How to stock your freezer with whole food meals with the help of friends

Tip 1: Baby carrots are already cleaned and cut.
Tip 2: Make an extra bag of each meal for yourself.

Whether it is in anticipation of a new baby or just needing some time off of cooking, here is how I just stocked my freezer with freezer meals with the help of friends (because I was way to shy to do this alone).

What are Freezer Meals?
Freezer Meals are meals that have already been prepped and are sitting in your freezer ready to be eaten. They could be raw ingredients ready to be dumped in a pot or slow cooker or they can be completely cooked and just require a reheating.

Step 1: Get Friends
I was way too intimidated to do freezer cooking by myself. In fact it seemed like all the planning that was required would take more time than making the meals and I don't have a lot of time.  I asked a group of friends and found that several friends were also in need of this type of meal help. Plus it is the winter and we are all bored of our own cooking.

Step 2: Decide on some standards
We had a few chats in a Facebook message forum to get on the same page about a few things:

1. This was an experiment so we acknowledged that there will be a learning curve!
2. As soon as we decided to do this, we started eating from our freezers to clean out the current contents. The date was set for our meal exchange three weeks later so we could plan to have freezer space in time.
3. There were 5 of us so we each decided to make two types of meals so at the end of the exchange we would go home with 10 different meals. This means that each person made each of two meals 5 times.
4. We would each make one vegetarian and one meat meal.
5. Meals were dairy free and gluten free to accommodate everyone's needs.
6. We would try to make it a one-dish meal.
7. Raw ingredients to be dropped into a pot or slow cooker were fine with everyone. Pre-cooked food was also okay.
8. Zip-loc type gallon bags would be mostly used and pre-frozen laying down.
9. We agreed to "try" to use organic but at a minimum stay away from the EWG's Dirty Dozen. I did appreciate that no one labeled the ingredients with organic. I appreciate this because if there was a economic difference, it was not visible. We exchanged and were equals.

Step 3: Finalize Recipes

A Google-Doc was created that we could all go to and post our recipes. 

Step 4: Grocery Shopping

Since I knew in advance what I was making, I planned around a great sale ($4.50/lb for organic grass fed ground beef!).  We had been eating a lot of food from our freezer the previous weeks so the economics of buying 10 extra meals worth of food sort of balanced out. To not waste time making separate a shopping trip I added the ingredients (including the quantity) to my regular weekly shopping list. 

Step 5: Cooking Day

These are the steps that we found most efficient:

1. Ditch the kids and set aside 2.5 hours of solid work time. We all have very young kids and it was much easier to not have them around. There are other cooking projects to do with kids.
2. Use a permanent marker to write the name of your dish on the Ziploc bags and the cooking instructions.
3. Get out all ingredients and put them on a pile for each meal (the floor works).
4. Start Meal #1: Wash all produce. 
5. Prep produce so that it needs only a final chop. 
6. Setup your Zip-loc bags by folding over the top. Then place your hands in side the bag and make the bottom a rectangle that stands up. The folded top will help it stay in this position. Now you can put your five bags for meal #1 standing next to each other.
7. Go down the recipe one ingredient at a time. Add the first ingredient to all bags then the second and so on. Chop as you go. Some people like to do the final chop earlier in the process but then I cannot tell how much 1 onion or 1 pepper is.
8. Squeeze out as much air as possible from the Zip-loc bags, close them and lay them down in your freezer. They should nicely stack on top of each other.
9. Repeat steps 5-8 for meal #2.
10. We found that the food needed at least two days to freeze solid.

Step 6: Enjoy Not Cooking!

After you meet with your friends and exchange your pre-frozen meals, you will have 10 pre-made healthy whole-foods meals in your freezer! My friends had different uses for their meals. Two ladies wanted to just not cook for the next 10 nights. One lady was saving the meals for after her new baby arrives. I am saving my meals so I can get a break from cooking on the weekends. 

THE VERDICT

So here it is. The truth. This seemed like a lot of work before I did it. I spent years reading about moms homeschooling 5 kids and making 30 freezer meals in one morning. Getting friends to do it with me and only needing the mental space for preparing 2 meals made it much easier. I also enjoyed the idea of getting to eat other people's cooking since I am so bored with my own food. 

Everyone was excited about the project except during the cutting stage. ALL of us starting thinking "I am never doing this again" but it is just like giving birth or running a marathon in that the toughest part is only a small part of the whole picture. When we exchanged meals it felt like Christmas and we all promised to do this again. Maybe next time I can convince them to do it with 15-20 meals!!!

Check out my tips on getting organized with your meal planning here.

