27 posts tagged “motherhood”

I recently wrote an email to a newly married young woman who is expecting her first. I compiled a bunch of links for her to look over. I thought you might enjoy looking over the list too.

Fertility Awareness / Natural Family Planning
"Taking Charge of Your Fertility" by Toni Weschler
This book completely opened a whole new world for me as far as what my family planning options were. Highly recommended reading. It's a wonderful introduction to world of Fertility Awareness (Natural Family Planning).

Couple to Couple League
This is a Catholic organization that trains teaching couples to teach classes on Natural Family Planning (NFP). My husband and I took a class through them. Very informative and helpful. Again, highly recommended.

Natural Family Planning International, Inc.
When I took the NFP course they used the book "The Art of Natural Family Planning" by John and Shelia Kippley. CCLI no longer uses that exact text, and the Kippleys have gone on to form a new NFP organization (the above link). This site is good because the entire how-to book for learning NFP is free on their website (in PDF format). What I like about their approach to NFP is it is very comprehensive and gives you lots of options for figuring out your fertile/infertile days based on your  personal history, but all the options can be confusing. The Toni Weschler approach is much more simple, but less flexible.

Fertility Awareness on Wikipedia
Good general overview of Fertility Awareness/Natural Family Planning.

Birth Control
Contraception Resource Info
Great site that has lots of VERY ACCURATE and COMPREHENSIVE information on all thing contraception related. I've cross referenced information I've found on this site with lots of other resources and found it wonderful resource. There is stuff on hormonal birth control, IUD's, various barrier methods and various natural methods.

A Condensation of Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions? by Randy Alcorn
Basically, I wish someone had told me this a long time ago. It's up to you to read it, fact check, etc. and decide the morality of the situation, but I do want you to have the information. You can find some of my thoughts on this with lots of other links here:  Informed Consent?

Some Subtle Effects of the Birth Control Culture
Some wonderful thoughts analyzing how the wide use of birth control has affected our culture's view of children and family size.

Birth and Newborns
Preventing PPD: Summary of the plan
I had postpartum depression (PPD) after my first and managed to avoid it after my second and third. Implementing a lot of the strategies found at the above link was a large reason why I did much better in later pregnancies. I wrote some more thoughts about this here: Link Love: Ask Moxie: Preventing PPD

Kellymom
A great breastfeeding resource.

My (unsolicited) Advice on Bunches of Baby Things
As the title says, this a bunch of my unsolicited advice. Enjoy!

Parenting
Raising Godly Tomatoes
This book has been hugely helpful to me in figuring out what in the world I'm doing with this whole parenting thing. You can read the whole book online for free. I wrote a review after first reading it here: Parenting Lots of Little Ones

There are more parenting resources I could send you, but a lot of that stuff kicks in after the first year. So, I'm just sending you my favorite for now.

Life as a Stay-At-Home-Mom (SAHM)
Suburban CEO
Some wonderful thoughts on finding happiness and fulfillment in staying home and being a mother and wife in a society that teaches us that kind of life is not valuable, fulfilling or happy.

Why Modern Motherhood is So Much Harder than it Ought to Be
Some more thoughts analyzing the frustrations many modern women go through as we transition to being a SAHM, but from a more Christian perspective.

I had postpartum depression (PPD) after the birth of my oldest. It was rough. For a while I really didn't realize what was going on. It was so hard for me to even admit I was depressed in the middle of what seemed like should be such joy. This was the child I had received after a three year journey of infertility. How could I not be happy? On top of that, most people around me seemed to have little idea of how to help me, and I certainly had no idea while I was in the thick of it how to help myself. I thankfully had an OB that recognized my struggle without me having to ask and prescribed some meds to help me get out of the fog.

When I had my second I was really fearful that this would happen all over again. That's around the time I found the blog Ask Moxie and her plan for preventing postpartum depression. As she herself says there's truly no 100% "preventing" postpartum depression, but she does give some wonderful advice about ways to help you hedge your bets against getting postpartum depression. This advice really helped me to avoid PPD after the birth of my second and third (however I admit I did have a really rough time with the pregnancy of my third which happened at four months postpartum, but that's another story). Below is her summary of the plan:

AskMoxie

Preventing PPD: Summary of the plan

A few people have asked me to write about the plan I made and followed to prevent post-partum depression (a.k.a. post-natal depression or PND). I have had regular depression off and on since I was a teenager, and have a strong family history of it. I was quite depressed during my first pregnancy (and mildly depressed during my second) and was terrified of developing PPD. So I set out to figure out and do whatever I could to prevent PPD. Some of it I researched and planned, and some of it was just stuff I fell backwards into, but I never had any PPD (I, of course, had major hormonal mood swings the first few weeks, but those aren't PPD).

