love, marriage, baby carriage

05/4/16

Self Care as a Mom

This is a sponsored post, though all opinions are my own.

When I reflect back to those sweet newborn days, it’s extremely bittersweet. While I developed an incredible breastfeeding relationship with my daughter, I sometimes felt trapped. While I took pride in nourishing my baby girl from my own body, I felt the burden of responsibility. While I cherished those moments of complete reliability on me, the pressure was palpable.

Joys and Terrors

The beautiful and terrifying new mom phase is short-lived, though in that season, there were moments where 5 minutes feels like 5 hours and 10 minutes of inconsolable crying was surely an eternity. I spent my maternity leave, for the most part, braless, holed up in my house, both loving and relishing my greatest creation and crying because I didn’t leave the house in days.

04/14/16

The Dangerous Thing You Need to Know About Limes

You know when you’re browsing Facebook or the internet and come across seemingly freakish health-related topics with pictures that make your stomach curl and think, that could never happen to me, and go on the rest of your day thinking nothing of it? I hope that is not the case with this post – I hope you read it, share it with your friends, and prevent this from happening to you, your friends, and your children. I hope you share it with everyone you know to avoid this seemingly freakish health-related topic because it can happen to you. How do I know? Because it happened to my husband.

Justin came home from work one day with some small blisters on his hand; he seemed only mildly bothered by it, and it looked like nothing to me. I gave him Benedryl ointment and thought nothing of it. The days went by and the blisters not only spread and enlarged, but a painful bright red splotchy rash developed. My husband is not a complainer and has a high threshold for pain, so he played it off for a while like it was nothing. Every day it grew worse until he admitted the horrible pain and burning he felt.

03/7/16

A Mother’s Promise

This is a sponsored post for Acorn Influence, but all opinions are completely my own. 

As parents, we tell our kids lots of things. We tell them, ‘if you’re good, you’ll get a treat;’ ‘if you go to bed now, you’ll get three books before bed tomorrow;’ ‘if you stop throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the store you can have candy for dinner for the rest of your life.’ Do any of these sound familiar?

My daughter is only 13-months-old, but I think about what sorts of things I will tell her as she grows up. Sure, I know there will be a lot of artful negotiating and bribing in our future, but when I make a promise to her, that will be different. A promise should be different. The word promise should be sacred and trusted. I only want to make promises to her that I will honor and keep.

Of course, I promise to love, protect, and care for her always. But I have something extremely important to me that I want to make a known vow, something that’s a living, breathing, palpable part of my family. One of the vows I am making to my daughter is a promise to both of us: I promise to raise her in the spirit of kindness and to lead by example.