See my latest articles below, or click on a topic category to find out what I've written on that specific topic, enjoy!
When you gave birth to your first, there was no one else to worry about – just you and your baby. Well…now, wait a minute. You probably worried about your partner, too. And if you have a cat or a dog or a ferret or other such companion, you likely made sure that they, too, would be looked after while you were in the throes of labor.
Mountain. Half Moon. Pigeon. Dancer. These are the English words for some well-known “asanas” (or poses) which make up the body’s yoga vocabulary. Most people – especially the uninitiated – equate the practice of yoga with physical exercise. But movement is only the beginning.
Any authentic yogi will tell you that yoga is not just about holding postures and moving our bodies. A huge component of yoga teaches us to breathe and move consciously with awareness. This delivers well-documented and numerous benefits that can be accessed anytime in order to achieve a sense of calm and well-being.
I remember sitting at my kitchen table while holding my newborn daughter, staring bleary-eyed at the glass of water Rollie placed before me. Rollie was an angel sent from heaven. Her wings may not have been visible, but I know for a fact they were there.
Rollie was my postpartum doula, and my husband and I don’t know how we would have survived those early days without her. When she observed on our first day together just how sleep-deprived and hormonal and besotted and bewildered I was, she asked, “how can we better prepare new mothers for this?”
Let’s have a little doula chat, shall we? You’re pregnant, and as a result, you’ve acquired a whole new vocabulary: baby-wearing, layette, milk-duct, meconium, hybrid-diapers, effacement, linea alba – the list goes on. One word that will become ever-present on your prenatal planet will be this one: “doula”. You’ll hear it from friends, on social media, in your childbirth class, maybe even from your local grocery store check-out staffer. So, because you have an inquiring mind of the prenatal kind (where you HAVE to know everything, but then forget it five minutes later), you are going to investigate the heck out of this doula thing. And we applaud you for that. If you want a solid intro as to why you should hire a labor support doula, please watch Anne’s video.
If you were to ask 100 different moms about what breastfeeding means to them, you might literally receive 100 different answers. You could also ask 100 different babies to wax poetic on the subject, but I’m uncertain as to just how far that would get you.
I’m not here to talk about positions, nor reasons why you should consider nursing on demand, nor to expand upon the chemical properties of breastmilk nor debate the latest in breastfeeding nightgown technology. What I am here to do is to dispel a few myths that inevitably pepper nursing conversations whenever they pop up at a cocktail party (at which you will not be having a cocktail):
