Video Calling Lets Mom Feel Like She’s Home

Last year, one of my team members went though a challenging time. Stan’s wife, Annie, was having a difficult pregnancy and needed to be hospitalized with complete bed rest. This meant Annie would miss out on seeing her three other children for almost a month, with the exception of short hospital visits. Stan found a great solution using our webcams – during breakfast each morning, Stan set up his laptop and webcam at the breakfast table so Annie could see and hear the kids, as well as talk to them. Nightly bedtime stories were also told via video calls. The entire experience made Annie feel like she was still a part of the everyday routine even though she was stuck in the hospital.

In Annie’s own words:

When we found out that I was going to be hospitalized for a few weeks, I was sad – I have never been away from my family for an extended period of time. Since the hospital had an Internet connection and I could use my laptop, Stan suggested that we use a webcam to video call.

Having webcam time to look forward to with the children (and my husband) was such a morale boost for me while I was hospitalized – it gave me something to look forward to each day. In particular, I enjoyed:

    • Participating in silly breakfast chatter
    • Seeing the latest square dance choreography that my son learned in his physical education class
    • Giving feedback to my little girls on the outfits they’d picked for school the next day…
    • Watching my kids play Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii
    • Playing “verses” with my family (Skype games: checkers, battleship)
    • Listening to the children read bedtime stories to me at night
    • Saying goodnight before bed
    • And finally, I loved seeing their smiles.

 

Annie, Stan and the kids said hello to the newest member of their family, Melody Faith (a future webcam user), on January 15, 2009. Congratulations!

Author

Vice President, Internet Communications

2 comments

  • Granted, the 9000 and Quickcam Pro for laptops are great cameras. 2.0MP is nice. But they have been here for some time now. Just when is Logitech going to realize it is 2009, not 1999? Still screens with these cameras is great. video, on the other hand, not so much. Logitech needs to anouce the next evolution for these cameras. Higher frame rates and sharper imaging. People will pay twice the price for twice the performance.

    WHEN are we going to see these new cameras? “People want to know”, to coin a phrase.

  • I love the story. I always hate being away from my kids when I go out of town. I will have to look into webcams.

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