pregnant – My Mom is the Worst

ALL the Birth (Book) Details – Slighty Less Graphic than My Birth Video

Can you imagine being pregnant and having the “due date” continuously pushed back, week after week?

At some point you might just think you are going to stay pregnant forever.

Many times I felt that way during the writing of the latest book. Things took far longer than I expected to come together. It literally ended up taking nine months from the time I put a call out that I was looking for positive, minimal intervention birth stories to then compile, write, edit, format, and publish this baby. And like an anxious mama-to-be, I was losing my patience with the process toward the end.

Even the name took longer than expected to choose. But a title, is pretty important. It will be around for a while. I wanted a strong title, yet one that wasn’t too “birthy.” So like most of us do when we are expecting, I made lists and ran them by friends (and fans) to gauge their reaction.

But ultimatly the decision was mine. This book was my baby. The final title is one I feel honors the women that shared their positive birth stories in the book. And it also encourages any woman, that decides to one day give birth, to believe in her body:

Because YOU Are Superwoman: How to Harness Your Superpower and Create a Positive Birth Experiance with Minimal Medical intervention

Things are finally coming together. This baby is fully baked and ready to make an appearance.

Speaking of appearances, let me share the first official cover photo!

The cover clearly lets readers know that the topic is “birth,” but hopefully the strong, modern, and bold look and feel alludes to the tone of this birth book.

I also threw in some humor and overly personal details, just to keep it light;) Think of the book You are a Bad*ss and then add the words, At Giving Birth.

Here is the working book description:

***

Do you want a positive birth experience, but haven’t heard of any?

Do you think a more natural birth experience sounds ideal, but don’t know how to go about having one?

Have you ever wondered if other strong, educated women choose to birth with minimal medical intervention?

Fortunately, these are not your typical birth stories.

These are the remarkable stories of modern-day superheroes. A bunch of bad*ss super women, just like you. They are bold, educated, strong, and they decided to do things differently. Ultimately, they chose to make their belief in their body Plan A, while reserving the marvel of medical interventions for Plan B.

Over twenty birth stories, paired with six evidence-based steps for a Minimal Intervention (M.I.) Birth, will provide you with the confidence and skills you need to go after the birth experience that you desire. An empowering experience that likely strays far from everything you’ve been conditioned to believe about birth.

Stop simply hoping for a positive, minimal intervention birth. This book contains the specific birth plan for you, and it’s easier than you think.

***

Cursing, pooping, grunting, naked, raw, real and candid birth stories told by strong, intelligent mamas. Above all their stories will encourage fellow women that they too have everything they need to birth their baby with minimal intervention.

So here is the exciting part. Unlike childbirth where you never know the exact birthdate, this book is going to be available on Amazon on Nov. 11th, 2018! That’s just two weeks away, and I couldn’t be more thrilled for you to read it! If it lives up to the expectations of those of us that collaborated on it, this book is going to change the way women, and practitioners, think about birth.

If you’d like to get an advanced copy of Because YOU Are Superwoman in exchange for an honest review on Facebook or Amazon, join the launch team! Contact me here and include the words Launch Team in the heading – I’ll follow-up with details next week. To join the team and get your free advanced copy, I need to hear from you by Monday, Nov. 5th.

Ready to get your hands on something now? For a limited time, if you buy either of my children’s books on Amazon, you get the e-book FREE and you can start reading ASAP!

And if you are still questioning, does she really have a graphic birth video? The answer is yes.

And no.

It’s not a flattering angle, and I don’t plan to share it;)

Growing Up Made Me Ashamed to Relax

We’ve got responsibilities. We’ve got bills. We’ve got goals. We’re adults now. But really, we’re also just horrible at pausing and seizing the day.

For most of us there is always a to-do list. We are always thinking about what’s next.

But some times life hands you a 90 degree day in January and you just can’t ignore that kind of gift.

Except we do. All the time. Because, life.

We’ve got responsibilities. We’ve got bills. We’ve got goals. We’re adults now. But really, we’re also just horrible at pausing and seizing the day. I’m preaching to myself here, but honestly, probably you as well.

