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Filed under Events
Play, the Natural Family Way
The value and significance of childhood play has been broadly documented. Once believed to be an activity of indulgence, play is now understood to be a vital component of a healthful childhood and a springboard for adaptive and positive functioning in adulthood. It promotes emotional and cognitive development, cultivates social skills such as conflict resolution and cooperation, and stokes creativity. In my social work education and career, I have even studied and observed the brilliant, skilled use of play as a means of therapy for children. Play is powerful stuff!
I’ve learned in my relatively short parenthood journey that it is ridiculously easy to get pulled in by the promise of “educational” toys, music, and DVDs. Our love and dedication as parents makes us vulnerable; we lovingly want to give our babes every possible advantage towards becoming well-thought, kind, creatures. Studies have revealed, though, that those blinging, singing educational toys actually fail to deliver on their marketed promises. And others now recognize what we as attached parents have always understood: the best, most influential toy your child can have is you.
We’ve tried hard to stem the surge of those kinds of toys into our home. We don’t buy them. Usually these toys have been given us to as thoughtful, well-intentioned gifts, and we’re grateful that someone cares enough to think of our son in this way. We pull those toys out as a matter of exception, usually for specific circumstances (like, for example, a long road trip), and as we rotate one in we rotate another out.
We’ve visited the homes of friends where shelves bulge and erupt with toys, where even I feel a bit overstimulated by the bounty of bright, loud, plastic playthings. In our home we’ve deliberately chosen to limit not just the types of toys, but also the amount of toys present. I especially love this perspective on why having fewer toys actually benefits your children. (Really, if you click on only one link from this post, make it this one. It’s an insightful read. And if you are interested in ways to cull your current toy stockpile, here are some pointers.)
We focus, instead, on time spent and activities enjoyed together as a family. Play is darn fun and can serve to expend our little ones’ bottomless energy, but it can also be a delightfully effective way to enrich attachment. And, you know what? These kinds of activities are often free or awesomely inexpensive–just one more example of how natural parents are richer.
Taking walks is a huge hit for us right now. We live just blocks away from a sprawling park with towering old trees, winding walking paths, and a safe playground. We collect leaves, smell flowers, pet moss on tree trunks, wave to robins and count squirrels. We take our shoes off and kick balls in the grass. Nature is free and wild, and little ones benefit from time spent outdoors with their caregivers.
Looking for other ideas for easy, mostly inexpensive ways to play with your toddler? Here are some fun ideas. Or perhaps other nifty ways to get your nature on with your half-pint? Here is a good place to start.
What kinds of toys does your child dig the most? What kind of activities do you enjoy doing with your kiddos? Have any favorite resources for natural play?
Best play space Rhianna ever made for her 17-month-old son? Dedicating a whole kitchen cabinet to him and filling it with random inexpensive kitchen related items like egg cartons, empty spice containers, herbal tea boxes, wooden spoons, and play food. She lives in St. Louis and spends a good deal of time in Tower Grove Park, where her toddler enthusiastically gifts her with sweetgum balls, chunks of mulch, pebbles, and beheaded flowers.
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Did you know The Other Baby Book: A Natural Approach to Baby’s First Year is now for sale? Are you interested in learning more about gentle, mom and baby-friendly practices that foster a joyful, connected relationship? Want to introduce a pregnant friend to natural parenting? Check out our website or head over to Amazon to grab your copy today!
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Adding Exercise
Olivia ready to exercise
This guest post is by Rachel Tainey, and is part five of a six week series.
Week 5
Starting weight: 125
Ending weight: 123
It’s almost go time! Three more weeks until Miami, and I am pretty happy with my weight loss so far. I have already lost seven pounds and I hope to lose at least three more. This week I have continued to be dairy free…. well, mostly. (I had cheese twice.) I am still loving my coconut milk and coconut yogurt. Somebody told me about coconut ice cream and I’m dying to try!
As a dietitian I teach people that in order to lose weight and keep it off, a healthy routine should include nutrition and physical activity. In addition to helping you reach a healthy weight, exercise has numerous benefits, including mood elevation–and as sometimes-sleep-deprived mamas, don’t we always need that sometimes? For me, healthy eating is much easier than exercising.
I wish I liked exercise. My mom is one of those people that goes to the gym every day and sometimes twice…but I have never really liked going to the gym, despite having memberships on and off throughout my adult years. I am the kind of person who is always in search for the right “fit” when it comes to exercise. I have gone through many phases looking for the perfect exercise match (kind of like exercise dating, ha!). I have tried roller blading, hot yoga, aerobics, home videos, and spinning–to name a few! The only thing that I have stuck to is walking. I love to look around and clear my head and the best part is that I can do it any time, any where, and with DD.
