How to track your cycles and chart your fertility without going super insane
Charting is a super, insanely useful way to get really amazingly in touch with your body and your cycles, but if you’re not careful, charting can drive you super insane.
Postpartum depression: it’s not just a woman’s disease
Like a werewolf under the light of a full moon, women with “hysteria” were transformed by the powerful force of their uterus, causing an excess of emotion. Interchange that moon for a baby, and you’ve got postpartum depression — a woman’s disease.
How to make a natural air freshener, and assemble your own laboratory for concocting teas, salves, and syrups
Herbs. They taste good, they smell nice, and have well-documented medicinal properties. You can put inexpensive ingredients to good use after you put together your apothecary kit. Though I’m even more interested in Dale’s illustrated herb chart on salvaged wood.
Endometriosis didn’t crush my baby-making hopes
I think the first time I experienced “the pain” was around 15. After describing these very scary occurrences to my gynecologist, she ordered an ultrasound where they found multiple grape sized cysts and endometriosis on and around my ovaries.
My experience with late-onset postpartum depression
What I learned from postpartum depression: don’t suffer in silence, don’t think that your feelings are synonymous with failure, and recognize that post-partum depression can occur anytime in the first year after delivery.
Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week
Congenital heart defects can be confusing and scary, so Brooke’s compiled a few common questions and answers that may help ease your mind.
Why I almost decided to have an unassisted birth
I currently live in North Carolina — where traditional midwifery is illegal. At 37, I’m also “of advanced maternal age.” This means, no one wants to deliver my baby.
Dealing with super painful post-partum sex, aka vulvar vestibulodynia
After three frustrating years, many visits to fertility clinics that ultimately resulted in nothing, we found ourselves pregnant in the late Spring of 2009. Aside from the regular baby chaos, everything has gone extremely well. Except for one thing: sex. I can’t have it.