Things I Haven't Said to Strangers...

I wrote this when Lucas was about Calista's age, and I'm sharing it with you because... well, why not? Enjoy! Also, just because I think they're adorable, here are my two babies at five months of age, two and a half years apart.

Oh, hello, lady who seems slightly unhinged. Thank you for repeatedly stroking my six-week-old baby's head! The fact that I am wearing him in a baby carrier and his head is pressed against my chest does not make your stroking of it any more awkward than it already was. Sure, absolutely - you can definitely hold him! I can't think of a single reason not to allow a stranger to hold my child. Please wait a moment while I take him out of the carrier, where he is comfortable and content, so that I can put my newborn into the waiting arms of someone I don't know. I can't believe I didn't come up with this idea myself!

Hi, woman I just met while visiting a friend! Yes, my two month old does sleep reasonably well at night (you know, for a two month old.) What's that? I should mix apple juice with rice cereal to give to him before bed so that he sleeps better? Even though I just told you he already sleeps well? Well, why the heck not? His pediatrician told us not to give him any juice OR cereal until he's 4-6 months old, but she never said a word about juice AND cereal! Plus, what does she know?? It's not like she went to medical school or spent years working with babies! And if it's going to make my baby (who already sleeps well) sleep well, then I should do it for sure! Thanks for shouting "apple juice and cereal!! Seriously!" after me as I walk out the door!

Well hello there, man who has had several drinks at a cook-out. Yes, my three-and-a-half month old would love a potato chip! I've already told you repeatedly that he is much too young for solid foods, but that was only because I was testing you to see just how much you really wanted to give him some ruffled chips! He will probably love them and not choke at all! Yes, that's it... continue to shove your plate in his face. He is just now learning to grab objects that are placed in front of him, so if he misses the chips, he can always grab a handful of your potato salad. Either way, delicious fun is just inches away! Wait, where are you going? Has my pulling him away offended you?

Oh, good, you're back... with a pretzel stick! Thank you for wedging it into his hand before I could stop you! I genuinely enjoy prying age-inappropriate foods from his fingers.

Ok, this is a safe place... share something you wanted to say to a stranger but somehow managed not to say. 

10 Things Your Best Friend Would Tell You About Recovering from a C-section (If she had a tendency to overshare.)

Here's my story: The whole time I was pregnant, our plan was for my husband Dan to deliver our baby. He was in his final year of an ER residency at the hospital where we delivered, he had already helped deliver babies there, and my awesome OB-GYN thought it would be amazing for him to deliver our child. Her plan was to sit nearby in the rocking chair while he delivered, just in case he needed any advice. Then my amniotic sac (aka "water") developed a slow leak without me going into labor. About ten hours after it had started leaking, I still hadn't had a single contraction and I was only 1cm dilated, so I was hooked up to a Pitocin drip. After a whole night on Pitocin (and 24 hours after "the leak" began,) I was only 4cm dilated, my son was face up, his head was not at all engaged in my pelvis, and his heart rate started dropping after each contraction. So we talked with my OB, and we all decided that a c-section was the best option. (When my OB delivered our son, she realized that his umbilical cord had been trapped between his head and my pelvis, so if his head had moved down, it could've clamped off his cord and become an emergency.)

I hadn't even bothered to pay attention when they talked about c-sections in our childbirth class, because I "knew" I wasn't going to have one. So here are some things I didn't know that you might want to know if you've just had a c-section, if you're having a scheduled c-section, or if, like me, you're totally sure that you'll never need a c-section. You know - just in case.

(Just to warn you, I'm going to talk about some things that could potentially be awkward. Like pooping. And sex. So if you don't want to read about those things, go read something I wrote that's less awkward. Like my recipe for chicken with zucchini and squash.) 

Nothing in this post should be misconstrued as medical advice, and it definitely shouldn't take the place of real medical advice from a real medical professional - these are just some friendly tips from one mommy to another. When in doubt, ask your doctor/midwife/nurse.

1. Walk, walk, walk.
When I shared the news of my son's birth on Facebook, I also shared that I had a c-section. And I got a few messages from awesome women in my life (at least one of whom - an old friend from summer camp - I hadn't spoken with in years) who had had c-sections and offered advice and encouragement. The one thing they all advised was to walk as much as I could, so I started walking (up and down the halls) the day after Lucas was born, and I think it helped a lot (not that I have anything to compare it to, but still.) As with anything else, listen to your body and don't overdo it.