DIY Placenta Tincture by Jennifer Leigh Mayer

My placenta went home with me for baby #2 and baby #3 to encapsulate my placenta (a.k.a. "happy pills"). I started running really low with baby #3's happy pills and a friend suggested that I make a tincture that I could use if I ran out of pills and also for hormone balancing during menopause (1-3 capsules full in 8 oz. grain alcohol). Jennifer Leigh Mayer, a Placenta Alchemist with Mama Moon NYC and Brooklyn Placenta Services has shared her recipe for making your own placenta tincture.  Thanks Jennifer for this great placenta tincture tutorial!

DIY Placenta Tincture

DIY tinctures are a wonderful remedy for mothers to use during the postpartum period. Many mothers use the tincture during times of transition such as teething, weaning, change in caregiver or even travel. They are easeful to prepare, all you need is 7-10 drops of tincture in a bit of water. The effect is a gently uplifting emotional support.

This step-by-step guide will teach you everything you need to know about making a DIY Placenta Tincture after the birth of your baby. Good luck!

First thing is first: gather your supplies

To make the tincture you’ll need:

• A clean glass jar- preferably tinted and not clear (I use an 8oz glass blue bottle)
• A small tinted glass dropper bottle
• A good quality grain alcohol such as vodka
• Paper towels, chux pad or other water proof counter cover
• Disposable gloves
• A small knife
• A spray bottle
• Bleach
• A clean work space
• The placenta 

Preparation:

1. Wash your hands carefully. Clean your designated workspace and put down a chux pad or waterproof cover. Make a stack of paper towels to put the placenta on. Take the placenta out of the fridge and place on the paper towels, the baby side with the umbilical cord facing down.
2. Get your tincture bottle ready by filling the larger bottle with grain alcohol up to the shoulder of the bottle. Keep the cap off for now.
3. Push aside the membranes and wipe clean the mother’s side of the placenta. There might be some blood clots present.
4. Find a healthy looking, robust area of the placenta and trim off a piece the size of a thumbnail.
5. Place the thumbnail size piece of placenta into the prepared tincture bottle. Wait until you take your gloves off to put the cap on.
6. Return the placenta to it’s container.
7. Clean up your workstation, throwing out the paper towel and chux pad. Wash the knife with warm soap water.
8. Place a cap on the placenta tincture and a label on the bottles. Date the bottle and give the tincture a name.
9. For professional use: Make a 10% bleach solution in the spray bottle. Spray down your counters with the bleach solution. After the knife is washed, spray the knife with bleach solution too.
10. Let the placenta sit for six weeks in a cool dry place. After six weeks decant the placenta tincture from the original bottle into the dropper bottle. You can now use your tincture as needed!

Jennifer Leigh Mayer is the founder and owner of Mama Moon NYC and Brooklyn Placenta Services in New York City. She is a Licensed Massage Therapist, Professional Birth Doula, Certified Holistic Health Counselor and Placenta Alchemist.

Jennifer is unique in her approach to working with her clients, her philosophy is to support and guide her clients down their unique path of health and wellness. She recognizes that this journey of health and healing as continuous and evolving.

Jennifer graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder, her work has been featured in New York Magazine, Anderson Cooper’s day time talk show and Flaunt Magazine. She is currently working on her first book, The Placenta Book, about the practice and history of placenta encapsulation.

How to Guarantee that your Baby will have a Higher I.Q.

As parents we all want to see our children reach their highest potential. We know that we cannot protect them from every danger, toxin, and heartache. We all want to make the decisions that will have the best long term outcome on our children.

Some moms and dads have known the secret to a higher I.Q. for thousands of years. Yet it comes as a news-breaker in papers such as the NYTimes when JAMA Pediatrics, a major mainstream medical journal, publishes a study about it. The World Health Organization recommends doing this for at least 2 years. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends doing it for at least 1 year. 

Breastfeeding 1+ years WILL increase your child's I.Q.

(for those who have already chosen the formula path, have adopted, or have serious medical issues I am in the process of writing a post on how to pick the healthiest formula so check back and don't feel left out!)

Below is the latest study including the results and conclusion (the important part). The outcome has taken into account factors such as socio-economics and parents education level. They are looking at exclusive breastfeeding (no formula/bottles) compared to just formula feeding for the first six months followed by then breastmilk and solids. If you need another reference, the World Health Organization already found the relationship between exclusive breastfeeding and higher I.Q. (and as adults are less likely to be overweight or diabetic).



Infant Feeding and Childhood Cognition at Ages 3 and 7 Years: Effects of Breastfeeding Duration and Exclusivity.
JAMA Pediatr. 2013 Jul 29. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.455.
Belfort MB, Rifas-Shiman SL, Kleinman KP, Guthrie LB, Bellinger DC, Taveras EM, Gillman MW, Oken E.Division of Newborn Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

IMPORTANCE Breastfeeding may benefit child cognitive development, but few studies have quantified breastfeeding duration or exclusivity, nor has any study to date examined the role of maternal diet during lactation on child cognition. 

