The reality is that I’m feeling burnt out and stretched thin. I’ve found myself with too many obligations and not enough time to cover them all and still be a mom. I need some breathing room. Which is why I am stepping down as the writer here at The Attached Mother While I have loved writing here and meeting so many amazing home schooling families, it’s just time for me to move on and hand the reins over to someone else.

Of course this doesn’t have to be a complete goodbye. You all are more than welcome to check in on me at my personal blog, Wired For Noise. In fact I would be honored if any one of you stopped by from time to time. Heck, stop by there today and enter the contest I am hosting this week.

Thank you all for the wonderful time I spent blogging here.

Summer

What really caught my eye was this post 3 Essential Books to Read When Planning a Natural Birth. The three books listed are great, definitely worthwhile reads. However, as much as I love Ina May Gaskin I know that some people find her too hippy-dippy for their taste. I’ve also heard some of the more “hardcore” birthers say she was too intervention friendly. When you hear complaints like that you know you are friends with the truly natural birthers.

I thought I would share my own list of must read books. Mine is different as it comes from the perspective of someone who both enjoyed two natural births and who is a trained doula. To me these are great books for understanding as well as preparing for a natural birth. Whether at home, in a birthing center, or in a hospital these are the books I would say every mom should read.

• The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth - A great book for making sense of the various medical interventions and recommendations. It may be a little too medical for some, but the information provided is great.
• Gentle Birth Choices - This professional and friendly book is full of resources and research, a definite must read for understanding birth.
• Active Birth : The New Approach to Giving Birth Naturally, Revised Edition Explains the process and birth and offers a lot of great advice on how to manage it through positions and breathing.
• She Births: A Modern Woman’s Guidebook for an Ancient Rite of Passage - A very pro-woman birth book. A great read for feeling empowered during and by birth.
• Mothering Magazine’s Having a Baby, Naturally: The Mothering Magazine Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth - Fans of Mothering Magazine will love this book put together by the editor, Peggy O’Mara. A great resource of information and ideas for giving birth naturally.
• Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care - I think knowing the why is just as important as knowing the how, and this book explains why birth is the way it is in America.
• Birth as an American Rite of Passage - A good look at the medical industry of childbirth. If you plan to try a natural birth in a hospital this is a straight look at how the birthing culture evolved there.

I’m sure there are many more books that others would recommend. Books such as Birthing from Within, HypnoBirthing, and Husband-Coached Childbirth : The Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth are books that cover specific styles of giving birth so they might not be for everyone but are still worth mentioning.

What books would you suggest for moms thinking about or planning for a natural birth?

childbirth, birth, natural birth, books

Two breastfeeding experts have resigned from Burnaby General Hospital over a dispute involving infant formula giant Nestlé.

Renee Hefti-Graham and Linda Good both quit last week.

The issue began with an invitation circulated through the hospital’s e-mail system to a Nestlé-sponsored “wine-and-dine” event to be held June 12.

Both women were adamantly opposed to the event.

And it was criticized by Health Minister George Abbott and the hospital’s executive director, Arden Krystal, as a violation of a World Health Organization code that deals with the marketing of breastmilk substitutes.

The code states “no financial or material inducements” may be provided by formula companies to promote their products to health workers.

Nestlé cancelled the event following news of the controversy.

The WHO code is not enforced in America, mostly because the high profit formula companies have strong enough ties with the lawmakers who would be in charge of actually enforcing it. It’s nice to see that in Canada some people can actually get the giant Nestle to step back. Sadly it means that women now birthing in the Burnaby General hospital have lost what might have been their greatest breastfeeding support.

The hospital says that they are training the nurses in infant feeding. I hope that they will be teaching them how to support breastfeeding moms rather than push formula on them over every little thing. Perhaps the hospital will ask Renee Hefti-Graham and Linda Good to come back. With all of the news this story has been generating perhaps Nestle will think before aggressively taking over a hospital.

Sadly, I doubt it.

Nestle, breastfeeding

She lists three reason why the AAP feels that co-sleeping is dangerous,  gives a nod to the parents who disagree, and throws in the “if you child is sick” exemption plan. Nothing really worth mentioning. In fact I only bring it up because a friend sent me an email last night asking my opinion on the article and on another story. It’s the second story that deserves the attention.

The story comes out of Columbus, Ohio where 4 separate cases of infants dying occurred.  On the outside that doesn’t seem so odd. From SIDS, respiratory infections, accidental suffocations, to undetected physical problems many more than four babies die each day. Probably all in the same area also. However what set these four cases apart is that each child was sleeping with an adult at the time of death. This has, of course, lead to warnings of the dangers of co-sleeping being tossed around. Of course we don’t know exactly how these babies died yet, but the simple fact that all four so happened to be with adults sleeping leaves some pointing to co-sleeping as the obvious cause.

And yet if four babies in the same county all died and they were all in cribs I somehow doubt there would be much public outcry on the dangers of leaving infants alone in cribs.