2. Take the stool softener.
From what I've heard, pooping the first time after you have a child is always a pain - literally - whether you delivered vaginally or by c-section. But if you have a c-section, you have the added problem that many pain medications can make you constipated. I was on Percocet after my c-section, and that stuff stops you up like you wouldn't believe. It was kind of awful. So any time they offer you a stool softener/laxative in the hospital, TAKE IT! (And if they don't offer you one, ask for it.) Drink prune juice, mix fiber in your drink (if your doctor says it's ok), eat tons of fresh fruits and veggies, and TAKE THE STOOL SOFTENER. I cannot stress that strongly enough. For me, constipation was the worst part of my recovery. Moving on from the fact that I just told everyone I couldn't poop...

3. Stay in the hospital as long as they'll let you.
I know, I know; you just want to get home to your own bed and your own clothes and your own nursery that you spent the last nine months decorating. But those things will still be there in a day or two, and in the meantime, you should  take advantage of the fact that you can have healthy meals delivered to your bed and a few extra pairs of hands to help with diaper changes. Remember, you're recovering from a major surgery; more help is a good thing. Most insurance companies cover four days in the hospital after a c-section, so if you can get it, take it.

Our last morning in the hospital. Goodbye, 24-hour nursing staff! Goodbye, being able to have ice water delivered to my bed at 4am with the touch of a button! Goodbye, all-you-can-eat steamed broccoli!

4. Sleep as much as you can.
All new moms are told to sleep when the baby sleeps, but this is especially important when you're recovering from a major surgery on top of new-mom sleep-deprivation. The laundry will wait. The dishes will wait. Go take a nap.

5. You still can't wear tampons.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I kind of thought that the whole "no sex or tampons for at least six weeks" thing was just because your vagina goes through a traumatic experience during childbirth and needs some recovery time. Actually, it's because you still have an open wound where the placenta was connected to your uterus. So putting anything into your vagina is a no-no while this wound is healing because you run the risk of accidentally introducing bacteria into your uterus and causing an infection. So even if you deliver by c-section instead of vaginally, you're still going to have to use pads for your postpartum bleeding. Sorry. And while we're kind of on the subject...

6. Sex still might hurt for a while.
This is something I neither knew nor expected. I knew that sex was painful for the first few times if you had a vaginal delivery, but I assumed that it was just because, you know, you had pushed a baby out of your vagina. But sex was still painful for me the first few times after having a c-section (and I don't mean it was painful at the site of my incision, if you catch my drift.) I'm guessing it was because of hormones (and my son was breastfed, which causes you to be extra dry.) Use lots of lube, and take it slowly. It gets better.

7. It's ok to feel sad, but if you're too sad for too long, talk to your doctor.
Some women feel some sadness after having an unplanned c-section. If you had a picture in your mind of how your baby was going to be born and then circumstances outside of your control resulted in an unplanned c-section, it's normal to feel a little disappointed. I was fortunate in that I didn't deal with any feelings of sorrow over my c-section after my son was born (although I did cry when we all realized I'd need to have one,) but I know that some women do feel sad over it, and that can be totally normal. But my concern is that if it seems to you that your excessive feelings of sadness, guilt or anger have a legitimate cause, you might be less likely to recognize if they're actually symptoms of postpartum depression. So if your feelings of sadness don't go away or if they get worse, talk to your doctor about them.

8. Ask for (or accept) help.
This one can be tough, but things will go much more easily if you do it! If someone asks if there's anything they can do to help, say yes! And if they don't offer, don't feel bad asking for specific favors from close friends or family members. If you're breastfeeding, no one else can take over the feedings (obviously,) but that doesn't mean they can't change diapers, do some laundry, or rock your baby while you take a nap. If your neighbor's planning a trip to the grocery store, ask if she can pick up a few items for you, too. The women from my Bible Study brought me meals for two weeks, and I can't even tell you how wonderful it was not to have to think about getting/making food while I was recovering.

9. You might have to buy more pants.
I forget how long it took before I could fit into my pre-pregnancy pants, but even when they fit well, I still couldn't wear my jeans comfortably. The waistbands on all of my pre-pregnancy jeans were positioned at just the wrong height so that they were fine while I was standing, but when I sat, they pressed right into my c-section scar. The scar was tender if something rubbed/pressed against it for at least nine months after my son was born, and I had given up on ever wearing my pre-pregnancy jeans again and purchased all new jeans with higher waist bands by the time the sensitivity finally went away. Now I have tons of jeans, so I guess that wasn't necessarily bad.

