Tag: nursing

Our New Pregnancy Book: A Gift From Moms To Moms

On By Anna EastlandIn Maternal Health, motherhood, Writing9 Comments

Beginner’s Guide to Growing Baby

Happy Belated Mother’s Day everyone! I hope you all had good days…whether you have one child or ten, you deserve wonderful things! It’s a big, full-time job nurturing life.

My mom blogger buddy Bonnie Way and I have written a book on pregnancy, birthing and early days with a newborn and are offering it free this week until Thursday on Amazon kindle. With 14 kids between us both, we have plenty of experience, and hope our tips, experiences, and birth stories can help support you on your journey to motherhood!

You don’t need a Kindle device to read it—you can get the free Kindle app on your phone, iPad or tablet as well. Here’s the link:

Beginners guide to growing baby: tips to help you through all four trimesters

You may wonder why we say tips for all four trimesters, instead of three, but this is not a typo! During the first three months of a baby’s life, they are still so completely dependent on their mothers to keep them alive, safe and secure. There is nowhere my nine week old son prefers to be, than snuggling on my chest, sleeping to the drum of my heartbeat.

At the same time, a mother’s health and happiness depends a lot on her baby. If he is nursing well, sleeping well, and generally content, so will she be. That means her snacking lots to keep up her energy for nursing, eating well, and napping with the little one, because newborn days are pretty exhausting—but with gentle care—happy baby, happy mama. This is why we call it the fourth trimester…not so much a time to rush into getting “back to normal,” but a time to move slowly while you continue to nurture fragile new life, grow into this new role of being a mom, and find the rhythm and support you need as well.

Huge hugs to all my fellow mamas! I hope you enjoy reading our birth stories!

Double birthday: new baby book and new baby born!

On By Anna EastlandIn Maternal Health, motherhood, Writing7 Comments

COVID Bucket List:

Have a baby ✅

Write a book ✅

Welcome both to the world on the same day ✅

More than one thing has been gestating during the past year of isolation at my place…and I’m excited to tell you that on the same day my son was born last week, my new book also made its way into the world, thanks to my friend and co-author Bonnie Way. Our Beginners Guide to Growing Baby: Tips to Help You Through All Four Trimesters is now available as an e-book on Amazon, with the paperback version to follow shortly.

Good job, Mom! You’ve been busy!

Here’s our blurb about it:

To give you a better idea of all the things we wanted to share with you, here are the table of contents. We keep thinking of more and more chapters, because there are so many experiences we would like you to learn from faster than we did, but we had to stop somewhere, so here’s what we chose:

As you can see, something that makes our book a little more personal, besides the fact that all our advice is based on our personal experiences, rather than on theories, is that we share all our birth stories with you. Not some overdramatized movie versions of birth, but our honest, actual stories. Keeping’ it real.

Another tidbit I’m rather pleased about is a little surprise tucked in between each section, that is, one of my poems for each trimester, birth and beyond…because the beautiful, feminine mystery of giving birth is something beyond mere prose.

I hope Beginner’s Guide to Growing Baby will be a helpful resource for both new and returning mamas and help empower them to make healthy informed decisions about what’s best for them and their babies. Bonnie and I are not medical experts, but after 14 births between us, we are certainly very experienced!

Other important credentials include the fact that as I lay cuddling my four day old infant, I am wearing an International Women’s day outfit worthy of a superhero…or at least some kind of fertility goddess/Star Wars fan gone wrong—Baby Yoda pj pants and a green cabbage bikini—see Fourth Trimester chapters on breastfeeding engorgement to learn why the heck I’m doing that!

Party on, Mom!

If you’d like to be informed when the physical version of our pregnancy and baby book is available to order online, leave me a comment and let me know so I can keep you posted. I’ll also be ordering a box of copies, so if you know me personally and prefer to pick one up from me, let me know to add you to our pre-order list and save on shipping.