Of course the coroner states that co-sleeping increases the risk of SIDS, despite studies showing quite the opposite.  Scare tactics are still great ways to sheep people into doing what you want them to do. Tell parents it will kill their children, even if there is no proof that it will or research that it might be safer, and the natural instinct to protect one’s children will kick in. If only parents were presented with facts instead of fears.

co-sleeping, cosleeping

In the US there is a Federal Law protecting a woman’s right to breastfeed in public on Federal property, however the law does not establish a upper limit for age. Each state has also created their own laws for breastfeeding in public and how to protect that. The sad thing is that they need the laws at all, that we can’t just accept that mothers will feed their babies and that often happens outside the home. Like outside of a courtroom for example.
Toronto, Canada is also working on a public breastfeeding initiative. it’s something that has me pretty excited. Imagine, an entire city proudly promoting breastfeeding moms who dare to leave the house.  It’s a beautiful thing.

The initiative, called “Breastfeeding Friendly. Anytime. Anywhere.” will encourage the 6,100 restaurants throughout the city to post decals in their windows and register online to let mothers know that breastfeeding inside is not only accepted but encouraged.

breastfeeding, lactation

In a 5-2 decision the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a midwifery provision and became the 38th state to allow midwives. You could almost hear the sigh of relief that spread across the state as this ruling was handed down. Though the physicians’ associations were, obviously, up in arms over the decision women were ecstatic to have one more freedom of choice handed to them.Before this ruling many women were having to seek other ways to get the care that they wanted during pregnancy.

During my second pregnancy I drove nearly an hour to the nearest midwife. There I met a woman who had driven over 8 hours from Missouri just so that she could get the care that she wanted. As I read about this decision my mind immediately went to her. I wondered how she did during labor, if she found a midwife closer who as able to illegally deliver her child, if she had to ride in the car for those long hours to get here, or if she stayed in a hotel near the midwife during those last few weeks.

There is an article at Babble from a woman in Missouri who had an illegal home birth. Because midwifery was illegal she had to find a way to receive her and her child’s care without being caught. It’s a great anecdotal story to remind you that even though something may be illegal that certainly does not mean are not making a choice to do it. A warning though, do not read the comments to the article unless you have blood pressure medicine handy. All of the tossing around words like “risk” and “irresponsible” and “death” is enough to cause a headache.

Missouri, midwifery, midwife, home birth

The Baby Borrowers

Trust me, I’ve been there. Been there? Try still there daily.

There are some things that you can do to ease the fighting and feuding of sibling rivalry. Set guidelines of what actions are acceptable and what ones are not. Give them room to express themselves in a space where they are not hurting the other. And be sure to let each one know that you love them individually, that they do not have to fight to compete for parental love or attention. Of course how you put those ideas to work in your day to day life will be up to you.

If you have a preschooler who is struggling with a sibling I have an article here on Preschoolers and Sibling Rivalry. In it I talk about a book that is a must read for families dealing with sibling rivalry no matter what age their kids are, Siblings Without Rivalry. I cannot say enough about how much this book has helped with me understand and deal with the fighting. Being an only child sibling rivalry completely threw me off, but the suggestions have worked beautifully for calming things down.

What are some of the tricks you use to deal with your kids fighting? Do you have any magic bullet that works to defuse the tension and relax everyone? If so do share! Good tips and advice are always welcome.

fighting, sibling rivalry, parenting

In Canada an anti-spanking bill has been passed by the Senate and is heading to the House of Commons. The bill is an attempt to remove a section of Canada’s criminal code that allows parents and caregivers to use “reasonable force” against their children. The problem is what exactly is reasonable force? Here ins the states a court ruled that it was reasonable parental disciple when a mother beat her son with an extension cord and left bruises. Clearly there is not one size fits all definition of what is reasonable and what is criminal.

There is an interesting article here discussing the anti-spanking bill and the differences between using force to hurt a child or to stop them from hurting themselves. For me the difference is between grabbing my child’s arm and pulling because they are touching something of mine or because they are running out into the street.

Corporal punishment is the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury for the purposes of correction or control of the child’s behaviour.

The line between acceptable corporal punishment and dangerous physical abuse is usually drawn in the sand on a blustery day; there are no guidelines. Physical abuse is the infliction of physical injury through punching, kicking, beating, biting, burning, shaking or otherwise harming a child.

Whether a parent or caregiver did not intend to cause harm doesn’t make it more acceptable. In the end, it’s about one person asserting power over another and there’s nothing healthy in that dynamic.

There is another quote that I absolutely love, one that I wish more parents would think of when disciplining their children.

While immediate compliance is often what we’re after when we discipline, parents need to promote children’s ability to control their behaviour using internal controls because these are skills that are more important to long-term socialization.

We want children to behave well not because they don’t want to get hit, an external motivator, but because they have internalized socially appropriate ways of behaving. Knowing what the right way to behave is on the inside is enhanced by parental discipline strategies that use minimal parental power, promote choice and autonomy, and provide explanations for desirable behaviours.

In the end parents need to look honestly and completely at what they are doing when they choose to spank. What are they teaching their children about right and wrong? What are they teaching their children about power over and physical violence? And what are the long term possibilities.

spanking, abuse, Canada, anti-spanking bill

I have a roundup of what others have been saying about this here. Go ahead and click over to find what others are saying about the AMA’s decision to walk all over women’s choices and bodies. Hathor is taking this on as well in her usual style, with a series of witty and pointed comics.

homebirth, home birth, AMA, childbirth