Baby Feet Casting

The unknown parents of the child known as Baby Chloe, an abandoned newborn found inside a plastic bag in February, had their parental rights terminated on Wednesday.

The little girl is now 3 months old. Authorities have been unable to locate her biological parents and have stopped looking for them, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Estella Olguin said.

The determination by Harris County Juvenile Court Judge Michael Schneider brings Chloe closer to becoming available for adoption, but it’s not too late for the mother or father to step forward.

“Once the judge signs the order, then the biological parents still have up to 30 days under the law to contest the termination,” Olguin said. “This basically gives an opportunity for the father to come forward. It doesn’t mean that the child will be returned to him, but we might be able to consider a relative.”

Chloe has remained with the same foster family since she was discharged from the hospital and they want to adopt her, Olguin added.

The baby was discovered by a woman walking her dogs in northwest Harris County when the animals became interested in a Wal-Mart bag on the perimeter of the Stonegate Villas Apartments. About 3 inches of the child’s umbilical cord was still attached.

She was a distinct infant – born with one bottom tooth – who weighed 4 pounds and 12 ounces. Medical officials determined that she was a late preterm baby delivered at 36 to 37 weeks’ gestation. She was named Chloe by the Texas Children’s Hospital staff.

“She was perfectly healthy,” Olguin said. “No injuries, no health issues. No hypothermia. She was out there in February. She didn’t suffer any consequences from being left out in the elements.”

Despite releasing sketches depicting what the biological mother and father might look like and offering a rare opportunity for the media to photograph an abandoned child, officials have been unable to locate Chloe’s parents. When the pictures were released, CPS received calls from across the United States and abroad.

A few people were tested for a DNA match to the child, “but we didn’t come up with any leads,” Olguin said.

Article source: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Baby-Chloe-moves-closer-to-adoption-4540388.php

Google faces new federal antitrust probe: sourceReuters

U.S. regulators are in the early stages of an antitrust probe into whether Google Inc, the top player in web display …

Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/research-markets-chinese-markets-baby-183600447.html

Ian Harrowell, Christine Austin and Manish Arora

A molar tooth model showing color-coded barium patterns.

By Stephanie Pappas LiveScience

A baby Neanderthal who lived in what is now Belgium about 100,000 years ago started eating solid food at 7 months old, revealing a new aspect of the evolution of breast-feeding.

The precision of this estimate is courtesy a new technique that uses elements in teeth to determine when breast-feeding started and stopped. Though researchers can’t be sure the young Neanderthal’s pattern was typical of its kind, such a breast-feeding pattern is not unlike that seen in many modern humans.

“Breast-feeding is such a major event in childhood, and it’s important for so many reasons,” study researcher Manish Arora, a research associate at Harvard’s School of Public Health, told LiveScience. “It’s a major determinate of child health and immune protection, so breast-feeding is important both from the point of view of studying our evolution as well as studying health in modern humans.” [The Facts on Breast-Feeding (Infographic)]

Reconstructing breast-feeding
Until now, however, no one had an effective way of looking at bones and reconstructing breast-feeding history. Past attempts had relied on moms’ memories of when they started supplementing breast milk with solid food and when they weaned their babies. Those memories can be fuzzy years after the fact, Arora said.

Austin et al. Nature (2013)

Patterns of barium in baby teeth reveal the duration of breast-feeding.

He and his colleagues had an advantage: A large study of pregnant women in Monterey County, Calif., that started when the women were only 20 weeks along in their pregnancies and followed them for years. At seven years and onward, the mothers were asked to donate a baby tooth their child had lost. Arora and his colleagues analyzed the teeth for biomarkers that matched changes in the child’s breast-feeding status. The researchers also conducted a similar analysis in macaques.

They found that both in humans and macaques, the ratio of the elements barium and calcium in the teeth revealed what the baby had been eating when those teeth formed. The researchers analyzed the enamel (the outer layer of the tooth) and the dentine (the mineralized layer that supports the enamel).

The parts of the teeth that form in the gums before birth have very little barium, Arora said, probably because only a small amount of the element gets into the fetus through the placenta. After birth, barium spikes and stays high in the tooth enamel and dentine. If a baby transitions to formula, the barium levels get even higher, as formula has even higher levels of barium than breast milk. [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

The profile changes again when babies (or macaques) start adding solid food to their diet of breast milk.

