Co-Sleeping/Bed-Sharing

Co-sleeping: Safe, Bonding & Beautiful (photos)

3 Comments 06 December 2011

 

Attachment Parenting, Babywearing, Breastfeeding, Co-Sleeping/Bed-Sharing, Home Birth Advocacy, Home Birth Safety, Motherhood, Pregnancy

The Best Advice the BBH Community Can Offer

2 Comments 19 November 2010

Whenever I have a question or need advice, I go straight to the Bring Birth Home community.

On the BBH Facebook page, there are over 4,500 experienced friends and fans, ready and willing to share their experiences.

The only problem with all this great advice being on Facebook is it can easily get lost in the feed, never to be found again!

Which is why I took the time to track down a few of those precious questions so you can read the tremendous advice these women (and men) had to give.

Aren’t a fan of Bring Birth Home on Facebook yet? Become a fan!

(Click on the titles below to be taken to the answers)

Did you get enough help after giving birth?

Did you have older children at your home birth? What did you do to prepare them for the birth? How did that work out?

How did you *know* you wanted to hire your midwife?

What do you wish you would have known or could have been more prepared for before giving birth at home for the first time?

Bring Birth Home on Facebook is a great way to find like-minded mamas to talk to, connect with and gain insights from.

Feel free to ask them your questions. It can be hard to find support for your “off the wall” choices – that is what the BBH community is for!

Attachment Parenting, Babywearing, BBH Dad, Birth Experience, Breastfeeding, Co-Sleeping/Bed-Sharing, Home Birth Advocacy, Home Birth Safety, Motherhood, Pregnancy

Navigating the Bring Birth Home Blog – A Road Map

2 Comments 26 October 2010

When you visit a blog, and you take a look around, one thing looks pretty familiar from site to site – the sidebar.

The sidebar was created to help us navigate a blog or website.

While the categories, popular posts, news feed subscriptions, and archives might do a good service, it can still be rather challenging to navigate the blog, especially if there have been a lot of posts.

I’ve recently noticed that there are some gems of articles hidden within the Bring Birth Home Blog.

I wonder if our readers are finding them…because sometimes they’re hiding behind the “Older Entries” button at the bottom of a section.

Let’s face it, who likes to click and click around a site, spending more time searching for a particular article than reading?

That is why I have created this post - to create a clear and easy to follow road map, (think of it as a list of the Chapters at the beginning of a book!) for you to navigate the Bring Birth Home Blog all the easier. Now you’ll know just what you’re getting under each category.

Bookmark this post to get back to!

Why Birth Experience Matters Series

Description: A ten part series that describe exactly why birth experience matters to both mom and baby. The first half of the series tackles Birth Management and Intervention. The second is all about Creating a Peaceful Birth Experience.

Part One

Part Two

Pregnancy

The BBH Dad

Home Birth Safety

Home Birth Advocacy

Breastfeeding

Babywearing

Bedsharing/Co-sleeping

Motherhood

BBH Video Blog

The Bring Birth Home Store

Have you purchased any BBH logo merchandise? Or maybe you need some supplies for birth or just after birth? We have partnered with Mama Goddess Birth Shop to bring you nursing supplies and home birth kits!

Good Reads & Movies

I will be adding to this post as more articles are added! (and as I organize some of the messiness within this blog!)

Co-Sleeping/Bed-Sharing, Guest Writers

Holding My Baby Close to My Heart: A Journey to Co-sleeping

No Comments 07 September 2010

by guest blogger Amanda Hartman

I am amazed at how much I learn from my children.

They have so much love, not just for my husband and myself, but for everyone. They have shown me so much about how to love and that love is not just words, but actions as well.

As I get older, and we have added more children to our family, I have had so many learning experiences.

I have learned from my mistakes – as we all do.

I have also learned about things I never knew anything about. I learned about extended breastfeeding, cloth diapering, co-sleeping, home birthing, unassisted birthing, homeschooling, placenta encapsulation, and baby wearing. Some of these were almost instinctive.

Some others took a while to understand.

When I had my first baby, I was 18.

I was very new to mothering, and was a little nervous about what to do.

I was also very scared of hurting my baby if I dared to let her sleep with me.

Because of this, I would not bring her to my bed with me. When she cried at night, I would go into her room, and nurse her in my rocking chair. When she was done, I put her back in her bed and returned to my bed in the other room.

When our second baby came, we took her to see our family when she was only a couple of weeks old.

She ended up with a pretty severe cold, and spent the next week struggling to breathe through her nose. I could not sleep at night during this time. I would get up to check on her all throughout the night (sometimes poking and waking her up to make sure she was still with us). I then began bringing her to bed with me, so she could be close and I could keep watch over her.

This is when I the beginnings of our co-sleeping started.

With my second, and then third baby daughter, I began to bring them to bed more and more with me to nurse them.

