Crystal Bowden
There’s a movement of citizens inspired by the presidential campaign who are now submitting ideas for how they think the Obama Administration should change America. It’s called “Ideas for Change in America.”
The top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy.
Get involved and check it out! Here are some of the ideas I am supporting…
December 30th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Crystal Bowden
Well Christmas 2008 went off without too much a hitch. All was well and Haden seemed to have tons of fun but I do have to say that by the end of the day I felt completely exhausted. Oh to be a kid again! How I miss when the holidays were nothing but fun and excitement.
Here are some excerpts form out holiday good times…
December 27th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Crystal Bowden
An article by Phyllis Schlafly
Why are American infants and schoolchildren being forced to submit to hepatitis B vaccinations even though the French Health Ministry has stopped giving them because of evidence they can cause neurological disorders and multiple sclerosis? Has America become a nation where bureaucrats can force controversial medical procedures on children without informed choice by parent or child?
If you think such things only happen in Communist China, think again. Big Brother is on the march and his weapon is a hypodermic needle carrying the vaccine for hepatitis B.
“”Force” is not too strong a word. Across the country, newborn babies are being injected with hepatitis B vaccine only hours after birth (even when their mothers test negative for hepatitis B), and children are told they must present proof of having received three hepatitis B shots before they can be admitted to daycare, kindergarten, fifth grade, high school, or college.
I first became interested in the hepatitis B vaccine when, in connection with the birth of two new grandchildren, I learned that hospitals are routinely injecting newborns with the vaccine during their first 24 hours of life. A series of inquiries produced no convincing medical reason or scientific evidence for this procedure.
My new grandchildren were not at risk for hepatitis B, which is primarily an adult disease transmitted through bodily fluids. Those most at risk are the highly promiscuous (heterosexual or homosexual), needle-sharing drug addicts, health care and custodial workers exposed to blood, and babies born to already-infected mothers.
According to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report, there were only 10,637 cases of hepatitis B in the United States in 1996, including only 279 cases in children under the age of 14. Hepatitis B is not fatal for most who contract it, is not epidemic except among those high-risk groups, and bears no relation to hepatitis A (the disease sometimes picked up in restaurants when food-handlers don’t wash their hands).
For the problem of 279 children who have hepatitis B, millions of U.S. children are being forced to submit to vaccination consisting of three hepatitis B shots! Where does such an intrusive and expensive rule originate, and how can it be enforced nationally since immunizations are a state, not a federal, matter?
The federal medical police have figured out how to override state authority (and even pediatricians who might otherwise act in the interest of their patients), and develop an intricate system outside of the spotlight of public scrutiny and without accountability. CDC endorses a given vaccine, the state legislatures delegate the decision-making power to state public health departments, the unaccountable bureaucrats make regulations that conform to CDC instructions and have the impact of law, and the drug manufacturers spend millions to advertise their products.
The CDC uses carrot and stick to force states to obey federal mandates. The CDC has doled out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to reward state health departments for promoting mass vaccinations, and has the power to withhold money grants if state health officials don’t show proof of designated vaccination rates.
The 1993 Comprehensive Childhood Immunization Act, signed by President Clinton, gave the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) $400 million to award to states to set up state vaccine registries to tag and track children so that Big Brother can hunt them down and compel vaccinations. States receive either $50, $75 or $100 per child who is fully vaccinated with all federally recommended vaccines, including hepatitis B.
When I entered public school, the only vaccination required was for smallpox, and that’s the only immunization I ever had. Most states now require children to be injected with about 33 doses of 9 or 10 different viral and bacterial vaccines in order to enter public school, including three doses of hepatitis B vaccine.
In 1995, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala gave the states the power to appropriate newborn babies’ social security numbers in order to set up vaccine tracking registries. The CDC plans to network all the state vaccine tracking registries in order to create a de facto centralized electronic database containing every child’s, and ultimately every American’s, medical records.
