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Laurie Ann Thompson

Laurie Thompson

Write what you know

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This is an arti­cle in which I got to be my own expert. My hus­band and I have had plen­ty of expe­ri­ence trav­el­ing with our two small chil­dren. Many of our friends and fam­i­ly think we’re crazy (and some of our trips have occa­sion­al­ly bor­dered on insan­i­ty), but we love hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expose them to new things. I’m con­fi­dent it is good for their devel­op­ment, even if they’re too young to remem­ber the actu­al experiences.

“Hol­i­day trav­el with babies and tod­dlers”, Par­entMap, Decem­ber 2005

Decisions, decisions

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BabyMap runs a reg­u­lar col­umn called Deci­sion Digest, where they sum­ma­rize all sides of impor­tant issues that expec­tant and new par­ents face. In this issue, I tack­led two ques­tions: whether to bank cord blood for per­son­al use, and using cloth dia­pers ver­sus disposables.

“Deci­sion digest — Pri­vate cord blood bank­ing and dia­pers”, BabyMap, Fall/Winter 2005–2006

Unite for Children. Unite against AIDS.

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Unite for Chil­dren, Unite against AIDS is a glob­al Cam­paign to alert the world to the fact that chil­dren are miss­ing from the glob­al AIDS agen­da. It pro­vides a plat­form for urgent and sus­tained pro­grams, advo­ca­cy and fundrais­ing to lim­it the impact of HIV/AIDS on chil­dren and help halt the spread of the dis­ease. Pol­i­cy­mak­ers and the glob­al pub­lic must become aware that AIDS not only affect adults, but is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing affect on chil­dren through­out the world. Please find out more at http://www.unicef.org/uniteforchildren/index.html.

Keeping love alive after baby arrives

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Here’s one where I have some hands-on expe­ri­ence — main­tain­ing a healthy mar­riage after kids join the fam­i­ly. My extra­or­di­nary hus­band and I will cel­e­brate our 10th anniver­sary this year. We make time to care for each oth­er and our rela­tion­ship, as well as for our two young children.


“Keep­ing love alive after baby arrives”, Par­entMap, Sep­tem­ber 2005, pages 13–14

Book Review — Swimming with Maya

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I picked up this book because the pic­ture on the cov­er looks like my own daugh­ter. When I read the back notes and learned that she was dead, I quick­ly put it back down. I didn’t want to read about Eleanor Vincent’s dev­as­tat­ing loss. For some rea­son, though, I felt com­pelled to try to com­pre­hend her experience.

What I found was indeed dis­tress­ing, but inspi­ra­tional at the same time. The book is in many ways a post­mortem trib­ute to Vincent’s daugh­ter and an explo­ration of the heal­ing effects of organ dona­tion. Tak­en in its entire­ty, how­ev­er, this book is real­ly about a jour­ney through the process of heal­ing from a life­time of psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­mas. The extreme grief over her daughter’s sud­den death and the strug­gle to cope with it lead Vin­cent down buried paths of pain going all the way back to her child­hood. She emerges trans­formed. She lost her daugh­ter, but there­in found her­self, and we can’t help but applaud her success.

Jogging? Ugh.

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I love hik­ing, but my bike has been parked for years and jog­ging has nev­er been my thing. To look at me is to clear­ly see that I am not a great author­i­ty on fit­ness. Nev­er­the­less, I accept­ed an assign­ment for an arti­cle on exer­cis­ing out­doors with a child under two. Yes, I actu­al­ly got out the sneak­ers and went jog­ging for this one, all in the name of research. I broke a sweat but had a good time. If you look close­ly, you can see I also took the photo.

“Get out and get fit — with your baby”, Par­entMap, July 2005, page 13

A little stretch

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All of the arti­cles I’ve writ­ten before this one have been on top­ics that I already knew some­thing about or have had some first­hand expe­ri­ence with. Not this one! It was real­ly fun to do, though. Most of the research came from inter­views, so at first I was a lit­tle ner­vous. Every­body I talked to was so help­ful and inspir­ing, how­ev­er, that now I look for­ward to interviewing.

“Young teens need prac­tice man­ag­ing mon­ey”, Par­entMap, June 2005, pages 19–20

Tiny article, but extremely important

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Here is a very short arti­cle about a top­ic I am quite pas­sion­ate about, umbil­i­cal cord blood. Sev­er­al major hos­pi­tals in our area have teamed with the blood bank to col­lect and store the stem-cell rich cord blood and donate it to indi­vid­u­als in need through a nation­al reg­istry. Now some­thing that is typ­i­cal­ly dis­card­ed can instead save lives — magnificent.

“Donate cord blood and save a life”, BabyMap, Spring/Summer 2005, page 4

[Note: Because this ran in the Post­ings sec­tion, it was not archived on the Par­entMap web site, so there is no link to an online ver­sion. Sorry!]

A little flattery

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It’s always nice to receive com­pli­ments on your work. After doing the arti­cle and school pro­files for Judy’s Book Greater Seat­tle, Liesel Pol­lvogt wrote:

Thanks Laurie–you did an *awe­some* job on these. I was impressed with your quick turn-around, qual­i­ty of writ­ing, and how you instant­ly “got” what this was all about and were able to get start­ed with­out a bunch of ques­tions. Thanks again for your hard work and quick turn-around on this! There may well be work in the future if all goes well!

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