OBJECTIVES To examine relationships of breastfeeding duration and exclusivity with child cognition at ages 3 and 7 years and to evaluate the extent to which maternal fish intake during lactation modifies associations of infant feeding with later cognition. 

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Prospective cohort study (Project Viva), a US prebirth cohort that enrolled mothers from April 22, 1999, to July 31, 2002, and followed up children to age 7 years, including 1312 Project Viva mothers and children. MAIN EXPOSURE Duration of any breastfeeding to age 12 months. 

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Child receptive language assessed with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at age 3 years, Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities at ages 3 and 7 years, and Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test and Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning at age 7 years. 

RESULTS Adjusting for sociodemographics, maternal intelligence, and home environment in linear regression, longer breastfeeding duration was associated with higher Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test score at age 3 years (0.21; 95% CI, 0.03-0.38 points per month breastfed) and with higher intelligence on the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test at age 7 years (0.35; 0.16-0.53 verbal points per month breastfed; and 0.29; 0.05-0.54 nonverbal points per month breastfed). Breastfeeding duration was not associated with Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning scores. Beneficial effects of breastfeeding on the Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities at age 3 years seemed greater for women who consumed 2 or more servings of fish per week (0.24; 0.00-0.47 points per month breastfed) compared with less than 2 servings of fish per week (-0.01; -0.22 to 0.20 points per month breastfed) (P = .16 for interaction). 

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Our results support a causal relationship of breastfeeding duration with receptive language and verbal and nonverbal intelligence later in life.

Related Posts:

Why Breastfeed? - Includes 10 steps to successful breastfeeding

Pumping at Work - It is the law!

Breastfeeding in Public - So much easier than dealing with bottles.

Parenting School 101 - Includes a great breastfeeding book to read!

Nursing Tea Recipe - One recipe for pregnancy, postpartum, and to increase milk supply.

Forward to your friends and family: How to help me!

Dear friends and family,

I had [am about to have] a baby!  Yay!  I have no clue how my baby will act from day to day.  Maybe I had a caesarian and cannot even get out of bed alone. Maybe my baby is an innately easy baby that lets me rest or get things done while he/she sleeps. Maybe my baby is super fussy and only naps while having skin contact with me, nursing, and marching up and down the stairs at the same time. We all have different experiences so please help me on my journey and don't judge me.

It used to be that "it takes a whole village to raise a child" and then we all moved away from our families and started working outside the home. In India family takes care of the older kids and home chores for three weeks after the baby is born. I don't live in India and I don't have a village of relatives helping.  I don't live in Europe where spouses get paternity leave.  Some women need help after the first baby and some don't need it until their third. Here are a few ways to help me:

1. Tell me that I am a great mom. I need to hear it.
2. If you ask to help and I don't take you up on your generous offer at first, ask again.  Better yet, just show up at my door with some cooked healthy food. I don't care what it is (but respect me if I have a food restriction). If you don't cook, deliver some pre-prepared food like a fruit salad, bagged salad, or granola and yogurt. The sooner the better and please do not promise food and not deliver it. This is really disappointing.
3. Tell me how great I look. Even if I still look 9 months pregnant and have no makeup on, tell me how radiant I am and how my belly looks like I never had a baby. Lies are okay here.
4. Clean my home. Seriously. Just show up and start washing dishes, sweep my floor, fold clothes, whatever. I will be embarrassed that you are seeing my home in such a mess but I will get over it and love you more for it.
5. Make my older kids go away. If I am not up to the task of delivering them to you, come and get them. Hang out at my place. Take them to the park. Feed them. The longer the better.
6. Make sure that I get some fresh air and a walk everyday. Don't let me tell you that I am afraid of my baby breathing fresh air because it is cleaner than the toxic air in my home (paint, furniture, rugs, germs, lack of vitamin D, you get it).
7. If I mention any issues with breastfeeding, support me with breastfeeding and DO NOT MENTION formula. This advice should only come from a lactation consultant (not you). Don't tell me about someone you know who "supplemented" with formula. Just don't. Instead look up a lactation consultant and get her here within the hour! She'll fix it. Period. Doctors are sort of helpful but they are not experts in lactation and have been known to not spot tongue tie, production issues and other things that lactation consultants are famous for instantly finding from the comfort of your home.
8. Don't let me eat junk food. Food is my fuel.  Junk will not help my milk supply and will make those post baby pounds stay on me.

I promise to return to a new form of normal in a few months and I will be indebted to you!