This week Olivia and I have been vamping up our walk routine and have been taking longer and much more intense walks. One day we took a nice walk with friends through the steep hills of Westchester, and my butt thanked me later! This morning we participated in a beautiful two mile walk at the NY Botantical Gardens. DD loves being outside and so do I. Ever since she was a newborn, we would take walks together, even if it was just five minutes so that we felt that we did something for the day!
Walking is all good, but I need ways to make it higher impact. I’m going to try walking faster, hiking up steeper inclines, and walking with weights (which would be hard to do with a stroller). Do you have any ideas?
What types of exercises have you tried? What’s your go-to way to get moving?
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Did you know The Other Baby Book: A Natural Approach to Baby’s First Year is now for sale? Are you interested in learning more about gentle, mom and baby-friendly practices that foster a joyful, connected relationship? Want to introduce a pregnant friend to natural parenting? Check out our website or head over to Amazon to grab your copy today!
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Filed under Eat, Guest Post
Part II–(Postpartum) Depression: 10 Ways to Triumph
This is part II of a two part guest post series on postpartum depression. You can read part I here.
There are so many ways to counter depression and its hold on your life, but you will not get better if you do nothing. Professional counselors and therapists are trained to help you work through the illness, and to teach you coping techniques to help you manage it. Your physician can prescribe antidepressants to help from within the body, or he may refer you to a psychiatrist if he feels that you should be evaluated by someone whose focus is mental health. A combination of the two (counseling and medication) is often highly effective. But if you’re leery of taking antidepressants, as some natural-minded mamas may be, there are a number of things you can start doing right now, right at home, to help yourself feel better. These are my coping techniques, the little things that I’ve learned to do over the past 18 years that help keep me sane.
1) Ask for help. Don’t be afraid to rely on your support system. Your family and your friends love you, and they want to help you. Maybe it’s helping with chores, keeping the kids so you can get a nap, sitting with you while you talk, or holding you while you cry. You know who you have around you, and who will be able to help with what. Ask. (If you’re military and far from home, there are about a zillion programs designed to help families. You can follow those channels!)
2) Let go of the guilt. It’s not helping you, and it’s not helping anyone else. Depression is an illness, and to some extent, it is going to affect your ability to function, just as having the flu or a heart attack will affect your ability to function.
3) Exercise. In the short term, exercise releases mood-lifting endorphines. In the long term, it’ll help you get that pre-baby body back, which will boost your self esteem.
4) Keep an eye on your diet. Not only is it just plain good for you, but you’ll probably feel guilty if you eat junk. When you eat well, you’ll feel good about making healthy choices.
5) Baby steps. When things seem overwhelming, break tasks down into bites you can chew. For example, if you’re having a hard time keeping up with the house work, break it up so that you only tackle one or two jobs per day. I love making lists, too, so that I get to cross things off as I complete them. The sense of pride and accomplishment I have when I’m done is a definite pick me up.
6) Take a step back. Reflect on your thoughts and emotions from a logical perspective. If it’s hard for you to adopt that perspective, try hashing it out with someone else. (This is where having a professional counselor or therapist can be very beneficial. An impartial third party will be able to give you a truly unbiased perspective that your mother, partner, or best friend may not be able to.)
7) Educate yourself. There are about a gazillion things to read about (PP)D on the internet alone. Choose a few trustworthy sources, and learn about what you’re experiencing and why. Learning about hormones and synopses and neurotransmitters and how they play a role in how I feel emotionally helped me to accept that my depression is not just a figment of my imagination.
8) Professional Help. Ask your doctor, your priest, your pastor, your rabbi. Seek counseling. Even for families without insurance or with a restricted income, there are programs in place to help you. Take advantage of them.
9) Be honest with yourself, about how you feel, what you can do, and what you need. Act accordingly. Don’t expect to be able to coordinate a bake sale, just because you think you ought to be able to. If you try to take it on and then later find that it was too much, you’re going to feel more overwhelmed and frustrated than you did to begin with, on top of a sense of failure that you weren’t up to it. And if you know that being alone is just going to give you time to wallow in your negative feelings, make it a point to get out and around other people. On the other hand, if you need some quiet time to yourself to unwind and process, then make it a point to do that.
10) Want to feel better. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? If you’re depressed, it’s much easier said than thought. Want it enough to work for it. Marshaling the energy to do these things that I’ve listed is hard. It’s hard to get out of bed, it’s hard to ask for help, and it’s hard to face our emotions, especially when they’re so out of control.
