Parenting
Doula doula whata? That was me, five months pregnant with SuperBoy. My childhood girlfriend (Hi, Andrea!) happened to hang out with me and catch up after a few years apart and mentioned a mutual childhood friend (Hi, Emily!) was a doula. Oh. That’s nice. A what? Her description sealed the deal for me: “a woman who helps you through labor.” Sealed as in, no thanks. I got this. My husband is smart and very sweet. He’s got this. We will just roll on into the hospital and have this baby, just like in the movies. Why would I want an old friend there? That’s just weird. It wasn’t until a little later in pregnancy that we chatted with other friends who had . . . wait for it . . . done Bradley Method classes and wait again . . . a midwife! I was again, so surprised and confident that we didn’t need methods or classes. We were signed up for the hospital classes. They’d tell us everything, right? Wrong again. Fast forward. Doulas at every birth. Bradley Method self-taught. Huge pushers of the Bradley Book and the Big Book of Birth. We’re like evangelizers for natural childbirth. Natural as in, no interventions or only as needed. Woe to those pregnant friends who were lured to our house for dinner. They always leave with a few books, a few enthusiastic chats about vaginas and cervixes and doulas. Poor friends. I wrote about our changing perspective and conversion on this…
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My belly cast that my sweet doulas & best friend did when I was 38 weeks with BabyLoves. I LOVE it and am so glad they did it. The kids helped me paint it, finally, many months post partum. But I have something heavier I want to share about today. I came across an online forum that had some negative comments about my blog, and people who I’m friends with that also blog. I will spare you the details, but some of what I read really hurt my feelings. But more importantly, made me think that maybe the people who have followed my journey of familyhood no longer think I’m writing anything of real value because I’m doing giveaways and working with brands. Gosh. I don’t know what to say. I really love that I can approach a company and ask for free quality products for my friends. I know that’s not every reader’s cup of tea. Totally get it. And my etsy shop and my sister’s organic skincare products? I do talk about them a lot. They’re both a big part of my life. And some of the comments talked about my Catholicism and how it’s masked or veiled, or I’m not trying to be up front about my beliefs because I’ll then get more sponsors. Confused about this. My ad bars on the side? They’re friends of mine. People who are mostly in the natural parenting world, helping families and moms. I charge a very small fee (compared…
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I recently took stock in all that I’ve written on the blog over the past 3.5 years to see if there was good material for a book. I mean, the very original idea that a mommy blogger who’s a crunchy Catholic could schmoosh her posts into a book. Well, 170 pages of posts that generally fall under “parenting” had me convinced I am the next behavioral expert. Until I started re-reading it all. Yes, there are a few gems in there, but . . . big boy battles, 2 under 2, 3 under 5, taming your toddler’s tantrums, feeling powerless with your preschooler, power parenting: why force & fear don’t work, helping emotional boy find his voice & ears, clearly I’m just another mom with limited knowledge, time, energy, and yet unlimited opinions. Book may have to take a different form. But I digress. Right now we’re dealing with the fine line between threats and explained consequences with our budding four year old boy. Mr. SuperPants SuperBoy. He’s so sweet until he’s terrible. He loves to take directions until he doesn’t. He is never cross until he’s crossed. You know how it is. I’ve found a few things work and don’t work with his temperament. His sister’s already shaping up to be a completely different person (shocker!) with acute needs of her own. I share not because I’m an expert but because maybe your child is similarly situated and what is working for us might work for you. Or might…
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I have written so many posts on sleep. Why? Because it’s what we all dream about as moms, right? Dream // dread // fear // desiresodeeply. Sleep sampler // infant -12 months Toddler sleep & big boy wakes Ousting the co-sleeper (sorta) Why co-sleep? Toddler sleep night trouble 12 steps to recovering your humanity when you’re a wreck When to stop night nursing When your infant screams and screams and you do too to name a few. Generally, we’re in the attachment parenting group. We follow Dr. Sears on most things. We don’t do cry it out with babies. Once our kiddos hit 12 months, we night wean and gently work on letting them cry for a few minutes alone before comforting them, then letting them cry a little again. You’re thinking: SHE’S CRAZY. Combined with: WHO HAS TIME FOR THIS??? And I can only laugh and agree I’m crazy. And yet, somehow, it has worked so far for our family. My big kids screamfightplay if I’m nursing the baby down for his nap. They don’t get screen time because I’m (crazy) and (not nice) not a huge fan. They learn to deal with each other and are old enough to be left unsupervised a room away from me for a little while. They learn to negotiate, freak out, and come and bother me 53 times and be told again and again to work it out. I follow the same basic pattern with my babies for sleep that doesn’t involve sleep training.…
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Dear fellow mother, You are not defined by your children. Not the number of them. Not the age gap between them. Not their clothing choices. Not the state of their hygiene. Not the contents of their bowl in the morning. Not by how messy their hair is and how they rip out their pony tail holders all the time. You are not defined by your child’s naughty almost humorous meltdown in front of your entire group of older adult guests at a fundraiser. You are not defined by your baby’s eczema on his face that looked as if you’ve never lotioned him up before. You are not defined by your daughter’s low-weight gain, or petite status that looks as if you’re not feeding her enough. You are not defined by your son’s early speech, his quick ability with words, his apparent cleverness that also translates to terrible difficulty with not getting his way (long way to say tantrums). Nor are you defined by your baby’s big size and early movement, Mr. Plank, Mr. Pushup at 4 months, Mr. Scoot Around the Room on his Tummy. You are not defined by your once fashionable eye glasses that are bent and greased out of proportion. You are not defined by your “ironing pile” as in “grab it and quickly iron it before you need it pile” that is shuttered behind a closet door. You are not defined by your garden that never produced herbs this year, or its poorly produced tomatoes. You are…
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My poor little kiddos. The other week we went out of the house and it was a real testament to my motherhood. Did you see the title? That may have tipped you off to where this is going. (We don’t leave all that often, for good reason.) We were at the apple orchard with a group of mama friends, ladies chatting away, and SuperBoy was with his best little buddy, so they were just slipping in and out of tractors, hay mazes, apple trees. I was keeping a vague eye on SweetPea. She’s so wildly adventuresome that I forget she’s not even two and a half. She was puttering around. I had the baby in the carrier and I even felt so brazen as to be balancing an apple cider in one hand and my Lily Jade in another. Oh, me? Just a casual mom of three. I didn’t even bring my stroller today. The kids? Oh, they’re great. I’m so free-range. I’m sure they’re happily organically playing somewhere. She bravely traipsed up one slide and whooshed down. BAM. It was too steep a drop off from the slide to the ground and she whacked her little bum so hard. Down goes the bag, down goes my cider, and I bend over to check for injury. You see, I was standing right there. Right at the bottom of the slide, ushering her, encouraging her. Not spotting her. Way to go, w-w-m (see title? Got it? Good.) Well she recovered and we…
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