“You find the amount of barium we can absorb from solid foods such as vegetables and meats is different from what we get from breast milk, so we can see this period of exclusive breast-feeding,” Arora said.

The researchers could pinpoint weaning with great precision. For example, researchers knew one baby macaque had been separated from its mother and abruptly weaned at 166 days of life. The tooth analysis method estimated that this weaning occurred between 151 and 183 days of life — a matter of just weeks’ difference from the actual date.

Austin et al. Nature (2013)

A juvenile Neanderthal molar reveals barium patterns linked to diet.

A baby Neanderthal’s meals
Barium has the advantage of resiliency compared with other elements, so Arora and his colleagues tested their new method on a very old tooth. They used a molar from the Scladina Neanderthal, a fossilized juvenile found in Belgium.

Similar patterns as in humans and macaques appeared: a barium increase at birth, which stayed high until the Neanderthal was about 7 months old. At that point, the tooth indicated, the Neanderthal baby went into a transitional diet, consuming breast milk supplemented by solid food. The pattern is one that today’s parenting experts would likely approve. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusively breast-feeding babies for at least six months after birth, followed by the gradual introduction of solid foods.

The Neanderthal’s mixed diet continued for seven months until 14 months of age, when the baby abruptly weaned. No one knows what happened, Arora said. It’s possible the Neanderthal became separated from its mother, or perhaps the mother got pregnant or gave birth to a younger sibling and cut her older child off from the breast.

So far, Arora and his colleagues have tested only the Scladina Neanderthal, and they aren’t sure whether its weaning pattern is typical of the species.

“We would very much like to do this on more Neanderthal samples and even beyond Neanderthal samples, on other extinct primates leading up to modern humans,” Arora said. The goal would be to create an evolutionary map of breast-feeding practices in primates, he said.

This line of research could also reveal insights into the long-term health effects of breast-feeding. Researchers could recruit children with and without certain health conditions and look at their teeth for an objective measure of how long they were breast-fed, Arora said.

The researchers will report their findings Thursday in the journal Nature.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans
• Image Gallery: 3-Year-Old Human Ancestor Revealed
• The Cleavage Countdown: 8 Facts About Breasts

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Article source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653378/s/2c479c1e/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A50C220C184249420Eneanderthal0Ebaby0Ehad0Eonly0Ebreast0Emilk0Efor0E70Emonths0Dlite/story01.htm

A baby Neanderthal who lived in what is now Belgium about 100,000 years ago started eating solid food at 7 months old, revealing a new aspect of the evolution of breast-feeding.

The precision of this estimate is courtesy a new technique that uses elements in teeth to determine when breast-feeding started and stopped. Though researchers can’t be sure the young Neanderthal’s pattern was typical of its kind, such a breast-feeding pattern is not unlike that seen in many modern humans.

“Breast-feeding is such a major event in childhood, and it’s important for so many reasons,” study researcher Manish Arora, a research associate at Harvard’s School of Public Health, told LiveScience. “It’s a major determinate of child health and immune protection, so breast-feeding is important both from the point of view of studying our evolution as well as studying health in modern humans.” [The Facts on Breast-Feeding (Infographic)]

Reconstructing breast-feeding

Until now, however, no one had an effective way of looking at bones and reconstructing breast-feeding history. Past attempts had relied on moms’ memories of when they started supplementing breast milk with solid food and when they weaned their babies. Those memories can be fuzzy years after the fact, Arora said.

He and his colleagues had an advantage: A large study of pregnant women in Monterey County, Calif., that started when the women were only 20 weeks along in their pregnancies and followed them for years. At seven years and onward, the mothers were asked to donate a baby tooth their child had lost. Arora and his colleagues analyzed the teeth for biomarkers that matched changes in the child’s breast-feeding status. The researchers also conducted a similar analysis in macaques.

They found that both in humans and macaques, the ratio of the elements barium and calcium in the teeth revealed what the baby had been eating when those teeth formed. The researchers analyzed the enamel (the outer layer of the tooth) and the dentine (the mineralized layer that supports the enamel).

