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Friday, November 30, 2012

Nursing covers...just because you want to wear one, doesn't mean it needs to look like Omar the Tent Maker made it.






I'M NURSING DISCREETLY...YOU CAN'T SEE A BIT OF SKIN AND NO ONE CAN TELL WHAT I AM DOING BECAUSE I COVERED UP!!!!!




What the fuck is this?

You could live in this thing!!

There are some smaller options if you really want one...

An UdderCover is slightly less noticeable and ridiculous.


The Loved Baby Shawl is kinda cute.


This is the Moboleez.
And here is a Baby Bond..Simple, Discreet and NOT ridiculously Ginormous.

Hell, a shirt over a tank and just for shits and giggles, a receiving blanket would do the job. Please don't fall for the HUGE ass tent thinking it will make life easier.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

GUEST POST!!!!! "The Mommy Wars" ~ Teresa Graham Brett


Teresa Graham Brett is a coach(link: http://www.parentingforsocialchange.com/parent-coaching.html) consultant, and author who founded Parenting for Social Change (link: http://www.ParentingforSocialChange.com) in 2009. Bringing together her experiences in higher education as a social justice educator, trainer, and administrator with her experiences coaching parents, she provides parents with transformative learning programs that help them to parent with trust and respect. She is the author of Parenting for Social Change: Transform Childhood, Transform the World (link: http://www.parentingforsocialchange.com/about-book.html) and the Guide to Liberation Parenting (link: http://www.parentingforsocialchange.com/guide-liberation-parenting.html)



The Mommy Wars
I had a recent conversation with several college-aged women about my identity as a mother and my identity as a woman. It has been over 10 years since I took on the role of being a mother. But I claimed the title “mom” with a great deal of reluctance.
When I became pregnant, I was in the middle of my career (or so I thought) as a university administrator. My first encounter with the liability of being pregnant and being a mom came during a conversation with my female boss about taking on additional responsibilities in my role as associate dean.
During the conversation, I revealed to her that I was pregnant. Her response to me was that perhaps we should wait to see how my pregnancy went before giving me additional responsibilities. If I had a difficult pregnancy, then I would not be able to handle what she was proposing I take on.
That was my first skirmish in the mommy wars.
I soon decided that I needed to start looking to go to another university. It became clear to me that I had hit the limits of my ability to move up in my career in my current situation. I started a job search when I was about 4 months pregnant.
The dean of students position became available at one of the universities I had always wanted to work at, the University of Texas at Austin. I applied without hesitation. When the time came for me to interview on campus. I was 8 months pregnant.
I flew down to Austin believing that there was little chance I would be hired given that I was so pregnant. I gave the 2 ½ day interview my all and decided to let the chips fall where they may.
My second skirmish in the mommy wars came during the interview. I sat in the dean of students’ office with the interim dean. This was a man who was holding the job until a permanent replacement was hired.
He looked down at my belly and told me three times during the 45-minute interview that this job was a 24/7 job. It was clear he didn’t feel I was up to the job, considering my state.
My new boss felt otherwise and offered me the job. We moved to Texas. My boss, all my peers (the other associate vice presidents) were all men, who either had no children or who had older or grown children. I was 12-18 years younger than all of them, and I had a newborn baby.
During the time I was there, I pumped for 2 years. I was nursing the entire time I was there. I left work occasionally at 4 p.m. to nurse him and returned to the office when I had a late program. I worked 60+ hours a week. I was on call for emergencies 24/7.
How often I pumped, when I left the office and returned in the evenings, the fact that Rob and the baby accompanied me to some social functions, the fact that Rob stayed at home and we didn’t hire a babysitter while I did the evening and weekend functions solo, were all topics of gossip and conversation.
Daily skirmishes in the mommy wars.
When I decided to leave that career, even after being offered the top position in my field, vice president for student affairs, I received a call from another woman, a generation older, who I had considered an ally. She chastised me for thinking that another baby would get in the way of my job.
I realized that my experiences in academia as a woman, a mom, had kept me from claiming that title. Even as I wrote this website and my book, Parenting for Social Change, I rarely used the word mom or mother. I always used the gender neutral term “parent.”
I had internalized the belief that being a mom is not enough, or that it is a liability. Moms are not given respect in our culture. Moms who stay at home with their children are not valued. The unpaid work done by mothers is not seen as contributing to the family in the same way that paid work is.
I had bought into those lies.
The real war that I was fighting wasn’t with those around me. They only mirrored to me my insecurities. They mirrored the beliefs I had internalized, that I was less when I was a mom.
Even since I left my career, I have believed, at times, that I am less valuable to my family because I don’t make the same amount of money now as a consultant, author, or coach as I did as a dean of students. I have believed that I am not as worthy.
And yet, in my heart, I know that the work I do in my role as a mother with the children who share my life will have a greater impact that any work I did at the university.
My willingness to parent, to mother, in a way that affirms their dignity and rights will create more change than the many years I tried to create social change in any of my university positions.
As a culture, we value the big actions, the titles, the positions of power. We believe that is where the change is occurring. We believe that is where we most influence those around us.
And yet, it is in our small day-to-day actions, the ways we live our lives congruent with the values of mutual respect and trust that really matters.
It is the ways we hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes and learning that really makes change over the long term.
It is the ways in which we empower the children in our lives, as moms and dads, that results in a better world.
The mommy wars are over for me. Mostly.
I still sometimes struggle with the identity. I still sometimes think my value is reflected in the money I bring to the family. At least now when those thoughts come into my head, I understand where they come from. And, I let them pass on through to their next destination.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

