You did it! A couple of weeks ago,thousands of mothers emailed their U.S. Representatives urging them to vote YES for the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act (HR 5781), and... the bill passed the House!

If this bill passes the senate, federal workers will finally receive four weeks of paid leave when they birth or adopt a child. If we pass this bill for federal employees, we'll be one step closer to paid family leave for everyone.  We might even catch up to England, France, Canada, and every other country we usually compare ourselves to.  Who can argue with the need for mothers to bond with their new babies?  Did you know that when you have a baby in France, you not only get paid time off to bond, the government also sends someone to help with housework and laundry so you can rest?!

The organization taking the lead on this is MomsRising.com, which recently helped New Jersey and Washington state  make history by passing paid leave policies.  A special thank you is also due to the National Partnership for Women & Families for all the amazing work they're doing on this and many other issues.  And in my own home state, New York,  Working Families has been keeping paid family leave on the agenda and pressuring the legislature.

The next step now is to push this bill through the U.S. Senate. We need your help.  Your Senators need to hear from you now, while the bill is hot out of the House, to show that moms care and to give this bill a boost forward.

Take action at MomsRising.org.

If you need more info, here's some background:

Everyone needs paid family and medical leave and it's past time to start putting this policy in place.  We know that paid family leave helps provide children with a healthy start and keep families out of poverty.  Yet, the United States lags behind every developed country in the world in offering paid leave to new mothers. 

It's time for the federal government to become a model employer by offering their workforce paid parental leave, and to pave the way for the rest of the nation to follow.  With more than 1.8 million civilian employees, the federal government is the nation's largest employer.  Currently, federal workers don't have any guarantee of paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child.  Some have accrued paid sick or vacation time that they may be able to use while on unpaid FMLA leave.  However, others, especially younger workers who haven't accrued sick or vacation time, have no choice but to take unpaid leave.

If passed, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act guarantees qualifying federal workers four weeks of paid parental leave for the birth or adoption of a new child.  It would also enable federal workers to use up to eight weeks of accrued paid sick time immediately following the first four weeks of parental leave.

First federal employees, then the rest of the people in our nation! 

My friend John Perkins' grandson is featured in a story on the dangers of polycarbonate bottles in the Palm Beach Post this week.  Nine month old Grant (pictured here with his mom Jessica) has never used a plastic baby bottle; his parents are commited to glass for all his food and drink. I know, glass bottles can break.  But we also know that most plastic bottles have bisphenol A (BPA), which is dangerous to all of us, but particularly to tiny bodies.  

This story has become pretty mainstream and I wonder how families are handing the news, so I'm asking moms reading this to drop a quick post and weigh in. What kind of bottle does your baby use? 

BTW, the arguments for breastmilk, beyond nutrition and IQ:  Always the right temperature, the cat can't get it, and no BPA!

If you still have any doubt about the BPA issue, take a look at the Center for Science in the Public Interest Nutrition Health Newsletter Information (and there's more on their site):

Bisphenol A (BPA) Update (April 20, 2008)

• The National Institutes of Health on April 15th released a draft of its conclusions about BPA, expressing concern over the safety of the chemical. The public can submit comments.
  
  
• Health Canada on April 18th announced a 60 day public comment period on whether to ban the importation, sale and advertising of polycarbonate baby bottles which contain bisphenol A.
  
  
• Nalgene Outdoor Products on April 18th announced that it will phase out production of its Outdoor line of Nalgene polycarbonate containers that include BPA.
  
  
• Wal-Mart on April 17th announced that it will stop selling baby bottles with BPA by early next year.
  

Claire, my favorite feminist Mormon stay-at-home-mom from Georgia, in her Garden of Eden blog, recently posted some incredible research on breastmilk.  According to the Science Network of Western Australia, Dr Mark Cregan, the Perth scientist who made the discovery that human breast milk contains stem cells, believes that mama's own milk contains key markers that guide babies' development long after they wean, even into adulthood.

“We already know how breast milk provides for the baby’s nutritional needs, but we are only just beginning to understand that it probably performs many other functions,” says Dr Cregan, a molecular biologist at The University of Western Australia.

Cregan explains that a new mother’s mammary glands uses stem cells to take over from the placenta to provide the development guidance to ensure a baby’s genetic destiny is fulfilled.