I awak­ened this morn­ing to the news of TIME magazine’s lat­est issue. As their Moth­ers Day gift to Amer­ica they chose to go after par­ents who choose any par­ent­ing style other than that of “chil­dren should be seen and not heard”. The purposely-inflaming cover photo of a mother nurs­ing her 3 year old (with him stand­ing on a chair) was set up by the pho­tog­ra­pher because he thought it would be “edgier” and claimed that chil­dren that age don’t sit still eas­ily. I sus­pect there was a lit­tle some­thing extra in it for him if he got tongues a-waggin’. And wag­ging they are. But for all the wrong reasons.

I’ve been tak­ing a med­i­ta­tion class but even med­i­ta­tion is not help­ing me to cool down on this one. TIME is claim­ing there is a bat­tle in moth­er­hood in Amer­ica. Really?!?! Where have they been for, oh, I don’t know…forever? My old­est is 24 years old. Back then (and time eter­nal before) if you worked, you felt guilty for not being at home. If you were at home, you felt guilty for not work­ing.  If you breast­fed, peo­ple pushed for­mula on you. If you formula-fed you were beaten up for not breast­feed­ing. Shall I go on? The world’s old­est pro­fes­sion is not pros­ti­tu­ion, it’s moth­er­hood and guilt is the gift that soci­ety hands you as soon as you find out your’re pregnant.

The shame­ful thing is that TIME had a golden oppor­tu­nity to open up a real dia­log on par­ent­ing. Instead, they allowed the “sex­ier” “hot­ter” top­ics of breast­feed­ing beyond what the AAP rec­om­mends as being extreme to become one of the mov­ing tagets. Extrem­ism is the nasty mon­ster under the bed. 

Feel the need to hold your baby rather than let him cry? Extreme! Want to eek every moment out of your time with your lit­tle one? Extreme! Feel­ing exhausted because you’re try­ing to jug­gle things? Extreme!

And to make mat­ters worse, they hold  Dr. William Sears up as the evil mas­ter­mind of attach­ment par­ent­ing. He took a beat­ing today that is beyond believ­able. Let me just say this: attach­ment is as old as human beings. TIME could have read the whole library wing on this topic but decided to blame the poor pedi­a­tri­cian for some­thing that was never his to begin with.

Par­ents, ignore the smoke and mir­rors that TIME and soci­ety are using to alter your sen­si­bil­i­ties. Here is the truth: Par­ent­ing is unbe­liev­ably hard. It’s also unbe­liev­ably won­der­ful. And it would be much eas­ier if edi­tors, writ­ers and the lady stand­ing in line behind you at the mar­ket didn’t judge you so hard. But, they will. So the solu­tion is to take a really deep breath and then smile. Because guess what: YOU“RE the par­ent. Which means this is your child to raise, to learn from, to teach, to cry over, to cher­ish, to cheer, to break your heart in a thou­sand and one lit­tle ways and then mend it again with one big, sloppy smile. If your per­se­cu­tors want to step in and do it for you, tell them to come on in at 3 am when every­one except the baby is exhausted and take over. But I can promise you that not a one of them will.

As for me, I’ll not be buy­ing an issue of TIME mag­a­zine again. If I want mind­less chat­ter I’ll read some­thing more worth­while, like PEOPLE magazine.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!! You are doing a great job, whether any­one else acknowl­edges it or not. And I respect each and every deci­sion you make as the mom. Now go give that sweet baby a hug

As I con­tinue to sit here day after day, the time sur­pris­ingly going some­what quickly, one thing I have learned about bed rest is the impor­tance of mile­stones.  Hav­ing that “some­thing” to look for­ward to has cer­tainly been cru­cial for my san­ity, and in my last few weeks on this preg­nancy jour­ney, the “some­things” will con­tinue to keep me going.

I am a happy 32 weeks along now, and noth­ing could have put a big­ger smile on my face than my doc­tor giv­ing me a con­grat­u­la­tory high five at my weekly appoint­ment. That reas­sur­ance from him that this was mile­stone #1, and if, for some rea­son, my lit­tle one would make his appear­ance now, the chances of him being happy, healthy and thriv­ing at this point are excel­lent (insert gigan­tic sigh of relief). Sud­denly, the com­plain­ing and feel­ing sorry for myself for the last 6 weeks seemed petty, and the moti­va­tion and desire to push through till my next mile­stone (34 weeks) took full force. 6 weeks already down, what’s another 2 or 4…or even bet­ter another 6?! My ulti­mate goal, my biggest mile­stone, is 36 weeks, and I will be here on the couch dream­ing about it, but regard­less of when this baby boy comes, I know that we have made it this far and the light at the end of the tun­nel is get­ting big­ger by the day.