10. It gets better.
At first, simple things like laughing are going to hurt. You're going to be tired and sore for a while. But it gets better. I promise. And yes, your scar will fade a whole lot. On the days (or the nights. Especially the nights.) that it's really tough, it doesn't hurt to tell yourself out loud - "This is temporary. It will get better." Then send an email or a text to a fellow mom who can relate, and tell her you need some encouragement. (If you don't know who to email, my email is bejaneum[at]gmail[dot]com.) It gets better. Pinky swear.

Bonus tips for if you haven't had your c-section yet:

11. Daddy might be able to do skin-to-skin contact with baby if you can't.
Skin-to-skin contact - also called Kangaroo Care - is when a newborn baby is placed naked (or wearing only a hat and diaper) on mom's bare skin, and it's great for newborns. (You can read more about why it's good for them here.) I was really determined that I would do skin-to-skin contact with my baby as soon as he was born, so one of the first things I thought of when we realized a c-section was a distinct possibility was that I wouldn't be able to have skin-to-skin contact right away since I'd be getting sutured closed. So Dan asked if he could do it instead. My OB had the nurses bring him scrub pants and a hospital gown, which he wore with the opening in the front, and he was able to hold Lucas against his bare chest while I was still on the operating table. Since then, my OB recommends it to all of her c-section patients, and she even wrote a letter about it that was published in a medical journal (I have a copy in Lucas's baby book.) If you've found out that you're going to need a c-section, ask your OB about this ahead of time. (You can even mention that it was suggested in the May 2013 issue of OBG Management if you really want to sound like you've done your homework on the subject.)

Yes, I know Dan is wearing a jacket here. This was taken later. We don't have a picture of it, ok?

12. Bring one or two pairs of long, comfy socks to the hospital.
Because you'll likely stay in bed for 18-24 hours after your c-section, they'll probably put these plastic things on your lower legs that inflate and deflate to massage your legs and prevent blood clots. When they first put them on, you'll be like, "Ahh! Leg massage! This is so luxurious!" And then after ten minutes, you'll be asking the nurse to please, please, pretty please take them off just for one minute, please!! Plastic against your bare skin just feels sticky and sweaty and uncomfortable. I imagine that soft cotton knee-high socks would help a lot. (I say "I imagine" because I didn't know about the plastic massagers of misery and was stuck trying to bargain with the nurse that if she took them off for just five minutes, I swore I would flex my legs the entire time and also use sheer force of will to prevent blood clots.)

So there you have it: c-section recovery advice from a mom who "knew" she wasn't going to need a c-section. Do you have any advice to add to this list? Please share in the comments!

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Tips for hosting a successful giveaway on your blog

Here are a few things I learned from running my first eight giveaways on my blog. I'm still new to this, so don't be fooled into thinking I'm an expert! But I did learn a few things (and form a few opinions,) and I figured I'd share them. Let me know if you have any more to add to the list!

1. Don't rely on your blog's Facebook page as your only method of spreading the word about your giveaway(s), especially if you don't have a gigantic Facebook following. Facebook wants you to pay to promote your posts, so it doesn't show them to everyone unless you pay or get a lot of people to like or comment on each individual post. Every day of my giveaways, the posts were shown to fewer and fewer people, even though I got more new fans each day. So for my sixth giveaway, when I had 207 Facebook fans, I posted the link, and in almost two hours, Facebook showed it to one person... me. It wasn't until I was whining about it on my personal Facebook page and a few friends intentionally went to my blog's Facebook page to look at and like my post that it was made visible to more people.

And I had more than one Facebook fan online at the time. I checked.

2. Do submit your giveaway to as many giveaway lists as you can! Some of the lists that got a good amount of traffic for my giveaways were:

     - Money Saving Mom
     - Online-Sweepstakes.com
     - Tightwad in Utah (Only posts giveaways with fewer than 200 entries that end in one week or less.)

3. Don't host a giveaway for something that you wouldn't want to buy. Sometimes it's tempting to host a giveaway because you want more traffic and you can get a free product for yourself, but if it's not something that you'd want to spend money on, it's a hard sell as a giveaway. I've been contacted to do a handful of reviews and giveaways that I turned down, even though I would have gotten free stuff if I'd said yes, because I didn't feel like I could be honest and genuine when encouraging other people to buy the products. One company contacted me to do some reviews and giveaways of office supplies, but... I'm a stay-at-home mom. I don't buy office supplies, so I'm not going to try to convince anyone else to buy them or even enter to win them for free. When I set up my eight non-toy gift giveaways, I searched on Etsy for really cool products that I would genuinely want to buy, checked the reviews to make sure they were good, and only then did I ask the sellers to participate.