More than 22,000 reports of hospitalizations and injuries, including 300 deaths, following hepatitis B vaccination have been reported since 1990 to the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. There have been no controlled studies to evaluate these reports, there is no adequate proof of the vaccine’s long-term safety, little is known about its effect on a newborn baby’s immune system, and the disclaimers that the drug manufacturers put on the hepatitis B vaccine package are downright disturbing.
The hepatitis B vaccine may give only a temporary immunity, and it is not clear when booster shots will be required. Some of those who receive the hepatitis B vaccine may thereafter test positive for hepatitis B because many routine blood tests are not sophisticated enough to differentiate between prior vaccination and the disease.
Freedom in America should include allowing parents to make their own informed choice about injecting their babies with a potentially dangerous vaccine. More information is available from the National Vaccine Information Center (1-800-909-SHOT and www.909shot.com).
Time and again in America, people of all races and backgrounds have overcome division and fear, and come together to uplift the country and create a more equal and just society. It’s part of what makes this country great.
With an African-American nominee running on a major party ticket and a woman on the Republican ticket for the first time in history, this campaign has seen Americans–men and women of all races–inspired to continue that great tradition, coming together to bridge the gaps that history has set between us in service of our national progress.
But let us be clear: while we have made great strides in this country when it comes to racial equality, we are not finished. Now, more than ever, we need leadership that understands that we live in complex times where too many are quick to judge another by the complexion of their skin or the sound of their name.
In the last few weeks, Senator McCain and Governor Palin, rhetoric at your campaign events has taken an increasingly dangerous tone that seems to ignore the precarious state of our progress when it comes to race and ethnicity.
Supporters at your rallies and other events have used hateful language and called for violence against Sen. Obama yelling “kill him!” “off with his head!” and “bomb Obama.”
For the most part, you have stood by in silence. In addition, you have also repeatedly made statements that somehow connect Senator Obama with terrorism. Your surrogates have emphasized his middle name. This is problematic and dangerous, and we believe helps create the conditions that have given rise to these incidents of violent rhetoric from some of your supporters.
Today, we’re standing together as Americans of all political persuasions to express our deep concern that the decisions of your campaign are contributing to a dangerous atmosphere of paranoia, division, and hate that, as we have already seen, has the potential to seriously harm our country and its progress.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
In these trying times, candidates seeking the highest offices in the land must call on the best in each of us, and call off the worst.
We urge you to join people of conscience from all races and backgrounds to reject the politics of division and fear, and come together to uplift the country and create a more equal and just society.
October 25th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Crystal Bowden
There is nothing more positively powerful than compassion guided by wisdom. A wise mind knows that to fulfill our compassionate hopes for the welfare of others, we must realize our full potential as a spiritual being.
October 24th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Crystal Bowden
Janine DeBaise teaches writing and literature at the State University New York College of Environmental Science and Forest (SUNY-CESF), but she says her most important job is rearing her four children (ages 1, 4, 7 and 9). Her poem “Birth Moment” was in Midwifery Today Issue No. 36.
Here is the plan for the birth of my child. I’ve taken words from the dreams of 200 women. I’m translating them for the hospital staff.
1. No blue hospital gown. No sterile drapes. When I give birth, I want to be naked. I want my body to choose the colour of its growing.
2. No enema. No antiseptic wash. No shaving of pubic hair. If I wanted to shave something, I’d shave my head. Like Jean-Luc Picard. I’ve always wanted to be captain of a star ship. When I give birth, I explore uncharted territory, I move and writhe into new worlds. I want to go where no man has gone before.
In 1872, an English doctor named John Braxton Hicks discovered pre-labor contractions. This was sort of like Columbus discovering America. Some people already knew it was there.
3. No drugs. No epidural.
I want to feel the baby moving, his hard head pushing through layers of me. My bones shifting, my uterus contracting. I want to feel birth. I want to know fire.
4. No episiotomy. No amniotomy. I don’t want anything that rhymes with lobotomy. I prefer to stretch slowly, burning in a rim of panting breaths, around my baby’s head.
Pierre Vellay, MD, wrote that pregnant women must be “trained in the proper way.” His vision: Laboring women “like expert engineers with perfect machines and carefully presented information (who) control, direct and regulate their bodies.”
