Best for Babes

Our ads launched in May 2009.

We’ve received wonderful feedback on our ground-breaking ad campaign, and have gotten a lot of interest from bloggers and websites who would like to run the ads as a public service.  We’re thrilled that others love the positive, provocative and humorous approach of the ads and want to join us in cheering on, coaching and celebrating ALL moms without pressure, judgment or guilt!   For what motivated the campaign, see the guest post we wrote for PhDinParenting.

Thanks to our wonderful friends at Frank About Women, who donated the six-figure campaign completely pro-bono, our most recent ad is now available in a variety of sizes for anyone who wants to run them, and we are giving away a magnet for every approved blog or website that participates!

Here’s how to do it:

Anyone suggestions for improving this post are welcome.  I’m technologically challenged.

1.  Grab the ads.   For help with codes to put it up on your blog, see this post.  (Special thanks to Crystal Gold of http://www.thevervepath.com!)   If you need jpeg files, email me at bestforbabes.bettina@gmail.com.

2.  Link the ad to our home page (www.bestforbabes.org) or to the ad campaign overview (http://www.bestforbabes.org/help-moms-beat-the-booby-traps/)

3. Leave a comment below announcing that you are running the ad.

4.  After I approve your site (just making sure it is not a spam request), I will contact you for your mailing address and send you a magnet.   You will have fun finding random places to put it.

5.  Bonus: Everyone who runs the ad and tweets about it will be entered into a drawing for a Best for Babes t-shirt.  Just put in your tweet:  “Our website is running the @BestforBabes ad!   Entries closed by December 31, 2009.

Special thanks to http://www.PhDinparenting.com for leading the way and putting our ad right up on the home page!   And for @cfoutz and @RobinPregnancy for pushing us to do this post.   You are all babes!

Best for Babes PSA ads are now available in these sizes:

new! 140 width (special thanks to  http://www.doudoubebe.com)

150 x 150

180 x 240

700 x 100

700 x 300

140 width online ad

150 x 150 online ad

180 x 240 online ad

700 x 100 online ad

700 x 300 online ad

For more help with the codes to put the ad up on your blog or website, see this post.  (Special thanks to @cfoutz and http://www.thevervepath.com)

Another suggestion, from http://www.phdinparenting.com:

Here is the code that I use for the PSA on my site, http://www.phdinparenting.com:

Just drop that into a text widget and you should be good to go.

If you want to customize it or use a different image/size, then just replace the right components of the code.

E.g.

* If you want to use the images in Bettina’s post http://www.bestforbabes.org/2009/12/how-you-can-help-run-our-ad-campaign-on-your-blog-or-website-and-get-a-magnet/, then pick the one you want to use and:
o Replace http://www.bestforbabes.org/images/BfB_Final_Economic.png with the URL for the image you want to use (right click and then choose “copy image location” to get the URL for the image you want

o Replace the numbers in quotes after “width” and “height” with the numbers indicated for the image you chose (e.g. 150×150 would be width=”150″ height=”150″).

Last Tuesday (October 6th) I attended the Big City Moms‘ Biggest Baby Shower Ever, held at the American Girl Place in New York City.     It was an awesome event and the line to get in went down the block.   All three floors were chock full of vendors, delicious treats, and fabulous moms-to-be chatting, checking out the goods, and asking questions about baby car, safety and sleep habits.

Seminars on a variety of topics were held on the first floor every twenty minutes or so.   I thought Big City Moms did a great job addressing subjects that moms are interested in; including sleep, feeding, and safety.    As fun as it is to shop and prepare the nursury it is so important the new mothers have the information they need to make healthy decisions!

The first seminar that I did not want to miss was Dr. Alan Greene speaking about “Feeding Baby Green:  Teaching Your Baby to Love Healthy Foods.”   Boy is this guy excited about babies eating!!   He talked about how babies’ tastebuds are actually most sensitive in utero, and that they practice swallowing before they are born, drinking up to 3 cups of amniotic fluid per day!   Dr. Greene explained that not all nutrients pass through the umbilical cord, and that the baby is actually bonding with and getting to know his mother.    I really appreciated his non-judgmental style of speaking that addressed the concerns of mothers who were planning to breastfeed as well as those who were not.   He talked about “imprinting” and how babies who are breastfed get thousands of different flavors from mothers’ milk, exposing their tastebuds early on, and suggested that formula feeding moms switch brands a few times to change things up.   Dr. Greene doesn’t go for a lot of the standard feeding advice given by many pediatricians, especially as far as allergies and feeding schedules, and he explains why in his book, which was included in the gift bags.   I found his lecture to be super interesting and informative and well, really intuitive!   As a mom I always wondered why introducing solids had to be this highly controlled experiment, when really, babies have been reaching out of the sling for millenia to grab a bit of what’s going into mama’s mouth.

Me and Dr. Alan Greene at the Big City Moms Event

I was fortunate to get a chance to speak with Dr. Greene before his talk . . . I knew about his great work with Healthy Child, Healthy World and was excited to meet him.   I told him about what Best for Babes was doing and right off the bat he bubbled over with enthusiasm and fired off some recent breastfeeding research studies.   It was clear that he is very pro-breastfeeding and very knowledgeable about lactation science.   I told him I thought it was great that the Born Free bottles were BPA-free and hoped that the company would become WHO Code Compliant.  Dr. Greene shared that his wife is a breast cancer survivor (like my business partner, Danielle Rigg), and we talked about how strange it was that the big breast cancer organizations didn’t jump with joy over a recent study showing that women with a family history of breast cancer can reduce their risk by 60% — yes, 60% — if they breastfeed their babies.  We see eye to eye on a number of things and I was thrilled to meet him.

Kelly Rutherford & Me (Bettina Forbes, Co-Founder, Best for Babes)

The last seminar of the evening was actress Kelly Rutherford speaking about “Socially Conscious Mothering.”   She is incredibly down to earth and warm and spent most of the time answering questions from the floor.    She has a very nurturing style and made me feel like we’re all in this together, trying to do our best as parents, picking ourselves and each other up when we fall.   She talked about some of the personal decisions she had made, including tandem nursing (see our interview with her) and her choice not to vaccinate.   I appreciated that she was very open as a mother who is trying to parent in a socially conscious way, and shared her own experience.   I think she is an awesome role model and all the expecting moms really enjoyed talking to her.  Best for Babes is very lucky to have her as a Champion for Moms!

All in all it was a great evening and a great resource for moms-to-be.   Everyone left with a huge gift bag filled with gorgeous items, and better prepared for motherhood!