4. Do realize that it's going to be more work than you think it will be. It sounds easy: you're giving things away for free. Everyone likes free, right? But getting people to find out about the giveaway and actually take the time to enter takes work. And writing quality posts, taking good pictures, and setting up the giveaways all take work, too. That's another reason you don't want to host a giveaway for something you wouldn't buy. You don't want to put hours of work into a giveaway if all you're going to get in return is a free can of creamed corn and one Facebook like. (Unless you really like creamed corn, I guess.)

5. Do stalk other blog giveaways to see what works and what doesn't.  This will give you a chance to check out the different options for having people enter your giveaways (I used Rafflecopter, but there are other great options out there, too.) Plus, you can get a feel for how people run their giveaways and what you like or don't like about them. Which brings me to my next point...

6. Don't offer too many entry options. While I was checking out other giveaways, I came across a giveaway that had 139 entry options. (Yes, I counted.) 30-something of the entry options were "liking" the Facebook pages of the people who contributed products to the giveaway. And I seriously, seriously doubt that many people (if any) liked all of the Facebook pages. Which means that the participants at the bottom of the list weren't really getting any exposure in exchange for the product they provided for the giveaway. Plus it's kind of overwhelming. I wanted a gift card and some free products, but not enough to do 139 different things to get them. Plus, some of the giveaway lists (like Tightwad in Utah) only allow you to list your giveaway if there are less than 200 entries (regardless of the number of entrants), so if you give people the option of getting lots of entries into your giveaway, you run the risk of not being able to list your giveaway on the low entry lists, even if you only have a handful of entrants. This is just my personal opinion, but I think you should try to keep it below 10 entry options.

7. Don't make liking a Facebook page the only entry option (or a mandatory entry option.) Believe it or not, there are people who don't have a Facebook account but who do want to enter online giveaways. One of my friends doesn't have a Facebook account, but she has three young kids and she still entered all of my giveaways. Several other people whom I don't know also entered using some of the options but not the Facebook ones, so it's possible they don't have Facebook accounts either. If you require people to have a Facebook page in order to enter, you're preventing some people who might be interested in the product from entering for a chance to win it. Even if one of your main goals in hosting a giveaway is getting more Facebook fans, you can still do that without requiring it.

8. Do have some friends enter your giveaway and provide you with feedback. Especially if you're new to giveaways and don't have a tried and true system yet. My friend Teri entered my first giveaway while she was on the phone with me and gave me feedback as she did it. Thanks to her, I realized that I needed to add a "Pin it" button to my photos (since pinning one of them was an entry option) and that some of my wording was a little confusing.

So there you have it. My non-expert advice on hosting a giveaway. For those of you who have done blog giveaways before, what advice would you add? And if you've entered blog giveaways, what do you (or don't you) like about some of the giveaways you've entered?

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Every once in a while, I have a good idea

Before Lucas was born, I had already decided not to have a traditional baby book. Part of my reason for this is that I've never once seen a baby book that was actually completely filled in. The makers of the baby books put in all of these blank spaces and questions, and inevitably, you only fill in like a third of them, and then you feel bad every time you look at the book, because you realize that you never made note of the momentous occasion when your child first "Coughed artificially (a polite little cough to get attention.)" (That's a direct quote from my husband's baby book. Shockingly to no one, that blank is not filled in.)

So I decided I would make Lucas a scrapbook instead of getting a typical baby book, which sounds unbelievably ambitious, except that I discovered a company (and when I say that I "discovered" it, I obviously mean that a nurse my husband used to work with gave him a catalog to give to me, and then I forgot to look at it for about two years) that allows you to make individual 12x12 scrapbook pages online, and then they'll print and send them to you. It's fabulous. (The company is Studio J. And no, they didn't pay me to say this. But if they want to give me free stuff, I won't say no. You know, just in case they're reading my blog.)

If you make your own baby book, you can look like a super mom because you've recorded the dates of events like "first time in a lake" and "first high five" and not like a slacker mom because you forgot to record when your child "first ran with confidence" or "first said 'I won't'." (Those were really in my husband's baby book. Who writes these things anyway? Seriously.) The problem, of course, is actually remembering to write down the dates for random, vaguely interesting milestones. Enter my good idea (which, in all honesty, I can't totally take credit for.)

After Lucas was born, my mother-in-law brought him some cute gifts that she had gotten him from the Hallmark store, and in the bag with the gifts was this little datebook:

Yes, I wrote the word "Lucas's" over the phrase "Life is a Special Occasion." (Also, yes, the extra "s" does belong after the apostrophe to make "Lucas" possessive. I promise.)

