Fielding questions about adopting — what you should say, and what you should avoid
Suggestions for both parents who are planning to adopt, and friends who are surprised by their “We’re adopting!” exclamation.
Tips for your first backpacking trip with a baby
Elka and her husband recently made it through their first backpacking trip with baby Uli, and she’s compiled a list of tips and tricks for fellow backpacking and parenting enthusiasts.
How to stave off questions about drinking while pregnant
I was at a party. I was pregnant. Someone handed me a half glass of wine, and I drank it. And there it was — the crack of the whip glare. At first I thought I was projecting (my rule was one-ish on a full stomach, with lots of water, to be totally honest) so I turned to the glarer, a friend of mine, who was already a mom.
“You didn’t drink when you were pregnant, did you?”
“No,” her tone was short and sharp.
Dealing with clogged ducts while breastfeeding
One morning I woke up with a huge, hard lump on my right breast. I didn’t know where it came from and totally freaked out – Did I have a tumor!? I wrote my mama friends, did some reading and figured out it was had to be a clogged duct.
How should my child’s gender be defined?
The age-old struggle: defining gender. Every family has a different way of approaching the topic, and Denise is in the process of figuring out what exactly “female” means for her three month old, Nikte.
Making prints of lotus-born placenta
Lotus birth babies have two birth days, they have the day that they were born into the world from Mama’s womb and they have the day that their umbilical cord and placenta naturally detached from their belly button.
Following in Momma’s footsteps: teen piercings
I was a bit of a late bloomer into the piercing thing. I started with tattoos at 21 but it wasn’t until I was thirty that piercing became cool in my book. As a rocker chick, it just seemed a natural next step. I had my ears pierced since I was 12, but I was ready for the next big thing. And, apparently, so was my daughter.
Building a family through semi-open adoption
Every family has an origin story. The boundaries of my own little family are less clear than most — we are a family formed through a semi-open adoption.