The parts of the teeth that form in the gums before birth have very little barium, Arora said, probably because only a small amount of the element gets into the fetus through the placenta. After birth, barium spikes and stays high in the tooth enamel and dentine. If a baby transitions to formula, the barium levels get even higher, as formula has even higher levels of barium than breast milk. [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]

The profile changes again when babies (or macaques) start adding solid food to their diet of breast milk.

“You find the amount of barium we can absorb from solid foods such as vegetables and meats is different from what we get from breast milk, so we can see this period of exclusive breast-feeding,” Arora said.

The researchers could pinpoint weaning with great precision. For example, researchers knew one baby macaque had been separated from its mother and abruptly weaned at 166 days of life. The tooth analysis method estimated that this weaning occurred between 151 and 183 days of life — a matter of just weeks’ difference from the actual date.

A baby Neanderthal’s meals

Barium has the advantage of resiliency compared with other elements, so Arora and his colleagues tested their new method on a very old tooth. They used a molar from the Scladina Neanderthal, a fossilized juvenile found in Belgium.

Similar patterns as in humans and macaques appeared: a barium increase at birth, which stayed high until the Neanderthal was about 7 months old. At that point, the tooth indicated, the Neanderthal baby went into a transitional diet, consuming breast milk supplemented by solid food. The pattern is one that today’s parenting experts would likely approve. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusively breast-feeding babies for at least six months after birth, followed by the gradual introduction of solid foods.

The Neanderthal’s mixed diet continued for seven months until 14 months of age, when the baby abruptly weaned. No one knows what happened, Arora said. It’s possible the Neanderthal became separated from its mother, or perhaps the mother got pregnant or gave birth to a younger sibling and cut her older child off from the breast.

So far, Arora and his colleagues have tested only the Scladina Neanderthal, and they aren’t sure whether its weaning pattern is typical of the species.

“We would very much like to do this on more Neanderthal samples and even beyond Neanderthal samples, on other extinct primates leading up to modern humans,” Arora said. The goal would be to create an evolutionary map of breast-feeding practices in primates, he said.

This line of research could also reveal insights into the long-term health effects of breast-feeding. Researchers could recruit children with and without certain health conditions and look at their teeth for an objective measure of how long they were breast-fed, Arora said.

The researchers report their findings Thursday (May 23) in the journal Nature.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitterand Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans
• Image Gallery: 3-Year-Old Human Ancestor Revealed
• The Cleavage Countdown: 8 Facts About Breasts

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/baby-neanderthal-breast-fed-7-months-170337020.html

A baby was born about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday while her parents were en route to South Shore Hospital.

The birth took place in a pickup truck on Route 3 southbound, about a half-mile south of the Union Street exit, officials said.

State Police Lt. Daniel Richard said the father was on the phone with a dispatcher at the time.

“He said his wife was pregnant and we were stuck in traffic,” Richard said. “The next thing he says is ‘the baby is out.’”

Trooper Shawn Hatchell was with Braintree and Weymouth firefighters who were cleaning up after extinguishing a car fire in the northbound lanes that had snarled traffic.

Hatchell heard a call over the radio to be on the lookout for the black pickup truck.

“I started scanning down the road for it and it was right across from me,” Hatchell said.

He weaved his way through the traffic, saw the baby had arrived, and then went back to his cruiser for his medical kit.

He was joined by the crew of Braintree Engine 4, fire Lt. Bruce King and firefighters Robert Loud and Brian Ferdholm.

King suctioned out the baby’s nose to make sure she was breathing, while one of the other firefighters wrapped her in a blanket.

“I’m glad he was there. He is better trained than I am,” said Hatchell, who has been a state trooper for a year-and-a-half.

It was the first time any of the four had been in on the birth of a child other than their own.

The mother and daughter were taken to the hospital by Fallon ambulance. Their names were not available Tuesday night.

“They were doing well,” King said.

All four were planning to visit the family at the hospital Tuesday night.

Fred Hanson may be reached at fhanson@ledger.com.

READ MORE about this issue.