I could honestly write a book about this, so there's no way it will fit into one post. I'm thinking it'll probably take me half a dozen or so posts to put up the basics.

Please note that I'm not guaranteeing that doing all the things in my plan will prevent PPD, but if you do all of them you'll have created a support system for yourself that will act as a safety net so if you do develop PPD those people will be able to help you get treated ASAP.

Here's the outline of what I did, and what I'll talk about in my posts on this:

1. Setting yourself up for a Good birth (my definition of Good is pretty simple)
2. Getting your feeding support in place before you give birth
3. Getting your other support in place for the first few months
4. Finding your tribe
5. Taking care of yourself physically
6. Taking care of yourself emotionally
7. Staying afloat during really rough waters

Source: Ask Moxie: Preventing PPD: Summary of the Plan

She has an alternate version in PDF on her site, but I truly love this version where she goes in-depth on each topic linked. Well worth the read. I've passed her advice on via emails and comments, but I thought I would also send her a little link love via my blog, because her advice on postpartum depression has such a warm place in my heart. 

The family seems to be passing around this lovely throw up stomach bug. Yesterday night my husband was back and forth out of bed all night visiting the bathroom. Today he told me that his whole day he felt like he was going to throw up. It was all I could muster not to share with him just how much I could relate to that feeling. Try all day everyday for three months. But I was kind and sympathetic.

Today my oldest took a longer than usual nap and announced his wake up by yelling "I spit up on the bed, Mommy." I don't think I'm sick (yet), but I sure did feel like I was going to "spit up" myself cleaning all that up. Hopefully this won't last very long.

My children in general are what most would call "good sleepers." From the one-year-old to the four-year-old, they all sleep through the night in their own rooms. Every afternoon they all take a nap at the same time. I'm not entirely sure if this is something I've influenced through parenting, or if it's just in the genes. Perhaps some combination of both. Just in case I've managed to stumble upon some things I've done which may have helped my children sleep better, here are some of my practices and philosophies on sleep. As always feel free to take or leave any of the thoughts you read here and do what works best for your family.

I don't sleep train. Now, I may be training them in my own way, but I've never done a "by the numbers" style of little by little getting my children to sleep through the night. It's a lot more fluid and intuitive for me.

For newborns I don't care where you sleep as long as you sleep. I would hope it goes without saying that I don't care where a newborn sleeps as long as it is a safe place, but there I said it. What I mean is that I place a greater premium on developing sleep rhythms rather than the habit of sleeping in a certain place. I don't deliberately try to get them to sleep in non-traditional places, I just don't stress over them not sleeping in their crib, cradle or wherever they're "supposed" to be sleeping. All my children spent most of their early months sleeping in a Fisher-Price cradle swing. God bless the designers of that wonderful contraption.

I think sleep begets sleep. I've never been a fan of the philosophy that says you should keep a baby or young child up during the day to help them sleep at night. I think if you let a child get the sleep they need during the day, they will naturally find the normal human rhythm of mostly sleeping at night and mostly being awake during the day. Although I have been known to try to keep a child awake for a fifteen minute car ride until we get home for nap time.

We use comfort objects. All my kids have been big fans of pacifiers and blankets. I'm not necessarily endorsing or denouncing their use. I understand there are pros and cons regarding the use of comfort objects. I'm just saying this is what we do, and it may have contributed to my kids developing sleep habits that are easier on mommy.  

We co-sleep. I freely admit that my thoughts on co-sleeping entirely revolve around finding what practices help mommy stay most sane. In those early months especially, I find that both mommy and baby get more sleep if we're in the same room together. I put a portable crib in our room and allow the baby to sleep next to me while they nurse. I usually fall asleep while this is going on. If I happen to wake up and notice the baby's not nursing, I'll move the baby into the portable crib.