I hope these suggestions are helpful to you! Please remember, though, that sometimes, for some of us, these coping techniques are not be enough. I try to avoid using the medication if I can, and I make sure to use the smallest effective dose that I can, but I know when to call in the back up. If you are averse to the antidepressants, try remain open to the possibility that you might need an antidepressant for a period of time to get back on your feet. There may be some unnatural and unnecessary chemicals in there, but balanced against all that you stand to gain, it might be worth it, even if you’re pregnant or nursing. (Again, educate yourself about your options, and discuss them with your physician. The depression itself may be more harmful to your child than the medication would be.) Whatever you do, please do something!
In addition to being a veteran of PPD, Adrienne is a craft junkie, Navy wife, and stay at home mother to two beautiful little girls near Norfolk, Virginia. She blogs about it all at http://the-green-world.blogspot.com/ .
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Did you know The Other Baby Book: A Natural Approach to Baby’s First Year is now for sale? Are you interested in learning more about gentle, mom and baby-friendly practices that foster a joyful, connected relationship? Want to introduce a pregnant friend to natural parenting? Check out our website or head over to Amazon to grab your copy today!
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Filed under Random
Part I–(Postpartum) Depression: Let’s Talk
No one wants to talk about depression. In all of my talking with other moms, in all of the threads on all of the mother- and baby-boards I’ve visited, I’ve encountered little discussion of depression of any sort. Why don’t we talk about it? Perhaps it is because depression has no measurable, tangible or visible symptoms, like high blood pressure, a cough or a rash, so why go to the doctor if you’re just in a funk? Or maybe it’s because so many people, including some of those with depression, feel that it’s just a bad mood, and it should simply be a matter of “snapping out of it”. But that just isn’t the case. Depression (see also “clinical depression” or “major depressive disorder”) is a very real and very serious illness affecting millions of people around the world, and is especially prevalent among women. For example, an estimated 13% of women will experience postpartum depression (PPD). Think of all the women who gave birth in your town, on the same day that you (or your partner) did. More than one out of every ten of those new mothers experienced PPD.
Postpartum depression is a particularly nasty bit of work. Unlike “the baby blues”, which are comparatively mild and last only a few weeks, postpartum depression (or PPD) is an episode of true depression occurring in the first year after pregnancy and lasting more than two weeks. In addition to the normal run of symptoms associated with depression, a woman experiencing PPD may also feel a lack of interest in her baby, or even have thoughts of hurting her baby! Then there’s the guilt for feeling that way, or having those thoughts. And all of this is at a time when the mother is already exhausted, drained, and sleep deprived. It’s a nightmare, and can definitely interfere with the mother’s ability to care for her child.
I can tell you from first hand experience that depression is a bitch, and PPD is even worse. I have struggled with depression intermittently since I was a pre-teen. I can’t tell you how many trips we made from my small hometown to near-by Orlando, visiting different doctors: a child psychiatrist, a counselor, an eating disorder specialist. I’d been on three or four different antidepressants by the time I graduated high school, during which time I acquired a new doctor and a new therapist. I went off the meds in college, but saw the on-campus counselor for several months. I went back on the meds after moving to Germany with my husband, but improved enough during my first pregnancy to leave off of the antidepressants completely. That only lasted until my baby was about a year old, at which point I had my doctor put me back on Zoloft. A few months after that, I became pregnant with my second child and my doctor switched me to Prozac. I had a bad spell during the pregnancy, but it was smooth sailing in the months after my second daughter was born. I stayed on a low dose of Prozac throughout*.
Now, I’m still fighting it. It can still creep up on me, slow and subtle and insidious. Life will start to lose its luster, activities that I enjoy will start to lose their appeal. I start letting the house work slide, and the meals that I prepare become simpler and simpler. I play with my children less, and lose my temper more. I lose the ability to moderate my emotions, so that I fall apart at the slightest bump in the road. Even the simplest tasks begin seem overwhelming. I find myself ruled by lethargy, sadness, frustration, and guilt that I’m not doing what I know I should. Then I start to realize that I’ve been living for weeks in a gray murk. I begin to recognize that things are not as they should be, and at that point, I seek help. That is the important thing, especially now that I’m a parent. I go back on the meds, or I raise my dosage, or I go back to counseling, and the murk begins to clear.