Love,

Me

Survival Mode

Today at our community pool I saw a new mom with baby #2 and she was in Survival Mode and didn't know it.  I went "missing" for quite a while after baby #3 was born.  To outsiders at the preschool I was completely on top of it being early or just in time for drop offs and pick ups with kids that seemed happy.  On the inside, I was in Survival Mode.

Survival Mode is when it takes every ounce of being just to keep the family boat afloat. When you are in "go" mode from the moment you semi-wake until the moment you hope to sleep. This is often brought on by bed rest, morning sickness, pregnancy fatigue, post-partum recuperation, or a fussy baby.  REMEMBER THAT THIS IS JUST A PHASE AND ALL PHASES PASS. 

Here is what Survival Mode looks like for me:

• At least one kid awake and hanging on me from 5am - 10pm.
• An infant that doesn't nap unless sucking on me and rocking at the same time. (This only lasted the first four months until I was able to "aide" her into a better life.)
• Dishes pile in the sink until the end of the day because it is most efficient to load them in the dishwasher once a day. If the dishwasher is full then it is really going to pile up!
• Laundry is such a waste of time! I was able to keep it clean then toss it on the guest room bed. Close the door.  Ignore until the weekend. Buy an extra pack of undies for everyone.
• Have the mommy support line just a few clicks or phone calls away.
• Don't forget to pop those happy pills!
• Let go. Lollipops and screen-time for the older kids may seem more appealing than they used too. This is just a phase and whatever you need to do to help the situation is okay.
• Take help. If your older kids are willing to separate from you and go to a friend's house, let them go. If someone asks how they can help, let them bring a meal.
• There is no time for food prep or picky eaters. Breakfast: Joe's O's or raw oats + milk. Lunch: PB&J + baby carrot sticks. Snacks: fruit. Dinner: 5 minute crock pot meal prepped in the morning while I was still sane using frozen veggies.  A variation of this recipe is a weekly staple in our house depending on what ingredients we have: 

Slow Cooker Baked Ziti

Ingredients

- 1 lb of your favorite pasta (uncooked). I use Trader Joe's Brown Rice penne

- 1 jar of marinara sauce

- Any vegetables you might want to throw in. I use one bag of frozen vegetables since they are already washed and chopped

- Can of beans or leftover meat (optional)

- Cheese odds and ends.Whatever you have. I have even used crumbled tofu in place of cheese.

- A dash of olive oil

Directions

Add the pasta, sauce and oil to the slow cooker. Add some water (maybe 1/2 cup) to the sauce jar, swirl and dump in the slow cooker.  Stir. Top the cooker with your veggies and cheese. Do not stir, this way the veggies and cheese are weighing down the uncooked pasta. Cover and cook on low for 3.5-5 hours. Mine takes 3.5-4 hours. You don't have to worry about being a little late and it won't really burn!

Cloth Diapers: The easy way

Baby #3 was born while I still had 3 kids aged 4 and under at home. I had to shave down daily tasks to a "survival" level yet I continued to cloth diaper my baby because I had discovered a great system. It is so easy that I had to share it with you. Here's a video of the diapers in action.

Disposable Diapers

Do you ever think about disposable diapers? They are made in a factory with a ton of chemicals and plastics then transported to your local store. What a carbon footprint! Oh wait, after they are used, they sit in a landfill for 450 years according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Yeah, yeah disposable diapers are not going to cause the human race to cease but it hardly feels like it helps our environment. I have heard arguments that cloth diapering is worse than disposable diapers because water is used to wash them.  Maybe if you wash daily but I wash weekly and there is no way that one load of wash comes anywhere near the environmental impact of making, transporting and sitting in a landfill for 450 years!

From a health point of view, disposable diapers are made of plastic and do not allow for fresh air to flow around the baby's skin which increases the chances of diaper rash. There are also all those perfumes and bleach rubbing against the baby's skin and we all know that everything on the skin is absorbed -- yuck!

Fancy Over-Designed Cloth Diapers

There are some great parents out there who have made beautiful cloth diapers that work just like a disposable diaper ("all-in-ones"). It is one piece and you put it on like a regular diaper. When it is dirty, you take the whole thing off and put it all in the diaper pail. This sounds nice, right? Well these diapers are around $20 each! A newborn goes through about 8-10 diapers a day and an older baby is at around 5 diapers a day. You would have to do laundry daily or have a huge stash of these in various sizes (although some brands have just come out with multi-size models). They are very thick so they take a long time to dry. They are usually made of fleece as the inner layer and this fabric often holds on to stink and causes you to have to do an extra "strip" washing regularly.  More work + more money + synthetic fabric against the baby = not for me.