I believe that for an expec­tant mother, on bed rest or not, goals and mile­stones are won­der­ful. Even in the eas­i­est of preg­nan­cies it can be hard: the fun aches and pains, real­iz­ing you can’t paint your own toes any­more, the day where you make 2 stops at the fast food restau­rant and wash every­thing down with a choco­late shake, then feel guilty after­ward, or when you meet that lovely stranger who can’t help but say, “wow, you must be hav­ing twins, you’re huge!” I’m sure we have all been to the point where we just can’t wait for it to be over and hold our sweet baby in our arms. Hav­ing a goal or mile­stone to look for­ward to makes that day seem so much closer, and helps to real­ize that, even though we already know it, some­times we need a lit­tle reas­sur­ance that it will all be worth it in the end. Maybe that “some­thing” to look for­ward to is a weekly mile­stone, like myself, maybe it’s a baby shower, maybe it’s an ultra­sound appoint­ment… what­ever the case, just keep push­ing through and work towards it. Before you know it, this big day will be here, and there will be a whole new set of mile­stones to look for­ward to with your pre­cious lit­tle baby.

All the signs are there: need­ing to buy big­ger clothes, grow­ing out of shoes, receiv­ing email updates from baby web sites refer­ring to your lit­tle baby as becom­ing a preschooler, and the sheer inde­pen­dence this lit­tle per­son is exhibit­ing.  But I recently had that ‘Oh my gosh, my baby isn’t a baby any­more’ moment. It wasn’t a light­ning strike moment by any means, she didn’t solve a qua­dratic equa­tion or stun us by doing a back flip, but for me it was a sim­ple moment of words that just made me stop, get a lit­tle tear in my eye, and think to myself, “my lit­tle girl is grow­ing up.”

I have men­tioned before that my 2 year old daugh­ter Aybree is quite ver­bal, in fact she has been referred to by many as my lit­tle mini me. She will say things that make us laugh because as sin­cere as she is about it, hear­ing cer­tain words or phrases com­ing out of a toddler’s mouth is just hilar­i­ous.  The other day, as we were all sit­ting on the couch together read­ing a book, Aybree decided to grace us with her words of wis­dom beyond her years once again.  She slowly slid off the couch, walked into the kitchen, and stood by the pantry.  It was then that she yelled, “daddy, can you come here for a sec­ond, I need a snack?”  For a moment I looked in to the kitchen and was fully expect­ing a teenager to be stand­ing by the door, and at the same time had a flash­back of hold­ing my infant daugh­ter in my arms won­der­ing what life would be like when she was this age.

Again, I do real­ize that this wasn’t a mile­stone moment by any means, but it was my moment. The point in time where for just a split sec­ond I was pray­ing that time would stand still because the thought of her get­ting any big­ger was heart break­ing. The moment passed, we laughed about her lit­tle com­ment, and of course daddy got up to get her a snack. But I still can’t help but to replay it in my mind.

I’m sure all par­ents have had their moments, a sim­ple word, phrase, act or mile­stone that has brought about sim­i­lar emo­tions. For me it is impos­si­ble not to think about the past and won­der about the future, but the here and now is such an amaz­ing point in time. To see the lit­tle per­son my daugh­ter is becom­ing is such a reward­ing feel­ing, even on the days where she has obvi­ously woken up on the wrong side of the tod­dler bed. I know the words are cliché, but if I can offer any advice to new mom­mies, it would be to enjoy every sec­ond because it goes by so fast.  Before you know it, your 16 year old tod­dler will be sur­pris­ing you every day.

Need a good laugh? Check out this cute web­site about the silly things kids say and do!

www​.fun​ny​thingsmykidssay​.com

Well, I am now 2 weeks into a min­i­mum of 7 weeks of bed rest, and I would love to say it’s get­ting easier…but that would be about as truth­ful as con­vinc­ing some­one I swal­lowed a bas­ket­ball.  One thing I have dis­cov­ered is that being on bed rest stirs up a slew of emo­tions, most of which take much effort to keep at bay.

