Recommended Reading ;)

I may not have been blogging much myself lately but there are 2 blogs in particular that I have been enjoying following and for anyone who happens to be looking for something crunchy, inspiring, and just really interesting, as well as really getting you thinking, I highly recommend Harriet's Mama's 2 blogs :)

First there is
The Musings of Harriet's Mama
The Life & Mind of a Lotus-Water-Freebirthin', Co-Sleeping, Non-Vaccinating, Baby Wearing, Cloth Nappy Using, Elimination Communicating, Lactivist, Feminist, Mum of One.

And her second blog, serving as a sort of diary for her family's journey with Elimination Communication (you might not want to read it while eating though, I learnt that from experience, LOL).

See A Cue? Catch A Poo!
This is where I keep track of our elimination communication (EC) journey. EC is the practice of learning and watching for a baby's elimination cues and catching her poo and wee rather than leaving her to soil herself. It's about strengthening communication between baby and parents and keeping baby in touch with her instincts

remember me?

Yes I am STILL battling the dreaded morning sickness...its getting a bit ridiculous at 17wks!! Hopefully it eases off soon because it is so so so SO tiring! (Not to mention bloody annoying!)

So I just wanted to post to say I am still around! Still here!
Have been a little busy of late working on a new little project and I hope you will all come and check it out....

Hathor Birth Haven

Hope you are all well, and hopefully I'll be back blogging, knitting and crocheting as much as I would like to be really soon :)

Just a quicky....

Have been fiddling with my blog again, as you can see...

For anyone interested, the banner at the top is also a link to Jet's birth story and.....

couldn't get the following to fit to my liking, but I couldn't not include them somehow.
From this wonderful site.

8 things about me Meme

Oky doky...so I have been tagged by Eilleen
I wasn't sure if I could come up with anything interesting so its a bit of fluff and a few interesting things about moi!

******
Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
******

1- My favourite band is The Beatles. I can thank exDP for that, lol. Despite loving them lots....I rarely listen to any music...or if I do its kids music

2- I must be the most boring member of my family.... I have never taken drugs and I never will... doesn't appeal to me...

3- I don't drink. I used to drink and drink and drink when I was a teenager....once I drank 3 times in one week ....the next week I had glandular fever. Smack bang in the middle of year 12....sort of hasn't had the same appeal since then. I have tried,lol, a few times....but I just don't 'get it' anymore, so now I don't bother.

4- When we were 16, my exDP and I got engaged....our parents were mortified Obviously we didn't last, but I hold no regrets... I just hate it when people make a big deal out of it...

5- I moved out of home when I was 17. My parents split when I was 15, I lived with my mum and stepdad for a few years and then things went pair shaped. They say it was me....I say it was him....How on earth can they blame a child??? I was lucky enough to find some help (because I was suicidal and apparently it was just 'emotional blackmail' to my mum ) and was able to move into temporary housing.

6- I am scared of dogs ....not as badly as I used to be... But they still make me nervous and I get butterflies in my tummy. Apparently I was jumped on and knocked over by a dog when I was 2 and have been pretty much terrified since. I remember when I was a kid I used to scream and cry if a dog was anywhere near me.

7- I relactated when Indy was about 9wks old I made some poor decisions, but wasn't really in the headspace to see clearly, nor did I have much support, which led to me quitting bfing Indy when he was just 2 wks old. I soon regretted it and decided to relactate. For the most part he only bf once a day and generally in the middle of the night when there was the least distractions. But I did do some things I never thought I would do....like actually enjoy bfing!! And bf in public. Unfortunately it didn't last as long as I had hoped....Indy started sleeping thru the night and wouldn't bf during the day, but I think we got at least a few months in there. (And now he doesn't sleep through anyway, lol)
I am so glad I relactated....if anyone out there is considering it, go for it!! It is bloody hard work, but so so worth it! It was pretty much relactating alone that made me want more babies....I remember feeding Indy in the rocking chair smiling away at him thinking, omg, I actually LOVE this....I NEED to do this again

8- I am planning a HBAC In one session with my psychologist we somehow got onto dream births and I happened to mention that I often dreamt about giving birth at home, but that I never thought it would happen...Having had a c/s I thought my only option was a repeat c/s because I won't labour in a hospital again after the trauma of Jet's birth. Kelli said to me, there's no reason you can't have your baby at home with just you and Jamie and the boys if that's what you want... A lightbulb went off in my head and I thought, holy crap! She's right!!
Initially I began researching freebirth because I didn't think there were any Independent Midwives around here....lucky I did my research!! Thanks to some lovely and very helpful Victorian midwives I was given the details of not one but 2!!! IM in MY TOWN!! My little backward town has 2 IM!!!
Now I just have to get this LLETZ related crap out of the way so I can TTC#3!


Now to find some people to tag..... (and to remember to tell them lol!!!)

• Carla
• Bec
• Jacki
• Mel
• ~Cinderella~
• Rebecca
• Bec (purps)
• Susan
  

Phew....that was hard!!!

Hidden Messages....

Another article I came across today....funnily enough, stuff I have been discussing with my psychologist lately....how about that hey...


Hidden Messages

By Jan Hunt, M.Sc.

Newborn

What we say: "You can cry all you want, I'm not going to pick you up again!"

What we think: "This is breaking my heart but all those experts can't be wrong."

What the child thinks: "They don't love me. They don't care about my suffering. Mommy Is perfect, so there must be something wrong with me. l must not be worthy of anybody's love."