Super Easy and Cheap Cloth Diapers

When I had a diaper service, I was introduced to the world of prefolds and I was sold. What is the easiest and cheapest way to cloth diaper?  Prefolds!  A prefold is a piece of 100% cotton fabric that has been folded to be most absorbent and is then folded again before put in a perfect fitting cover. Back in the day these diapers were pinned on babies then a horribly fitting plastic cover/bloomer was put on top. It was a horrible combination.  This is not what I am talking about.  This is how I diaper:

STEP 1: WASH COVERS
I wash covers in cold or warm water with regular laundry. This way I only need a 2 day supply (I reuse the same cover over and over until it is dirty or the end of the day). When I lived in an apartment without laundry in the building, I used to hand wash the covers. This took 1 minute in the bathroom since I would wash them while they were fresh.

STEP 2: WASH PREFOLD DIAPERS
I wash prefold diapers weekly. First they get a gentle wash rinse with no detergent, then they get a heavy cycle on hot with Rock-n-green laundry detergent. I have hard water so I use the Hard Rock variety. When they come out of the wash, I fold the prefolds into thirds (or fourths if they are huge) and put them in the top drawer of the changing table so they are ready to go.

Prefold folded in thirds

Prefold folded in forths

STEP 3: DIAPER!

Diaper changes are the same as with disposable except that I have to first put a prefold on top of a cover. When I have a sitter, I put the prefold already in the cover so it is ready to go. I reuse the same cover all day or until it is dirty. Diapers are put in a covered pail until laundry day. I use the Diaper Champ with a homemade reusable PUL liner and it blocks odor perfectly.

That was easy!  Breast-milk only bowels that occur during the first 6 months do not require any special ringing. When the bowels become solid with solid foods then the bowels must first be flushed whether you are using a disposable diaper or a cloth diaper. When using cloth I sometimes put a little piece of fleece on top of the prefold to make the bowel roll off easier into the toilet. I simply cut fleece to the size that I wanted. There is no sewing required with fleece.

You didn't miss the VIDEO of me cloth diapering did you?

Dear baby, please sleep!

You cannot hear it enough: EVERY BABY IS DIFFERENT. You "should" not compare your baby to those of your friends or other children, but it is really really hard not to. Enough said, let me compare my kids: all three were different sleepers and this third one is the worst!

Baby #3 is asleep at Oma's house.

Are you familiar with co-sleeping (bed-sharing or room-sharing)? For those of you who set up a cute nursery and never even knew the benefits of being in the same room as your baby, read this article by James McKenna Ph.D.,
Cosleeping and Biological Imperatives: Why Human Babies Do Not and Should Not Sleep Alone.


Did you read that sleep book that I recommended in Parenting School 101? The Sleep Lady's Good Night, Sleep Tight: Gentle Proven Solutions to Help Your Child Sleep Well and Wake Up Happy. You had better because you will need it now and for the next years! It is best to start the techniques while your baby is only a couple of weeks old so your baby gets used to it and doesn't have to transition later. Clearly, Attachment Parenting's method of bed-sharing did not work for us for long! Room-sharing has worked very well (another form of co-sleeping).

There seem to be a few different thoughts that moms have on sleep:

1. I'm a bed-sharer and it works for us now. Okay. Co-sleeping is hailed by the attachment parenting community and certainly has benefits to children. I keep my kids in a crib next to our bed after the newborn stage so they are still close enough to hear me but not smelling my milk and wanting an all night buffet. If bedsharing would not make my babies want to nurse all night I would have possibly done it longer.
2. I'm a bed-sharer and we are going to stick to this even if at least one person does not get a good night's rest. This is where lots of moms are and it just doesn't make sense to me to knowingly make someone miserable. The baby needs longer spans for mental development and you need it to function better.
3. I've read a few sleep books and tried one or two things they mention and the books just don't work for my baby. Of course not. You have to follow the book 100%. Seriously!
4. What? I can get a long stretch at night from a breastfed baby?   Yep, don't you wish that you knew how to do that sooner!
5. I need consecutive nighttime sleep so I make it happen. That's me when grandma visits and I can cater to my baby rather than the older kids.

I have read and re-read my sleep book and find it to be my sleep bible. There are different chapters for the different developmental stages.  My book worked great for my first two kids. This #3 is tougher because we could not (until recently) cater our days around her naps so she was overtired and not sleeping well at night. Then she started teething and whew now we are back at 2-3 wakings a night. Wish me luck tonight as we get back into our groove!