Two weeks ago I made my first trip to the hos­pi­tal after expe­ri­enc­ing con­trac­tions that con­tin­ued to get stronger and closer together. For­tu­nately, after 4 days I was able to return home with strict orders of bed rest and quite a life tran­si­tion for our fam­ily. But my won­der­ful, sup­port­ive hus­band and I kept telling our­selves that our lit­tle boy was strong and healthy, was still cook­ing inside, and that’s all that mat­tered.  The last 2 weeks have been stress­ful and frus­trat­ing to say the least, but we began to adapt to our new sched­ule and rou­tine.  Then, this past Sat­ur­day night, just as we were start­ing to feel com­fort­able and set­tled in and my hus­band sat down for the first time in 18 hours, it began again.  I started to time the con­trac­tions: 10–12 min apart, then 7–10 and by the time we made the deci­sion to head to the hos­pi­tal once again they were stronger than ever and 3–4 min apart.  Luck­ily, once again, my won­der­ful doc­tors and nurses were able to get the sit­u­a­tion under con­trol, baby boy con­tin­ued to be happy and thriv­ing, and most impres­sively there was no change to my cervix which calmed everyone’s nerves to an extent.  I was able to go home the next day, con­tin­u­ing my med­ica­tion, con­tin­u­ing bed rest, and now, con­tin­u­ing to worry on a daily basis that I could once again end up in the hos­pi­tal, not know­ing if the next time I might be going home with a baby.

So as I men­tioned, emo­tions are flow­ing rapidly.  The biggest emo­tion I feel is guilt.  I feel guilty that I have turned everyone’s lives upside down. My 2 year old daugh­ter who was at my side every sec­ond of the day up until these events has now been thrown in day­care full time and has had dif­fi­cul­ties adjust­ing. I feel guilty that my hus­band has now been put in a posi­tion where he is work­ing 2 jobs, and now on top of it must keep the house in order and take care of our daugh­ter when he comes home sim­ply exhausted.  I feel guilty that both of our fam­i­lies, as well as my friends, have also vol­un­tar­ily and gra­ciously offered more help than we can pos­si­bly thank them for by car­ing for our daugh­ter every after­noon, cook­ing us meals and doing laun­dry.  And, I feel guilty for being more con­cerned about how I have dis­rupted every­one else’s lives ver­sus think­ing of the well-being of my baby.

Frus­tra­tion: my frus­tra­tion lev­els are off the charts. I become so frus­trated, sit­ting here alone every day for hours on end, not able to con­tribute at all while every­one is bend­ing over back­wards to make sure that I am ok.  I’m frus­trated because on an aver­age day I feel fine, think­ing putting away some laun­dry isn’t going to cause any harm, but know­ing per­fectly well that it could.  And I become so frus­trated when I’m con­stantly told by every­one that,” it’s only 7 weeks; it’s for your baby; etc, etc, etc,” (I then imme­di­ately feel guilty for becom­ing frus­trated because I know that my unbe­liev­ably sup­port­ive friends and fam­ily are only try­ing to make me feel bet­ter and help me through this).

The list of unset­tling emo­tions could go on and on, but I feel it’s most impor­tant to say that despite the neg­a­tive feel­ings I have, this expe­ri­ence has given me a new out­look in many ways.  It has given me time to bond with this lit­tle boy in a way I hadn’t done up until this point.  I have bat­tled to become a stronger per­son who must be ok with ask­ing and accept­ing help from oth­ers, as well as learn to focus on the pos­i­tive when I nor­mally am a very anx­ious per­son who fears the worse.  Over­all, it has made me feel so incred­i­bly blessed and for­tu­nate to have such won­der­ful, car­ing, under­stand­ing and help­ful peo­ple in my life. If there is any advice I could give to a mother to be who must be on bed rest, it this: those who care about you are not going to offer and give the help if they truly don’t want to, so be grate­ful and accept­ing, and know in your heart that you would do the same for them.  Soon enough it will be over and your reward will be your pre­cious lit­tle one who was com­pletely worth every ounce of craziness.

Epit­omy of mul­ti­task­ing: apply­ing makeup, strength­en­ing my left bicep, and bond­ing with my “I’m-plagued-by-separation-anxiety-and-can’t-be-away-from-mom-or-dad” son. To be hon­est though, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love feel­ing needed and I love that he turns to me when he’s scared or sad. I’ll prob­a­bly be singing a dif­fer­ent tune though when he starts to cry as I leave him at day­care. Right now he loves his day­care bud­dies and sim­ply waves good­bye to me.

I received a phone call at work this morn­ing that my lit­tle man had a high fever at day­care and had to come home. Luck­ily my hus­band has flex­i­bil­ity in his career and is able to stay home this after­noon. I am thank­ful for that, although I really wish I could be the one to hold and cud­dle Con­nor, since I know that’s what he’s going to need.