Article source: http://www.patriotledger.com/news/x1884771488/Baby-born-in-pickup-truck-on-Route-3?rssfeed=true

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Babies who sleep in bed with a parent are more likely to die of sudden infant death syndrome compared with babies sleeping separately, even when parents follow other recommendations that lower the death risk, a new review of studies finds.

The increase in SIDS risk was greatest in the youngest infants. Among babies younger than 3 months old, those who slept with a parent were five times more likely to die of SIDS compared with infants who slept separately in the same room, even when researchers only considered babies who were breastfed, and whose mothers did not drink or smoke.

Among babies between 3 months and 1 year old, the risk increased by three times, according to the study.

“This is areally important study, because it does what no other study has done before,” in that the researchers separated out each factor linked with increased SIDS risk, said Dr. Rachel Moon, a pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C., and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics task force on SIDS. 

The study should send a message to parents who consider their babies at low risk for SIDS, Moon said. Parents who are highly educated, who breastfeed and put their babies to sleep on their backs (a major recommendation for lowering SIDS risk) may think the recommendation about not sleeping with the baby doesn’t apply to them, she said.

“Even if you do everything right, bed-sharing increases a baby’s risk,” Moon said.

In the new review, researchers led by Robert Carpenter, a professor at the London School of Hygiene Tropical Medicine, pulled data from five previous studies. They looked at nearly 1,500 cases of SIDS, and about 4,700 babies who didn’t die but were matched to the SIDS cases.

The increased risk of SIDS linked with bed-sharing rose even more sharply if the mother or her partner smoked, or if the mother had more than two alcoholic drinks in the previous 24 hours.

The researchers estimated that about 88 percent of SIDS deaths while bed-sharing would not have occurred if the baby had not been bed-sharing. 

“It’s become really uncommon to encounter a baby who dies of SIDS who wasn’t bed-sharing,” Moon said.

About 2,100 infants in the U.S. die yearly from SIDS. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends:

• Placing babies on a firm mattress to sleep, and not using pillows or bumper pads in cribs.
• Staying current onall recommended immunizations.
• Making sure a baby does not get too warm while sleeping.
• Not smoking, drinking alcohol, or use drugs while pregnant, and avoiding exposing baby to secondhand smoke.
• Breastfeeding, if possible.
• Putting a baby to sleep with a pacifier (But if a baby rejects the pacifier, don’t force it.)
• Putting babies to sleep in the same room, but not the same bed, as parents.

It’s still not exactly clear what happens in SIDS. Moon said that researchers think in some cases, a baby’s brain stem, which controls breathing, may not function correctly. If a baby with this risk factor is in an environment where there is not enough oxygen, they may die.

But it’s not known what makes a baby vulnerable. Eventually, Moon said, researchers would like to have a test that looks at a baby’s arousal capabilities, and reveals whether they may be at an increased risk of SIDS, but such a test is a long way off, she said. 

Follow Karen Rowan @karenjrowan. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook  Google+. Originally published on LiveScience.

• 11 Facts Every Parent Should Know About Their Baby’s Brain
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Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/co-sleeping-baby-raises-sids-risk-111943047.html

NEW YORK (AP) — Amid the purveyors of belly casts and placenta pills, sonogram art and cord banks at a recent baby gear extravaganza stood a smiling Rosie Pope, pregnancy advice guru, mommy concierge to the rich and, with any luck, the Martha Stewart of maternity.

“There’s Rachael Ray for cooking and Rachel Zoe for style, but who in motherhood? That’s my dream,” said the affable mom of three as she signed copies of her pregnancy guide, “Mommy IQ,” showed off her maternity clothing line and chatted up fans Saturday at the New York Baby Show.

Making sense of maternity and baby gear these days isn’t easy, so Pope may just get her shot. More than a few moms-to-be were befuddled as they walked the crowded show floor, some with exhausted husbands in tow, at a cavernous pier just off the West Side Highway.

There’s the “Tortle,” for example. It’s an infant hat with a soft wedge built in to battle flat head syndrome. And there’s Clean Bee Baby, an eco-friendly cleaning service for strollers and car seats.

