100 LITTLE THINGS ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH, AND BEING A FIRST-TIME MOM In celebration of my 100th post on this wee blog I want to share 100 things I’ve learned in the last year about pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, breastfeeding, caring for a baby, and being a first-time mom. I make no apologies that this will be a long post, but I really hope it serves you… or at least makes you smile. Because motherhood, after all, really is the greatest joy and privilege. ABOUT PREGNANCY: 100 LITTLE THINGS ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH, AND BEING A FIRST-TIME MOM From:  http://adrielbooker.com/ ABOUT PREGNANCY: 1. Don’t worry about timing your baby “just right”. Most people take a few months to get pregnant anyway. 2. Forget #1 and do everything possible to not be in your third trimester in the middle of summer. Because seriously, nine months pregnant in the height of summer sucks. 3. Your  pregnant elephant ankles   will  return to normal. Just ...

Do I Have The Baby Blues Or Postpartum Depression? Pregnancy is filled with many emotions and sensations.  Not only are our bodies changing, but there are also wishes, hopes, plans and expectations that bombard us both from the inside and outside. Typically during pregnancy, appetite increases, there’s an eager anticipation of the new life to come, and  sleep is good  (except for the usual physical adjustments).  Normal doubts and worries can be sprinkled throughout the pregnancy experience, but they shouldn’t dominate our days or nights. When you ask yourself, “Do I emotionally feel like ‘me’ most of the day?,” “Am I able to sleep at night?,” “Am I generally looking forward to the baby coming?,” and “Am I feeling hungry?,” the answer should be “Yes.” Read the full article here . 

The Burnout We Can't Talk About: Parent Burnout New research demonstrates parental burnout has serious consequences. Robyn Koslowitz Ph.D. Parents Admitting to Burnout: That’s New New  research  published in  Clinical Psychological Science  suggests that parental burnout can have serious consequences. In two longitudinal studies, 918 and 822 participants were analyzed, respectively. The studies involved the completion of three online surveys per year. Results indicated that parental burnout has much more severe implications than were previously thought. Burnout was associated with escape ideation—the fantasy of simply leaving  parenting  and all its stressors—as well as with neglectful behavior and a "violence" category that included verbal and psychological  aggression  (e.g., threats or insults) and physical aggression (spanking or slapping) directed at children. The truly remarkable...

How Many of These Crazy Pregnancy Facts Did You Know? Deborah Wainwright 1. Africa has the most twins 2. Baby's can cry in the womb 3. The father of an unborn baby can feel pregnant too Read all the crazy facts here . 

Knowing the stages of neurological development can make you a better parent There are four main stages. Each has its own particular set of advancements and challenges.  PHILIP PERRY Don't you wish you could predict your child's behavior with 100 percent accuracy? Any realistic parent knows it's an impossible daydream, but an appealing one nonetheless. Kids will always surprise you. There are so many factors that go into behavior, not to mention the fact that internal and external forces can sometimes make kids act out of character. What you can do is come to understand the stages of their neurological development and what it means for their learning and behavior. Turns out, those parents who get a good grip on how we develop neurologically, are  better able to guide their children  toward positive outcomes. Here's a rundown of the stages of neurological development and what they mean for parenting.  Read the full article here .   

Holding Your Crying Baby isn’t Spoiling Them, You’re Just Meeting the Child’s Needs Many new parents are given conflicting advice. The baby should sleep on their stomach… wait no, the back or… the side? The baby should sleep with the mother, no, in their own crib, no, in their own room. Sometimes the advice comes from a trusted place, like a doctor or a family member. Most of the time it’s unsolicited from well-meaning people, who often chirp things like, “Enjoy this age while it lasts!” “Catch up on sleep when the baby sleeps,” and the cherry on top, “Stop holding the baby so much — you’re going to spoil them.” Read the full article here . 

You Don’t Have to Exhaust Yourself to Be a Good Mother By Laura Mazza I had never People always say to me "I don't know how you do it with three. I can't do it with one." And I’ll always say the first is your hardest. I had never been more shocked, more overwhelmed, or more sleep-deprived ever in my life. Yes, three is hard. But entering motherhood for the first time is like a tornado that swirls you in and spits you out. Those days are by far the hardest. But what I do know is this; the days of feeling like you’ve been kicked up the vagina and hungover are few. You can hug your baby, he can sleep in your arms, you can have a routine or not and nothing bad will come of it Some days you’ll shower, other days you’ll smell like an orangutan picking fleas off your head.  Read the full article   here .

The surprise side benefit of regulating your own emotions "Before I even notice, I’m already 10 steps into reacting with whatever issue is at hand with my kids. When I can remain calm, it certainly helps the situation as opposed to when I get heated up, which only makes things worse. It makes me sad to know that until now, I have not been a good example of emotional regulation at all. And it's so disheartening to see my kids doing things that I know they saw us do..... throw something, slam a door...." Sounds familiar, right? Regulating our emotions is at the heart of our ability to parent the way we’d like. In fact, it’s at the heart of most of the ways we trip ourselves up, from over-eating to procrastinating to fighting with our partner. It's just so easy to get hijacked by our emotions and find ourselves already ten steps down the low road. This very challenging task -- regulating our own emotions so that we can guide our child lovingly rather than ...

Sharing stories of miscarriage helps women grieve, fight for change By Elissa Strauss, CNN Miscarriage holds the unusual position of being both very common and routinely avoided in polite conversation. According to the American Pregnancy Association,  miscarriage occurs i n 10% to 25% of known pregnancies. This means anyone who knows at least 10 women of childbearing age -- a category that includes, hopefully, all of us -- most likely knows someone who has had a miscarriage. Nevertheless, many women skirt the topic, even with family and close friends. They don't want to be seen as the kind of woman who can't have kids. They don't want to admit that they had to miss work for a week in order to bleed out a failed pregnancy in bed. And they don't want to be the one to pierce the sunshine bubble that surrounds pregnancy in our cultural imagination. Continue reading

‘It’s not your fault.’ The extraordinary pain of an ordinary miscarriage. By Maggie O'Farrell iStock “It was nothing you did,” the nurse says. “It’s not your fault.” I am silent. I had not thought it might be. I look again at the image of the baby on the screen. There it is. Sitting up in its dark cave, as if waiting for something, as if on its best behavior. If I sit straight, it seems to be saying, no one will notice. I know how it should be, how it should look. This is my second pregnancy. I know the heartbeat should be there, flashing and flashing like a siren. So when the radiologist says that he’s sorry, the baby is dead, I already know. But I carry on staring at the monitor because there is some frail, furled part of me that is hoping there has been a mistake, that the heartbeat might suddenly appear, that the scanning machine might roll further and there it will be. I can’t look away, even when the radiologist starts talking again. I want to burn ...