Toward the end of both of my pregnancies I have been reminded of this. I have a to-do list and I work feverishly to complete it because I know there is a huge productivity wasteland coming at me in the near future. And then all the boxes get checked.

But each time I’ve reached forty weeks pregnant, neither of my babies have arrived. So I have some unaccounted for time. I am forced to remember what I used to do for pure pleasure before I was a grown-up. Ummmmm?! What?! But then it starts to slowly come back to me…hang out with friends…do something creative, like drawing a picture…go to the beach!

Lifes a beach bag — This Beach Bag was given to me on the last day of my position at a corporate marketing company. I think they assumed I would use my new “free time” at the beach. Today was the first time it’s been used.

So that’s kind of what I’ve been up to this last week.

The productive adult in me is embarrassed to admit it. I feel the need to mention the admirable, grown-up things I’ve done this week (attend a children’s book writing class, write query letters to agents, track stats and book sales) so you don’t think less of me. But honestly, doing things just for fun has been super strange, and super fulfilling.

I’ve gone to a chick flick at the theater (who knew movies were only $6 if you go at 11 am?!), I’ve done some pencil drawings in my sketch book, and another preggo mama and I spent three hours at a cozy little spot in Laguna Beach chatting with the sand between our toes on a beautiful 90 degree day in January.

Mermaid chubby Baby twins

It’s like my Baby Girl is already forcing me to mentally slow down and be present and grateful for the moment in front of me, a skill that surely does not come naturally as an adult.

Watch out world, she already wants to be in charge.

pregnant laguna beach 1 (1) — Um, Do I look fat in this? 😉 41 wks. baked.

How to Love Your Maternity Pants, Then Return Them for A Smaller Size

So why am I raving about pants that aren’t even mine, that I plan to wear to the max, and that I’m going to return?

I’m in love with my pants. Hands down they are the most comfortable thing I’ve worn, pregnant or not. The weird thing is, they aren’t mine. Even weirder, I intend to return them.

I’ve worn them three days in a row now and I plan to wear them every day until Baby Two arrives, and probably for a week or two after that. Then, back they go. No point in keeping them since I’ll soon be out of maternity sizes.

Le Tote Maternity — My Current Obsession: These Pants!

So why am I raving about pants that aren’t even mine, that I plan to wear to the max, and that I’m going to return?

It’s because over three years ago I joined a rent and return clothing exchange called Le Tote. I initially joined long before I was pregnant, but now this service has carried me through two pregnancies, and all the time in between. Weddings, interviews, casual days, parties, business meetings, trends I wasn’t sure I could pull off, trends I didn’t want to commit to, a growing belly, a shrinking belly – the service has been there with me through it all.

For the first two trimesters I can typically craft something together to wear – a rubber band to give me more room on your pants button, a flowy dress, or leggings and a long shirt – but by that third trimester it starts getting really iffy. That’s when I switch from the regular Tote Box to the Maternity Box for a few months.

Pregnant or Not, Here’s How the Service Works:

Sign up for Le Tote here, and get your first BOX FREE!
Fill out a style profile.
Sign up for a monthly plan (cancel at any time). When I’m not pregnant I do the five piece box (three clothing items/two accessories). When I’m pregnant I do the Maternity Box with three pieces (two clothing items/one accessory). They have plenty of name brands to pick from – Lucky, Kate Spade, Jessica Simpson, Vince Camuto, Calvin Klein, etc. and accessories include jewelry, scarfs, and handbags!
Le Tote curates the shipment for you based on style preference, fit, time of year – and then you have 48 hrs. before they ship it to go in to your account and swap items if you want. *I do this almost every time because I usually have an event coming up that I want specific items for.
Your Tote clothing arrives in the mail with a preprinted mailer for your free return shipment.
Wear the items as long as you want (you don’t even have to wash them before you return them), and drop them in the mail. If it’s during the same month, you get to pick more clothes without paying anything else. I typically get three boxes a month for one monthly fee. Ladies, that’s like 15 items for about $60 a month! Plus you can add insurance for five bucks a month in case anything happens to the clothes. Mother’s of little ones, it’s worth the peace of mind.
If you ever want to keep items – they offer awesome discounts off the retail price. But don’t feel like you have to. The premise is wear, return, repeat!

