Mamamia Cares
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Could you identify the age when fertility starts to decline?
By LOUISE JOHNSON Like MamaMia writer Kate Hunter, I am a woman and a mother and I’ve had many conversations with other women about children and family. I also work in the field of assisted reproductive treatment and fertility, so my conversations with hairdressers, taxi drivers and people at parties usually touch on the subject of having children. As the CEO of the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority and the spokesperson for the Your Fertility campaign, I read with great interest Kate Hunter’s article on MamaMia ‘The conversation no woman wants to have with her new [read more]
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A story about cancer that’s NOT heartbreaking or inspirational…
By PAULINE SHILKIN and YVONNE HUGHES If I tell you that this is a story about cancer, my guess is that you’ll think it’s going to be heartbreaking or inspirational. You know what, it’s not going to be either. No unhappy endings and no heroics. It’s about the everydayness of cancer, and what comes next. We’ve all heard that outcomes are improved if cancer’s found early, and we often hear about medical breakthroughs. It’s true – with early detection and improved treatment more and more people are surviving cancer. But what happens next? If you haven’t experienced cancer, then you’re [read more]
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Everybody deserves to have a better life.
By MARIAM MAZ HAKIM Over 40 million people around the world today are refugees. Refugee week is a celebration of the resilience, strength and courage that refugees face every single day of their lives. Most of them are so far away from civilisation, that they don’t even realise that there is a week specially dedicated to them. Refugees are dreamers. Dreamers of a better life and a better future. And everybody deserves to have a better life. My parents were dreamers too. They seeked a better life. They escaped Afghanistan during the Russian invasion, on horseback with three children aged [read more]
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These kids deserve a childhood.
By GABRIELLE BROPHY I have just returned from Cambodia, a country of gentle and sincere people spread across a beautiful landscape. But behind the beauty, Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, with one third of the population living on less than $2 per day. Fifteen years after the death of Pol Pot, Cambodia is still recovering from the horrific Khmer regime and genocide. During my time there, I visited a street outreach project that has been set up to help children working as rag pickers. It isn’t run by teachers or social workers. Instead, [read more]
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The ‘Courage of Champions’ paving the way for a better world.
After a week in which he became an unwitting but gracious spokesman against racism, and the victim of hurtful comments on two separate occasions, you would forgive Adam Goodes for avoiding the limelight for a while. He is, however, honouring his commitment to be the keynote speaker at an important event to be held at NSW Parliament House on 20 June 2013, the ‘Courage of Champions’ dinner. The event held by the Cricketers Club of NSW to raise money for The LBW Trust. The LBW Trust is a unique charity that provides scholarships for the tertiary education [read more]
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Help Oxfam help others.
by CARLY SHEEHAN Nahed is 30 years old, the same age as me. She’s married with two daughters, whereas I’m single. I go home to my parents’ house on the Gold Coast when I’m not working overseas. She’s also living with her parents again. But that’s only because they fled the civil war in Syria together and came to Lebanon. I met Nahed in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. She works as a cleaner now, earning just enough to put food on the table for her family. In Syria, she used to be a lifeguard. I was [read more]
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A month after his 2nd birthday, my son stopped breathing.
By JODY SLIWKA At 4.33am, on the 5th December, 2011, a month after celebrating Zac’s 2nd Birthday, he stopped breathing for no apparent reason. My husband performed CPR until the ambulance arrived but Zac’s heart had stopped beating and had done so for approx. 20 minutes. He had suffered a cardiac arrest. The ambulance resuscitated him and took him to Canberra hospital where he was stabilised and then helicoptered to Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick. Zac spent the next 11 days in an induced coma. MRI and CT scans confirmed that Zac had acquired a brain injury. My husband [read more]
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What do you think when you see a 42 year old woman with a walking stick?
By JILLIAN KINGSFORD SMITH This time last year I was diagnosed with MS. It’s only now that I’m starting to be a little more vocal that I’m living with MS because inevitably, whenever I do explain why I’m using a walking stick, people tilt their head slightly to one side and tighten their lips as if to say “Oh you poor thing.” In fact many do actually verbalise their pity for me. It’s enough to make you want to invent another reason why a healthy-looking 42 year old woman requires a walking stick. I’ve spent the last [read more]
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This isn’t about death and dying. It’s about life.
By DR YVONNE LUXFORD Think ahead (hopefully a long way ahead) to your last days. How do you want to go? At home, surrounded by family, in a specialist hospice with an expert team keeping you comfortable? If you’re anything like me, you spend half your life making plans and choices – from the type of coffee you like to kickstart your day, location of your next holiday, to where you want to live, and how you’ll save for your kids’ future. Why is it then that we leave something as important as our end of life care to [read more]
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This story shows how one individual can change the course of history.
