The art of pregnancy

Body artists gaze upon mothers-to-be with an eye to turning them into there latest canvas.

Painting the nursery is so last century. Today's mother-to-be has her eye set on a different canvas.

All she has to do is look down.



It's called pregnant belly art. It can take the form of a teddy bear, fish tank, giant baseball or floral theme painted on with non-toxic, washable body makeup. Or it can be traditional henna used to bless and celebrate.

Either way, adorning the baby bump is the newest form of body art for the generation that made tattoos and piercings mainstream.

A hot trend in Europe, belly painting made its formal debut in the GTA last month during a demonstration for a convention of Canadian face and body painters.

Victoria Kuek, a Toronto financial analyst, was a volunteer model.

"It's a way to remember that time of being pregnant, and I wanted to capture that," says Kuek, 23.

She was at home with her 2-year-old awaiting the birth of her second child when she stumbled on an Internet ad seeking models. It tickled. Daughter Naomi was born a couple of days later.

Trisha Gardiner, 31, was invited by a body artist who dropped into her Kitchener nutrition store and spotted her well-rounded physique.

"I was ecstatic. I love that kind of experience," says Gardiner, an artsy type who is expecting her first child next month.

"The best thing is the memory."

Tara MacLean decided on a natural henna design just before the birth of her third daughter last year.

The Toronto based singer wanted to celebrate the beauty of pregnancy and "there's something so ancient and sacred" about henna.

"To lie down and have someone pamper you like that is glorious," says MacLean, 35. "I felt like I was giving the baby a gift, too."

The Toronto artist she hired, Holly Monster of Henna by Holly, has done 17 pregnant bellies. She uses natural henna only, which is considered safe and lasts a couple of weeks. The process takes a couple of hours and costs $50 to $100, depending on the design.

Skeptics might suggest that pregnant belly art is akin to spraying graffiti on the Mona Lisa. Why try improving on perfection?

But to Marion Brown of Kitchener, president of the Canadian Association of Face and Body Artists, "it's all in the eye of the beholder."

"It's subjective. It's art," says Brown. "It's just another expression of how beautiful it is to be pregnant."

Pregnant woman chased by bear, Gets hit by car

Talk about having a bad day. A pregnant woman was not only chased down by a brown bear, but got hit by a car in her attempt to get away.

It happened Thursday morning on a trail in Colorado Springs near woodman road and Vincent Drive.

On the trail, there are warnings about possible flash flooding. But nothing prepared a pregnant Ashley Swendsen for a dangerous encounter with wildlife.

"I heard a rustle. I looked behind me and it was a bear--2 feet away," says Swendsen, who is 6 months pregnant.

The 26-year-old kept on walking, and then noticed the bear was following her.

"I freaked out and start running. It was chasing me for about 20 seconds," she says.

She made it to the street. But her troubles were far from over.

"This lady hit me with her car. She wasn't going that fast. I just rolled off her car," she says.

An elderly woman hit her from behind then took off.

The female bear also took off. Officers later tracked it down about a mile away and tranquilized it near some homes.

"If it is the one and Division of Wildlife policy is any aggressive bears do have to be euthanized," says an unidentified division of wildlife officer.

It turned out to be the bear. Its fate decided, the DOW had no choice but to kill it.

"Bears not afraid of people are the most dangerous because they don't run away," says DOW spokesman Michael Seraphin.

"It's still sad. It spared me and it still has to die," says Swendsen. But she says she'll remember the bear in her own way.

"We're going to name the middle name of our baby, 'bear.'"

Police are looking for the woman who hit Swendsen for possible hit-and-run charges.

She is described as white, in her seventies and was driving a black 4-door sedan, possibly a Mitsubishi. It's unknown if there is any damage to the car.

Employers fire mothers-to-be

I was reading The Toronto Star this morning while having coffee, and I came across this article, I thought i'd share it with you

Recession used as excuse for surge in pink slips

Human rights advocates are seeing an alarming surge in cases of pregnant women being fired by "Neanderthal" employers across Ontario, who claim hard times are the cause.

What's especially stunning, they say, is how brazen some bosses are, almost 50 years after Ontario enacted the Human Rights Code to prevent such discrimination.

"We actually have an email from one employer saying, `Sorry, but with your little bundle, I don't think we'll be able to (re)hire you. We want a permanent solution,'" says Consuelo Rubio, manager of client services for Ontario's Human Rights Legal Support Centre, an independent agency funded by the province to provide free legal services to people experiencing discrimination.

The firings are in all sectors: "It's happening to women in senior positions and women in minimum-wage jobs," says Katherine Laird, executive director of the centre, who says she hasn't seen this level of discrimination through two previous recessions and 30 years in the human rights field.

"It's outrageous and illegal," Laird says.

The spike in calls from pregnant women who are frightened for their jobs, can't nail down return-to-work dates or have been told there will be no job waiting for them at the end of their maternity leave, started last fall. But they hit "nightmare" levels in January, says Rubio, and are now averaging 10 to 15 calls a week – accounting for about 10 per cent of all calls from workers inquiring about their rights.

