One odd guest of theirs placed an eye pack over his eyes to nap in the middle of the day in their living room and crossed his arms crossed over his chest like a vampire, would only eat foods according the Blood Type Diet, and did extensive breathing exercises.

After that, it seemed like a good time to tell them I had to pump breast milk.

On Friday, I went to the Brooklyn Museum to catch the Ron Mueck and Annie Leibovitz exhibits. Google Ron Mueck if you don’t know him.

When I got back to our town, hubby and baby were there to meet me. Baby was up way past her bedtime, so that she could be brought in the car to the train station. She appeared stunned.

When we returned to the house, I nursed the baby. She conked back out. We all got to sleep.

I woke to the sound of a jet engine crashing into the house. Immediately, I turned to wake hubby and let him know about the jet engine.

He was not there.

Then, I heard the jet engine again. My husband vomited violently into the toilet. I’m half out of my mind due to grogginess and worry and — darnit — admiration at the force of his vomit. When I vomit, it’s all gentle and dainty. But his vomit was, like, manly.

The baby woke up due to the aforementioned noise. I got her back to sleep and brought husband some water. Then, I lay in bed awake until the baby woke up for the day and wondered if husband washed his teeth since those acids are bad for them.

Needless to say, we were both wrecks the whole next day. Of course, O didn’t nap that day either. She went to sleep, woke herself up by pooping, and then was cranky from lack of sleep and, probably, lack of exercise due to two brain-dead parents. My main goal this past Saturday was surviving long enough to make it to baby’s bed time, so that I could go to sleep myself.

—-

I never thought I’d make it to more than a year of nursing. Now, we’ve been nursing for 14 months.

I had my baby while standing in my front hallway. I delivered her myself. Afterwards, blood started coming out of me at a fast rate. I didn’t really care at that point. I just didn’t want to slip in it while holding the baby,and I didn’t want to get the furniture messy!

Because of losing so much blood, my body put milk making down on its list of things to do. A month went by until the doctor realized the baby was not gaining very well.

During my last week of maternity leave, I had to pump 4-6 x per day in addition to nursing 8-12 x per day. Basically, I was either pumping or nursing around the clock. And when I wasn’t doing one of those activities, I was trying to eat and drink a lot, so I could make the milk my baby needed.

Unfortunately, I had to supplement with formula. Even the lactation consultant said to supplement, because the weight gain was soooo low. Thank goodness I had the help of a lactation consultant who could teach me how to supplement while proteching my milk supply.

Eventually, I had weeks in which the baby got all breast milk. I was thrilled.

=)

Of course, the fine women in my life helped me, too.

I thought I’ll just get to 6 weeks. And then I’ll get to 3 months. And then I’ll make it just to 6 months and decide. By 6 months, things were great!

At 9 months, we were having a blast.

At a year, we point to body parts while mommy names them while we nurse. We giggle. We let mommy eat our hands. We stop nursing at night. YAY!

At 14 months, we snuggle for an hour each morning and nurse before we
have breakfast. We are loving it.

I am so happy I fought to keep nursing.
Tags: Breastfeeding – Nursing a Toddler – Baby Nursing – Mom Blog – Mommy Blog

The mother sees her baby for the first time. She is small, beautiful and adorable. Often, the mother gets a few weeks off (if in the U.S.) or a few years off (if in Europe) to spend nurturing this new life.

For mothers with a few months or weeks off from work, it can be a challenge to return to the 9 to 5 grind and to be away from a baby that’s only a few months old.

Now I WAHM (work at home) while the baby is only a street away from me. This is an arrangement I like a great deal.

When I first started to WAHM, I found it hard to focus on my work. The house was a mess, dirty dishes called my name, and we had a mountain of laundry. Not much housework got accomplished during my maternity time.

After much trial and error, I came up with several ways to get more done in less time. Reading Dan Kennedy’s time management book helped me as well. Since I read it, I’ve instituted changes in how I work with excellent results.

These are 5 ways I’ve managed to make the most of my time.

1. Set Up a Defined Work Area. I have a small office upstairs. On the days DH is home with the baby, I’m able to hear the fun and be away from the action at the same time.

2. Have Everything You Need Within Reach. I gather together snacks, plenty of water, a cup of hot tea, reference materials, pens and paper. By doing this, I do not waste time getting up and down all day.

3. Bunch Your Tasks Together. Instead of making a telephone call and then editing documents and then checking email, gather your similar tasks together and work on them in groups. Make ALL your phone calls one after the other. Check your email at certain times or it can eat up hours if you do it 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there.

4. Do Not Answer the Phone: When I first starte WAHMing, I kept answering the phone. One day, I had more than 10 people calling about a babysitting job I’d posted. Yikes! It wasted a lot of time. I emailed people to let them know I was not answering the phone for the next several hours.

5. Make Lists. I use the Outlook task list to make lists of what I need to accomplish in both my personal and professional life. I can see what needs to be done all in one place, and I don’t have to sit around wondering what was it that needed to get done today (a real time waster!).

Good luck on your WAHM journey.

Tags: Work at Home Mom – Work at Home Mother – WAHM – Time+Management – Parenting – Toddlers – Mom Blog – Mommy Blog

http://www.totville.com/parenting-magazines/index.html

I searched for the brand I drank today and this Kombucha Ginger tea is the closest I could find.

Since I enjoy eating whole foods and know how and what I eat can prevent me from getting those icky time-consuming colds and flu, I appreciate that this tea contains amino acids and healthy digestive bacterias (similar to the healthy bacteria you’d find in yogurt).

Another plus is that the tea contains nearly no sugar. After I took a taste, I scrutinized the label another 3 times just to be sure there was no sugar, because it tasted sweet. But it must have been the natural sweetness of the ginger.