GUEST POST!!! "Children Are The Mirror" ~ Teresa Graham Brett


Teresa Graham Brett is a coach(link: http://www.parentingforsocialchange.com/parent-coaching.html) consultant, and author who founded Parenting for Social Change (link: http://www.ParentingforSocialChange.com) in 2009. Bringing together her experiences in higher education as a social justice educator, trainer, and administrator with her experiences coaching parents, she provides parents with transformative learning programs that help them to parent with trust and respect. She is the author of Parenting for Social Change: Transform Childhood, Transform the World (link: http://www.parentingforsocialchange.com/about-book.html) and the Guide to Liberation Parenting (link: http://www.parentingforsocialchange.com/guide-liberation-parenting.html)



Children are the Mirror
I have often said to myself and others in the last 5 years that whatever we are triggered by in others is usually a reflection of something we are unwilling to face within ourselves. Of course, I wasn't the first person to say this. Many spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism, espouse such a belief.
Over the last several years I’ve struggled with my relationship with money. This struggle has been on-going throughout my life, but when I worked in my career as a university administrator, I was often able to keep it at bay.
When I left the “safe” world of the institution where I received a regular paycheck, I’ve had to confront this struggle at a deeper level. I’ve known that I am constrained by my fears and beliefs about money. But for whatever reason, I haven’t been willing to look at it until recently.
As the youngest child in my life has grown, he has been my mirror for all the challenges I have about money and the decisions I made as the person who used to be (and often still is) the primary income earner in our family.
I made a decision to challenge myself to squarely face my fears and what I believe about money within myself. When I go into that place of being fearful, I usually feel it in my stomach. So when my stomach starts to hurt and I tense up around some financial issue, this has been my cue to take a pause and explore the beliefs and feelings I’ve been avoiding.
One evening, he began collecting spare change and asked me to give him some money to go get a toy. I asked him to give me a few minutes to think as I began to feel that familiar pain in my stomach.
I lay on the bed and decided to invite the fear to come out of hiding. I just said to myself things like "I need to let myself feel this" and "I invite and welcome this feeling and fear into my consciousness."
It took about 10 minutes of embracing the feelings of fear and the pain in my stomach for the answer to break through the surface.
By inviting the fear in, I realized how I believe that I always make bad decisions about money. Growing up I would hear my mother say this about my father. I feared that I was like my father and couldn't handle money.
The fear that whatever decision I made about money was a bad one was one that constantly lived in my subconscious. Whether it was giving him $10 to spend on a toy, or my decision to buy something to eat for myself when I was out of the house and hungry, or my decision to add a second bedroom onto our small house.
Every decision I made about money, no matter how trivial, was connected to my belief that I always made bad decisions. I even remember how as a teenager, I would question my own decisions believing that I was bound to screw it up.
These decisions were not always about money. I’ve lived in this confusion on a daily basis. I remember many times how I would ask for clarity from others. I would call Rob on the phone or talk in person with him about a decision I was trying to make.
I would question every decision I made no matter how small and he would show up and be my mirror. He would mirror back to me my belief that I could not do it right.
And in that fear and lie, I would be triggered.
It kept me from seeing what he was doing was just the desire of a four year-old child wanting money to buy a toy. Instead I saw his actions as a confirmation of how much I had screwed up in my life. That is quite a burden for a four year-old to carry.
Realizing that I lived in fear of making a decision about money, because I knew I would mess it up, was a big one for me. And, as soon as the realization hit me, my stomach pain went away. I felt this weight lifted off of me. I brought out from my subconscious this belief that undermined me and which I used to punish myself. By bringing it out of hiding, I released a lot of its hold on me.
This break-through allowed me to be present with him around his desire to go buy a new toy in a way I had rarely experienced. I could make a decision and not have it be clouded by my self-imposed confusion.
I could make a decision and not have it be tied to my underlying belief that I always made bad decisions. And, because I made bad decisions, I would pass this trait onto him. That's a whole lot of twisted crap floating around!
Your issue may not be money. But there may be ways in which the children in your life reflect your fears. The situation you hate to enter into with them, because it is rife with conflict, may be because you are holding on to some deep beliefs (or lies) that keep you from being clear and present.
What are the lies you are holding onto about yourself and how do those manifest in your relationships with the children in your life?
It can be a challenge to go deeper and allow the fear to surface. The fear may be rooted in some very traumatic experiences you had as a child. The depth of that pain may make us even more afraid to allow it come to the surface. You may need some support to allow yourself to go there.
But, if we choose not to go deeper, how might we be impacting our current relationships? How might our actions today be influenced by what we choose not to look at in our past?
When we avoid the pain and fear, it maintains it's hold on us. The people in our lives, especially children, bring that fear and anxiety to the surface. If we choose not to face it within ourselves, we can easily project it on to them.
Our lack of clarity, our confusion, our unwillingness to go deeper and expand our awareness of ourselves, directly impacts our relationships with children.
Our work, then, is to face our fears and uncover the trigger. This "work" is really not work in the traditional sense. It is about love and acceptance of all the parts of our experiences, past and present. It is an honoring of those things we have hidden away. It is a love of what those experiences and feelings have to teach us.
Ultimately, it is about loving ourselves unconditionally, just as we hope to do with the children in our lives.