Did you Tender Cargo was recently honored as a Medela Certified Nursing Center?
Come visit our physical location “The Nurture Center” for shopping and breastfeeding support. This year marks our Eleventh Anniversary of helping local parents at this same location. Certified Nursing Centers have an especially large selection of Medela products, including breast pumps for sale and for rent,  pump accessories, and pump replacement parts.
We sell nursing bras by Medela and many other brands, including hard to find sizes like extra large cups or narrow band sizes, and we are happy to be your certified bra fitting experts! We have a trade-in program to take back old, broken breastpumps and give you credit to buy a new pump in style advanced. We have an IBCLC lactation consultant on staff and offer various support groups and classes related to breastfeeding, such as “preparing to go back to work” or “transitioning to solid foods”

Driving here? The Center is less than 5 minutes from freeway 680 as it passes through Walnut Creek. We are 15 minutes from most of Berkeley and Oakland, come on highway 24 through the Caldecott Tunnel. The Nurture Center is at the Central Lafayette exit.  Our next door neighbors are Wine Thieves and Jack in the Box. suit yourself! We are open 7 days a week so if you ever have an emergency where your power adapter dies or your puppy chewed up the pump tubes or maybe you lost your car lighter power cord or some  little valves and membranes, just come right over, we always keep those items in good supply. Of course we do ship nationwide, including express overnight shipments but really, if you’re in the California Bay Area, come to the local store and get your Medela parts even faster! Besides, there is a lot of great baby gear to browse while you’re here, and we have a cozy room to nurse and weigh your little one while you visit.

We know it is confusing that the TenderCargo.com store location uses a different name! See the official Medela.com link about our new status as a Certified Nursing Center, which shows it both ways. www.medelabreastfeedingus.com/for-expectant-mothers/certified-nursing-center-tender-cargo

Psst – sneak a look inside our store!

Visiting the San Fransisco Area? We’re open 7 days a week, click for the map.

These photos are from the front of the store, where the BumGenius diapers and Medela gear goes. We are a Medela Certified Nursing Center and pump rental station. And yes, we have Bumgenius 4.0, one-size organic elemental diapers, Flip, and Econobum diapers all for sale in-person at this location. simply handling the diapers should help you determine if you prefer snaps or velcro. Of course if you aren’t coming by, all the cloth diapers are all available online.

A Guinness World Record will be set this week for most cloth diapers changed at the same time – thousands participating worldwide in celebration of Earth Day and choosing reusable products.

Cloth diapers have come a long way in the past ten years. An event, called the Great Cloth Diaper Change 2011 is creating buzz in North America and all over the world, will take place on Saturday, April 23, 2011. The Great Cloth Diaper Change (http://www.greatclothdiaperchange.com) will set a Guinness World Record for the most cloth diapers ever changed simultaneously.

Link to the full Press Release

Each local event is unique, with many hosts planning fun family activities for parents, friends and older siblings, leading up to the specific “change” time. You won’t want to miss the local action in Lafayette! Organizer Christine Alonso of The Nurture Center is eager to be a part of setting a Guinness World Record and letting the world know that cloth diapering rocks. The East Bay event is hosted by the Nurture Center and being held at Our Saviors Lutheran Church at 1035 Carol Rd in Lafayette California.

Online registration for this and all other SF Bay Area event locations is available at this link .

Pre-registration is preferred but not required.

Click this link for the PDF of the full press release ASTM Moves Closer to Developing Standard for Baby Slings Tender Cargo store owner Christine Alonso is a board member of The Baby Carrier Industry Alliance and a Berkeley California mom of 3.

The Baby Carrier Industry Alliance (BCIA) today applauded the efforts of all stakeholders involved in the three year effort that brought the first voluntary safety standard for sling-style carriers to ballot last month. When finalized later this year, the standard will join those for cribs, strollers, hand-held infant carriers (car seats), bouncer seats, play yards and other durable nursery products as an effective way to provide the public with safer products.

The standards process, initiated by a group of sling manufacturers comprised of BCIA members, is administered by ASTM International, one of the largest voluntary standards development organizations in the world. In addition to BCIA, other stakeholders involved in the standards process include the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Health Canada, Juvenile Products Manufacturing Association (JPMA), consumer groups (including Consumers Union, Kids in Danger and Consumer Federation of America), testing labs, retailers and manufacturers.