Hoping you find some clothes that make you as happy as my cozy pants make me. Everyone deserves to love their pants and everything else in their closet!

Other Recent le Totes

Keeping Your Mind From Fearing Birth During Those Final Weeks

I got this mailer from my hospital the other day. They mention the pampering experience you receive in the Labor and Delivery ward. That should be illegal.

Watch out! It’s officially birth month. Something pretty large is exiting my body soon whether I like it or not.

40wks birth — Insta Photo Cred @mayavorderstrasse

My due date is Jan. 23rd. So I’m currently 38.5 wks. pregnant. Some might say baby is due any day. Which is possible. But really anytime between Jan. 9th and Feb. 6th should be considered “ordinary” since due dates are an approximation and two weeks “early” or “late” is the normal window in which your body is likely to go in to labor.

In fact, according to Glow’s Nurture Pregnancy App. 95% of babies aren’t born on their due dates. Just 25% of babies come “early” and 70% of babies come “late.”

So, that said, I am just over here trying to keep my cool and enjoy these final weeks before a tiny dictator becomes the center of my universe.

The last couple of weeks I have shared resources I used to educate myself on birth, why I chose a natural birth, the natural hospital birth story of my first daughter, and today I’m sharing my thoughts on how I’m dealing with the idea of experiencing birth for the second time around – very, very soon.

In reality I am excited and nervous at the same time. Birth is like a beautiful body and mind *ss kicking that can sneak up on you at any moment. So psychologically, that’s a blast.

I’ve been trying to stay healthy, positive, and busy to avoid getting stuck in my own head. Birth will happen in its own time, so in the meantime, here is how I’m keeping my mind from fearing birth during these final weeks…

Fearing Birth

Staying Active: I don’t feel quite as strong, or as active, as my first pregnancy, but I’m still making a decent effort. I’m stretching, doing short (15-20 min.) body weight to 10 lb. weight workouts, and walking. The better shape I keep my body in, the more likely it will be ready to be my teammate in labor.
Relaxing: My bubble bath habits have gotten a bit out of control. Between finishing our master bath remodel and my baby belly growing much faster this time around, baths happen almost every other night. I am not a big t.v. watcher, so the tub is likely where you’ll find me after 8 pm. I also like to get massages. I didn’t enjoy some of the wimpy prenatal massages I received with the first pregnancy. So now that I am in the “birth month” window, I feel comfortable getting a firm massage again, with no fear of it setting me in to labor. At this point, baby is developed. Plus I feel like this aligns my spine and pelvis, which is helpful for baby’s exit strategy.
Checking Things Off My To-Do List: Some of the things are rational, and I really would like to accomplish them before baby arrives: washing the infant car seat that have been in the dusty garage for a year, setting up some book marketing efforts for my children’s books that can run in the background, girl time with my friends. But other silly things just get added on when I start to panic that I will never have free time again – like washing the living room curtains, transplanting my succulents, and filing every piece of paperwork in my house.
Adulting – When you start to think about creating new life, you also start thinking about how you need to get your ducks in a row. With the first baby, our adulting goal was to pay off the remainder of our hefty student loans before our daughter was born. We managed to pay them off the month she was born, except the joke was on us when her monthly daycare and diaper bills ate up all the money we thought we were going to be savings. Kids are fun. This time around, our adulting goal was to write a will. We managed to finish it, but are waiting to file it until we have a name and birth date for Baby Two. But, at least we now have it on paper, and know what each of our wishes are, if needed.
Filling My Head With Positive Thoughts: Is child birth going to hurt? Yup. Am I going to have to try to push through that to have the birth I want? Yup. Is it going to be a walk in the park? Nope. And even with my best intentions, plenty of unforeseen things could still come up. But, having no plan, is like planning to fail. So, I’m filling my head with positive birth stories through the resources I mentioned here, and leaving the rest to the higher power at be.

