Sometimes I have a feeling the universe is trying to tell me something. A while back I was writing about a man I once observed while riding the bus. He was the obligatory crazy man that all buses seem to have. Continue reading
Mental Health
Momstinct: The Art of Trusting Yourself
One of the benefits of being a new parent is learning to trust my momstinct. No, I haven’t developed a new smell after becoming a mom (at least, if I have, no one has told me so). That’s what I call my mommy instinct. It’s amazing how dead on it can be.
Back when Siddhartha was almost seven months old, he got sick for the first time. As is often the case, it started in the middle of the night. Continue reading
Microblogging: The First Few Weeks After Birth
Time for cramming more microblogging into a full blog post! I’m thankful that my slightly younger self was able to take the time to make quick updates to Facebook so I can look back on the first couple weeks of my son’s life. It’s just a snapshot, but it brings back memories and allows me to elaborate now, while I still remember some details. Continue reading
Your Baby Learns His Reactions From You
I swear in front of my kid. When I knock something over I say “$h1t!” and the other day I’m pretty sure I even dropped the f-bomb. At this age (4.5 months), I don’t think it’s something to be too concerned about. It will be a long while before he’s repeating what I say and it’s not like those words actually hurt anything.
It’s so easy to view a baby of this age as something like a pet. I know that sounds awful to admit, but they have so much in common at this point. They communicate with you through cries and body language, they depend on you for most of their needs and although they can interpret tone of voice, they don’t know exactly what you’re saying to them.
Well, last week I was delighted to discover that Sidd is picking up on more than I thought he could at this point. Continue reading
Lessons Learned From My Little Buddha
I hear children teach adults many wise life lessons. Less than two months old and Siddhartha has already taught me (inadvertently, I think) a huge one. I will be much happier if I simply accept that things will not always go according to plan. Not yet able to speak and he has already demonstrated for me the basic tenets of Buddhism. The difference between the way things are and the way we want things to be causes suffering. If we want to end suffering, we must eliminate our desires and accept things as they are. Continue reading
Step Backward to Move Forward
Remember that movie Awakenings? Do you remember how Robin Williams’s character, the doctor, had a theory that these unmoving people were actually moving so much that they became frozen and that’s when he decided to try the medicine used for Parkinson’s? I haven’t seen the movie in a while, but it was something like that, right?
That’s how I feel sometimes. Frenetic to the point of paralysis. Continue reading
My Bookshelf: HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method
In preparation for the birth of our first baby sometime in the next few weeks I started reading HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method by Marie F. Mongan. I’ve just started it, but already I’m impressed by the calming effect it is having on me. Funny thing is, I haven’t even begun to read much about the specifics of the technique.
In the first part of the book Mongan spends much of her time convincing the reader that childbirth does not have to be painful. Continue reading
My Bookshelf: The Optimistic Child
On Friday I wrote that I would post about the book Dave and I are reading that I hope will help me with my desire to raise emotionally healthy children. I started reading the Optimistic Child by Dr. Martin Seligman over a decade ago for a mentor program I participated in when I was in high school for which I studied depression independently. It has a slightly different meaning for me now and I feel as though I understand it a little better.
Seligman’s theory is that depression is caused by learned helplessness. Continue reading
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Baby? Part II
On Wednesday I wrote about some of the fears I have about being a parent, but I needed a whole separate post to address my biggest fear. Continue reading
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Baby? Part I
I’ve decided that if I can get through this pregnancy and the subsequent adjustment to a baby without too much freaking out, that will show that I have made an enormous amount of progress in the anxiety realm.
I feel I’m getting to the part of the pregnancy in which I’m having more anxious thoughts. Continue reading
A little bit of wisdom 