I don't expect little babies to sleep through the night any time soon. In my view that just cause heartache and frustration. I gear myself up for interrupted sleep for the long haul and then am always pleasantly surprised at how "soon" they start sleeping longer stretches.

When I have a newborn I always nap with the newborn during afternoon nap time. Newborns sleep on and off throughout the day, but I always try to make afternoon nap time part of their normal rhythm by lying down with them. Not to mention with a newborn mommy needs the sleep too.

I move kids into their own room when it's no longer working for me. That usually happens around nine to twelve months for us. This is an entirely intuitive thing. Basically, when I feel like my child and I are loosing more sleep than gaining by sharing a room I move the kid out. Around this time my kids are usually taking two regular naps during the day, a morning and afternoon nap. When I start to get the idea that the kid should probably move out soon I start to have them take the morning nap in their own room. So far moving out has never been a big transition for us. Just one night they're sleeping in our room and the next night they sleep in their own room.

In general my philosophies on sleep revolve around doing what will make mommy most sane. I try to give myself realistic expectations while at the same time maintain boundaries for my own sanity. 

Before I had children my husband and I were both big advocates of sending our kids to public school. My husband is a public high school teacher and I have a degree and background in education myself. We love the idea of the cultural and socio-economic diversity our children would be exposed to in public school. My oldest child is scheduled to start kindergarten next year. For now it looks like the plan is to send him to the Christian private school I work for. He would be able to go for practically free. It seems like the obvious right choice and it's probably what we will do, but I feel like I have to give an honest look at what my other options are out there.

Public School?
I looked up what public elementary school we are zoned for. My heart sank. We live in district for where my husband teaches. If we had high school age children, they would be zoned for that school. I've seen the kind of freshman that feed into the school from the middle school we're zoned for. Suffice it to say that in many ways it's not reassuring. Somehow I hoped, naively perhaps, that the elementary school was different. Sadly, I don't think it is. Why does this all have to start so early?

I think independence in an adult is a good thing. I plan to raise my children into well rounded, independent adults. Yet are we pushing that independence too early? I mean, is the canned response of "well, he'll learn about it sooner or later" really something I should just accept as a forgone conclusion? And is learning about adult things at an age way before adulthood really the same thing as independence? I'm not really talking about teachers teaching my children inappropriate things. I'm more worried about things learned through peers. I can't control some other person's parenting, which I think is good and right, but I can to some degree control the influences I allow my child around. 

It's not the public school system that I really have a problem with. My problem is with the growing number of parents who have children in public schools that have abdicated their responsibility over to the school to raise their children and leave it to the school to instill moral values in their children. That is not the school's responsibility, yet at the same time the school is having to deal with the fall out from the mass exodus in parental responsibility. As far as society goes, I have no idea what the best solution is. I think it's a worthy goal to strive to educate every single person in a society, yet a widget factory we are not. Humans are messy and complicated, and there is almost never a one-size-fits-all solution. However, aside from the philosophical thoughts on what society should do, I must come back to what is the best choice for our family.  

Homeschool?
It may seem strange, but public school versus private school is not the biggest question in my mind. I'm still struggling with the question of whether mass schooling is the best solution at all. Is taking a bunch of six-year-olds, putting them all together and, in a Napoleonic fashion, saying we're all learning reading right now and then we are all going to learn arithmetic, etc. really the best way for them to learn? I mean, to some degree that's just the way it is. We all learn in some sort of linear fashion, one thing after another. I guess I'm more concerned with the idea of having to learn a certain thing at a certain time just like all the other people who have birthdays around the same year. Again, for me it goes back to the idea that we're not widgets.

I'm also questioning the idea of having so many children of the same age all together and saying that's the optimal environment for social development. One of the big cries against homeschooling I always hear is the lack of social development. I'm not saying social development is not a valid concern, and not something that shouldn't be seriously thought through for the homeschooled student. I'm just wondering why is it taken as a given that the traditional school classroom environment is the kind of socialization we want for our children. Sorry, I don't have an answer for you. I'm still just asking the question myself.