So I stuck the datebook in Lucas's diaper bag, and every time he did something amazing (which, let's be honest, was every day), I could just write it in the appropriate date square in the datebook immediately instead of hoping I'd remember which things belonged in the baby book AND hoping that I remembered to write them in whenever I got around to it. Plus, since I had the diaper bag at all of his pediatrician appointments, I could immediately write down his height and weight at each appointment rather than trying to remember to write it in the baby book at home... which I wouldn't have remembered to do, so Lucas's baby book would've looked like mine, where my mom recorded my height and weight at birth, 9 months, and four years old.

I also used the book to keep track of when he tried new foods for the first time so that I could check for potential allergies. Just thought I'd share in case you were wondering why "first ate tomato paste and onion powder" seemed like a momentous occasion to me.

So instead of trying to remember if "First time someone said baby looks like a dinosaur while crawling" or "First time baby gave someone a wet willy" is in the baby book and then remembering to write them down, they are now in the calendar, and I can transfer them to the scrapbook later... if I ever get around to it.

Anyway, my advice to new moms is to stick a small calendar in your purse or diaper bag. Or just go ahead and pre-apologize to your kids for the fact that their baby books are mostly blank.

Stranger anxiety for moms

If you are pregnant with your first child or are a new mom (and by new mom, I mean "a mom with less than my whopping 13 months of mom experience"), I am about to let you in on a little secret: complete strangers know more about caring for your child than you do.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

It sounds weird, I know, but it's absolutely true. You're the woman who grew the child in her uterus from a microscopic little blob to a full grown baby whose presence caused your stomach to break out in purple stretch marks that faintly resembled a road map of the United States. Since you first saw two pink lines on a pregnancy test, you've likely spent every waking moment (and many sleeping ones) worrying that you weren't doing EXACTLY the right thing for your child and googling a million variations of "can I use hair spray while I'm pregnant?" And of course that worrying only intensified when your baby was brought, wrinkled and crying, into the world. Or perhaps you adopted your child, and before you ever even learned of her existence, you were spending hours researching the very best way to care for her every need so that you would be ready to be the best mommy humanly possible at a moment's notice. You are probably the only person in the world for whom a description of the color of your baby's eyes requires a minimum of three adjectives.* You've spent literally hundreds of hours just staring at your baby (or you will once your baby is born), and just from the pitch and volume of your baby's cry, you can often tell exactly why he is crying in under 30 seconds. But none of that matters. Because complete strangers - people who have never so much as laid eyes on your child until right this second - are the ones who are the experts on what your baby needs.

How do I know? Because they will approach out of the blue you and tell you exactly what you should be doing for a baby that they may mistakenly think is a girl even if he is wearing a onesie that says "Mommy's little man." Or, even worse, they will loudly criticize your parenting within earshot.

Here's an example: Last September, I was taking a walk around our neighborhood with L in the ErgoBaby carrier. It was 64 degrees (I know this because I checked as soon as I got home.) In addition to being pressed up against my torso, L was wearing fleece pajamas, a sweatshirt, and a hat. I had been walking for about five minutes when I passed a 30-something man and a woman who were walking together in the opposite direction. As soon as we had passed each other, the woman said loudly, "It is WAY too cold to have a baby out here!" Imagine how grateful I was to have overheard her! See, up until that point, I thought that the fact that I can tell whether L is cold simply by listening to him breathe** was a sufficient indication of whether or not I was mistreating my child by bringing him out into frigid mid-60's weather, but it turns out that the only one who is capable of determining if my son is warm enough is a woman I've only ever seen that one time who may or may not have children of her own. You'd be a fool to ignore that kind of expertise!

He's freezing.

So here is my advice for new moms: Go to a crowded place. A grocery store or shopping mall will work fine. Then just stand there with your baby. It helps if your baby is only wearing one sock (or better yet, no socks at all.) Before you know it, helpful people will be swarming all over you to tell you what you're doing wrong.

Or you can save yourself the trouble of knowing how very little you know about your own child and remain in blissful ignorance by buying this onesie:

*For the record, L's eyes are a beautiful hazel-y greenish gray, darker toward the outside of his iris and lighter in the middle, with little brown flecks. They're kind of a mix of my eyes and Dan's eyes.
**When he is cold, L will periodically breathe in a quick little gasp. Just so you know. Apparently that's not helpful information, though.


Disclaimer - I am often genuinely appreciative of advice from people I know in real life, even if I don't follow it. Criticism from complete strangers? Not so much.