I got this mailer from my hospital the other day. They mention the pampering experience you receive in the Labor and Delivery ward. That should be illegal.

A Pampering Birth

Unless they now paint my toe nails and tell me I’m pretty during labor, leave chocolates on my pillow during turn down service, and my girly parts feel relaxed and rejuvenated when I go how with my newborn two days later, a pampering experience is a slight overstatement.

I’ll report back in a few weeks and let you know how that pampering experience played out.

***I’M CRACKING MYSELF UP OVER HERE***

Natural Childbirth Sounds Insane, But You’re Still Curious

Six Resources to Help Consider if Natural Birth is Right for You, or Just for Hippies.

I’m a ticking time bomb over here at 37.5 wks. pregnant with Baby Two.

The first time I gave birth I had to learn a lot about my body. It was a topic that I had avoided for many years (thirty-three to be exact). So when I started to even think about natural childbirth, it felt like a bit of an ignorant pipe dream.

Could I? Should I? Why would I want to endure that? Do modern women really chose such a barbaric option, or is that just for gypsy women with no health insurance?

First hour of life, natural birth — First Hour of Life

If you find yourself asking any of these questions, but are still intrigued whether you could achieve your own natural childbirth, we are going to first start by opening your mind to the possibility.

This post is part of a multi-post series on my experience with natural childbirth (Sign up to follow the blog and you will get an alert when the rest of the series is added): resources I found to open my mind to the possibility, the benefits I found in favor of it, actually experiencing it with Baby One, and trying to wrap my mind around the idea of doing it again with Baby Two.

Your mind is incredibly powerful. It will greatly help or hinder you during childbirth. For that reason, we will start there.

Here is a list of the best resources I found to help consider a natural childbirth, and if the possibility was really for me.

Natural Childbirth, is it right for you

Book – Expecting Better – This book is a great place to start, natural birth or not. It helps you to better understand all the “advice” (like “Don’t eat cold cuts”, “Don’t sleep on your back”, “You need a c-section if you had one before”, etc.) we receive as pregnant women, so that you can make educated decisions for yourself based on actual statistics.
Movie – The Business of Being Born – you can find it for free on YouTube. The documentary shares the opinions of doctors that are for and against births by midwife. You get to see what natural childbirth looks like, something most women have never seen: minimal intervention, not hooked up to an I.V., fetal monitor, catheter, and epidural. Painful, intense, beautiful, and empowering, There is even a story of one woman that planned to have a natural birth but ended up in the hospital because of complications with her baby. It reminded me that I feel blessed to have the option of western medicine, when necessary, to support my birth wishes.
Hire a Midwife – I liked my OB-GYN, but at 32 wks. pregnant I finally decided that if I wanted to try for a natural birth, a midwife was my best bet. OB-GYN’s are trained in all the ways to intervene during childbirth. Most have had minimal experience with a natural childbirth. I thought, if it it foreign to them, how are they going to keep me calm and reassure me that everything is normal? I found a midwife that was approved to deliver at the hospital I planned to deliver at. I decided to meet with her, and was impressed how much we discussed the mental side of childbirth and what kind of experience I wanted. There were far fewer rules about how things had to progress. It was about letting my baby and body do their job, and my midwife would be there to coach me through it all.
Book – Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth – This book is divided in to two parts. The first part is natural birth stories. The second part is observations from Midwives that live on a farm in Tennessee and have attended thousands of natural births. I didn’t have you start here, because the book is pretty hippy, but awesome, once your mind is ready for it. Please do not skip this resource if you are considering natural birth. You will gain an entirely new perspective on birth from what our western culture teaches. Plus, Ina has a bit of a sense of humor, “There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ, they would brag about it. So should we.”
Positive Affirmations – Birth will be an experience like no other. Give yourself the best possible chance of dealing with it by having a phrase or two that you can repeat when you start to doubt yourself. For the first birth, mine was something along the lines of: You are strong, capable, and safe. Your body was meant for this. A similar one that I found for birth two is: Your body is not a lemon. The Creator is not careless. Your body was made to give birth.