The sellers of the Woolino were there. It’s a four-season wearable sleep bag for baby in Australian merino wool that promises to regulate body temperature, wick away moisture and last until age 2 in place of those dangerous things called blankets.

There were also numerous reinventions of the wearable baby carrier, bright and cheery seats and rides of all kinds, including one that looks like an actual car, and all-natural everything, from squeezable baby fruit to Kinder by Nature herbal wipes, loaded with certified organic aloe vera, tea tree and ylang ylang extracts.

A couple of doulas turned up with a pink Mini Cooper, extolling such services as “placenta encapsulation.” It involves dehydrating one’s placenta, turning it into a powder and putting it inside capsules for ingestion as a postpartum supplement. Which is not to be confused with a reinvention of prenatal vitamins as a powder you can sprinkle on food or mix with a liquid, or with services that will store umbilical cord blood for its stem cells soon after birth.

In addition to a little trend-spotting (highlighter orange is in and the nursery animal of the moment is the hedgehog), Pope offered her view on the explosion of gear for mom, dad and baby.

“There’s so much we do not need,” she said. “What we do need is a safe place for the baby to sleep. We do need a safe car seat. We do need a stroller system that the car seat can snap into. What we do need is SOME clothes. What we don’t need is shoes and hair accessories and wipe warmers and bottle warmers and all of this sort of extra stuff that really is just adding complication to what you’re doing rather than making your life easier.”

Like gear, maternity clothes have come a long way, as have some famous expectant moms, she said.

Of the very pregnant Kim Kardashian’s criticized floral Met Gala gown by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, Pope offers:

“I think that maybe she’s a PR genius since that caused her a lot of attention, but really what I always tell my clients is stay true to your sense of style. Kim was very sensuous and her clothing was generally very tight and you could see her curves. But an upholstered turtleneck gown with matching gloves is really hard for anybody to pull off. She is a beautiful pregnant woman, though.”

And the other high-profile mom-to-be, the former Kate Middleton?

“She is keeping to her sense of style, so very understated, very demure and classic and tailored. And what she’s really showing, which I love, is that you don’t have to just wear stretchy clothes when you’re pregnant.”

In addition to sellers of wearable baby carriers and a foundation looking for donations to fund kiddie yoga lessons for the underprivileged, the makers of modesty covers for nursing women were on hand at the show sponsored by New York Family magazine.

Pope said she used one called the Hooter Hider but made clear she casts no judgments on breast-feeding versus bottle feeding. She nursed her first, now 4, for about six months but said “it didn’t work” for her second. When her third came along she decided as a busy working mom on a combination of pumping and formula.

“There’s a lot of pressure to breast-feed and I think if you can do it, it’s a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t work for everybody,” Pope said.

The star of Bravo’s “Pregnant in Heels” reality series takes a similar approach to many maternity issues in her book, out last October with medical-related advice by one of New York City’s foremost obstetrician-gynecologists, Amos Grunebaum, who was Pope’s doctor as she navigated infertility treatment.

“So many of the books I find to be quite heavy and quite hard to figure out whether they’re saying yes or no. It’s always in the middle, the advice. I wanted to know what is right and what is wrong and then what is up to me. That’s really important.”

She professes zero tolerance for caffeine and alcohol during pregnancy, “but then I am much more open-minded when it comes to breast-feeding and when it comes to attachment parenting or sleeping. I really believe every family is very, very different and what’s right for one person is not right for another.”

In decades past, maternity advice was “this way or the highway,” but so many options and so much readily available information today is a “blessing and a curse,” Pope acknowledged. “If you can navigate your way through that you can really find a path that is wonderful for you.”

Agnieszka Golasik of Brooklyn, an artist by way of Poland, wasn’t looking to help expectant moms navigate so much as decorate. She’ll turn your sonogram pregnancy image into a psychedelic portrait of your fetus through her company Your Baby to Be, at a starting price of $250.

“I was experimenting with these images for a series of small monotypes when I found out I was pregnant,” Golasik said at the booth she shared with co-founder Margaret Blat. “This is a special time and new way to remember your baby.”

The folks over at Cast in Time were of similar minds. They’ll take a plaster cast of your naked and pregnant silhouette, from pubic bone to breasts, decorate it and frame it for hanging, at a minimum of $495.