The Birth of Baby #3

Not a Pre-Planned Birth

During this blogging experiment, I have been planning and awaiting the arrival of Baby #3. She was due 8/24/12. Like my other babies, that due date came and past. My other two births were pushed along before my body went into labor. For this birth, I was worried that my husband would not be able to make it from work in time. My last labor was only 3 hours and I was thankful that we lived near my husband's work. Now we are in the suburbs and my hospital was even further away (a two hour trip from his office to the hospital). I could use a closer hospital but there is nothing closer that has midwives. So I tried to "plan" the birth! The day before my due date, my husband took the day off and went to my midwife appointment with me. We hoped that she would strip my membranes and send me into labor. Unfortunately the baby was not low enough yet and she worried that the cord could get in the way. So instead we had a "date" and went out to lunch and for a 3 mile hike in a nearby national park. We decided that we would just wait for the baby to be ready and run to the hospital as soon as labor started.

The Birth Story of Baby #3

The three days leading up to my labor, I felt different. I felt the need to sit down for no particular reason. My body does not tell me when I am in early labor so this might have been early labor for me. On the night of 8/30/12, I was mentally ready for the baby to come. I had done several tricks to relax my cervix and my husband was going to be working from home the following day (the eve of Labor Day weekend). It seemed like the perfect timing for the baby to make her arrival. It was almost midnight and I started to have a lot of back pain with a lot of downward pressure. When I stood up, I felt the baby drop so low that she felt like she completely opened my cervix and was between my legs. The back pains were very uncomfortable and I was exhausted from the day. All I wanted to do was go to sleep. I realized that the most intense back pains were coming every 10 minutes thus my labor had started. This baby, like my others was posterior so I get excruciating back pains (plus those regular contractions but who cares about those when my back was being stabbed!). I decided to try to talk myself out of the labor so I could get a little sleep and feel more rested.  I could not lay down because the baby was between my legs and it was extremely uncomfortable.  So I propped myself up on pillows and slept sitting up in bed. I woke up four hours later and was no longer in labor.  Labor restarted at 9am when I was getting ready for my 10am midwife appointment.

On the way to my 41 week midwife appointment, I realized that I was in labor but my contractions were only 10 minutes apart so I thought that I had plenty of time. At the appointment, I felt constant back pain and the need to do small hip rolls although the strongest contractions were still 10 minutes apart. My mom and daughters were in the exam room with me and the kids completely sensed my labor and fought the whole time (after 9 months of them being perfect at my appointments).  I had to send my mom out of the room bribing them with lollipops.  Yes, I knew I was in labor because my kids drove me crazy! My midwife checked me and I was 6 centimeters dilated!  She looked at me in confusion and surprise because I was not in the "heavy labor" that most women would be in at 6 centimeters. I must have been having mini-contractions that were just causing back pain between the larger contractions. At this point, I knew that it was time to head to the hospital that was luckily only five minutes away.

At the hospital, while waiting a few minutes for my room to get ready, I entered active labor so my husband and I did our slow dancing routine during contractions. Slow dancing with him makes my body feel fabulous through contractions and we both love how close we feel with each other. The first 20 minutes in the delivery room had to be spent hooked up to monitors according to hospital protocol. Of course this was not so fun in active labor but I was able to move around and rock my body through contractions. My husband massaged my back and pressed it with a warm pad to help ease the extreme back pain. My previous babies were also posterior so I experienced the same sharp back pains with contractions. This time the back pains did not subside between contractions. I remembered my NYC yoga instructor's advice to go right into the pain and hit it face on with deep exhales (Melissa Feldman -- I still love the Dark Vador exhale)! It is amazing how facing pain head on made my body really release natural pain killers. Or did it make me go into a trance? I don't know but it worked.

During the last contraction on the monitors, my body knew that it was time to move on and my exhale turned into an orgasmic song. The midwife joyfully announced "that's the baby" and I was thrilled to finally be allowed in the jacuzzi tub that I had been eyeing. As soon as I slipped into the tub and put my back against the jets, I was so at ease. All of my back pain went away and my body fully relaxed. I felt like I was on vacation (minus the pina colada and palm trees)! My body gave me a little break from contractions. When the contractions started again they seemed so mild in the water and the tub had taken away my back pain. My husband slipped into the tub behind me so I could use his knees to hold onto. In just a few minutes, my body felt like it was ready to push the baby out and I soon felt my body pushing so I pushed too and the baby came right out in one long push.

The baby, my husband and I enjoyed a beautiful couple minutes embracing each other skin to skin in the tub. I could not believe how great my body felt from being in the tub. When I got out of the tub, and rested with the baby on my chest, I was surprised to have no tares and a placenta that pushed itself out (this was a change from my past tares and pain pushing the placenta out).

Baby Katja Elizabeth was 8 pounds 7 ounces and 20.5 inches long, born posterior after a 3 hour labor! My baby was born loving to suck and insisted on sucking my breasts for her first 1.5 hours of life!

Looking Back

Baby Katja met her sisters a few hours after birth.