Why am I taking so much time, effort, research, and care into raising my children just to (what feels like) hand them over to someone else to raise (that's not really what I mean or I believe) have a great influence on them for a large portion of their day? Am I being selfish, smothering and too sheltering with that thought, or is it valid? I don't know. I mean, I'm not talking about 20-year-olds here, or even teenagers who I'm wanting to retain the larger portion of their day. He'll be five years old. The decision about what is best for a 5-year-old is not always the same as what is best for a 15-year-old. It just feels like by opting into the mass schooling I'm handing over part of my parenting that I'm not sure I want to hand over, or maybe even should hand over. Or would I be hindering my child by still keeping all those responsibilities? Again, I don't really know.

Am I not my child's best teacher? I think I know my children better than anyone outside our home. You often hear the critique that the mother shouldn't be her child's teacher because of lack of education or training, which I don't agree with, nevertheless for my own sake I'm college educated with a degree in education, no less. I've worked with and taught kids of all ages. I feel confident that I could, if I chose to or needed to, teach my children all subjects through high school. Really, I think my biggest qualifications are that I can read, I can research, I can learn and as their parent I'm already teaching them.

Just Stick With The Private School?
Yet this is all very theoretical. In reality my kids have been going to school. We go to preschool three mornings a week for three to four hours each morning. Each of my children are in age segregated classes, and the truth is: It's been good. I don't feel like my parenting has been undermined. I love finding out the new things each one has learned. I haven't discovered any bad habits picked up from other kids.  It's been good.

Yet I still feel uncertain about letting go of the rest of my day to mass schooling when my oldest enters kindergarten next year. Is this normal motherhood paranoia, or do I have valid concerns? Really, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too.

I have closely spaced children. It can be really hard at times. Ultimately I find it very rewarding and worth it to have them all so close together, but I have no illusions about the sheer difficulty and true exercise in patience it is having so many small children. I'm due with my fourth in March '09. When that one arrives I will have a (just turned) 5yo, (almost) 3yo, (almost) 2yo, and a newborn. Here are some of the things that really helped me adjust and even find joy in having so many little ones.

Take Yourself Seriously
I starting making my own physical and mental health a serious priority. I know you hear that in lots of places and it's hard to internalize and put into practice, but it is really true. I just started looking at my health as part of my job. I can't do my job if I'm an emotional wreck or if I've made myself sick from stress. If I'm spread so thin that I can barely drag myself out of bed, I'm not doing my job. If I'm so stressed that every little thing is annoying me and tempting me to yell, I'm not doing my job. If I'm feeling so guilty about not being a good mother that I'm not properly disciplining my children and letting them get away with things that would normally be unacceptable, I'm not doing my job.  It's vital to my children that I am my best self and I have to take that seriously.

Make Revitalization Time Part of Your Routine
One of the ways I started to take myself seriously is that I changed nap time from a time for me to catch up on things like housework to a time that is only for things I want to do. That may be some housework related project or writing or just taking a nap too, but it's only for things I enjoy and will feel revitalized by doing.

Your Home Is One Big Classroom
I started looking at my home and all the mundane daily activities as one big classroom with lots of little learning experiences. If I look at kids helping me with laundry, dishes or cleaning as a learning experience, I find that I get less frustrated about the slowness of it all. And trust me having a 4yo, 2yo and 1yo "helping" you is slow. The important goal is them learning a new skill and implementing it rather than having a spotless house (which has always been an elusive goal for me anyway).

Obedience Is The Primary Skill You Teach
From a safety, as well as sanity point of view working towards teaching my children first time obedience really takes a lot of stress away. When we're getting out of the car and I tell my children to keep one hand on the car as I get another child out or get a bag out of the car and trusting that my children will obey me makes a lot easier and a lot less stressful to go on an outing. The shortest way for me to describe how we work on first time obedience is that the child keeps doing a command (they already know how to do) until they get it right (with the right attitude as well as the right action). The phrasing usually goes: "I think you're having a hard time listening to Mommy. Let's try that again." Then I reset the situation and restate the command. Don't worry, obedience just because Mommy said so is not the end of the skill. When rational thinking starts to kick in you can and should start to explain why a command is important, but I believe the first skill should be for little ones to obey their parents period. And no, my children aren't perfectly obedient all the time. It's a skill and just like any other skill sometimes they are very good at it and other times they need more practice. As with most things with children, it's a work in progress.   

