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What I Learned about My Body after Pregnancy
Postpartum I expected to learn a lot about myself, as a mom of two, and my tiny best friends in our new family dynamic. What has really surprised me is how much I learned about the world around me, courtesy of my body after pregnancy, and how it relates to the world. I’ll say now, as I’ve said for the millionth time this year “I’ve been the same height and weight (give or take twenty pounds) since i was about 13”. I only find myself waxing poetic about this when I’m pregnant because the sudden weight gain always throws me for a loop. I literally can’t remember a time where…
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No one Warns you about Postpartum Rage
When I fly, people often come up to me on airplanes and tell me how well-behaved my tiny best friends are. I covered in slobber and tiny pieces of food don’t see it, but I smile and thank them. On any given flight postpartum there is always a point where I ask myself, in a blind rage, why I thought I was ready for such torture. On our most recent flight, we Sat behind a mother and her two children on the plane home from Hawaii. The mother pleaded with her two children to stop fussing with one another. The toddler seemingly used to their older sister’s antics responded by…
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What’s a Doula |Consider a Postpartum Doula
The day after my mid-winter birthday one month after I gave birth, I had the joy of introducing my newest Tiny Best Friend to my favorite place in the world, the Beach. One month after giving birth I was watching the sunset on my greatest contributions. The experience was akin to having my children baptized by Mother Earth. It was made possible by my postpartum doula. Having a postpartum doula made those first few months after giving birth the second time around, completely unrecognizable to the same period after birthing my first child. The period of your life that’s normally isolating and terrifying in a new mother’s life (even without…
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What’s a Doula |Black Doulas and Midwives near me in NYC
Traditionally all Doulas and Midwives that birthed babies in America were Black women, over time the “business of birthing” gave way to whitewashing and monetization. Now it’s harder and harder to find a Black birth worker. The care of a Midwife for a low-risk birthing human greatly reduces the risk of complications in pregnancy and delivery. I didn’t hire a doula at my first birth, I thought I couldn’t afford one and I was also really afraid of having any more than the one stranger that ABSOLUTLEY HAD to see my vagina, get a peek at it. My midwife knowledgeable as ever showed up to my birth with a doula…
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Postpartum Care | Prioritize Pelvic Floor Physiotherapy
What is pelvic floor physical therapy exactly? Pelvic floor physiotherapy is a guided form of internal bodywork that focuses on strengthening the pelvic floor. Pelvic floor physical therapists are globally excepted as an integral part of postpartum care, except for in, you guessed it the United States. The way that it really clicked for me to visualize what pelvic floor physiotherapy really was, and why I should see a physical therapist was to think of your favorite net reusable bag, hang it on a hook and then place a bowling ball in it, and remove after 9 months. A sturdy bag may not break but signs of its former inhabitant…
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Cloth diapers for beginners, babes, and babies
Blame it on my hippie soul but even from the beginning, I’ve always wanted to cloth diapers. Albeit on a self-contained farm in view of a mountain range but my NYC apartments served the purpose in the end. There’s so much information on the internet about cloth diapers for beginners, however, I feel like a lot of it is aimed at people who are already deeply entrenched in the community. There’s a heap of cloth diapering lingo that to be honest I don’t have the energy to decipher while attempting to keep two babies alive. If you’re farther along in your journey to cloth diapers or have a specific question…
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Low Waste Living | Trying to raise a Zero Waste Baby
Whenever I think about the glitzy glam that is today’s Zero waste movement I’m moved to tears at just how much this way of living is just ingrained into the lives of immigrant families. There is a picture of my mom in a garden stooping down between a group of children, one of them is my little sister, three others I’ve long since lost contact with, they’re all wearing too-big-for-them-dresses that I have fond memories of playing in myself. Sustainability is now a flashy buzz word but the notion of being zero waste with my baby now just takes a bit of digging low down into my own memory banks.…
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8 Cute Nursing Bras Found on Amazon for Plus size and Straight Size bodies
Searching for cute bras to nurse in is hard enough when you’re not in a pandemic. Guessing the exact size your boobs are going to balloon to coupled with the new measurement for your postpartum girth, is far from an exact science. After countless hours of research, conducted in the dead of night once my tiniest best friend woke me for a night feed I’ve found some pretty epic numbers How do you like your Nursing bras? The first step before searching for the perfect nursing bras whether it be on Amazon or elsewhere is to decide your preferred boob access. Essentially decide how exposed you want your boobs to…
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Cloth Diapers|Everything you Need to Know About Reusable Baby Diapers
Answer the call of your hippie soul and use reusable diapers on the perfect bottom of your new baby. Disposable diapers were invented in the ’50s so most of our parents and grandparents used cloth diapers on their baby bottoms. Disturbing fact, all the diapers ever used are still rotting in a landfill somewhere. Is this your first-time cloth diapering? Nope, I used cloth diapers with my first baby 5 years ago and loved them so much I wanted to use them again with baby number two. Best cloth diapers for newborns Are newborn sizes worth it for big babies? Nope, not at all. Some companies’ “newborn” size is a…
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Binding Postpartum | Choosing The best belly wrap, faja, or girdle
Wrapping your belly postpartum is a very controversial polarizing concept. Many birth workers are divided on whether or not it’s best for postpartum women to wrap their belly. However, in most indigenous cultures around the world, some sort of binding is used postpartum, whether it be an intricately wound strip of fabric or a girdle. The closing of the womb and resetting of the hips is an age old tradition the world around. Wrapping your belly postpartum is a very controversial polarizing concept. Many birth workers are divided on whether or not it’s best for postpartum women to wrap their belly. However, in most indigenous cultures around the world, some…