It is now a week later and I am still shocked how wonderful the water birth was and would recommend that every pregnant woman get herself a good MIDWIFE and a TUB!  My hospital was far more nurturing and had much warmer staff than I experienced with my NYC hospital births. I was glad that I did not do a home birth (which I wanted with birth #2) because I really needed the distance from my kids. After they would visit for 2 hours each day, I was ready for them to leave and to enjoy quiet time when my baby allowed it.

I am thankful for my body. Genetically I have an incredibly shaped pelvis that has allowed me to easily deliver three posterior babies that most women would require a c-section for. I am also thankful for keeping my body in shape while pregnant. Up until the end (and post due!) I was at yoga class, hiking in the forest, taking my older kids for outings and eating very healthy (especially avoiding sugar and processed foods). This allowed my body to labor nicely and for it to already be in good shape post-partum. All of that coconut oil that I rubbed on my tummy paid off because I still don't have any stretch marks.

Encapsulating my placenta again was a priceless idea. The day that I came home from the hospital, the idea of taking care of a newborn that requires so much time while my older kids were crying, demanding attention, etc. was a stressful thought. I knew that I would have my placenta pills in another day and told myself to save those thoughts until I had my pills. Indeed as soon as I started taking them, I felt so much more at easy with my mothering abilities. My own mother is here to entertain the older kids and keep the house afloat so the real test will be when she leaves us!

I am reminded again that every baby is different. This is the first of our babies that wants to co-sleep.  Katja and I did not sleep well in the hospital with all the interruptions and her wanting to suckle constantly. I even tried a pacifier and sent her to the nursery one night for someone else to hold a pacifier in her mouth so I could get two hours of straight sleep. As soon as we were home in our own bed, Katja was so happy to just sleep cuddled next to me. Last night she even went 6 hours between feedings!

I thank you all for following this blog and will now search for what I should do with the roughly written information that I have posted here.

Warmest regards,
Elizabeth

Food prep for a new baby

Post-Partum: My Dream Freezer
image: Southern Living

I am counting the days until my baby decides to arrive. In the past two months, I have tried to overcook meals when I could. Half of my freezer is now filled with yogurt containers filled with leftovers and ziplock bags of veggie burgers and marinated chicken. A quarter of the freezer of it is now filled with frozen Trader Joes food that my husband had a blast buying last weekend. We usually don't buy pre-made foods but I am predicting that I may not want to eat my own cooking and that restaurant delivery gets old after a while. It will be nice to have a variety at my finger tips.

During my past pregnancies I was not so concerned about stocking up food. Thankfully, my mom visited to help with the transition of each birth. It is the time AFTER she leaves that I plan for. For baby #1, it was only my husband and I who had to eat and we didn't care if we ate the same food for days. For baby #2, we left the country so soon after giving birth that there wasn't much prep work needed. Now for baby #3, the kids eat more than they used to and there is more of them! They do not want me to serve the same bean stew for lunch and dinner three days in a row.

I find meal planning to be a lifesaver now that our family has grown. Once a week before I go grocery stopping, I make a list of what we will have for dinner each night. I buy only the ingredients for those meals and stick to the plan so I don't have to think during the week. Post-partum, I will also have a meal plan but it will require me to thaw food the night before so I can reheat it for dinner. Our breakfasts and lunches will be standard each day so I don't have to think. This little bit of preplanning means that our family eats healthier and there is almost no food spoilage.

All new moms must fully taking advantage of anyone who wants to deliver meals.  If someone offers, quickly ask what day they can bring something by and enjoy it because you deserve it!

My placenta goes home with me

The placenta of baby #2

I had heard of people eating their placenta after birth. Supposedly it is extremely common around the world and has been done for eons BUT it seemed weird and extreme! So the thought did not cross my mind (although my doula had suggested it) for baby #1.

By the time I was pregnant with baby #2 I had learned about all of the positive benefits of consuming your placenta post-partum. It is really a miracle substance that prevents postpartum depression, stabilizes hormones and keeps your vitamins and minerals in balance. My midwife highly recommended it since I had been anemic and since my life was going to be extremely busy. Not only was I about to take a newborn home to a household with a 2 year old BUT, I was moving 2.5 weeks after the baby was born and leaving the country with the family the day after the move. It was a busy time in life.

I heard about having my placenta encapsulated and that felt like a method that I could deal with. Popping a pill is easy. I called around and found that the going rate was $300 to have my placenta encapsulated. I looked up online how to do it and was surprised that it could be done so quickly at home. I followed these instructions and encapsulated my own placenta a couple days after giving birth.

The pills worked for me. For months later, if I was having a rough time with my kids I would pop a placenta pill and feel that I could better cope. There is scientific proof behind the power of the placenta but if nothing else, the placebo effect is great!