"I thought I was the only person this was happening to," says Brandi Mather, 21, a housekeeper at an Orillia hotel who was laid off Jan. 19, ostensibly because of a lack of work. She later learned her boss had overhead co-workers talking about her pregnancy. Mather had hoped to return to work this month, but found out a replacement worker had been hired in the meantime.

Her boss was quite upfront, saying it was because of the pregnancy. But the boss backtracked when she realized Mather had checked out her legal rights and then said it was because her work was shoddy.

Most firings seem to occur soon after women announce they are pregnant, says Rubio. That puts women's maternity leave benefits at risk, since to qualify for full benefits they must work 600 hours within the 52 weeks before filing.

"I need 435 more hours," says Mather, who also has a 2-year-old daughter and had been working part-time while studying to be a pharmacy assistant. Her pregnancy is starting to show, which has made it impossible to get another job.

"I don't want to go on welfare, but if that's what I have to do, that's what I have to do. I've tried really hard not to do that because I know there are other people who need it."

Until Dec. 4, dental assistant Ann Dunn split her work week between two dentists, one in Courtice and one in Bowmanville. At 10 a.m. she told the Bowmanville dentist she was pregnant. A few hours later she was given a $300 gift certificate to The Bay and told her one-day-a-week job was over.

To her gratitude, the other dentist was so shocked by the move he took her on staff early enough before her son, Michael, was born April 1 to allow her to qualify for maternity benefits. She's filed a claim with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal and is seeking $10,000 in damages.

"If he had said to me, `Things are getting slow in the office and we don't have a lot of hours. Just finish off your three months,' I would have said, `That's fine.' But I didn't have that option. The only option I had was the gift card."

The dentist hired a replacement.

The centre is also hearing from pregnant women who work on commission but simply aren't being given any work or sales calls to make.

"Employers are crying about the recession and saying, `This is so terrible for us,'" says Rubio. "Well, what about all these workers who are going through the financial crisis too? The recession is not only affecting employers, it's affecting mothers with children, it's affecting disabled people – even more so because a lot of these people can be even more vulnerable financially."

The centre is also fielding more calls from injured workers and disabled people – who have always accounted for the vast majority of inquiries – and are seeing troubling signs on that front as well, especially among people who work for hard-hit auto-parts manufacturers, some of them unionized shops.

Human-rights advocates are investigating a Peterborough firm that produces car bumpers and other plastic parts. It laid off 18 workers back in January – every one of whom had at some point claimed disability benefits or were on modified work assignments to allow them to do less strenuous work to cope with their injury.

Meanwhile, 18 "healthy" workers were called back from layoffs.

"The Human Rights Code is supposed to be about recognizing the worth and dignity of every person – and sometimes the real test of an employer's commitment comes when economic times are tough," says Kate Sellar, a lawyer with the centre.

"Bad economic times aren't a licence for employers to discriminate against pregnant women and workers with disabilities."

Pregnant Woman Given Speeding Ticket When She Asks For Help

In news that's DEFINITELY strange, and absolutely TRUE:

Boston has some of the most congested roads that I have ever seen. Once I was driving from Logan Airport and trying to enter the tunnel. Traffic was backed up and tempers overheated. I actually witnessed a man exit his car and bend the antenna of another car and beat on the hood with his hands, denting the car.

In another incident, I was driving in Quincy and I admit that I turned on a yellow light that became red as I went through it. I was hailed down by Quincy’s finest who began to verbally berate me, shined a light into my rented XC90 and told me to wait. He also told me that “all you New Yorkers are alike with your fancy Volvos.” It was a rental car and I told him that I am not from New York, but he was such an anger ball, that did not extinguish those flames.

90 minutes later, I was still in the New York-plated Volvo rental car waiting for the anger ball to give me my ticket. Since I was already way late to where I was going, I got out of the car to simply ask him how much longer it would be since there was no reason to detain me for that long except sheer nastiness. I asked him nicely how much longer it would be and he threatened to arrest me. OK. There ought be a law!

In another crazy traffic incident in Boston, a pregnant woman in labor was stuck in traffic. Her husband started driving in the breakdown lane and they actually pulled up behind a state trooper to see if they could continue to use the breakdown lane to reach the next exit. According to the Boston Globe,

Jennifer Davis holding her "evidence" - Charlotte

Not only did the trooper say no, he gave them a $100 citation for driving in the breakdown lane, made them wait for their citation while he finished writing someone else’s ticket, and even seemed to ask for proof of pregnancy, Jennifer Davis said.

“He said, ‘What’s under your jacket?’ I said, ‘My belly,’ ” Davis said. “He waited and gestured with his head like, ‘OK, let’s see it.’ He waited for me to unzip my jacket. I mean, it was so clear that I was pregnant.”

The Davis's say the contretemps occurred after two other troopers they encountered had waved them along in the highway breakdown lane, allowing them to evade gridlock while advising them to be cautious and keep their hazard lights on.

You can't make stuff like this up...There is something wrong with some of the cops in Boston, seriously!