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Showing posts from October, 2017

Sleep training- What's the big deal about it anyway?

Recently I have been having an internal battle over this whole sleep training thing. You might be wondering what sleep training is so maybe I should explain that first... Sleep training in simplified terms is essentially training your baby to sleep for longer periods in their own bed. Theres a range of different strategies and ideas around how to do it but whatever way seems to involved some element of crying out or leaving you baby to cry until they 'get used to it'. I realise this is some what of a controversial topic which is why I have been thinking about it for a long time. As an early childhood teacher I personally would never promote sleep training techniques with my families because it didn't fit our centre philosophy of following children rhythms. However, I know there are some parents who really do benefit from it especially if they haven't had a decent nights sleep in years- ek! Now that I'm a mum (a very tired one I might add!) I feel so conflicted ...

Prenatal Anxiety: Yes, that's a thing and I went through it.

Our sweet baby boy is coming up 6 months next week. Yep! that's almost an entire half of a year. I'm so proud of him and proud of us. It's been one crazy roller coaster ride so far and I'm sure it's not going to end anytime soon. As time ticks on I've come to realise that I haven't always been in such a good place mentally. I mean I have my ups and my downs at the moment but on the whole I'm really, really happy. I know this definitively because before our baby was born I was really not happy… My friend sent me an article yesterday about (PND) Post Natal Distress and it got me thinking about my own anxiety. I've had a lot of anxious moments in my life and some trauma but the weird thing about anxiety is that you often don't know just how bad you are really feeling when you are in that anxious place. Looking back on my final 6 weeks pregnancy I can now see just how scarily anxious I was.  I was lucky to have two of the most lovely and jus...

Mum Rant: Breastfeeding is hard and why you need to stop being a jerk about it

I recently had a some what of an awkward conversation with a fellow mum about why I'm not breastfeeding. She didn't know my birth story because we'd only just met but she seemed like a pretty kind and understanding lady. However! when I pulled out my bottle of formula to fed my little boy she gave me a 'look'. Then she paused and said "Why aren't you breastfeeding?" in a very matter of fact tone. Without even thinking I shot back "Because I almost died". Sadly, I've had a few of these conversations in the last 5 months but my response seems to always shut down those conversations. In fact it usually ends in some kind of an apology to me by the said judgey person. The truth of the matter is that I tried desperately for 8 weeks to breastfeed, I went to classes, We paid for lactation consultants, We even drove to Palmerston North to get my babies tongue tie snipped all to no avail. I expressed day and night during those first 2 months and ...