Texting for Babies

The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB) has partnered with public and private groups to start a service called text4baby (www.text4baby.org), where parents can register to get free weekly text messages sent to them on their cell phone with advice to help them through their pregnancy and baby's first year. Being the geek loving babe that I am, I think this kind of stuff rocks! In fact, I got my first magazine writing gig doing an article called "My Online Pregnancy," which was about an experiment David and I conducted while trying to have Nicole where we decided to see how much baby preparation we could do online, from conception to delivery. Yeah, I know, muy geeky. Anyway, I love this text4baby thing because here's yet another way technology's being used to reach out and support someone. How helpful to have little tips and info about babies sent to your phone. Because let’s face it, even though when they are born, they do in fact come with an instruction book (at least at our hospital they did), but who has time to read it??? Between feeding, burping and vomiting, and that was me, not the baby, I don't think I had a spare moment to sit down, read a book and see what I was doing wrong. So this idea of texting short little tidbits of baby info is pretty cool.

The way social media is being adapted for everything from saying hi to helping parents to raising cash is a good thing. I was blown away by how it was used for fundraising for the last presidential campaign and how much dough was raked in for Haiti by people texting. Email, texting, skyping - they can all be used in ways to make our lives easier and to help those in need, or for those who just like being connected...all the time.

I know I've ranted about being too connected, too stimulated by all the technology. And yes, I'm of that mind for the most part. But I also think that when tech is used for good - kind of like The Force in Star Wars - then we should embrace it like a cup of cocoa on a cold night.

That being said, I shut off the text function on my iPhone...much to the dismay of David, who can't imagine how anyone could live without texting (I feel the same way about email). But I started getting spam texts. I hate spam in all variations, phone (in the form of telephone marketers) and emails (do I really want and/or need to get a lap band, enlarge a penis or get a master's degree online in as little as three weeks?) I don't even like spam as meat from a can (and no, you can't really make it taste better by frying it with eggs)! So when I started to get spam text messages, I was done! At least for now. Until they figure out a way to de-spam my texts, I will remain the email obsessed Diva that I am.

So text/email for good.