Said the founder, who goes by Bindia: “Pregnant women are beautiful.”

___

Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/rosie-pope-helps-navigate-exotic-baby-gear-193829282.html

Couples trying for children better get busy before the baby bonus is abolished in March next year.

The Gillard government announced the savings measure that will save $1.1 billion over five years in the federal budget.

The $5000 baby bonus has been axed and there could be a baby bonus related boom next year as mothers vie to give birth before the changes.

Under the measures families eligible for Family Tax Benefit A will receive a boost to their payments of $2000 for first borns and $1000 for subsequent children, if they are not accessing the federal government’s paid parental leave scheme.

Treasurer Wayne Swan said the change was about making the family payments system more sustainable.

Dumping the baby bonus was a recommendation of the 2010 Henry Tax Review.

The review found that the bonus provided more assistance than necessary to cover the costs of a new child.

The government will also make it easier for working mothers with children born close together to qualify for the paid parental scheme for subsequent children.

Parents will be able to count time on the government’s parental leave as work, under the work test.

Single mothers, who were slugged with welfare cuts in January, when they were forced off Parenting Payments and on to the Newstart Allowance, will be disappointed there won’t be much financial relief.

Many were left $60 to $100 worse off and had been pinning their hopes on a $50 a week increase to the dole.

The federal government ruled out the payment rise as too expensive but will allow welfare recipients to keep an extra $19 a week of part time job earnings by increasing the income free threshold.

Indexation pauses on family payments will also continue saving $1.2 billion over the forward estimates.

Other savings measures include, from January 2014, the age eligibility for Family Tax Benefit Part A will change.

This means families can claim money only up to the end of the calendar year that their teenager is completing school.

Teenagers could receive Youth Allowance once their families are no longer eligible for the family payment.

People living temporarily overseas will only be able to claim family related payments for one year not three, while they’re away.

The Gillard government previously announced it was not proceeding with increases to Family Tax Benefit Part A that were announced last year as a measure to ‘spread the benefits of the mining boom’.

Jobseekers who are complying with Centrelink rules will have a reduced number of physical interviews.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said the budget offered ‘next to nothing’ in extra support for single mothers and the unemployed.

St Vincents De Paul chief executive John Falzon was also disappointed.

‘You could well be forgiven for feeling like tonight’s budget is less Robin Hood and more Sherriff of Nottingham,’ he told reporters in Canberra.

‘The Newstart Allowance is so low that it has become for many a path to despair instead of a path to employment.’

But UnitingCare national director Lin Hatfield Dodds said replacing the baby bonus with better targeted family payment increase would better help families in need.

Article source: http://wap.news.bigpond.com/articles/National/2013/05/14/Baby_bonus_axed_in_federal_budget_872107.html

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Vikkie and Peter Chrisoulis with their children Kathryn, 11, James, nine, and Julian, six, at their home in Newport.

John Howard was on the baby-kissing election trail in October 2001 when he met first-time mother Vikkie Chrisoulis and held her day-old daughter Kathryn.

Less than 24 hours before visiting her maternity ward at St Vincent’s Private hospital he announced a baby bonus of up to $2500 would be part of the 2002 budget with payments eligible to the first child either born or adopted from July 1, 2001.

During that budget speech, the then treasurer Peter Costello told Parliament the baby bonus would ease the financial burden on those starting a family.

Thirteen years later Treasurer Wayne Swan said it was all over for Australian families.

It is a cut that Mrs Chrisoulis strongly disagrees with, concerned about the effect it will have on lower income earners.

”The government is struggling at the moment and they’re trying to cut down on spending … but they’ve got to look at other options to cut down on, not the baby bonus,” she said.

The current payment of $5000 for the first child and $3000 for each subsequent baby, available to stay-at-home mothers in families with incomes of up to $150,000, ends on March 1, 2014. The payments were originally a lump sum but in 2009 it was changed to an instalment system.

”People do need it. Living costs have gone up, there’s struggling families out there trying to put food on the table and coming down to one income you really do need that extra cash to get you through,” Mrs Chrisoulis said.