5. No Pitocin drip. No synthetic hormone to stimulate labor. Let my baby choose his own birthday. My body does not recognize the ticking of the clock on the wall.
I don’t want to control my body. I want to surrender. Let the darkness soak through me, drip down my legs. Let the pulse of that unborn voice throb through me.
I don’t want a needle stuck in my hand. If my labor slows, I’ll lie in the sun on a fur quilt and let my husband caress MY nipples. I prefer to get my hormones the primitive way.
6. No electric fetal monitor.
I don’t need a machine to tell me how my baby is doing. He kicks, he twists, he somersaults inside of me.
Robert Bradley, MD, advocated the idea of the husband as the labor coach. He liked the idea of natural birth, but still he thought that somehow a man had to be in charge.
7. No bright lights. No noise. No softball cheers. Don’t give me instructions. My body knows what to do. Birth is not a team sport. I don’t want a coach. I want my husband’s presence. His hands to grip. His arms a sling to lean the baby bulk against. His face a mirror in which I can watch my baby emerging.
8. No stupid jokes. No cheerful chatter. No television, please. I want to listen to the moans rising in my throat. I want to hear the child singing in my womb.
In the 1950s a French obstetrician named Ferdinand Lamaze began teaching something he called childbirth without pain. French Catholics were horrified, the Bible said it was supposed to be painful.
9. No delivery table. I am not a plate of spaghetti. Let me give birth on the bed. A table works fine for conception, but it’s way too hard and far too awkward for birth.
“Male science disregards female experiences because it can never share them.” Grantly Dick-Read said this in 1933. No one listened to him.
I know what I want for my baby.
No nursery. No pacifier. No bottles. No crib. No cheerful, white-coated, well-scrubbed, briskly walking, thermometer-wielding nurses, please.
Let the baby sleep against my skin, nurse from my breast, wrap his wrinkled blue limbs in the heat of my body.
10. Nothing intrauterine, nothing intravenous.
I prefer to give birth in simple words. Breathe. Push. Touch. Pain. Wet. Stretch. Bum. Birth. Yes.
For 50 years, doctors have used these terms. Braxton-Hicks contractions. Bradley birth. Lamaze breathing. But a woman knows. The mystery is too overwhelming. We can never name it.
When the baby’s head crowns, I want to touch the wrinkled scalp. I want to cradle the head in my palms while he is still inside of me, his neck stuck in the warm swollen parts of me. My moans will be the guide I need to pull him out of myself.
Hot compresses. Yes.
Dim lights, a bathtub of warm water. Yes.
Hands massaging me. Yes.
My husband lying next to me, solid to lean against. Yes.
The smell and feel of a slippery newborn baby wriggling against my naked skin.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Mike Bowden is a self employed web
consultant and has been working for himself for over two years. Currently he's attending UAT for a Bachelors degree in Game Design, with one and a half years to
go. Mike runs Sinco Technologies, LLC a corporate site, is in
the process of starting a new company By Geekz, for the masses,
and runs quite a few service related web sites.
Crystal Bowden is a certified DONA
birth doula and an ALACE trained childbirth educator. Her
family is her number one passion. Her interests include yoga, romance novels, childbirth,
politics, environmental issues & learning about new things! Visit her site for Loving Labor Birth Services, to find great resources on
childbirth, breastfeeding and parenting issues.
Haden Bowden is a cloth diaper wearing, breastfeeding, co-sleeping two and a half year old.
His current interests are helicopters, airplanes and motorcycles. He absolutely loves flip-flops, is currently learning to count to 10 and loves to repeat everything he hears.
Random Quote
If we are to heal the planet, we must begin by healing birthing. — Agnes Sallet Von Tannenberg
He is running a $299.95 special, which includes….
Mike Bowden is a self employed web
consultant and has been working for himself for over two years. Currently he's attending 
Crystal Bowden is a certified DONA
birth doula and an ALACE trained childbirth educator. Her
family is her number one passion. Her interests include yoga, romance novels, childbirth,
politics, environmental issues & learning about new things! Visit her site for 
