• Last updated 3/30/13 by mamazee

Baby Leone is three months old today. Three months already but it feels like she was just born. She likes to gurgle, look at her hands, and she has almost found her toes. She’s social and she smiles a lot but beware the friendly soul who wants to hold her: she almost immediately starts to cry with people she doesn’t know. I think she can tell by the way that they smell that they’re not me, or her dad, or her siblings. One of the only times she didn’t cry right away was when the PBS producer, Kate McMahon, held her. Kate is a lactating... read more

• Last updated 3/30/13 by mamazee

  Newborns are weird, postpartum women are too My friend Michele finally came to pick up her dishes yesterday. She brought us a meal when Leone was just a few weeks old and her pots have been on our porch ever since. Michele’s daughter is a freshman at Harvard. “Enjoy this time,” Michele said. “It goes by so fast … She’s not a newborn anymore, you know.” If Leone, who is almost two months old, is no longer a newborn, does that mean I’m no longer a postpartum woman? Sometimes I find myself hobbling around, like I did the day... read more

• Last updated 3/30/13 by mamazee

  This baby is a good sleeper but I'm not It’s 2:30 in the morning and I’m wide awake. A post on sleep was not in the line-up for this week’s blogging but here I am in a pitch black 50 degree house and all the other topics I had planned to write about (weird but normal in postpartum women, how Cheri Huber stuck a gun in her stomach and pulled the trigger before she found Zen Buddhism, more on the philosophy behind going diaper free) feel irrelevant right now. I remember my father having insomnia. From my room I would hear him go downstairs... read more

• Last updated 3/29/13 by Momsteader

Yesterday novelist and retired high school English teacher Peter Ferry was in Ashland. I hosted a book chat with him at my house for about fifteen people and then he taught a fiction writing workshop on campus at SOU. Baby Leone cooed and gurgled through the first event and slept soundly through the second. I wore her all day in a front pack. She was very patient, even though I spilled falafel on her head while she was sleeping. But, as I suspected, I was not nearly as in tune with her elimination needs. I did catch a poop in the chamber pot during the book... read more

• Last updated 3/26/13 by Melanie Mayo

Babywearing offers a huge amount of benefits, but choosing the right carrier isn't always easy. Recently, we started a conversation in the Mothering community to ask for baby carrier recommendations and the response was wonderful. Check it out here.   Below you will find the top five baby carrier picks from our members.    You can read more reviews, or leave your own, in our Babywearing Reviews Section. And discover everything our members have to say about babywearing in our Babywearing Forum.      Beco Butterfly II Carrier    92 Reviews | 5... read more

• Last updated 3/21/13 by Melanie Mayo

  Originally published at MotherWiseLife.org   On our MotherWise Facebook page, we often post breastfeeding photos as part of our effort to normalize nursing, and the reaction is always the same: lots of support and celebration, lots of oohs and ahhs, but also a plethora of insulting, attacking, disgusting comments.  No matter how many times this happens, I am always stunned by the ugly reactions people have to a mother feeding her child.  Our society has received some strong social conditioning, and apparently the message is that one of the worst, most... read more

• Last updated 3/20/13 by mamazee

Yesterday Baby Leone, Etani, and I walked two miles to pick up Athena from school. The stepmother of one of Athena’s classmates was there, so I got to see her son, who was born three days after Leone, for the first time. The babies smiled at each other. “How much does she weigh?” The mom asked me. “I don’t know,” I began. “We don’t–” “She’s so tiny,” she interrupted. “Tiny?” “Well, maybe she just looks puny compared to MY baby,” she said. “He weighs fifteen pounds!” Of all the adjectives I would use to describe Leone,... read more

• Last updated 3/20/13 by mamazee

#1: I love to suck on Mommy’s chin. Wait, where did it go? Ah [drool, drool], there it is. Yummy. #2: I can sit up by myself. Oops. Until I fall over. #3: I am a good grabber. #4: I grab Big Sister #2’s hair. #5: I grab Big Brother’s shirt. #6: I grab the platter. Oops. Now it’s on the floor. #7: I grab — [editor's note: I think everyone gets the idea.] #8: I like to stand on laps. #9: I like to bounce on laps. Bouncy bouncy bouncy. #10: My fingernails are razor sharp, even though Mommy cuts them almost every... read more

• Last updated 3/20/13 by mamazee

It’s a given that you use spousies when you travel with a baby. That’s what we did most of the time with our older three, even though we were super duper into the whole cloth diaper thing. But why can’t you travel with cloth? Since Descartes tells us we have to examine all of our beliefs, reject our assumptions, and follow only what we can verify is certain, I’ve decided to reject the idea that you can’t travel with cloth diapers. You can. I’ve taken Leone on one long car trip — for an assignment in Gold Beach, Oregon — and traveled twice... read more

• Last updated 3/20/13 by mamazee

Leone is growing so fast that the peach fuzz on her head looks longer from one day to the next. She’s got a little bang in front now, like Tintin. And her eyelashes have grown long and unruly. But the biggest change since she turned six months old five days ago is that she suddenly has so much purpose. She knows what she wants and she tries to get it, a look of serious concentration on her face. When I have a cup filled with water and I take a sip, Leone fixates on the cup, grabs at it with both hands, and shoves it towards her mouth. She smacks... read more