#variations of normal

[unspoken-motherhood]

Breastfeeding.

They say that the moment your baby latches for the very first time is an incredibly special moment for mother and child.

I didn’t experience this. I was feeling a little overwhelmed by all that had happened so I felt numb to all of this. I remember my midwife squeezing my boob as she tried to get colostrum for my baby in a syringe.

I’m not sure why? I don’t remember. I’m not sure if it’s because he wouldn’t latch, or because he was distressed at birth and needed a pick-me-up from my colostrum.

The whole stay in hospital, I didn’t really feel that special bond. Feeding became really stressful as it was so ‘on the clock’, to get his low blood sugars up, and in this, I started to despise it. It was hard. There was so much pressure on my baby to feed well to get his sugars up. And there was so much pressure on my husband and I to make sure he latched properly and also that he took all the formula we had to syringe through a tube.

My introduction to breastfeeding was not what people made out it would be. Was yours?

[the-art-of-birth]

Bringing Baby Earthside: Meditations for an Empowered Birth

**NOT YET AVAILABLE** but check out our other amazing coloring books! http://the-art-of-birth.zibbet.com/shop Bringing Baby Earthside: Meditations for an Emp...

[the-art-of-birth]

Bringing Baby Earthside: A Birth Affirmations Coloring Book

http://the-art-of-birth.zibbet.com/shop A quick flip-through of Bringing Baby Earthside for the newcomers who may not be as familiar with The Art of Birth! -...

[hellogerbils]

This is what a REAL MOM BODY looks like.

How you can tell: I’m a real person; I’m a mom; this is my body.

Other REAL MOM BODIES might look like this, or they might look very different. ALL are normal. ALL are just shells so your organs don’t fall out your butthole. What you look like right after giving birth, or one year later, or ten years later, means absolutely nothing other than you are human and have normal human tissues, and there are literally thousands of variations of normal. 

Stop telling women to lose all their baby weight in the first year.

Stop telling women they don’t look like “real” moms if they don’t have loose skin or stretch marks. 

Stop accusing women of starving or neglecting their children if they happen to have lean body types or did not get very big while pregnant.

Stop telling pregnant women not to get too big. I gained 50 lbs with my second kid. I am small (5 ft), she was big, still had a totally natural (home) birth.

Just...stop...telling women ANYTHING regarding how her body should change to fit some (probably male) definition of normal.

[mamabird]

Ever since the Holidays creeped up this year, I’ve been fighting this battle inside. Do I celebrate Christmas or Yule? This wasn’t an issue until this year; until I had a baby. Her father and I decided to celebrate both. We were going to do just Yule, but we figured it’d be difficult for his East Texas family to adjust to. So our baby gets two Holidays :-) When I was younger, and probably what influenced me to seek out paganism, my mom told my sister and I a story about Christmas faeries. If you string popcorn cranberries and whatnot, if you feed them, you’ll get a lot of gifts Christmas morning. I figured I’d integrate that tradition to tie the two Holidays together. At the end of our Yule celebrations I’ll have Audrey feed the faeries for Christmas. I’m beginning to feel the magic of this time of year again.

daydreamingjellyfish, I figured you might like this idea.