I like to tell my hus­band that he has many titles: father, hus­band, handy­man, part time cook. I think we can add one more to that list: nurse. Since he’s the one home this after­noon that means that he needs to abide by my type A per­son­al­ity by writ­ing down every tem­per­a­ture, all oral intake, and every dose of Tylenol. This is how I’m used to mon­i­tor­ing child­hood ill­nesses at work and I don’t know how to do it any dif­fer­ent with my lit­tle one. Despite see­ing sick chil­dren fre­quently at work, it’s just not the same when it’s your own child. My heart broke because I wish there was a way to wave my magic wand and make him bet­ter. He still gave me a small smile, but he wasn’t the same spunky lit­tle guy I’m used to.

It’s kind of ironic. I’ve always told par­ents, “This is going to be harder on you than it will be for your child.” Being sick, teething, and get­ting shots are no fun for the chil­dren but they’re resilient. It’s always much harder for the par­ent to see the child cry or be in pain. … Looks like it’s time for me to take some of my own advice.

It goes with­out say­ing that a preg­nant woman has a body with a mind of its own. This “new you” is com­pletely for­eign ter­ri­tory and, there­fore, it comes as no sur­prise that ques­tions will arise as to what is caus­ing the aches and pains, the ups and downs, and the highs and lows.  Some­times the answers are sim­ple, but then there are the times when your instincts are telling you that some­thing else is going on, some­thing that just doesn’t seem right.  What do you do then?

I am now just about 7 months along with my sec­ond child.  I have said before, my first preg­nancy with my daugh­ter was an absolute breeze, no real aches and pains or ups and downs. This time, well, let’s just say this lit­tle boy inside me is giv­ing me a run for my money.  From the weeks of bed rest early on due to sig­nif­i­cant bleed­ing, to the insom­nia, to the con­stant headaches, and the list goes on, this time around is any­thing but a breeze.  So when I began to feel cramp­ing last week, my first thought was, “what now?”  Part of me wanted to sim­ply chalk it up to being preg­nant, much like many other symp­toms, but there was that feel­ing telling me that maybe, just maybe, some­thing else was going on.  It was then that I had a flash­back: Novem­ber 16, 2009 3:00am. That was the exact date and time that I was hav­ing a typ­i­cal late night bath­room break at 9 months preg­nant, when it seemed as though I was “going” just a lit­tle too much.  I pon­dered the pos­si­bil­ity that my water had bro­ken, but didn’t want to be the moron that rushed to the hos­pi­tal only to be told that no, every­thing was in-tact and to lay off the late night glasses of water.  So I went back to bed, feel­ing a lit­tle out of sorts, and laid awake until 6am when I told my hus­band that maybe just to be safe we should call the doc­tor when the office opened at 8:30am.  We did just that, went in at 10am, and sure as my instincts were cov­ered by my pride we found out my water had bro­ken and we were on our way to have our baby.

So here I was with these painful stom­ach cramps, part of me not want­ing to see the doc­tor who could quite pos­si­bly tell me it was gas, and part of me remem­ber­ing the guilt I felt for not trust­ing my instincts with my daugh­ter on that Novem­ber night.  How does the story end?  Because I chose instinct over pride this time around I am now on bed rest for a min­i­mum of 7 weeks due to the fact that cramp­ing I was expe­ri­enc­ing was indeed con­trac­tions which needed to be put under con­trol with the help of 2 hos­pi­tals, numer­ous bags of fluid, and an extreme amount of med­ica­tion.  Not exactly the answer I was expect­ing, and sud­denly going in to see the doc­tor who could have told me it was gas wasn’t sound­ing so awful, but ulti­mately choos­ing to make that appoint­ment is now keep­ing this baby happy, healthy and cook­ing for a while longer.

So if there is any advice that I can give to expec­tant moth­ers it would be to always, always, always trust your moth­erly instinct. It kicks in long before your baby arrives. There is never any sit­u­a­tion to small that won­der­ful doc­tors and nurses, like the ones I was for­tu­nate enough to have at Colum­bia Cen­ter, wouldn’t be ready and will­ing to assess.  And if it does end up being gas, don’t feel silly, be thankful.

Bed rest can be very try­ing on a mommy-to-be and her family…here’s a great web­site that offers tips on how cope with bed rest

http://​www​.just​mom​mies​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​b​e​d​-​r​e​s​t​-​p​r​e​g​n​a​n​c​y​.​s​h​tml

Good morn­ing fel­low par­ents! I’m excited to write my first blog for Colum­bia Cen­ter. My name is Dr. Kate Bur­rows. I am an internist and pedi­a­tri­cian. What that means is that I am a physi­cian who takes care of chil­dren and adults. In this blog I look for­ward to shar­ing my jour­ney as a work­ing mom as well as share health related infor­ma­tion about tak­ing care of your­self and your chil­dren. I don’t want you to think that I am an expert on par­ent­ing, how­ever. New chal­lenges present them­selves on prac­ti­cally a daily basis. The most impor­tant thing I’ve learned is that you have to stay patient and roll with the punches. It’s funny. No mat­ter how pre­pared we think we are, there’s no prepar­ing you for the magic, hap­pi­ness, and (let’s be hon­est) exhaus­tion that comes with moth­er­hood. And just when you think you have it fig­ured out, your child learns a new trick or starts cut­ting another tooth, and the whole ball­game changes. I hope you fol­low me along on my jour­ney of moth­er­hood and share your expe­ri­ences with me so we can learn from each other.

