The Queen gets hug. In public view. From commoner.

"Bet that's the first time a black woman ever put her arm around your Queen!" said my New York friend on the phone. Oh, come on, I said. Aren't you being slightly racist here, for a good East Coast Democrat? She's Queen of Jamaica, too, you know, and half the Caribbean, and Tuvalu and Papua New Guinea. I'll give you that Michelle Obama is the tallest black woman who ever embraced the Queen, but no way is she the first.

From here. There was a frisson that rippled through the media when Queen Elizabeth II was photographed at an official G20 function with US First Lady Michelle Obama, arms extended around each other's waist ... errr, given the difference in height, Obama actually reached around The Queen's shoulder, in a spontaneous BFF gesture.

It always helps to have the right touch, and the Obamas apparently do. ... The latter gesture — a near hug that caused the British press to drop its crumpets — was the touch heard ’round the world, rehashed and analyzed on television and the Internet as both a major breach of protocol and a kindly, inoffensive act.

The photographs of the event, and some of the tongue-in-cheek discussion that followed was a welcome antidote to the shameful removal of two Israeli cabinet ministers from public view by two fundamentalist Jewish publications this week.

Bizarre Media Phenoms: The Baby-Bump Watch

We at DJ! are not obsessed with finding ways to bump our website stats. First of all, we don't carry advertisements (YouTubes of X-rated condom commercials don't count). We only write about famous unintended pregnancies when it is relevant to an issue near and dear to us.

So it doesn't surprise us that the latest rumour circulating on the 'net concerns the sighting of a purported baby-bump on the concave surface of Michelle Obama's statuesque and zaftig body.

The best - and only place, in our humble opinion - to read about this non-event would be Wonkette's blogpost. From the combox:

"i saw one piece of so called evidence where she was viewed slightly from the side, and arrow pointed at her thigh declaring it a baby bump. now i know a lot of white folks these days aren’t used to seeing those on a woman, but no her thigh is not a baby about to pop out of her."

Exactly.

A tale of two grandmothers of note.

Matriarchs are not often mentioned in our posts because many of our blogs are inspired by current news items regarding women’s reproductive health and choices. So we are pleased to feature today two grandmothers who have made choices in support of their own daughters’ choices.

First up: Jaci Dalenberg of Ohio decided that she would be a surrogate mother and carry her daughter’s fetus to term. Kim already had two children was unable to become pregnant because of a hysterectomy.

A 56-year-old woman who gave birth to her triplet granddaughters a month ago is recovering from a Caesarean section and hopeful that one of the girls will be home from the hospital by Saturday. … Dalenberg said she wasn’t frightened to be pregnant at her age.

“I’ve always been really healthy. I did get medical clearance, including psychological testing,” Dalenberg told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “When we found out it was triplets, I did get really nervous for about four days, but that passed real soon.” …

Dalenberg, who has four daughters, ages 31 to 36, said she would have preferred to try natural
childbirth, but her doctor told her that was out of the question. “I’m fine. I feel great,” Dalenberg said. “Knowing the outcome, I would do it over again, but … I’m not going to do it again,” she said with a chuckle. “We wouldn’t do that to her again,” her daughter said, smiling.

And then, Marian Robinson who may become the most famous granny in the US.

When the Obamas do finally move into the White House in January, they will be determined to take their normal family life with them – and that includes Michelle Obama’s mother, who has reluctantly agreed to leave her home on Chicago’s South Side and move to Washington. The nation’s new First Granny is Marian Robinson, 71, who regularly looked after Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven, while their parents were campaigning. …

It is the first time in living memory that three generations of a presidential family have all moved to
Washington, although Mrs Robinson has not yet decided whether to take rooms in the White House or live nearby. Mrs Obama “begged” her mother to come with them. “The girls are going to need her, as part of their sense of stability,” she told Newsweek. “And what is true for my mom is that she does anything for us and her grandkids.

First posted at Birth Pangs.