The family has received the bonus three times – in a lump sum – starting with Kathryn, 11, James, 9, and Julian, 6.

Peter Chrisoulis had just started his electrical business when his daughter was born, the family appreciating the extra money that helped with items such as the food bill, nappies and clothes.

”People that need it will miss it. It does help the lower-income earners – the people that are struggling, especially if they have to give up their full-time job,” Mrs Chrisoulis said.

The current baby bonus will be replaced with $2000 for the birth or adoption of a first child or each child in multiple births, and $1000 for second or subsequent children. Families will receive an initial payment of $500, the rest to be paid in seven fortnightly instalments.

The threshold at which families qualify will drop considerably. Under the new scheme couples earning more than $101,000 will not be eligible for a payment for their first baby. The threshold for a second baby will be about $112,000.

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• Fund your own lifestyle, instead of living off the dime of other tax payers.

  Great move from Gillard!

  Commenter
  daffy
  Location

  Date and time
  May 20, 2013, 8:24AM

  • +1 Absolutely.
    Those who do not want to have kids or cannot have them or are single …. what is in it for them?

    Commenter
    NR
    Location
    Melb
    Date and time
    May 20, 2013, 9:05AM

  • Do I get $5,000 for choosing not to introduce another person onto this already overcrowded planet?

    My hand is out. Where’s my money?

    Commenter
    Dave
    Location
    St Kilda
    Date and time
    May 20, 2013, 9:15AM

  • +1

    Commenter
    Daniel
    Location
    Melbourne
    Date and time
    May 20, 2013, 9:39AM

  • Well Said Daffy and Dave. Agreed 100%

    Commenter
    DeadlyNeddly16
    Location

    Date and time
    May 20, 2013, 9:42AM

  • Gillard is your hero for this. Just wait she will tax or remove finding for things you love soon.

    Commenter
    Dave
    Date and time
    May 20, 2013, 9:43AM

• There was no such thing as baby bonus when I was having my family. $2 for first child in child endowment$5 for2 and I received $35 per month for 5 children.We had children because we chose to not because of payment we would receive.If we didn’t want children we took necessary precautions.Now women see $$$$$signs at the start and don’t think of the 18years of rearing child.So many neglected kids in families who can’t really afford them but see this money as a good excuse to have a child they don’t really want.Yes I had 5children raised them on one income till last one was five and then did part time work no hand outs.All have good jobs families of their own.today if there is no extra payment for anything these people whinge.

  Commenter
  Observer
  Location
  Victoria
  Date and time
  May 20, 2013, 8:37AM

  • Sorry to all, but you have to be joking about getting money to have a child.
    This was nothing more than a political stunt when it was introduced and should have never been given in the first place . I raised 5 children that were born in the 80′s and 90′s and never had this as I saved to prepare by going with out things.

    Australia needs to understand that we must get away from a welfare mentality and that the Government must give us hand outs. This country is based on politicians that do not think through the longer term issues that all these hand outs cost. Also go back to cloth nappies and save a few dollars, cut back on non essentials, turn off lights that ate not required to be on, don’t go on a holiday for one year to pay for all of this. We as Australians cannot have our cake and eat it too without some self sacrifices.

    Politicians , need to stop giving out things this country can ill afford, and taking this away is good for the country .

    Commenter
    James
    Location
    Eltham
    Date and time
    May 20, 2013, 8:42AM

    • Just having my second baby and the costs are still high. New cot, extra seat for stroller, new car seat, new safety devices which invariably need replacing over time if you have more than one baby. That’s $1000 gone there before a single nappy is purchased. In my parents’ day, they made do and didn’t receive a baby bonus. They also chucked 7 kids in the back of a datsun and drove us to queensland.

      Commenter
      Doyareckon
      Date and time
      May 20, 2013, 8:47AM

      • Yep, 7 kids in the Valiant wagon in my folks’ case. We didn’t have the baby bonus for my two kids, nor did we have the first home owners grant or most of the middle-class welfare (maybe some child endowment). You get by on a cheaper pram or, god-forbid, a second-hand one. These things just push up the prices anyway.

        Commenter
        NotNeeded
        Location

        Date and time
        May 20, 2013, 9:22AM

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