That’s where I am now in my fight against depression. I’m clearing the murk and wondering, how many other women are walking this path with me? How many women are not seeking and receiving help, because they don’t know that they should, because they are ashamed, or because they don’t know who to turn to? Those are the women who break my heart, and those are the women I want to be talking to right now. Take a look at some of the links below for information about depression in general, and PPD in particular. Try to evaluate your recent feelings and behaviors. If you are depressed, there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. (Should a diabetic be ashamed that he needs a doctor to help him manage his blood sugar?) If you don’t know where to start, ask your doctor or try talking to a loved one. But please, do something. There is no reason for you to suffer.
In addition to being a veteran of PPD, Adrienne is a craft junkie, Navy wife, and stay at home mother to two beautiful little girls near Norfolk, Virginia. She blogs about it all at http://the-green-world.blogspot.com/ .
*According to the Ask Dr. Sears article on PPD, either Zoloft or Paxil would have been safer during breastfeeding, but I’d not heard that until now. I plan to ask my current doctor about it at my next appointment.
Sources:
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Did you know The Other Baby Book: A Natural Approach to Baby’s First Year is now for sale? Are you interested in learning more about gentle, mom and baby-friendly practices that foster a joyful, connected relationship? Want to introduce a pregnant friend to natural parenting? Check out our website or head over to Amazon to grab your copy today!
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Filed under Birth, Flow, Guest Post
The Sleep Games
My husband and I have guided our daughter to sleep for about 430 nights now (and yes, thank a calendar for that number, not my fuzzy mommy brain). Some of those 430 nights we dreaded bedtime and fought over who would initiate sleep mode. Some of those nights she fell asleep in a peaceful slumber without much effort on our part. And there were many nights that fell somewhere in the middle. Regardless of your parenting style, bedtime can sometimes equal stressful time for newbie and seasoned parents alike.
In my pre-baby months, I really didn’t give baby sleep much thought except that I didn’t want to do a nursery. We purchased an Arms Reach mini co-sleeper (best purchase ever, by the way!), bought some king-size pillow cases to use as sheets, and got an organic mattress for it as well. That’s all we needed, right? I had heard the phrase “sleep like a baby” and assumed that means babies sleep soundly. Yep, total fool.
In reality, I didn’t actually understand the logistics of infant sleep. I guess I erroneously assumed that babies enter sleep and stay asleep in a similar pattern as adults. But in fact it is so much different! Their sleep cycles are shorter (50-60 minutes), and they just don’t sleep as deeply as adults. When we try to shoehorn babies into adult sleep before they are ready, we are ignoring their biological wiring and even basic needs.
And believe me, there were many nights that my husband and I, after listening to multiple people tell us that our baby should be sleeping longer or in her own room, tried to (briefly) make it happen. We wished so ardently for that elusive “good sleeper.” But time after time we realized that we did not feel comfortable forcing her into a sleep pattern that her little brain and body couldn’t handle. It just wasn’t our parenting style.
And as I’ve talked to more and more parents, I’ve realized that what we’ve experienced is more the norm. That it is incredibly rare for babies to sleep through the night, and most likely it’s either because they’ve either been pushed to do so or the parents have been blessed with a heavy sleeper. And if you’re pregnant now, throw out any books that promise you a baby that sleeps through the night by 8 weeks because it’s not a realistic or healthy expectation.
Ultimately, parenting a baby to sleep can be stressful or it can be a beautiful, shared moment. We have two choices as parents: to focus on the negative (my baby won’t sleep through the night!) or focus on the positive (my baby and I have a special nighttime bond). I choose the latter, and I cherish the moments my daughter is sleeping peacefully in my arms or next to me. And EVENTUALLY she’ll sleep through the night, right?
What have well-meaning friends, family, and physicians told you about infant sleep? Did you follow their advice?
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Did you know The Other Baby Book: A Natural Approach to Baby’s First Year is now for sale? Are you interested in learning more about gentle, mom and baby-friendly practices that foster a joyful, connected relationship? Want to introduce a pregnant friend to natural parenting? Check out our website or head over to Amazon to grab your copy today!
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Kate has perfected the twin arts of sleeping upright and taking extreme cat naps in random places. Her favorite guilty (sleep) pleasure is taking an afternoon nap with her daughter whenever she can. Read more about her and her family at Boomerang Mama.
3 Money-Saving Tools for New Parents
Anyone who’s purchased baby food, including infant formula, baby cereals and purees, not to mention all those fun teething biscuits and snacks with cartoons on the boxes, will tell you—they cost a pretty penny. But they’ve been around so long—and, more importantly, marketed so successfully—you’d never know they weren’t necessary to feed your children.
