You just delivered a beautiful, vernix covered little bundle of joy.  Your heart is on cloud 9 and the endorphins are delightful.  The last thing you are thinking about is watching the umbilical cord.  Hopefully, your birth team will already be in practice of letting the cord pulse to completion, but taking the time to watch it happen will help you understand just why it’s so important.

The key to a beautiful nursery is to stick to a color palette and keep things peacefully simple.  It can be easy to go overboard (HA – what a great pun!) on a nautical nursery and overwhelm the room with lighthouses, boats, animals, stripes, ropes, and everything ocean related.  This is not what you want.  Think clean lines and sweet, comfortable pieces.  Choose your accents wisely.

We are seeing more and more babies in helmets these days.  

Here I sit, holding my 48 hour-new baby boy Ollie Jack.  I have been typing, deleting, and restarting this for hours now. The truth is, this birth experience was almost so indescribable, I could not find the words. I am still digesting, processing, and sorting it all in my head.  I’m actually hoping that by sharing it with you, I can wrap my mind around the entire event. As you know, we were planning a beautiful, peaceful homebirth for baby #4.  I have a few blogs lined up about the blessing way that was filled with women who love and support me, how we set up the birth environment to include music, inspirational birth décor, and even the smells I’d possibly want.  I have blogs about birth photography, labor relaxation practice, preparing the siblings to take part in a birth, cultural birth traditions including belly blessings, henna, and candle making.  I even have a blog about my midwife being my lifelong best friend, and how that changed my pregnancy and labor outlooks.

I feel as though we live in a “Fast Food” society.  One in which, the faster we can be done with something, the faster we can move on to the next task.  Very few people take joy in the little things anymore.  I can’t stand on a pedestal here, as I am just as guilty as the next person, BUT I am working on changing this trait. I want to instill a sense of calmness and appreciation in my children (and myself) that is rooted to their being, not just something they sometimes think about.  I want my children to always know that a handmade gift is better than store bought, that a letter sent snail mail is more fun than an e-mail or text message, and that a made by hand valentine is full of more love than anything bought in a store.

Sleep.

A foreign word at this point. “Mama. Mama. Mama. MAMA!” A toddler is screaming 3 inches from my face, while I was trying to rock an infant down for a nap. A nap that will never happen now. Dinner should have been started about an hour ago, but the toddler has spilled an entire box of cereal throughout the kitchen and decided to “help” clean it up with a soapy, wet dish towel.  You know, making it impossible to sweep it all easily. Bills need paid, the laundry pile is taking over an entire room, you are out of wine, your hair is in the same bun you created 2 days ago, the fridge is looking bare, and the baby could possibly be cutting a tooth.  Oh crap, now there’s glitter being mixed into the cereal mess. Sh*t, you could really use a glass of wine.