johncsnider

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 h...

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...

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). ...

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. Her...

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 "aid...

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 makin...

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 use...

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 lunc...

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 g...

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...

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...

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 ...