You Don't Have To Be Your Child's Playmate
I stopped feeling like I have to facilitate every moment of my children's play. Independent play is a good thing. Even though I strive to include my children in the daily household chores, there are still times when all of them can't participate at the same time, not to mention I think it is good for them to have their own unstructured play/exploration time. Since I've backed off I find that it has become super fun for me to come over every once in a while and see the cool new game they've come up with (usually way cooler than anything I would have come up with). I'm not a big fan of go to your room and play out of my sight, so I'm still within watching distance, just not play partner anymore.

You're Not a Single Person Anymore
Single people get things done a lot quicker than we do. I know that seems obvious, but I've really had to stop looking at my time from what I think of as a single person's (or perhaps a person with only one child's) perspective. It is a slow process to try to get three small kids in and out of the car. It's a slow process setting everything up for three little ones to eat. It is a slow process taking one child to the bathroom and changing diapers for the other ones. In general, everything goes at a slower pace with lots of little ones. I find that when I start to get frustrated and annoyed at how long it's taking us to do something, I realize I'm looking at the task from a single person's point of view and not from a parent of lots of little ones point of view. It's just a different pace of life. Once I got my head wrapped around that, I was a lot more at peace with having so many young children.

I love larger families and I love having my children spaced close together, but it is hard. Hopefully some of these ideas will work as well for your family as they have for ours. As always, feel free to take or leave anything you read here.

I've had this thing on my mind that I've really wanted to write about, but wasn't sure I was really ready to put up a post about it on my blog. Like most of you, I have internet land readers and IRL readers. And, yeah, well you know how that goes.

Anyway, the thing I've wanted to talk about, which been consuming a lot of my thoughts, but none of my writing, is that I'm planning a home birth this time around. I am super excited about it. My husband is not as excited as I am, but is cautiously trusting my decision. I've met some awesome people  on my journey to learn more about home birth, and I feel more well-read and well-researched regarding all things surrounding birth/postpartum than I ever did before any of my other births.

If you're curious about my birth history and what brought me to the home birth decision, but don't want to dig through my archives to piece it together, here goes:

I've had three hospital births. All three were what I consider very classic hospital births. With all three I had epidurals, some other kind of narcotics (couldn't tell you what exactly), IV's, continuous monitoring, laboring while lying down in bed... all the usual stuff for a hospital birth. I had pitocin with my first, but not with my second two. I've torn with all three, but haven't had an episiotomy. Also, all three were vaginal deliveries, full term and over eight pounds.

To be honest, I probably would have been fine with this American cultural standard for birth if it had not had been for the fact that epidurals and pain medicine in general work very poorly, if at all, on me. The narcotics I've been given for labor pain relief generally give me light relief for about 15-20 minutes (just long enough to call the anesthesiologist and wait for him/her to arrive). I've had varying luck with epidurals. With my first it only worked on one side and that was the labor that I also had pitocin with. Fun stuff let me tell you. I was a very poor advocate for myself at the time. The second time I got an epidural with my next child it worked at a tolerable level, although I had to beg him to turn it up. That's another fun feeling: pleading with someone to help you while you are in labor. Fun stuff. But again, I still felt lots of pain, it was just best described as muffled. With my third and most recent birth the epidural did not work at all. However I was more prepared for that possibility. As calmly and clearly as I could muster I told as many staff as I met that it was not working, yet no one took me seriously. I decided that relying on the hospital staff to help me (through pain management or whatever) was a waste and I had to handle this myself. Against staff advice I sat up from lying flat (which was the position I was advised to be in to "help" the epidural work) and began to manage the pain myself. It was extremely frustrating to be dismissed in labor, but with this labor I finally figured out that I really don't need pain medicine to get through the labor. I realized I can manage the pain myself and I manage it better than the pain medicine.

Finally, I realized that my whole attempt to use pain medicine to manage my labor was really a waste of my time. It is no longer a realistic option for me (it never really was). I have to do this myself. But managing pain myself in a hospital environment was (and is) a pretty scary idea to me. I mean, I know people who've done it, and I think that's awesome, but I just can't imagine how I would do it.

With each birth I've tried to labor at home a little longer. I know how I manage the pain at home, and it's not by lying in bed with a bunch of wires attached to me like the hospital would want. And I know the whole argument of "you can just tell the hospital staff what you want," but after three hospital births all I can say is in my experience it just doesn't work that way. Not to mention, it is extremely hard to advocate for yourself in the middle of labor! I just don't want to put myself in an environment where I feel like I'm constantly saying "no" and feeling like I'm in an adversarial position with the people who are supposed to be helping me through this process.