There are many other great ways to ingest your placenta such as raw, cooked or as a tincture. Ask your caregiver prior to labor, how you should get your placenta home because sometimes you have to sneak it out.

Parenting School 101

We all spent years and years in school to essentially learn how to survive in the real world.  Many people went to specialized schools or universities to get an even more specialized education.  Most of us did not learn a thing about raising children and how they develop.  When I was first pregnant, I was overwhelmed with the fact that I knew nothing about raising kids or changing diapers. 

There is a lot that parents SHOULD know before they bring the baby home from the hospital. Yes there are 45 minute parenting workshops at the hospital but they tell you little more than how to change a diaper, bathe the child, and not hit or shake your child. You may have family that are willing to help and be a wealth of information but I highly suggest reading books on different methods and determine what YOUR parenting style will be.  If you don't educate yourself then you are blindly sending your child down a path that molds their future.

These are the books that I found very helpful to reference before giving birth:

• The Happiest Baby on the Block - How to sooth a fussy baby. If you have a baby with colic, do more research because these babies benefit from seek dietary restrictions for at least 1 week -- dairy (most common cause of colic), eggs, soy and gluten are a good first step.
• The Sleep Lady's Good Night, Sleep Tight: Gentle Proven Solutions to Help Your Child Sleep Well and Wake Up Happy - Your baby's sleep patterns will change weekly then monthly. To ensure that your baby is getting the right type of sleep and to help you make sure that you are not setting yourself up for sleep issues (or to solve sleep issues), I highly recommend this book.  I have to warn you that this book is anti-co-sleeping. If co-sleeping works for your family, do it because it is great!  But if it stops being great, don't be afraid to try something new.
• Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child - A great all round medical reference that gives you conventional treatments, dietary guidelines, nutritional supplements, herbal treatments, and prevention tips for common ailments. This is a good first stop before contacting your doctor.
• The Nursing Mother's Companion, 6th Edition: 25th Anniversary Edition - You should have a nursing book if you plan to nurse. It is a great reference to read before giving birth, to keep in your hospital bag and to have as a reference at various stages of nursing.
• The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two

These are good books to read as your baby is growing:

• The Happiest Toddler on the Block: How to Eliminate Tantrums and Raise a Patient, Respectful, and Cooperative One- to Four-Year-Old 
• Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves: Transforming parent-child relationships from reaction and struggle to freedom, power and joy 
• Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids 
• Playful Parenting 
• Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason 
• How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk 
• The Diaper Free Baby

• The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child

  
  

That should be a good start. There are many more wonderful books on parenting and play so read whatever looks interesting and make your own opinions.

Breastfeeding in public

Nursing Tank from Target $20

After your new baby arrives, it will feel great to be out and about when you are back in the swing of things. Then there is the moment that every new mother dreads: a hungry baby.  Oh no, the baby is crying and you don't want anyone to think that YOUR baby cries!  You want to get milk in the baby as fast as possible.  Luckily you don't bottle feed and have to get all that stuff in order.  All you have to do is sit down and give the baby a breast. My friend Melissa (and fellow Holistic Moms Network Co-leader) wrote all the details out to Breastfeed Your Baby in Public with Confidence. Like Melissa, I don't think that the solution is to pump then bottle feed! She has great tips.

I don't recommend a cape or cover-up for nursing. They are scary for most kids and confusing for the mom causing stress and a possibly stressed out baby. Most of the time in public, I put a receiving blanking near the baby's face after a latch if I want to be super discreet. People think that the baby is sleeping in my arms when I nurse and they often walk up and comment how sweet it is to see my baby sleep -- haha!

At the very beginning, I planned my outfits around nursing in public. Until my postpartum belly returned to normal, I was self conscious and wanted to make sure that no one would see it. This is where nursing shirts come in handy. The easiest type to use is the simple tank style that has a built in shelf bra. This style does end up showing your whole breast. If you wear a button down shirt on top, the button down shirt does shield most of your breast and tummy no matter what type of shirt that you have on underneath. When the baby and I get in a routine, I prefer to wear a loose shirt that pulls up to nurse. The baby ends up covering my tummy naturally. Other women like to remove their breast from the top of their shirts or use special nursing shirts that I find hard to handle. Try it all at home and see what works for you.

I find nursing bras to be essential. With my first born, I had such a hard time finding a bra that fit well and that I liked (I went to several maternity stores and was "fitted").  Finally I went to a specialized nursing bra store in NYC (I love that NYC has stuff like this shop) and was fitted with super cute bras at a not so super cute price of $60 each. With my second and now third babies, I realized that Target carries a style that fits be really well and looks great for $16. If you breastfeed for as long as I do, you do wear out your nursing bras.