By MELISSA WELLHAM The Indonesian occupation of East Timor is a period of political history still fresh in the minds of many Australians. The brutal and violent invasion, which lasted from 1976 well into the 90s, was a divisive issue in Australia – and indeed, the world over – for many years. Alias Ruby Blade is a documentary that covers this period of history – but from a never-before-seen perspective. This is not just a documentary about the tumultuous birth of a new nation. This is also a story of intrigue, revolution and romance. At the heart [read more]
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This girl gets Canberra to pucker up and kiss goodbye to MS
By JANE QUICK My mum did not help me buy my wedding dress. When my daughter was born she couldn’t offer hands-on support. On a bad day I can’t ask her to make me a cup of tea and talk through my problems. As my mum has multiple sclerosis (MS) she has more bad days than I do. People who have healthy, living parents don’t know lucky they are. She was diagnosed 30 years ago just after I was born. As a kid I knew my mum had MS but was unaware how it affected her. [read more]
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‘Not getting paid – and loving it.’
by MIKE NICHOLSON If it’s true that the Australian economy has hit the skids and my industry (media) is dying, then why am I championing unpaid work? That’s because I’m talking about giving my time away to volunteer organisations that thrive on unpaid workers for their good causes. This week marks National Volunteer Week in Australia and what better time to put your volunteer hat on and get involved. My first experience with volunteering came six years ago when I signed up to be a part of a community radio station. However, I always consider this [read more]
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“Carbon Monoxide killed my kids.”
BY VANESSA ROBINSON Three years ago I lived every parent’s nightmare when I lost my two sons to carbon monoxide poisoning. I want to share some information that will hopefully prevent your family from suffering a similar tragedy. My sons Chase and Tyler were aged eight and six years at the time of their deaths in May 2010. They were normal, healthy boys living with me in our rented Shepparton home. It had never occurred to me that a silent killer could be lurking in our home. But it was – in the form of a gas [read more]
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‘My youngest sister was cutting herself. So I made her run.’
by MELINDA HIATT I still remember the first time mum told me my youngest sister Courtney was cutting herself. I was pretty shocked and a little puzzled about why she would be doing such a thing. I am the eldest of three girls and Courtney is 13 years younger than me. I was at her birth and even cut her umbilical cord so to think of this beautiful baby and gorgeous toddler as a troubled teenager was something I would never have expected. It seemed to me at the time that the source of the self-harming [read more]
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Little Miracles for premature babies.
By KATE WALTHER The night my daughter was born I couldn’t look at her. I heard her tiny cry, like a lost kitten, and saw her miniature 1 kg frame and turned my head away, shocked at how fragile she was. How my body had failed her at just 26 weeks gestation. Luckily, she was born fighting. So many times in her 4 month stay in the NICU we would hear the mantra from her doctors and nurses – 2 steps forward, 1 step back. It was a warning to expect turbulence, even when things seemed good, but [read more]
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These mothers and daughters need your help.
By DR. JULIA NEWTON-HOWES Could you tell a mother like Bophu to wait a year before you can help her provide her daughters with healthy, nutritious food all year around? No, nor could I. But we might have to. Bophu and her husband Lojeuw live in the remote mountains of northern Laos with their two daughters – two-year-old Teuyu* and Dupeu* who is less than a month old. Foreign aid is helping them and other families around the world to lift themselves out of poverty and to give their daughters a chance at a life that we take [read more]
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Why cancer research is important this Mother’s Day
By DAVID ARCHER May 2011 was the very last Mother’s Day my children ever celebrated with their mother. Two months later we said our last goodbye. Now two years have passed and time has perhaps softened our pain… but only a little bit. This is Danielle’s story. This is my family’s story. Danielle and I first met at the end of 1995. She was 20 years old. I was 26, and I worshipped her. We were married less than four years later and started our life together by settling into the lower Blue Mountains. We had [read more]
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This Mother’s Day, send hope, not twin sets.
By JULIE ULBRICHT I never look at junk mail, because it’s called that for a reason. However, for the first time in a very long time, I recently flicked through the Mother’s Day edition of a certain department store and smiled/sighed as I saw pastel twin sets as an idea. I mean, they were lovely, but not really the most inspired gift (read: Dear all, Do not buy me a pastel twin set, ever). Last year, I read somewhere that paying for your mother’s liposuction is also a great and creative idea. I’ll leave you to ponder [read more]
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Every day 37 women are diagnosed with Breast Cancer. This is how you can help.
With Mother’s Day approaching, and all that this day means for many women and their families, wouldn’t “a world without breast cancer” be the best Mother’s Day gift of all? Michelle King of Gunnedah NSW thinks so. Michelle was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006 at the age of 48. A friend “dragged” her along to BreastScreen for a routine mammogram and she thought everything would be fine. “I couldn’t believe it when they told me I had breast cancer,” said Michelle. “I was healthy and there was no history of it in my family.” [read more]
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“Those were the last words my son would say to me.”
In Australia, at least six children die each year from drowning in backyard swimming pools. Drowning is the most common cause of preventable death for children under the age of five. The NSW and Victorian Governments have recently implemented policies, which require pool owners to register online so they can be inspected. It is stories like Tammie’s, about the drowning of her son Jack, that are the reason why. By TAMMIE LACEY I am the proud mum of three beautiful children. Sadly seven years ago, on the 5th April 2006, my life was shattered into a [read more]