SELF-CARE MINDER
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Practically Perfect

Sometimes doing something practical is just what we need -- especially with sick dads and books that refuse to make sense. The bigger issues in life can take up all our our energy and then everything else gets really messy -- the layers of dried mud and gum wrappers in the car, the pile of scarves and camisoles on the closet floor I dumped there two weeks ago, the black circles on the bathroom wall from Lilly kicking her soccer ball while on the toilet.

Whenever I either am close to finishing a big project or stressed about something I can't do anything about, one of the ways I direct my energy ... more

One of my favorite websites is titled www.comfortqueen.com. It is written by Jennifer Louden, one of my favorite authors. She also has like minded guests writing on her site. From the website, she offers a weekly newsletter that has wonderful tips and suggestions on living your life creatively and gently and powerfully. I look forward to these newsletters and I refer to her book The Woman's Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life often. It has been my guide for many years. My copy is very beaten and worn. Signs that it is well loved. She also has written other Comfort books that are equally useful. ... more

Get ready to laugh, get ready to cry. Get ready to get on the roller coaster of a blog titled, A Little Pregnant. At www.alittlepregnant.com, she has it all. The fury, the humor, the relief.

This blog was recommended to me by another blogger for a listing of infertility blogs. I had been putting off reading some of these, thinking that they might color my blogs here. I needn't have worried since my blog here is a total horse of a different color. My only advice to reading this blog is to start at the beginning. In fact, I am only up to 2004 but loving every word. I am also going to offer a word of caution. If you are feeling ... more

The title of the book, Do Blue Bedsheets Bring Babies? by Thomas Craughwell is the reason why I got the book in the first place. Is there a fertility corrolation between sheet color and if a baby arrives 9 months later? Reading this subtitle, I automatically thought, "No way!" Let's see what the author has to say.

Craughwell rated this old wives tale right in the middle between true and false. Meaning, that the tale could be true or false fifty percent of the time. Using color therapy research from marketing research firms was the ... more

Looking into the book, Do Blue Bedsheets Bring Babies by Thomas Chraughwell I saw that there were many old wive's tales regarding sex drive,fertility and pregnancy. Most of them I felt were pretty easy to know if they was any truth behind them, but some were surprizes. Here are some of both!

The following things are rumored to be aphrodisiacs in folk lore, but what does the FDA say?
Oysters - yes! They are high in zinc, and zinc improves the sex drive.
Yohimbine bark - "encouraging". Rumored to activate nerve centers in males to improve sexual function.

The main emphasis on this subject in the book was for ... more

More happy things! Here is a celebrity couple that I adore! I love to hear updates on them, especially one like this. Congratulations to the Heidi Klum-Seal family! Congratulations to Leni and Henry on the upcoming arrival of your new sibling.

A healthy baby Bec woke up all better this morning. Just like nothing had happened. The antibiotics must be working their magic

a sense of style Miss Ivy is wearing her Buzz Lightyear ... more

The above link is for an article by Komo News in Seattle. My aunt sent this to all of us to help inform us about this rare form of breast cancer that does not present itself with a lump.

"Inflammatory breast cancer almost always presents itself without a lump," says Breast Cancer Specialist Dr. Julie Gralow.

Inflammatory breast cancer appears in sheets of cancer, or what doctors call cancer nests. The cancer clogs breast tissue vessels.

At this point in time there is very little research and support for women with IBC. Also, not very many women have ... more

Today I decided to take a small break from the book and think up my own list of things that make me happy that I encountered through out the day. I'm glad that I started out with this happiness mindset, as I found out today that my 8 month old has pneumonia! Thankfully we caught it in time to not have to do a hospital stay, but just having x-rays and a diagnosis were stressful enough.

Close Up toothpaste I despise the flavor of mint. Anything that is flavored like mint reminds me of toothpaste. Close Up is flavored like cinnamon and I ... more

Flipping through the pages of the "happy book", I look over the lists on both pages and then decide on one item to pick that makes me happy. I do this until I have ten things on my list. I then add these to my journal and write a small bit about why these things make me happy. To really think about happiness and about the happiness that is in my life. Here is my list for today.

chocolate pound cake Strong, thick pound cake, no fluff, no frosting and chocolate, of course!
ribbons as bookmarks I never seem to be ... more

Sometimes, when it seems like I can't think of anything to be happy about, I turn to 14000 things to be happy about.by Barbara Ann Kipfer. I practically kept it in my purse after I had my miscarriages. It helps to remind you that there ARE things to be happy about, regardless of the situation you may be in. Yes, they may be small, but they are reasons to smile none the less.