I've also researched the safety issue. I'll probably talk about that more in a future post. However, suffice it to say that study after study demonstrates that home birth is just as safe, if not safer in some ways, than hospital birth for normal, low-risk women.

There just seems to be reason on top of reason why home birth makes a lot of sense for me. And even though it is way out of the cultural norm that I'm surrounded by, I think it is the right decision for me.

I just finished reading through a series over at Amy's Humble Musings about Life With Three Under Three. This series of eight articles was written about a year ago, but it is very fresh and timely for me. Her thoughts range from the super practical laundry tips to the more philosophical questions of being open to having more than two kids. I was especially moved by the Life With Three Under Three - #5 post. There were words from both the article and the comments that really stuck out in my mind:

From the article:

After a few babies, reality sets in and the Christian mom begins to think that maybe everyone had a good point. This is really hard. She is knee-deep in Cheerios. The laundry has an unnatural smell to it. She’s knows the theme song to every show in the PBS morning lineup. Her husband gets to talk to people that are taller than his waist during the day and she feels jealous. The kids are crying, but when it’s quiet she is left with the thought, “How does doing THIS glorify God? And how in the world do I do this?!”

Our 21st-century homes do not have front porches. Quilting circles are only found in books. And the hospital nurse at your last delivery? She was 20. Her coaching consisted of asking every few minutes if you were ready for an epidural.

Has it really come to this? And if so, is it OK?

I don’t think it’s OK. I also think many women agree with me. We weren’t meant to do it alone. We weren’t meant to take our cues from the broader culture. We want to know that it’s OK to cross-the-line and have Baby #3 (on purpose). We want to raise them to love Jesus and not lose our minds at the same time. We want to know that our sacrifice means something, and at the end of the day, our pursuit of God’s glory made a difference.

Um, yeah... What she said. No really, did she just go into my mind and pull that straight out?!

And from the comments:

God doesn’t want ME to be successful, He only wants me to NEED Him.

I don't think I've ever seen it written like that, but the moment I read it I recognized it. Memories came flooding back of all the times God has tried to teach me this. My success is to totally need Him, to be in total submission to Him. I'm missing the point when I continually run my life as if to tell God "I'm all grown up now. I don't really need you that much anymore." Praise God that He continually finds ways to remind me how much I truly do need Him.

I don’t have to look like I can juggle 7 children, the perfect dinner, the spotless house and orchestrate three women’s Bible studies flawlessly in order to get a license to have lots of children. Sometimes what God calls us to is HARD. Motherhood is no exception. Sacrifice… 'present your bodies a living sacrifice.' Isn’t motherhood a beautiful way to lay down my life?!

I needed to see this. I occasionally get the "you must be a saint" or "you must be a so organized and so patient" comment when people find out how many children I have and how young they are. I usually just politely smile and say nothing. All the while the little voice in the back of my head is screaming "NO YOU'RE NOT!" But the above quote reminds me that it's ok if it's hard, and just because it is hard doesn't mean I'm doing it all wrong.  Hard work and sacrifice in motherhood, regardless of the number of children a mother has, is not a bad thing. It helps me to grow and be better.

Every child deserves a special mom. If it is not the Lord’s will for you to be the patient mom of a dozen children, you still owe it to your one child to be the kind of mom who could be patient to a dozen.

I really believe that. God does not call the equipped, but He equips the called. He gives to those who ask.

There are so many times when I prayerfully wonder why in the world God would bless me with these children. Who am I to deserve them? I'm not a good cook, I'm a terrible housekeeper. What was He thinking picking me for such a domestic life? "God does not call the equipped, but He equips the called. He gives to those who ask." Reading that last line literally made me cry. I've seen and heard it hundreds of times before, but this time I finally realized how it applied (and that it in fact does apply) to me. It reminded me that I'm not alone in this, as it can so often feel like I am. It reminded me that I'm not crazy for wanting this life. It reminded me that I don't need to be looking to perfect myself into what the world sees as "super mom." I need to focus on submitting to His will and He will perfect me into what He wants and do so in His own time and manner.

There are so many more gems to find in that series of articles. Well worth the read. 

Will he go potty?
Someday soon it will happen,
Maybe by college.