With the new year approach­ing I’ve been won­der­ing: How much has your life changed since you brought your baby into the world? Do you remem­ber when you were expect­ing and peo­ple would say, “Boy, is YOUR life gonna CHANGE.” And, of course, it was never said with any­thing but inten­sity and an atti­tude of wel­com­ing you into some awful club you never wanted to be a part of in the first place. Those folks missed the boat.

Truth be told, your life has changed, hasn’t it. (more…)

Over the last two decades when­ever I meet peo­ple at a gath­er­ing and they ask what I do for a liv­ing, I receive one of four reac­tions when­ever I tell them I am a child­birth educator:

1. They look fright­ened, like I might pull a pla­centa out of a bag, and they quickly decide they need to talk with some­one else.
2. They loved their classes and then ask ques­tions about births they’ve heard about.
3. They tell me the hor­ror sto­ries of their own child­birth classes and want to know how any­one couldn’t know they were pregnant.
4. They tell me they didn’t go to classes because they fig­ured they would learn about it in the hospital.

In response to A: I never carry real pla­cen­tas with me (though if you ask my kids they will tell you that I have pocket mod­els of the pelvis, baby, plactenta and uterus), B: We trade sto­ries, C: I sym­pa­thize. And usu­ally they wish that they’d come to ours!, and D: My jaw is usu­ally on the floor and I am speech­less, a rare thing for me.

So, why go to child­birth classes? (more…)

I was in a good mood, prepar­ing to facil­i­tate Moms’ Group, when into my InBox pops a copy of an essay Erica Jong wrote for the Wall Street Jour­nal about attach­ment par­ent­ing.

Jong is an author who wrote a book in the 70’s called Fear of Fly­ing and is con­sid­ered to be a fem­i­nist voice. Some would say a mil­i­tant fem­i­nist. The last line of the essay reads, “We need to be released from guilt about our chil­dren, not fur­ther bound by it. We need some­one to say: Do the best you can. There are no rules.”  If only Ms. Jong had fol­lowed her own advice. (more…)

I really had to take a deep breath when I decided to write about this. I don’t want to unduly frighten any­one and I want par­ents to know that I feel their frus­tra­tion. It’s so darn hard to be a par­ent these days. And this week was a doozy for some of you.

As many of you know, last week Abbott Labs, mak­ers of Sim­i­lac infant for­mula issued a vol­un­tary recall of some of their pow­dered prod­uct. The FDA then responded with a press release (view FDA press release). There were more than 5 mil­lion cans of for­mula in this lat­est recall. That’s right — it’s not the first and I wish I could say it will be the last. Past recalls have included every major man­u­fac­turer of infant for­mula, not just Abbott. This time the recall made the national news, but they don’t always. We here at Colum­bia Cen­ter posted the recall to the front page of our web­site imme­di­ately, along with infor­ma­tion on how to find out if you had any of the recalled prod­uct. (more…)

Last Fri­day news came to my fam­ily that some­one spe­cial to us had sud­denly died the night before. He was ener­getic, healthy and inspir­ing — and he was far too young. It left us all in that crazy place that grief takes us — where we have to think about the big­ger issues and to put day-to-day issues into per­spec­tive. And most peo­ple don’t like doing that. AT. ALL. It’s not one of my favorite places to be, but I talk about birth and begin­nings all the time here so it’s about time I men­tion a cou­ple of things about the other end of the cir­cle of life. (more…)

Last night I watched the rerun of the sea­son finale of “Glee.” Yes, we are gleeks at my house and I missed the finale the first time around. One of the char­ac­ters gave birth in last night’s episode, to the music of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhap­sody.” I love that song but never before asso­ci­ated it with birth. Tonight I think I get it: the the­atri­cal­ity … the inten­sity … the soar­ing feel­ing … the sweet ending.

The other day I was talk­ing with a new mom. She was still on her high after giv­ing birth two days before. Her eyes sparkled as she described push­ing her baby into the world. She was proud — and rightly so. Her hus­band was in awe of what she had done and she was prac­ti­cally glow­ing. Her amaze­ment at her own strength reminded me of why I do what I do.

Birth is dra­matic. (more…)

We live in a coun­try where there’s free­dom of speech but I can promise that the found­ing fathers never dreamt of iPhones, the inter­net or text mes­sag­ing. Super­model Gisele Bund­chen this week was inter­viewed by Harpers Bazarre UK and spoke about giv­ing birth to her 8-month-old son, Ben­jamin, and how much she loves breast­feed­ing. In her exu­ber­ance she said that she thought breast­feed­ing should be the law. She was refer­ring to how peo­ple in the US react to breast­feed­ing. And she has been skew­ered for this quote from the inter­view. Since the mag­a­zine arti­cle came out she has since issued a state­ment to clar­ify what she said.

Let’s all take a deep breath and think for a moment:
How many of us have shared our excite­ment, our joy over our chil­dren and being par­ents? How many of us have made state­ments that would seem a lit­tle extreme to peo­ple who don’t know us? And how many on bad days have said things that could allow strangers to believe that we are bad parents?

Let she who has not spo­ken extremely throw the first stone.

A cou­ple of weeks ago Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel had their “Baby Week.” You missed it? I wish I had. All I can say is who is in charge over there — it’s turned into a cir­cus.  Think I’m being too harsh? Just look at the lineup of some of their fea­tured shows:

• “Strange Preg­nan­cies”
• “Too Many Babies”
• “Born on a Bad Day”
• “10 Most Unbe­liev­able Births”
• “Sur­prise Birth”
• “Babies: Extreme Birth”
• “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant”

And the list goes on and on. Edu­ca­tion tele­vi­sion this is not.

My heart breaks that the amaz­ing life processes of preg­nancy and birth are being used this way. (more…)

July 11th marks the 50th anniver­sary of the book “To Kill a Mock­ing­bird.” Did you have to read it in school? I did and I didn’t fall in love with it until I was a few years older and re-read it because I wanted to. The lyri­cism of the words, the descrip­tion of the small, South­ern town and the char­ac­ters drew me in like a fly to honey. I grew up in the South and felt a kin­ship with some of the peo­ple and wished I had been able to know oth­ers. And I am very sorry to say that I did know a few peo­ple who bore more than a pass­ing resem­b­lence to a few less than savory characters.

I got to think­ing about Atti­cus Finch, Scout’s father in the book, the other day. And I real­ized that there was much to learn about par­ent­ing from Atti­cus and some of the folks who inhab­ited that world. (more…)

So there I was, going to the movies for a lit­tle mind­less chick flick and the movie was “Sex and the City 2″. Never did I sus­pect that I would find a nugget of moth­er­ing truth in it, but I walked away think­ing about a scene with the film’s two moms, Char­lotte and Miranda. In it they are sip­ping wine and telling “Mommy Truths”. (At least, that’s what I call them.) It’s a funny scene and it gets fun­nier and more hon­est with each truth that they reveal.

You’ve never heard of Mommy Truths? Allow me to intro­duce you. (more…)