Bless all the bellies and babies out there! Time to give my little one a midnight milkshake. 😋

Our New Book about Pregnancy, Birth, and Beyond

On By Anna EastlandIn Maternal Health, motherhood, WritingLeave a comment

The last time I posted was over a month ago, a photo on Christmas Eve of my precocious four year old waiting in the stairway for Santa…fast asleep! After all the festivities, we’ve been busy getting back into the new homeschool year and working on various projects.

Besides being busy with my seven kids, here are three main reasons I’ve been absent from my blog:

1. I’ve been working really hard on my next poetry book, Velvet Flame, which I hope will come out later this year! 🙂

2. My friend Bonnie Way and I just finished our new e-book on pregnancy, birthing and early baby days, including mama self-care and the need for mom buddies, and it will be on sale in the Ultimate Bundles Women’s Wellness Bundle starting today!!

3. And in case you had any delusions of grandeur about me…the third reason I haven’t posted anything this year is that I lost my iPad under my bed for a month. A whole month. Yup. It had slipped down by the wall and was hiding behind my husband’s guitar case and some ferocious dust bunnies in a conniving attempt to prevent me from blogging….

But back to our new book, Beginner’s Guide to Growing Baby! 🙂 There are so many pregnancy books out there, and sometimes reading them can be stressful…so what makes ours different?

Rather than being by a one step-removed professional, it’s written by real moms in the trenches of family life–vets in a way–because between us both we have experienced 13 pregnancies and births. So we have had lots of chances to struggle, make mistakes and learn better ways to manage, and want to share them with you.

These short, easy to read chapters represent the best advice we would honestly share with you if you came over for coffee…what worked for us, what was hard, and what helped, every step of the way. We are sharing the stories of our families with you, and encourage you to be the hero of your own story. Rest in what feels right; Mama knows best, for each baby.

Beginners Guide to Growing Baby is full of practical tips and tricks on surviving nausea, exhaustion and huge emotions, pregnancy-safe cures for colds and flu, how to get enough fibre, how to prevent or minimize tearing at birth, and how to adjust to early days of breastfeeding, including what to do if you get mastitis. Bonnie is also an avid researcher of natural remedies, and as an herbalist’s daughter, I’ve used many of them effectively myself, so we write about quite a few. We have experienced births with doctors, midwives, in the hospital and at home, so you can read about many possibilities. We hope learning about different options will empower you to make informed choices about what works for you and your baby.

May our stories of pregnancy, birthing, and early days of parenthood help give you courage on your journey to motherhood! We want you to know you’re not alone, but part of a huge sisterhood, here not to compare and compete, but to care for each other and cheer each other on.

If you’d like to check out the Women’s Wellness bundle this week (as it is only for sale from Feb. 5th-10th), and see all the e-books on health, diet, exercise, online courses on mama self-care, mental and emotional health, and many other resources it includes, here’s the link: Women’s Wellness Bundle.

 

Love your Cake Maternity pjs and wear them, too! Or why busy moms deserve pretty pjs…

On By Anna EastlandIn Maternal Health, motherhood7 Comments

Today my new nursing chemise arrived from Cake Maternity. I was so excited to try it but I thought I’d wait for a special occasion and put on my regular bedtime attire…and old t-shirt and plaid pyjama pants.

This outfit lasted less than an hour as Miss Baby decided to decorate it with a rather generous helping of milk. This may not have been been the special occasion I was hoping for, being far too frequent to be deemed special in any way, but it was reason enough to change, so I decided to try my new nightie on.

I carefully snipped the Cake Maternity label off and put in on my bathroom shelf. I liked the motto: Love The Body You’re In. It was symbolic for me as a mom…love the body you’re in now, as it is, with all its changes, and similarly, love the life you’re in, now, as it is…embrace it and appreciate it…this time with tiny people running about and a chubby baby smiling on my hip or snuggling into my neck with her fuzzy peach head.

This also means embracing and appreciating myself. Not waiting for later to wear the smooth, comfortable chemise that had arrived wrapped so prettily in tissue paper as if it was a gift from a friend earlier that day. Saying, today is special enough, because everyone deserves to be treated with gentleness and love every day, even me, a mom…and perhaps, for mothers, who dedicate their lives to making others feel special, it is even more important that we fill our well and do things that make us feel special also...that we love the body that we are in…that we honour it as a place of generous creativity, a place of love and of life.