Keep an eye out for this drink in your health food store. Yum!

Kombucha+Tea Whole+Foods Mommy+Blog

Doing a lot is how I am, so I don’t often think about the process in detail. A few of the most time-consuming projects I have are day work, art work, running a nonprofit on the side, mothering, wife-ing, keeping up social relationships, and working on other projects.

Since I can always learn to do something better, I’m reading Dan Kenndy’s No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, which helps you get more time out of your day by helping you see where time is wasted.

Substitute the word “mother” for entrepreneur. The principles hold true.

I thought about how mothers might benefit from such a book. Kennedy talks about turning off the phone, running errands and commuting to work at off-peak times, limiting email, and limiting meetings. He writes that you lose 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there and pretty soon you are talking hours (based on that old saying “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money). How true.

Recently, I read of a well-known author who said that email was his big procrastination tool to getting more writing done. (I have to admit email is one of the time suckers in my life.) The other day, I listened to a educational CD in my car. That filled my 20-minute commute perfectly.

Since I work from home a few days a week, I save myself several hours (and gas). If I add up the time I save over a year it is 67 HOURS. That is 67 HOURS that I am NOT spending in my car idling in traffic and waiting for stoplights. With my work arrangement, I now have more time to do something useful.
I plan out what I am going to do with my time, so I don’t meander like I can sometimes do. I plan meals ahead a lot of the time and use a slow cooker so food is ready when we get home. I keep lists. If I have a list, I am MUCH more motivated to complete what I need to do. I keep easy-to-lose items like keys in the proper place so I know where to find them (instead of wasting 5-20 minutes searching like I did before).

Everyone finds their own way of making more time; I learned to say ‘no’ to a lot. One suggestion in the book is to link all of your tasks to your overall life goals. Then, you can ask yourself if you are making the best use of your time in this moment. Sure, we’ll goof off and play video games, chit chat with people, and drink lemonade on the porch. However, we also want to make time for what is really important to us and to what we want to accomplish.

It’s a good book if you want to check it out.

Tags: Time+Management Mothering Motherhood Parenting Mommy Blog Mommy Blogging Baby Toddler

If you’ve ever been around a nursing baby, you know that you have two choices when they are hungry. You can nurse them and have a happy and calm baby. Or you can refuse them and have a screaming baby. Which would you prefer on your flight?

You can read about Delta airlines and breastfeeding in this article.

Below is a part of a statement from Moms Rising along with a link to a petition.

SIGN THE PETITION TO DELTA AIRLINES AND CONGRESS: Tell Delta Airlines to get a clue and be supportive of breastfeeding mothers. And tell Congress it’s time to pass the Breastfeeding Promotion Act, which amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect breastfeeding mothers. Clearly this law is needed now!

Technorati Tags: Delta Airlines Breastfeeding Nursing in Public Mommy Blog Parenting

Have I mentioned that I’m terrified of bugs. We used to have ants in my house as a child, and I’d have nightmares. In one respect, I find them completely fascinating. Ants, especially, are intriguing in how hard they work and how far they travel for food. But, if I see one unexpectedly, the shrieks will be heard for miles.

I am hoping that the Nugget does not ‘catch’ my fear. I’m not sure if I should try and hide it so she can make her own assessments or not. I don’t think it would be wrong to hide how I feel about it since these creatures are not harmful.

Since I don’t watch television, I’d never heard of Elizabeth Vargas until I read an article about how she had a baby and had to switch jobs so she could have more time with her child. Having to switch jobs tuned Ms. Vargas into what other mothers endure and the trade-offs they make when they work outside the home and mother.

TUNE IN TOMORROW NIGHT: Tune into the ABC 20/20 show with Elizabeth Vargas tomorrow night, Friday, November 10th at 10:00pm. Elizabeth Vargas is just coming back from maternity leave and her first show is aptly going to be about motherhood and work, and features an interview with Joan Blades, co-founder of MomsRising.

Joyce Brothers on Mommy Blogging

On Bloggers Blog, the subject of ‘mommy blogging’ came up, because someone wrote to Dr. Joyce Brothers about a relative blogging so much about her new baby.

I have heard that blogging about babies is a popular pastime now, and I can see the positive benefits that might come from keeping a record of the baby’s growth and development. We used to have scrapbooks for such things, but now the Internet serves as a repository for these records, along with all sorts of thoughts and debates that motherhood brings. For moms, it can be a respite from the isolation some suffer after leaving the workplace. Replies to their blogs can help them feel that they are sharing the “new mom” experience, or quell their worries that their child is the only one with a behavior problem or developmental delay.

Blogging while the baby sleeps seems OK. On the other hand, blogging has a potential for abuse, especially if it becomes a substitute for interacting with the child, or a place to lodge daily complaints against the father, or serves mainly to satisfy exhibitionistic urges. I can’t judge your brother’s specific case, but in general, diaries and journals have been replaced by the Internet, and your sister-in-law has jumped on the bandwagon, hopefully with taste and moderation.

Just like email has replaced letters, blogs have started to replace scrapbooks. I do better writing for an audience, and think that the posts I’ve written about the Nugget (on another blog) are better than what I’ve written in the journal we’re making for her.

Mothering Motherhood Parenting Mommy Blog Mommy Blogging Baby Toddler Moms Rising Elizabeth Vargas Joyce Brothers Motherhood and Working

Above are the kinds of questions you can be asked on a job interview in Pennsylvania. In a lot of states, asking such questions is illegal. Help prevent discrimination against your fellow mothers.

You can help make history by signing this petition to help mothers, which will help pass legislation that would make asking the questions above illegal.