Nostalgia: Reliving Childhood with my Kids

One of my favorite things about becoming a parent is that I have a built in reason to indulge in some good old fashioned nostalgia. There are milestones I’ve been dreaming about since getting pregnant that revolve around sharing some of my favorite things with my kids. I’ve hit some of those and I’m still waiting on others, but it is such a cool experience to revisit some of my favorite childhood memories again but this time through a different lens. Continue reading

A Letter to my Oldest Daughter for her 6th Birthday

Perhaps the greatest thing to bring me joy in life is becoming a mom to three magical humans. One of my favorite traditions is writing them open letters for their birthdays as one of the ways we celebrate them. So I’ll have two posts this month- an open letter for each kid. Today it is for my middle kid- my oldest daughter who turned 6 earlier this year. Continue reading

Prenatal Anxiety Part 2: Fighting for Fun in a Hormone Induced Hurricane

I wrote this post very shortly after coming home from the hospital last month- before the COVID-19 pandemic had really escalated. In light of that I debated taking a break from posting, but then I wondered if maybe my anxiety coping mechanisms could help people out as we all go through this anxious time… I certainly find myself needing to use them again as I struggle to get through the fear of how long this will last, how bad it will be, and how uncertain everything feels- no clue what is next. So I’m publishing it today and hoping it doesn’t sound too tone deaf given how quickly our world seems to have changed…

In my last post, I wrote about how in all three of my pregnancies I struggled with prenatal anxiety, but the way I dealt with that anxiety changed as I learned more about what prenatal anxiety was, what it meant for me, and how I might deal with it given my choice to have more children. This post talks about some of the ways I “dealt with it” during this last pregnancy…

*Just like in my last post, I do list some specific fears and anxieties in this post so it could be triggering for others suffering from anxiety or those who have been through miscarriage or infant loss* Continue reading

The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful of Breastfeeding…

I have to be honest with you, I started writing this post a LONG time ago. I almost posted several times but each time I got a bit self conscious and sent it back to the drafts section. But since this first week of August is World Breastfeeding Week, AND last month I hit my pie in the sky, didn’t think I could do it in my wildest dreams goal of six months breastfeeding, I thought it was finally the right time to publish these thoughts on my nursing journey. Continue reading