That’s a lot of homework right there. But you’ve got time. Start with one or two of resources and see if you are still interested. Or just come back to this blog for part two: The Cliff Notes Version of Why I Decided on a Natural Birth (Sign up to follow the blog and you will get an alert when the rest of the series is added).

Have you checked out the recent release of my second children’s book? My Mom is the Worst is available now!

If you have a positive affirmation you plan to use for childbirth, please share it in the comments.

Twenty Two Meals and a Bottle of Rum

So instead of European vacations or a trip home for the holidays, I scheduled some other fun activities.

Various doctors appointments. Finally sitting down to write our Will. Cooking over twenty freezer meals before Baby Two disrupts our routine.

I clearly know how to keep a marriage hot.

My husband had the week between Christmas and New Years off. The younger versions of us would have never let this week pass us by without making some amazing travel plans. The current versions of us let finances, toddlers, and the third trimester of pregnancy get in the way. Lame excuses. I know.

So instead of European vacations or a trip home for the holidays, I scheduled some other fun activities.

Various doctors appointments. Finally sitting down to write our Will. Cooking over twenty freezer meals before Baby Two disrupts our routine.

I clearly know how to keep a marriage hot.

We did the freezer meals before Wynn was born and it turned out to be a life saver for us. There was already going to be plenty of chaos in our house as first time parents of a newborn, and typically we cook a hot breakfast daily, and 5-6 dinners a week.

There was no way that was going to happen those first few months, so being able to pull out a meal from the freezer was one very appreciated amenity. Between a tired mama, and a crying newborn, nothing good happens in the kitchen. We would have ended up eating Chipotle or Pizza Hut every night, which contrary to what some of you believe, probably isn’t the best idea.

Actually, it could have been even worse than that.

We could have reverted back to our early marriage days where lean pockets and ramen noodles were considered full meals. You can read about the entire ridiculous year we spent learning to cook here. Expect to read lots of embarrassing stories and many, many typos. You’ve been warned.

You don’t have to be pregnant to benefit from stocking your freezer with meals. This is great for all of us with a busy life.

Here is the game plan we used to stock our freezer with 22 meals (88 servings). I recommend spreading the tasks over three days so that you don’t overwhelm yourself:

Day One (30 min/1 person): Gather recipes on Pinterest for freezer meals. I actually had these saved on my computer from last time we stocked the freezer. We chose 11 different recipes and planned to make two batches of each recipe.
Day One Cont. (30 min/1 person): Create a master shopping list, organized by the section of the store the ingredients would be found in: meat, produce, canned goods, etc. Make sure to double ingredients if you plan to make multiple of the same meal.
Day Two (1 hr/1 person): Go grocery shopping. I went to two stores, Grocery Outlet and Ralphs, and spent $230 ($2.61 per serving). The most expensive part was that we chose to buy organic meat and ingredients when possible. It adds up, but organic meat is important to us, especially when I will be nursing and passing everything along to my young baby.
Day Three (3 hrs/2 ppl. steps 4-7): Label all the freezer bags with date/recipe name/servings/and cooking day instructions.
Put all the meat in the bags so that you only have to touch meat once before moving on to other ingredients.
Recipe by recipe add remaining ingredients. It’s great to have one person reading the recipe and adding the dry ingredients while the other person is chopping the fresh ingredients. Lay each bag flat in the freezer, and stack them on top of each other to save space.
Clean up.

For a price, there are sites out there that will email you a monthly menu, shopping list, prep instructions, and bag labels. Once a Month Cooking is one that I have used a free sample menu from in the past. But I also enjoy finding recipes of my own that I know my family will eat.

If you looked in our freezer on a typical day, it’s freakishly barren. To the point you might feel bad for us. A few mini bottles of airplane booze and an ice pack. But now it is completely stocked. We look like a real American family, with the status symbol of abundance, the ‘overflowing freezer’.