Welcome once again to the Carnival of Breastfeeding. This month's topic is breastfeeding problems and, as you would expect, all the posts deal with problems breastfeeding mothers have encountered and how they dealt with them! In addition they also look at the online support they found useful.
Continue reading "Carnival of Breastfeeding: Breastfeeding Problems" »
Look at this!!!! Quickly, look at this:
In recent years baby showers have become increasingly popular worldwide. The reason for this is partly down to the fact that families in general are smaller, so individual babies get more attention than in years gone by! And whereas it was common practice in the past to only hold a baby shower for first-born babies, nowadays baby showers are often held for each new baby joining a family and also for adopted children...
Visit my website to read more about baby showers!
New baby sayings are a lovely way to remind expectant and new parents just how precious their baby is, or will become to them; they are also be a sweet way to prepare them for the joys and challenges that lie in the weeks, months and years ahead...
Visit my website to read some of my very favourite new baby sayings!
Continue reading "Pregnancy, Infertility, Birth, Babies, Breastfeeding and Parenting Forums" »
Jack has slept through the night for the past week or so and it is just incredible how good it feels not to be woken up three times a night anymore!
Like I said a while back, I intended to wean Jack by the time he turned two. Well he was two on Sunday and guess what? I haven't weaned him yet... although I have reduced the number of feeds significantly and am now only letting him breastfeed first thing in the morning, around lunch-time, tea-time and bed-time. And not at all during the night anymore!!! Yippee...
But, sleep... what is it good for?
Well after a quick google I discovered that sleep:
(source, VHI Healthcare, The Benefits of Sleep)
Already I couldn't agree more!
Physically I feel much better; I'm learning lots of new stuff for the company Stan and I have created, my skin is improving (I broke out in a rash of angry teenage-style acne last week!), I've been busily hammering away on my website adding over 40 pregnancy pages to it in just the last three or four days and I'm not feeling so angry and resentful towards people who disagree with me!
All that after just about a week of catching up. And perhaps the best thing is that I am now sleeping long enough to have the most amazing dreams, meaning I waken up feeling totally refreshed and alive!!
I can't wait to see how good it feels after six months!
It's celebration time! BreastfeedingMums, The Blog, has reached a new milestone... this is the two hundredth post! Who would've believed it?
So where did it all begin?
Well, it all began one day when I was feeling a bit down about the fact that I was stuck at home all day with a toddler and a new baby, with the school run for my eldest rapidly becoming the biggest social event of each day! I just lived for Monday mornings when I attended a local breastfeeding support group simply to get chatting to other breastfeeding mums.
I had reached a point in my life where I was seriously questioning why I had bothered with four years of university education, completing an English degree and a teaching qualification - when my chosen path was so obviously full-time mummyhood.
However, as I deliberated with myself, I quickly came to realise that I still had a burning ambition to educate.
Once a teacher, Always a teacher!
During the days I was at the support group, I became aware of the need of other young first-time breastfeeding mums to chat about breastfeeding and just family life in general. I also found that lots of the mums I was meeting craved answers to their questions about breastfeeding, but didn't know anyone else who had breastfed - and so had no-one to with whom to discuss those issues.
Very often I found I was answering their questions.
Many times the mums at the group mistook me for one of the group leaders and I began to realise that not every mum had researched breastfeeding in the way I had. I had read many books and scoured many websites in my own quest for for answers to my own breastfeeding questions. And because I was by now on my third stint of breastfeeding, the mums in the group viewed me as an experienced breastfeeding peer!
Browsing the web one day, as I looked at some breastfeeding sites, I had a lightbulb moment whereby I realised I could do what a lot of those other sites where doing.
But I would do it differently.
Whereas many breastfeeding sites seemed to be very medically based, I thought I would make a site putting across breastfeeding from a mums point of view, my own!
However, I also acknowledged that it would still require an authoritative medical slant. And that is where the wonderful Dr Jack Newman came in. He allowed me to copy many of his brilliantly informative breastfeeding articles to add to my growing site (and over time this inspired me to do the same with some of my own free-for-reprint articles!)
I spent many a long day and night researching and preparing my own breastfeeding articles before the site was ready to launch. And so BreastfeedingMums, The Website was born!
(Since that inaugural day I've also started to add some pregnancy articles as it became apparent to me that I needed to reach out to pregnant women if I wanted the breastfeeding uptake to increase.)
Around six months into my project, as I struggled to get enough visitors, I began to become aware of blogs and how useful they could be to increase awareness of a website's presence. And after contributing comments to a few, again that little lightbulb flashed and once again I thought, "I could do that" and so BreastfeedingMums, The Blog was conceived!
I struggled a little at the beginning, not really knowing which direction the blog should take, but over time I learnt to ease off on myself and to relax with the blog. I decided that since the website was my educational slant on breastfeeding that it would be more fun to use the blog to show my more personal side, to show the mum behind the words!
And so, two hundred posts later, and still with plenty to say, (albeit not always about breastfeeding!), I feel it's time to sit back for a moment to reflect upon and enjoy the path I have chosen, or rather the path that has chosen me :)
Phew.
At long last my website, BreastFeedingMums.com, has relaunched with a fresh modern new look.
Like I said a few posts back, I felt it had begun to look very dated. So with a lot of hard work and several very late nights, my hubby and I dragged it into the present with a much more polished and professional looking template - designed by the two of us!! (Stan saw to the template side of things whilst I photoshopped the little shoes and then the two of us worked on the banner till we got a look that we both liked.)
Go check it out and let me know what you think...
Any changes I still need to make? Any glaringly obvious errors I've overlooked? Any articles you'd like to see covered? Want to add your own breastfeeding story?
Your contributions and opinions are truly valued... :)