Today when I picked up the book, I saw a photo of Chris, Ivy and myself that I had stuck in the front cover when Ivy was about 10 months old. We were all going to ... more

I was wandering around some trying to conceive blogs and came across this link for www.thepregnancyplace.com. This website helps you to create your own ticker for many different occasions, including charting your cycle. There are many different backgrounds for the countdown part of the ticker. Then you choose an indicator. You get to name your ticker and then set it to your time zone. I created the above ticker to show how long it is until our anniversary. I then created two more that showed the exact age of ... more

Yesterday marked the official end of my maternity leave with Becken. I took off 5.5 weeks and I was ready to go back. Of course, my job is extremely flexible and pays very well. So going back to work for me really isn't going back to "work". I am one of those annoying people who say that they would still work even if they won the lottery. In my case, this is the absolute truth. I can't stay away. For the summer, my schedule will be Wednesday and Friday mornings every other week with some Saturdays thrown in here and there.

At one point in ... more

I decided this week to devote a little bit of time to dads and dads-to-be. I thought that I would do some blog reading on infertility from the male perspective. I couldn't find one during the small amount of searching that I did. I did find a really interesting article from a dad who suffered with his wife through their infertility woes and then go on to have a daughter and then some!

"Life to Music" by Mark Stackpole
www.DadsToday.com

Anyway, I'm laughing my you know what off after reading ... more

So, once again, I can't sleep. All of you have heard or experienced how having little ones in the house can disrupt your sleep patterns. Well, I have always had trouble sleeping, even as a child. Of course, during my pregnancies and then with a newborn, it only got worse. Even when she slept through the night, I couldn't. Now Bec is home and he is a trooper when it comes to sleeping at night. Not so for Mommy!

Instead of lying around and fretting over how my not sleeping is going to influence my mood tomorrow, I normally get up and try to do ... more

The greatest cargoes of life come in over quiet seas. p.129

About the heaviness of grief, it is the natural, healthy reaction to loss. Mercifully, it isn't constant but comes in waves, probably because the finality of death is so shocking it can't be taken in all at once, but has to be absorbed little by little. p. 131

There is a natural lessening of grief over time, and eventually we give up the deep sorrow and move on. We are not built to carry the heartache indefinitely. p.131

The above quotes are from the book,
Journey to Motherhood by Alison Freeland. The chapter that they are from is named, "Things That Help". ... more

Today is the one month mark for bringing home Becken! Chris and I were talking last night and saying that it seems like he has been here forever, but also like we just picked him up. We said the same things when we had brought Ivy home from the hospital.

These two get along so well. They hold hands in the car while they are in their car seats. It is so cute. Ivy has really taken to her role as big sis and is such a huge help. Bec just loves her. He looks for her and when his eyes rest on her they just light up and he gets excited. When Chris comes home from work Bec about jumps out of my arms to get to him.

We are up to two feedings of cereal a day. We had ... more

"Pregnancy Spacing Affects Outcome"

After reading the above article today, I really got to thinking about child spacing. The article states that the spacing in between biological children has an effect on the risk of premature birth. Pregnancies occuring right away after giving birth, and also pregnancies that happen after 5 years of giving birth have this down side, according to studies that will be published tomorrow in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Of course, these statistics aren't related to the spacing of adopted children, but for myself, I had ... more

I stole the title of this post from Ivy. To steal the phrase from Adoptive Families, I have a thumbs down to go to Reuters and Moviefone for posting this article.

The article states "The new baby joins the couple's adopted children Maddox and Zahara, rounding out a family People magazine has already dubbed 'the most beautiful in the world'."

Granted, I am a new mom in the adoption circle, but this segregation of children has always bothered me. Actually, it doesn't bother me any more that I now ... more

Last month I wrote about fertility symbols. I believe at some point I wrote that many individuals do not recognize these symbols in current times. Well, I just came across one individual who does.

I have heard of Tori Amos, but haven't ever listened to her. While in the bookstore this winter I came across her book Piece by Piece. The cover intrigued me and I requested it from the library. After waiting ... more

I spent the day on Sunday in front of the television catching up on episodes of the series on USA called The 4400. I hadn't ever watched or heard of the series before I started to catch up on watching my unwatched episodes of Law and Order SVU. Chris teases me about my phases in tv watching and in food. Once I get hooked, I'm hooked. Until I get sick of the show or sick of the food that I had been obsessed with.

If any of you watch this emmy nominated show, you'll agree that it isn't easy to describe. Interesting pilot episodes that lead into ... more

"I am the one still in your every breath." - Paul Valery, Le Jeune Parque"

This is the haunting quote that begins Shadowchild by P.F. Thomese. This book is haunting in itself. I am very calculated about where I spend our money. I hardly ever buy books. This is the next book on my list to own.

Again using the word haunting, the other word that I can think of that describes this book is lyrical. It is like a love poem of loss from a father to a daughter that has died in infancy. Although none of my losses actually resulted in a baby that I could hold and say goodbye to, this book conveyed the extreme confusion of losing a child. How the world goes ... more

Whenever I've been pregnant, I haven't ever dreamed of my pregnancies or the child that I am carrying. It always seems though, that women have many crazy dreams during pregnancy. A midwife that I used to be friends with until she moved away thought that this was due to the lack of quality sleep during a pregnancy and also that hormones could be a factor.

My step mom gave birth to my brother and sister almost 18 years ago. Her recurrent pregnancy dream was that she gave birth to monkeys. They brought the babies in, all diapered and washed, ... more