Yes, this is all a fancy way of saying that we moms deserve pretty pjs! But it’s because they symbolize something much greater…self-respect, feminine dignity, comfort…and the humility to know we are merely human and need to take care of ourselves in order to be able to serve our families.

While I pondered these things the baby began to squawk a bit and needed a snuggle dance to settle down. I discovered that the skirt flits about nicely just above the knees as I rocked the baby to sleep…and feels elegant and cheerful…as opposed to the tired old plaid pj pants which drag on the floor, in great danger of picking up stray Cheerios, dust bunnies or stickers.

With a sweet empire waist and easily adjustable shoulder straps, you can make it fit just right…whether you’re expecting a baby or already nursing one. And what makes this a nursing chemise is the fact that the straps have little hooks that open, just like a nursing bra, so you can nurse properly without having to stretch your pajamas out of shape…the sad fate of other non-nursing nighties.

The sporty back gives it a nice “I can do this!” feeling, which helps for night wakings or those endurance “please, go to sleep, baby” dances. Also, the straps can’t slide off your shoulders, so you never need extra hands to pull them back up, risking waking baby in the process.

It so helps that I could order the chemise online, rather than trying to buy clothes with my 7 kids in tow. Last time I bought pjs it was after about 2 hours of chasing kids through Value Village and another hour of waiting while they tried stuff on in the limited change rooms (my four eldest are girls!).

When it was “my turn” to find pajamas I just grabbed the first thing I thought could work and hurried to the cash, with my overflowing cart and procession of tired hungry kids. What I grabbed off the reject rack were soft orange and white striped capris joggers…or as the kids call them, my pirate pants. I usually wear them to bed with my black t-shirt that says, “Sarcasm loading…please wait.”

Charming right? So given that my options are looking like a sarcastic, washed up pirate or a sweet, elegant mother, I’m so glad to have my new chemise from Cake Maternity! Bed is my favourite place at the end of a long day–may as well dress up for it! 🙂

This lovely chemise was given to me in exchange for my honest review of it.

Thanks, Cake Maternity!

Can Breastfeeding Help to Prevent Breast Cancer?

On By Anna EastlandIn Maternal Health4 Comments

I’m honoured to share with you a guest post by Tracey Montford of Cake Maternity. I had heard that breastfeeding could lower your chances of getting breast cancer, but didn’t know why. If you’d like to understand more about the amazing natural power of the female body, read below! 

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States, apart from skin cancer.

Breast cancer occurs when abnormal cells in the breast begin to multiply and form a tumour. If caught in time the chance of surviving breast cancer is much higher. It is imperative that you take the time to regularly check your breasts for any unusual lumps or bumps and that you attend scheduled doctor’s visits to screen for breast cancer.

Who is at risk?

Some studies have suggested that an unhealthy lifestyle; a diet high in processed and fatty foods, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, drugs and stress are the leading causes of cancer.

On the other hand, some men and women are more genetically pre-disposed to developing breast cancer and will be aware of their Mother’s, Aunt’s, or Grandmother’s battles.

Does breastfeeding reduce my risk of getting Breast Cancer?

Thousands of women in recent years have participated in numerous studies conducted to investigate breast cancer and its cause. Each study reached the same conclusion. Breastfeeding does lower your risk of developing breast cancer.

Why does breastfeeding lower my risk of getting Breast Cancer?

It is thought that because lactating women have fewer menstrual cycles, they are less exposed to estrogen.  This hormone has been linked to the growth of some forms of breast cancer in cells.

Breastfeeding can make breast cells more resistant to mutations. It is during pregnancy and breastfeeding that your body sheds breast tissue.  The process of shedding can help to remove damaged cells with DNA prone to breast cancer.  This process can help to lower your risk of developing it.

Generally speaking, breastfeeding women tend to be more conscious about the food we eat.  Eating a well-balanced nutritious diet will help to ensure that a woman produces enough nutritious milk for her child. A healthy diet will also help to maintain a healthy weight, which is important as obesity has also been linked to cancer. It has also been said that breastfed children are less likely to become obese. Breastfeeding helps to reduce their chance of developing cancer, too.

