Our Forum is almost due to relaunch!

A couple of months ago I made the decision to close the forum for a while. Beyond The Baby was created out of love and I wanted a community where everyone feels comfortable to share their stories and experiences without fear of judgment. Slowly over time the forum became a place where members felt it was ok to judge each other and abuse each other for choices in parenting and beliefs. During this time after many emails from upset members I decided to implement new rules and guidelines to help protect everyone and I also created a motto for Beyond The Baby that outlines what we believe in -

Our aim here at Beyond The Baby is to support everyone’s right to choose the way they birth and parent. All parenting and birthing styles are encouraged and supported.

Essentially we believe in birthing healthy babies and we believe in baby feeding. No matter how these are achieved. Women have a right to feel comfortable with their choices and have a right to have access to information on all options.

Beyond The Baby believes in ….

Baby Feeding – No matter which form that may be – Breast, Formula, Cows Milk or Solids.

Keeping The Poop Contained! – No matter how you choose to do this with your child – disposables, cloth nappies or elimination communication. As long as the poop is contained that’s all that matters!

Baby Sleeping – Cots, cradles, toddler beds, co-sleeping! As long as your baby is safe and comfortable!

Choice In All Areas Of Life – immunizations, nappies, sleeping, baby feeding, food/shopping choices, brands/products etc. We support everyone’s way of life!

Information Sharing Without Preaching - We believe everyone has valuable information to share and we provide a non judgmental place. We believe in everyone’s right to share information not push beliefs on to others.

Beyond The Baby is a supportive group of mothers who want the best for their child in a parenting environment that works well for them. We accept all parenting styles and provide a safe community for everyone to share their information, stories and ideas without feeling pressured to conform to others views.

Beyond The Baby is all about choice, no matter what that is!

Even though I was supporting my vision and goals for a peaceful community there were still members who wanted to see Beyond The Baby travel down the same path of other unsupportive and biased communities. So after a lot of thought I decided to close the forum until I could develop a community I believed in 100% and was proud to put my name to.

I strongly believe in giving all of your strength and energy to causes you believe in rather than using your energy to judge others. As long as we all raise healthy happy children in a loving home environment with access to education, food, clean clothes and lots of cuddles then nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter if a child sleeps in a cot or in the family bed or if a child is breast or formula fed etc. We choose what is best for our child and we allow other parents that same right.

The forum is about to be open again in the next few weeks. We will have all new moderators and a brand new forum. All previous posts and threads are no longer available. We have also removed all closed forums by popular request to allow us to gain more of an online family feel. I have decided it is best that I am not an active part of the community, moderators will handle all forum matters and our management team will take care of any matters they can not deal with.

We will have a general list of rules with the basic being “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all” we want everyone to be supportive of each other, if you don’t like a topic or thread we ask you to express your opinion and then leave it be.

All members will need to sign up again as all memberships have been reset.

We really hope to have a wonderful forum and get past all of the formalities and nastiness and create a community we are all proud to be a part of. I stand by our motto and all members should too. If our motto or forum rules are not something you believe in then Beyond The Baby community is not for you. We only want members who want to be supportive.

Thanks so much everyone and I will keep you post with the official launch date of the forum!

Jen xx