Kathy is a wife; mother of three; north Auckland self-employed midwife; weekly Parenting columnist; founding director of BabyOK™ Products (producers of the renowned Babe-Sleeper); and author of NZ’s No.1 guide for new mums “OH BABY…Birth, Babies & Motherhood Uncensored” and her recent sequel “OH GROW UP…Toddlers to PreTeens Decoded”. You can find out more about Kathy on her website.
Traditionally childbirth has been described as consisting of three “mechanisms”:
• Powers – The forceful strength of co-ordinated contractions
• Passage – The birth canal anatomy, including the size and shape of the woman’s bony pelvis, and resistance of her soft tissue
• Passenger – The baby, particularly its lie and position of its head Continue reading »
It is pretty normal these days to start a baby on some solids at around 4-6 months. But don’t feel rushed at four months to quickly get them onto solids, as breastmilk (or formula) on its own is recommended for two more months.
Did you know some babies are born with teeth? My great-uncle was born with two! On the other hand, some infants don’t get their first teeth until after their first birthday. Babies vary tremendously as to when, and in what order, the little ‘pearls’ arrive in their mouth. But as a big generalisation:
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience,
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
— Paleontologist, philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
I wanted ‘it all’, but it took me 35-40 years to realise that we’re not actually supposed to have it all, all of the time. Why not? Because, that’s Life!
Kiwi women are commencing menstruation earlier and developing larger breasts. Kiwi men sperm-counts have halved. We have to ask ourselves why?! Of course, nutrition is a huge part of the complex situation. So almost every day society in general is becoming just a little bit more aware of the positive ramifications of eating organic food – meaning the type of food human beings had always eaten until 50-60 years ago, now fashionably called bio-dynamic food.
When heavily pregnant with your first baby, you can often begin to feel rather swamped with peoples’ remarks regarding the pending sleep deprivation which is going to beset you once your baby is born… “You should appreciate your peaceful night sleeps while you can!” … “You know babies are easier to look after ‘in’ than ‘out’!” … “You’ll be falling asleep at 8 o’clock out of shear exhaustion, you know – no more late nights for you for a long while”.
One essential aspect of lovingly nurturing and respecting yourself, is the intrinsic need to pay significant caring attention to your own intuition. As author Jeanne Elizabeth Blum writes in her book Women Heal Thyself, “Intuition is your most powerful ally – it can allow you to ‘tune-in’ to yourself, so you can get to know your own needs”.
There is usually an exhausting, painful grief a new mother goes through – no matter how good her pregnancy turned out to be, or how thrilling the birth was, or how beautiful breastfeeding has ended up becoming, or how crazily in love she is with her new baby. It is okay and normal for new mothers to sometimes feel at their wits end with the 24-7 role of motherhood, with its self-sacrificial relentless devotion and shocking loss of self. We’re not bad to think that way. Heck, this is the one job we can never resign from and it’s unrealistic to expect that we should like our work all the time.
These days, when we take on the role of motherhood, the majority of us sacrifice ‘fulfilling our own full potential’ in almost every other avenue of our lives — it’s not too dissimilar to the highly talented businessman who gives his career up to run a charitable trust close to his heart for a very basic income; or a top plastic surgeon who leaves his lucrative practice to dedicate himself to helping victims of war in a Third World country.
Unpaid word, or paid work: that is the motherhood question … but if you psychoanalysed the ‘answer’, its personality could be described as a deranged, confused, bewildered lost soul. There is no right or wrong response, only what is best for you.
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