Some studies suggest that women who take part in regular vigorous exercise lessen their chances of developing breast cancer.

Breastfeeding mothers are also less likely to consume alcohol, smoke or take drugs. Alcohol, smoking and taking recreational drugs can cause damage to the body and lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. An unhealthy body can be prone to developing cancer.

Breastfeeding

Whilst breastfeeding may take some time to get used to and the journey is difficult for some, it is always advised to push through the initial struggles. Breastfeed as long as your baby wants you to, or as long as you feel physically able to.

Breastfeeding is a beautiful gift that nature has provided us with to nourish our children.  Not only does breastfeeding provide our children with the best start in life, it also helps to protect our bodies.

For more information and a more in-depth read into the studies undertaken, click the links below:

The Lancet 2002

International Medicine Archives of 2009

Journal of National Cancer Institute

Like many women out there, Tracey Montford is an exceptional multi-tasker! Apart from steering a global business, managing 2 young boys & keeping the clan clean and fed, Tracey still finds time to provide creative inspiration and direction to the exceptional designs of Cake Maternity. From the branding, presentation and delivery, creativity is a big part of what Tracey does so naturally and effectively. Find out more at https:/ca.cakematernity.com or catch up with her on social @cakematernity

Baby Burpin’ Blues

On By Anna EastlandIn motherhood, Poetry4 Comments

It was a burp 
that woke my baby 
when he was sleepin’
inside his bed 

I thought that bedtime 
was all done now 
until I heard
those piercing cries

It was burp
that woke my baby 
and with tears 
did fill his eyes

I should have burped him 
after I nursed him 
but I clean gone ‘n forgot
 
He was asleepin’
oh, oh, so peaceful 
and I felt free as a bird

It was a burp 
that burst my bubble 
and made bedtime come once again 
Oh, oh, here we go once again!

Two Pounds Richer

On By Anna EastlandIn Friendship, Maternal Health, motherhood2 Comments

  

Have you ever wondered what the best gift for a mom with a new baby is? How you could best help her feel supported while she recovers from birth and gets into the swing of nursing? Well here is a simple way to be a hero, and the best of friends: organize a meal train for her! 

There is a simple website called Meal Train which will help you do just that. Simply invite all her friends and family by email to sign up for a date on your meal train page and you’re done. The site will lets the mom know when someone signs up to help out and even send reminder emails to people the day before their meal drop off day. 

There is a place to put favourite meals or let people know about allergies or any other preferences so that the food can be the most helpful. You can suggest fruit and veggie trays, muffins and other snacks as well as meals. I recommend scheduling the meals every two days, rather than every day, as the help lasts longer then, and leftovers can be used up on alternate days. 

I have been the very lucky recipient of meal trains since I had my second baby and it is always such a help. The nicest thing for a mom with a new baby is to be mothered a bit! I want to send a big thank you to all who have spoiled me in this delicious way! You are really a special part of making my baby’s first days more smooth and peaceful.

 
 I am very moved by the fact that some ladies who helped me only know me because I smile at them when we are both tending to our little noisy ones at the back of the church during Mass. You never know what a friendly smile will bring your way!

And best of all, thanks to your yummy spanakopita, Greek salad, cake, roasted butternut squash soup, homemade lasagna, chicken and potatoes, chilli, muffins, cookies, fruit, chocolate and so much more, my little three week early baby has gained 2 lbs! Thanks for making his milk, and my life, so much richer by your generous love!

  

Midnight Stroll

On By Anna EastlandIn motherhood, Poetry1 Comment

Just when lights go out
you open your eyes
and decide it’s time
for a midnight stroll.

We saunter about the kitchen
as you stare out from the blanket bundle
with your little wise old elf face.

You wrinkle your tiny forehead
and furrow your almost invisible eyebrows,
looking about quizzically as you ponder some deep truth
until the rapid flutter of your tongue
through pursed lips reveals your babyness
phantom nursing…

You were just spacing out
and daydreaming of milk after all.