With just eight weeks left to go, I find myself thinking a lot about the last stage of pregnancy–birth. It’s the last hurdle to jump before we get to meet our new little one, and while I’m over-the-moon-excited, I’m also beginning to get really nervous all over again. Fortunately, we have the most compassionate and loving prenatal care that we could possibly wish for in our midwives, and with their support I’m eagerly anticipating our upcoming home birth. Continue reading
It’s very, very early in the morning. My husband and I are sitting in our living room, quietly scrolling through our phones. Despite our best efforts to stay positive, cheerful and productive, we have had extraordinarily trying days. We are emotionally and physically wiped.
Part of the stress, I realize, comes from having to pretend that everything is A-okay all freaking day. It’s absolutely not. We’re dealing with work and school and family and finances and self-doubt and clutter and all kinds of other stuff too. I realized today what I needed to do was just sit with the negative feelings, because I was wasting a lot of emotional energy trying to avoid what most people I knew would inevitably say. Continue reading
I don’t know if it’s that I’m weeks away from my thirtieth birthday, or that I’m heavily pregnant with my second child, but I feel my adulthood keenly. When I was 25 years old and expecting my daughter, I felt like I was stepping into this new and exciting phase of my life. This time around, I feel settled, tired, and a bit sore. Or, to quote Bilbo Baggins: “thin, sort of stretched—like butter scraped over too much bread.” Continue reading
Twelve weeks to go.
Something about hitting this particular milestone feels super-significant to me. It isn’t just that, by most reckonings, 28 weeks is the start of the third trimester (although that is certainly in the back of my mind too). It just suddenly feels like such a small amount of time. Continue reading
My Mother’s Day started off in the most achingly beautiful way with a text message from my oldest step-daughter, Kayla. She sent me “Happy mother’s day. I love and appreciate you for everything I hope your sunday is awesome!!”
As I read the message over and over, I was transported back to what it felt like to hold her as she dozed off, still only three or four years old. I actually don’t remember how old my girls were when we first met. I just remember being so impressed with, and terrified of, these little tiny people. Continue reading
Every parent in every generation has a different set of tools that they rely upon, and well, technology hasn’t always been kind parents in the 21st-century. Because of the prevalence that screens and other advances have in our lives, we’ve become arguably more disconnected from each other than ever before. However, I can’t pretend that it also hasn’t made my life easier in a lot of really small ways. I catch myself using the same little hacks over and over again to make life a bit more manageable, and they’ve become nearly indispensable in the way I raise my kids. So I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to my top five tech-hacks that make parenting a tiny bit easier.
I love a good sale, especially when it’s on something that my family really, really needs. So I had to pop online to share the amazing offer that’s going on for one of my favorite businesses, Cord Blood Registry.
Cord Blood Registry, or CBR, has been around for quite some time. They’re the oldest and most respected cord blood banking system around, with over 800,000 samples stored. When I had Phoenix, almost four years ago, they were really the only show in town. I had never heard of cord blood banking before, and once I understood what it was, I knew it was something I wanted to do for my newborn baby.
Continue readingI am a naturally affectionate person, and I love my kids like you wouldn’t believe. I was the baby of my family—the youngest out of all my grandmother’s grandchildren—so I never grew up around really little kids (and definitely wasn’t in charge of caring for any of them). So when I had my daughter I was over the moon with affection and oxytocin. I wanted to snuggle her non-stop and smell her little baby head. I knew I would be firm, but gentle. I would listen to her. I would be compassionate and engaged.
As the saying goes…everyone’s a great parent until they have kids.
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Anyone who knows me knows that I do not cook. I just don’t. It’s ironic, really, because for a really really really long time I wanted to open a restaurant. I love and appreciate food, I really do. I’m just…lazy. Plus, I married someone who cooks really well, and if I look pathetic enough, he’ll mostly give in and feed me. Continue reading
Mommy. Mommy. My head hurts. My knee hurts. My elbow. Mommy. I’m so sorry, Mommy. I don’t feel good. Mommy, it hurrrtttts! No, Mommy, I don’t want it! No, ohhh, my diaper…Mommy.
This has been our soundtrack. For weeks. Not days, weeks. Our little Phoenix came down with the flu a week after the New Year. Fine, we said. She’ll get sick. That’s what happens in school. You know little kids and their germs, right? I even blamed myself, because I had been unsure about whether to get her the flu shot due to all the controversy and some rather vehement opinions from the grandparents.
After two weeks at home, she was excited to go back to school, see her teachers and friends, and get back into her routine. For six days. By the end of the sixth day, she was running a temperature, and the next morning, we were back at the pediatrician. This time, the likely diagnosis is strep. Continue reading
