A couple months into my pregnancy, my mom gave me and Andreas a gift certificate for 12 hours of private Hypnobirthing training with a certified instructor. The initial lessons were challenging, not because the practice itself was all that difficult (both Dre and I have had lots of exposure to and belief in focused breathing exercises, guided meditation, etc) but because the program felt, well, sort of silly…

Continue reading "Hypnobirthing isn't really hypnosis, and it's not just for birth" →

I'm a hyperemesis gravidarum "survivor." I hate using the word survivor, because hyperemesis gravidarum isn't a permanent condition. The physical effects only last as long as you're pregnant. It's more of a painful waiting game.

When I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter, I was elated — and to celebrate, I went out to eat. I got the biggest burger you're ever seen and happily ate the whole thing, thinking this was the sort of decadence my newfound pregnancy can guiltlessly afford me.

I was wrong.

Moments later, the whole thing came up. Everything after that came up as well…for months. I went to the ER once and was told it was just severe morning sickness and it would pass. I spent my first trimester and half of my second lying in the floor puking in a bucket. I could not move. I had to be carried to the bath and washed. Standing was impossible and walking was worse. I was so hungry, but unable to even think of eating. I lost 30lbs with my daughter. Luckily, she was born two weeks early a healthy 7lb 11oz little miracle. I felt as though I'd earned her. I had faced some sort of horrible trial and now was ready to face motherhood.

I eventually joined the Navy, where I met my current husband. He is a wonderful partner and a miraculous father-in-training to my now almost 4 year old daughter. We decided to conceive our second child a few months before he left for Qatar, and with very little time, we did. We were totally ecstatic! We went to our appointments and told our closest friends and relatives, giddy as can be.

Then I hit week 7.

Continue reading "Marijuana might have made me a healthier mom" →

Last December, my husband and I welcomed into this world our first born son: Lincoln. Lincoln Danger. Yep. As you might imagine, a typical conversation following Lincoln's birth went as follows:

Us: It's a boy!
Friend or Family member: Congratulations! What's his name?
Us: Lincoln Danger.
Friend or Family: (blank stare) I'm sorry, did you say Danger?

After the initial surprise, said friend or family member either feigned indifference, pretended not to notice, or (our favorite) broke out into a "That. Is. Awesome. Why didn't we think of that?!"

When you choose an atypical name (even a middle name) for your child, you must be prepared to answer the why's…

Continue reading "How to pick a middle name your kid will WANT to share" →

At the beginning of this current pregnancy, I was more prepared, more focused, and much more ready than I was for the birth of my daughter seven years ago. Rather than the pregnancy itself being the focus of my life as it was then, I was already thinking ahead to the arrival of the baby, and working out the logistics of birth and newborn care. I wasn’t very proactive about the birth of my first child, my fear of the entire process led me to just do as the doctor told me- and while I in no way felt he misled me or did a poor job — I felt strongly that being more active in the process could have saved me some pain (and possibly a few extra stitches) in the end.

Long before we made that ‘end-of-the-first-trimester-safe-zone’ announcement, I set out to arm myself with information. I bought twenty or so different books, ranging topically from c-sections to homebirths, joined every pregnancy website I could find, pored over every birth story I could get my greedy little hands on, and began deciding just how things would go this time around…

Continue reading "Why I threw out my birth plan" →

The noise-canceling headset did not cancel out the noise of my miniature screaming copilot at an altitude of 10,500 feet. My three month-old daughter Emma, was an unwilling second-in-command.

Her infant car seat had attached so nicely to the right front seat of my Mooney TLS single-engine airplane that our loving mother-daughter piloting adventures seemed meant to be. Had Mooney planned for this in the design of their TLS? After all, there are more and more women pilots every day. Surely they sought to accommodate the infants that these women pilots would produce, and undoubtedly wish to travel with. What corporate thoughtfulness, what social insight…what was I thinking?

Pre-baby, I knew I would never be one of those "traditional moms" who seemed to lose her mind and identity in a whirl of post-partum hormones. I was first and foremost a pilot. A fully instrument-rated, multi-engine, commercial and airline transport pilot and instructor. A woman in a man's world. No baby would ever stop me from flying.

Certainly, I thought, the reason most babies and children were such poor travelers was due to lack of practice. If you feed a child hotdogs and chicken strips, they will only tolerate Denny's or McDonald's. Feed a child sushi and brie and you will create a junior gourmet who craves fine international cuisine at the tender age of two.

Similarly, taking my tiny infant on plane trips piloted by me would turn her into a model traveler and junior pilot. I knew that my future two year-old daughter would sit happily for hours in the Mooney, enjoying foie gras on crusty French bread, while precociously assisting me with transponder and GPS settings.

Continue reading "Mile-high Motherhood" →

My son Conan is pretty much weaned now, at 13 months. It's been about a week since he last nursed, and he's perfectly happy without it. I have mixed emotions about it — on the one hand, it is SO liberating, but on the other hand it's the end of a really close part of our relationship, a connection we will never have again. But time moves on, and my little guy is rapidly metamorphosing from a baby into a toddler.

Thinking back on my early experience of breastfeeding, the thing that really jumps out is that I never, NEVER believed that we would make it through a whole year. For the first 2.5 months nursing was excruciatingly painful for me. Besides the physical pain, I felt like a total failure because I was constantly in a state of dread regarding the next feeding. A good mama would WANT to feed her baby, right?

That special one-on-one nurturing bonding time that I had so hoped for during pregnancy sure took a LONG time to materialize. I nearly gave up on so many different occasions. In retrospect, only my sheer stubbornness and a sort of twisted sense of maternal self-sacrifice kept me going. Now, a year later, I'm glad I did. Because as horrible as the first couple months were, the later months really did make up for it.

Continue reading "Breastfeeding was crazy hard, but weaning is sad too" →