If foods like baby formula are such staples, then why aren’t babies born with a bottle and can of formula? Because they are born with something even easier to access, healthier, and cheaper. We humans are called mammals because our bodies are genetically equipped to feed our babies with human milk, and we begin making milk in preparation for the baby’s birth. It’s true, not all women make enough milk for their babies. I know—I was one of the few who didn’t, at first. But it’s far less true than we’re led to think. More than 90% of women have enough milk, or can make enough milk to feed their babies. It’s just that new moms don’t get all the support we need to do it, in the form of skilled professionals like Lactation Consultants—or better yet, a wise community of elders—who can help us through the early days and the inevitable bumps in the road.
While we’re on the topic of baby food, I’m excited to share a revelation that changed my life, and kept our bank account healthy. Babies don’t actually need baby food! Really. I know what you’re thinking—here’s one of those blender ladies who is going to tell me to puree my own baby food. Actually, no. It’s much easier than that. Our babies—beginning around age 6 months and older—can eat the vast majority of foods that we eat. Things like whole fruit, cooked veggies and whole grains such as rice, quinoa, beans and even meat.
Not only can babies eat our food, they can also feed themselves. This is where the real fun comes in. Maybe you’ve seen a parent feeding their baby, or maybe you’ve been that parent airplaning mashed bananas into his mouth. You know that it takes both of your hands and your complete attention. You’re spooning the mush out of the jar, aiming it into the baby’s mouth, possibly making sound effects while encouraging him to eat it, then cleaning up when he’s done. Picture this instead. Cook dinner as you normally would, then put some food on his tray or plate. Let him practice picking it up, aiming it towards his mouth or just playing with it. Then clean up when he’s all done. What’s the difference between these two ways of feeding babies solid foods? In the second scenario, the parent can actually eat and enjoy the show! Chances are she has many comical pictures of her baby wearing his dinner, what with her hands free and clear. The long-term outcomes are even more impressive, though. Babies who are self-fed are less likely to overeat or be obese later in life. Not bad for budget-friendly dining.
Another top money saving baby-care secret is called Elimination Communication (EC), or infant pottying. Yes, really. Infants can be taken to the bathroom, and, in fact, they really want to be. No one wants to sit in their own filth, not even babies. Most parents who potty their infants notice that babies stop pooping in their diapers within a week or two. By tuning in to our babies’ cues, we’re able to better meet their needs. ECing parents also report less incidences of unexplained crying. You know those times when you fed, clothed, napped and changed your baby, and he still wouldn’t stop crying? Millions of parents chalk it up to a mystery of babyhood. But it just might be that your baby wants you to take off his diaper so that he won’t have to soil himself. It sounds crazy at first, I know. But pottying is fun for everyone – the baby who doesn’t have to poop in his diaper, and the parent who “catches” his eliminations and doesn’t have to change her baby’s diaper—not to mention pay for all those expensive Pampers!
We’ve all heard about life in the trenches – the first three months of a baby’s life when he’s crying all the time, waking up multiple times to feed and needing to be swaddled, rocked, pacified, sung to, driven in the car, or shushed to sleep. I’ve been there, and they were the longest and most miserable three weeks of my life. But thanks to conversations with parents in-the-know, I learned that I didn’t have to keep muscling through, all three of us miserable as my baby cried her way through the nights. I learned that I could bring her into bed with me – that bed-sharing wasn’t unsafe, as my post-partum hospital nurse had told me, as long as it was done safely. Safe co-sleeping is one of the best-kept secrets in Western society, even though it’s practiced across the rest of the world. The U.S. government in particular has done an impressive job publicizing the perils of bed-sharing, citing many tragic deaths from co-sleeping, without mentioning that they are actually 46 times less than crib deaths over the same time period.
What’s so great about co-sleeping? For nursing moms, sharing a sleep surface enables a baby to feed quickly and easily, without mom’s feet once touching the ground. (Babies who aren’t nursing are safest on a separate sleep surface, close to their parents.) For babies, who have spent 10 months in utero, co-sleeping allows them the nearness to their moms, making the world less scary and helping them relax and sleep! Also, while the baby’s lungs are developing, nearness to his mom helps him to regulate his breathing, resulting in fewer instances of apnea and SIDS.
As one who has tread both worlds with the same baby, I can tell you that the tools in our parenting toolkit have fattened our bank account, built a close intuitive relationship with our daughter and increased our sleep. Taken together or separately, the experience has been priceless.
Miriam is a fun-loving mama who literally can’t stop kissing Dalia, her delicious 2 year old. She loves reading, yoga, crafting and helping others find their paths through life coaching. She is co-author of The Other Baby Book: A Natural Approach to Baby’s First Year.
What about you? What are your top money-saving baby-care tools?