The new sling carrier standard will provide manufacturers with expert engineering and human factors guidance on how to design safer products based on industry best practices. In addition, it will offer recommendations on instructions and warnings for the safe use of sling carriers.
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BCIA reminds parents and caregivers that the practice of babywearing keeps babies in the safest place possible, in a parent’s arms with baby’s face visible to the carrying adult. For additional information on babywearing safety, please visit the BCIA website at http://www.babycarrierindustryalliance.org.

Click this link for the PDF of the full press release ASTM Moves Closer to Developing Standard for Baby Slings.

Join us the morning of April 23rd 2011 to set the world record for most cloth diapers changed at one time. This is an international event with several California Bay Area locations. Read more here and pre-register online.

The Great Cloth diaper change is a worldwide event. Tender Cargo is hosting one location at our East Bay store “The Nurture Center” in Lafayette CA. The event is free to attend but we need a participant count to ensure enough space. Guinness ™ requires 25 people at a minimum for every location. Also a $1 donation to the Real Diaper Association (501c3 nonprofit organization) is requested.

We will need volunteers to observe and certify the event for Guinness. Also volunteers to spread the word and invite others to join the fun.

For northern California locals the short signup link to  post in facebook, twitter, or email is   http://bit.ly/norcalpreregform

For information on locations in any other region, link to http://greatclothdiaperchange.com/

I am saddened today to hear that Mothering Magazine will not be able to print anymore, ending they 34-year run due to the down economy and the decline of print media in general.

They posted an open letter today here explaining today that their last printed issue was actually December 2010 and their last web-published issue is March 2011.

In 2009, magazine subscriptions saw their steepest decline in 40 years.

The venerable magazines Gourmet and Reader’s Digest ceased publication.

After three years of decline in advertising sales, subscription orders, and newsstand sales, with the March–April 2011 issue we saw our ad sales drop to their lowest point in 10 years.

In a single year, from March 2010 to March 2011, we lost one-third of our print advertisers.

I am surprised to hear, though maybe I shouldn’t be, that they would lose so much money even in a web-only magazine situation. They are ending the digital version of the magazine because even with trimming all the costs of physical printing and distribution, it would be prohibitively expensive for their staff to put together an online edition

I am personally interested in this story as one of those remaining advertisers, having signed a contract for every issue in 2011 to run a 1/3 page advertisement for this store. Time to go double-check the paperwork.

Mothering.com will move forward with their huge forums, their blogs and articles and resources, all of which is good news for the natural parenting community, especially pregnant and nursing moms who rely on Mothering for information and social support in those crucial times.

Here we are at the east bay birth and baby fair (san fransisco area) . I’m behind the camera, and pictured at the booth are the retail store manager and our lactation consultant (IBCLC). Did you know we were recently honored as a 2010 Medela Certified Nursing Center?

Our Display at the Oakland Birth and Baby Fair

I just received word of this through a local moms group, and wanted to pass it along for other breastfeeding / breastpumping moms in the CA Bay Area. If you feel inspired to find out more, here is the contact info:

“The Bay Area Breast Milk Co-Op is in need of local milk donors. If you have extra milk that you would like to donate, please email bethrago@yahoo.com Regular donations and one-time bulk donations accepted. Our needy babies are in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland.

TenderCargo.com was cited as a resource on eHow for how to breastfeed in plublic

We are registered members of the Real Diaper Organization, a nonprofit that supports cloth diapering awareness, activism, and education. They have great lines like “changing the world – one diaper at a time” “real diapers for real babies” . The image above from their latest campaign links to their site, which has a wealth of articles and ideas. The image below points to the cloth diapering section of our store.

San Fransisco bay area people, we set up a donation bin today in the Nurture Center store to collect diapers and wipes for a lovely organization called Help a Mother Out.  See a link here for the donation stations.

Help A Mother Out (HAMO) was formed in the spring of 2009 in reaction to media reports about the economic crisis’s effect on young children, families, and mothers, in particular the growing numbers of homeless children and families in California. Reaching out to San Francisco Bay Area shelters, cofounders Lisa Truong and Rachel Fudge learned that the number-one need was not baby blankets, clothing, or even food but diapers—which are not covered under social-safety net programs like WIC or food stamps.

The donation bin is ready now at The Nurture Center, 3399 Mt Diablo blvd, Lafayette Ca 94549. weekday hours are 9:30-5:30, saturday 10-5 sunday 11-3.