Baby, You've
Got Mail
By Jenny Spinner, FamilyPC Web
Exclusive
Welcome to the World Wide Maternity
Ward, where smiles abound and all the diapers are
fresh.
Here, families and friends can greet
their new bundles of joy without leaving home,
courtesy of online birth announcement services offered
by a growing number of hospitals and private Web
companies.
"Moms are clamoring for
it," says Laura A. Hopkins, senior district
manager for WebNursery,
a company that takes in-hospital photos and posts them
on the Web for loved ones to enjoy. Hospitals, in
order to compete in the maternity market, are
clamoring for it too, Hopkins says.
But it's also just the nature of the
event, says Lori Rosteck, of Central Baptist Hospital
in Lexington, Ky. "Whenever anything exciting
happens to a family, they want to share it as soon as
possible," she says.
At Baby
Central, Central Baptist's site for online babies,
visitors not only can see pictures of the wee ones but
can also leave messages for baby and parents. A
running log of messages appears under the photo.
Parents take a hard copy of their baby's page home as
a keepsake. Hits at the hospital's site increased 100
percent in the first six months of Baby Central's
inception.
"It weighed in our decision to
use that hospital," says Alan Cornett, whose wife
Traci gave birth to a baby girl at Central Baptist in
February. "When I did my e-mail announcing the
birth, I was able to include the link to the
hospital's Web site."
The Cornetts' friend Kathy Treml
says she loved leaving messages. "They set it up
right away, and soon you could see what everyone else
was posting to the baby."
Tony and Dana Mancuso learned about
Carle Foundation's Web
Babies in Lamaze class at the Urbana, Ill.,
hospital. When the Mancuso's baby girl was born in
March, hospital staff took five digital photos, then
let the couple choose two to post. The couple got to
keep the disk with the pictures on it.
"We tried to e-mail pictures,
but some people had trouble downloading and opening
them in the right program," says Tony. "The
hospital site worked for everyone."
A more elaborate service, BabyPressConference.com,
offers weekly updates for friends and family
throughout pregnancy, e-mails birth announcements, and
features a live interactive Internet broadcast that
parents can set up before the mother leaves the
hospital. And it's free. The company's site lists the
hospitals that carry their service.
Parents generally must sign a waiver
permitting their baby's picture to be posted. Because
of security concerns, Rosteck says she had difficulty
pitching the Web concept to maternity staff members at
Central Baptist. What helped change their minds was
the fact that no last names are posted, and someone
screens messages for identifying information and
off-color remarks. At WebNursery, parents can opt to
assign a password to their baby's Web page, she says,
and about 25 percent do.
If your hospital doesn't offer
online birth announcements, you can still get your
baby online by going online yourself. Most such
cybernurseries charge from $10 to $100, with varying
degrees of security.
Babies
Online doesn't charge anything for its service,
and is the best deal we found. You can post three
photos, update your colorful page with photos every 30
days for as long as you want, and secure your page
with a password. You can even record your baby's coos
and play them for your guests while they admire your
pride and joy. Or, alternatively, you can choose
background music.
BabyLounge.com
allows you to post one picture at no charge or order
other more elaborate packages that cost from $50-$100.
The basic package at Stork-Online
is $34.95 and gets you a choice of Web site designs
and the opportunity to post the baby's vitals, a
personal message, five photos, and photo captions.
Your page stays up for 30 days.
The Millennium Package at BabyVillage.com
allows you to post seven photos for two months and buy
additional postcard announcements for old-fashioned
mailings, all for $20 plus 75 cents per postcard.
MyFootprints.com
offers six pages, six photos, and six months of
hosting for $39.95. MyBabyPix.com
charges $75 for 10 photos that stay up for six months
or $100 for 16 photos that remain online for a year.
If you don't want anything fancy,
just the thrill of seeing your baby's name on the Web,
Baby Bag Online
offers a running list of basic announcements that
include the parents' and baby's names, including last
names. There, you can also link to information on how
to receive an official White House congrats
card signed by the President and First Lady.
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