Hi my name is James Becker, guest blog­ger for the week, as my wife Brandi wran­gled me in to pro­vid­ing some per­spec­tive from a daddy angle as it per­tains to our grow­ing fam­ily and the joys or anx­i­eties asso­ci­ated with her lat­est preg­nancy and parenthood.

This has been quite a jour­ney for me, from being voted least likely to get mar­ried in my high school class to becom­ing  a proud and very for­tu­nate father and hus­band.  I was blessed with a won­der­ful, very under­stand­ing and patient wife who has a remark­able abil­ity to be able to deal with my sev­eral faults and some­times hec­tic life.  I can­not thank her enough for the best gift she could have pos­si­bly given me, a beau­ti­ful lit­tle girl and our pend­ing sec­ond child, a boy.  As some­one who never thought he would set­tle down and take a wife, the birth of our first child was most cer­tainly met with some appre­hen­sion.  I found myself not only fear­ing that I would clum­sily drop our lit­tle one, but was gripped with the fear that I wasn’t going to be a good father, or would be able to do enough to pro­vide for my lit­tle girl in the way that I wanted.  These fears were sud­denly there, danc­ing around my head, as I held our lit­tle Aybree for the first time.   I’m sure that this is a rather nat­ural phe­nom­e­non when a major life alter­ing change takes place, but it is some­thing that I think all dad’s go through just because we pos­sess the male gene, the gene that dri­ves us to pro­vide, to make sure our chil­dren have even more oppor­tu­ni­ties than we did.  I found myself real­iz­ing that my life’s goals had changed, had taken a dif­fer­ent path, and now the most impor­tant thing in my life was to make sure that I became the best father that I could.  Now we have been for­tu­nate enough to be expect­ing our sec­ond bun­dle of joy and these same fears con­tinue to plague my thoughts daily.  This time the ques­tions morph into big­ger issues, can I be a good dad to both kids?  How am I pos­si­bly going to pro­vide for two?  Yet, there is some irony this time: these ques­tions, while wor­ri­some, are also strangely com­fort­ing.  Know­ing that the answers to these ques­tions can only be bore out over time, and that I have the abil­ity to affect the out­come makes appre­hen­sion turn to excite­ment.  The ups and downs, the lessons that father­hood teaches every sin­gle day make the jour­ney of being a father the most enjoy­able voy­age I will ever have the priv­i­lege of trav­el­ing on.  If there is any advice I could give to a scared or ner­vous soon to be father is just enjoy it all, embrace the chal­lenges, and most impor­tantly do what you think is right; and, of course, rely on your wife, sup­port her through her dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion, and when all else fails two words will always get you through, “Yes Dear.”

I was stand­ing in a small, inde­pen­dent book­store in the north Chicago area today, mind­ing my own busi­ness. Glanc­ing through the preg­nancy, birth and par­ent­ing books,  I saw a famil­iar face look­ing back towards me. From the cover of a book I saw some­one I knew: Doula Julie, one of the fab­u­lous Colum­bia Cen­ter Doulas, graces the cover of the 3rd edi­tion of THE DOULA BOOK by Klaus, Ken­nell and Klaus!

I had for­got­ten that today was the release of the book. Just before Christ­mas the pub­lisher con­tacted us out of nowhere. They had seen this photo on the Colum­bia Cen­ter web­site and wanted it for the cover of the lat­est edi­tion of what is an invalu­able tool for fam­i­lies, as well as doulas.  The book is required read­ing for all doulas who cer­tify with DONA Inter­na­tional and is read by doulas all the world over.

Our pho­tog­ra­pher gave per­mis­sion, as did Colum­bia Cen­ter, and the rest is his­tory. On the back cover you will see the photo credit and that it is used with Colum­bia Center’s per­mis­sion. We will be on the cover for a num­ber of years to come I can’t wait to tell all the doulas who I know that it’s us, front and cen­ter! Be sure to ask for Doula Julie’s auto­graph the next time you see her.