Then, by the time we made it to our fourth baby, our first boy, I was only occasionally moving him to his bed at night.

The only problem I had, and I will admit that it did happened, that he unfortunately rolled off the bed a few times.

Oh, how traumatizing for both of us!

Once, I even woke up holding my baby boy (he was actually like 7 months old) by the ankle, dangling over the edge of the bed. I had sensed him going over and caught him, by his foot, in my sleep. That was when I taught myself to curl up around him, to protect my little one from rolling away.

Thankfully, my fifth and sixth babies had much less ‘exciting’ sleeping experiences.

I love the times where I get to snuggle in bed with them.

However, there are the nights when they really just want their own bed. The nights when they just wiggle, and kick, and whine until I put them in their own little bed, away from mom and dad.

That is when I know my baby is growing up. When they want to move away a little bit at a time. It is sad, but exciting too.

I love to have my babies close to me when we sleep. I love the feeling of their breath on me, hearing their little snores, knowing that they are close to me, and close to my heart. I know that when my baby is first born, they have lost that closeness. They are no longer one with my body. They are now their own person, without the warmth, noise and all that they have every known from inside me. They are utterly alone in the new world.

When I snuggle with them, I place them on my chest, over my heart, so they can hear it beating.

I hold them next to me and whisper to them. Telling them how much I love them, how I missed them, and how I am so happy they are here with me. It is so hard for me to let my babies go. To let them grow up and become an independent toddler, then kid, teen and soon – an adult with their own family.

I enjoy watching them, as the days, months, and years pass by. I love watching them experiment, learn, smile, cry, and grow. As my babies grow older, though, I know that I have done well. I know that my babies are happy, and know that I have, and always will, be there for them.

*****************************************************************************

Amanda Hartman is a home birthing, homeschooling, stay at home mom of six. After her first three hospital births, she felt guided with her fourth to birth at home. Amanda went on the birth her next two children at home, the last being her first unassisted birth. You can read about her birth stories, placenta encapsulation information, and more My Heaven.

Make sure you don’t miss a single spectacular guest post! Sign up to receive email updates featuring the captivating and wise stories of women as they experience birth and motherhood in a holistic way!

Interested in becoming a part of the BBH Guest Blogging Team? Send an email to Kaitlin at KaitlinRose@BringBirthHome.com

Attachment Parenting, Babywearing, Breastfeeding, Co-Sleeping/Bed-Sharing, Guest Writers, Home Birth Advocacy, Motherhood, Pregnancy

Applying the Law of Intention and Desire – Bring Birth Home Expands

2 Comments 05 September 2010

This morning before breakfast, I picked up Deepak Chopra’s, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and opened it to a random page.

I would like to share with you the message I was given on the page I chose.

**

Applying the Law of Intention and Desire

I will put the Law of Intention and Desire into effect by making a commitment to take the following steps:

1)  I will make a list of all my desires. I will carry this list with me wherever I go. I will look at this list before I go into my silence and meditation. I will look at it before I go to sleep at night. I will look at it when I wake up in the morning.

2) I will release this list of my desires and surrender it to the womb of creation, trusting that when things don’t seem to go my way, there is a reason, and that the cosmic plan has designs for me much grander than even those that I have conceived.

3) I will remind myself to practice present-moment awareness in all my actions. I will refuse to allow obstacles to consume and dissipate the quality of my attention in the present moment. I will accept the present as it is, and manifest the future through my deepest, most cherished intentions and desires.

by Deepak Chopra

**

My intention with Bring Birth Home is to supply women interested in home birth with the information and support they are looking for while traveling the journey of informed birth.

While birthing at home is a prominent passion in my life, there are many others – some of which I have written about here on this blog, and some I have not (yet).

In order to fulfill and bring light to those other passions, Bring Birth Home is in the process of transitioning into something more expansive.

This includes broadening the subjects discussed at the blog and at BBH on Facebook and Twitter.

Several home birthing and attachment parenting mothers have shown an interest in becoming guest bloggers at Bring Birth Home.

They will be writing to you, sharing their experiences as they have learned how to become gentle parents and their tales of nursing, bed-sharing and elimination communication.

Others will describe their journey to home birth and the pleasant surprises and challenges they encountered along the way.

You’ll hear from women who gave birth at home after previous cesarean sections, women who were born at home and gave birth to their children at home, as well as mothers who transferred to the hospital after planning to birth at home.

As I take the journey to uncover and actualize the many passions in my life, I hope to capture that growth by blogging at Bring Birth Home as well.

So don’t worry, I’m not going away! Just learning new things about other things (I’ll keep you up to date on my adventures).

In the meantime, there are guest posts waiting to be cued. Watch out for them this coming week and until then, have a great Labor Day weekend!

p.s. make sure you don’t miss a single spectacular guest post! Sign up to receive email updates featuring the captivating and wise stories of women as they experience birth and motherhood in a holistic way!


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