What we say twenty years later: "What on earth do you see in Tom? How can you let him treat you like that? Don't you know you deserve better than that?"

Infant

What we say: "No more nursing - you're too big for that now!"

What we think: "I'd like to continue, but l Just can't stand all this criticism from my relatives."

What the child thinks: "I've just lost the most Important thing in my life: the long periods of cuddling, and the food that felt best Inside me. l must have done something terrible. I must be a terrible person."

What we say twenty years later: "Why are you drinking so much?"

Age 2

What we say: "You can't come into our bed any more. You won't be lonely. Look, here's a nice big teddy bear to keep you company!"

What we think: "Grandma thinks there's something wrong with having you in our bedroom. I'm not sure what it Is, but It's more important for us to please her than to please you. Anyway, this teddy bear should make you happy."

What the child thinks: "It isn't fair! They get to cuddle with a real person. They don't know me very well. They don't care about my feelings. Oh well, at least they gave me this bear."

What we say twenty years later: "I know you're upset that Tom broke off with you, but is that any reason to over-charge like this on your credit card? Will all this stuff make you feel better that someone left you? When did you get so materialistic?"

Age 4

What we say: "You know you're not supposed to hit your brother! I'll give you a spanking you'll never forget!"

What we think: "There must be a better way to handle this, but it's what my Dad did, so it must be right."

What the child thinks: "I was so upset with my brother I hit him. Now Dad is so upset with me for hitting, he's hitting me. I guess It's okay for adults to hit, but not for kids. I wonder what I should do when I get upset? Oh well, one of these days I'll be an adult myself."

What we say twenty years later: "A bar room brawl? Adults don't hit people just because they're upset. I never taught you to resort to violence!"

Age 6

What we say: "Well, this is a big day for you. Don't be afraid, Just do everything your teacher says."

What we think: "Please don't embarrass me by acting up at school!"

What the child thinks: "But I'm afraid! I'm not ready to leave them for so many hours a day! They must be getting tired of me. Maybe If l do what the teacher says, they'll like me better and let me stay home."

What we say twenty years later: "What?! Your friends talked you into taking drugs? Do you do what everybody else tells you to do? Don't you have a mind of your own?"

Age 8

What we say: "Your teacher says you aren't paying attention in class. How will you ever learn anything important?"

What we think: "If my kid never amounts to anything, I'll feel like a failure."

What the child thinks: "I'm not Interested In the things the teacher talks about, but I guess she knows best. The things that do interest me must not be important."

What we say twenty years later: You're 28 years old and you still don't know what you want to do with your life? Aren't you Interested in anything?!"

Age 10

What we say: "You broke another dish? Oh, never mind, I'll wash them myself."

What we think: "I know I should be more patient with you, but at least this way the dishes will get done."

What the child thinks: "Boy, am l clumsy. I'd better not even try to help any more."

What we say twenty years later: "You want that job but you won't even apply for it? You should have more faith In yourself!"

Age 12

What we say: "Go out and play with your friends - you'll have more fun with them than hanging around here all day."

What we think: "I know l should spend more time with you, but I've got so much to do. It's a good thing there are so many kids around here."

What the child thinks: "I want to do things with Mom and Dad, but they're always too busy. I guess my friends like me better."

What we say twenty years later: "You never call us or come to see us any more. Don't you care about our feelings?"

Age 14

What we say: "Please leave the room, dear. Your father and I have something personal to discuss."

What we think: "We have some secrets we'd rather you didn't know about."

What the child thinks: "I'm not really part of this family."

What we say twenty years later: "You're in prison?! Why didn't you tell us you were having problems? Don't you know there are no secrets in families? We tried so hard. Where did we go wrong?"

The con of controlled crying...

Came across this extract from Pinky McKay's book, Sleeping Like a Baby (which I own and love btw) and wanted to share....

The con of controlled crying

by Pinky McKay

Although many baby sleep trainers claim there is no evidence of harm from practices such as controlled crying, it is worth noting that there is a vast difference between ‘no evidence of harm’ and ‘evidence of no harm’.

A policy statement on controlled crying issued by the Australian Association of Infant Mental Health (AAIMHI) advises, ‘Controlled crying is not consistent with what infants need for their optimal emotional and psychological health, and may have unintended negative consequences.’ According to AAIMHI, ‘There have been no studies, such as sleep laboratory studies, to our knowledge, that assess the physiological stress levels of infants who undergo controlled crying, or its emotional or psychological impact on the developing child.’

Despite the popularity of controlled crying, it is not an evidence-based practice. In a talk at the International Association of Infant Mental Health 9th World Congress held in Melbourne in 2004, Professor James McKenna, director of the Mother–Baby Behavioural Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and acclaimed SIDS expert, described controlled crying as ‘social ideology masquerading as science’.

What this means is that despite a plethora of opinions on how long you should leave your baby to cry in order to train her to sleep, nobody has studied exactly how long it is safe to leave a baby to cry, if at all.

Babies who are forced to sleep alone (or cry, because many do not sleep) for hours may miss out on both adequate nutrition and sensory stimulation such as touch, which is as important as food for infant development. Leaving a baby to ‘cry it out’ in order to enforce a strict routine when the baby may, in fact, be hungry, is similar to expecting an adult to adopt a strenuous exercise program accompanied by a reduced food intake. The result of expending energy through crying while being deprived of food is likely to be weight loss and failure to thrive. Paediatrician William Sears has claimed that ‘babies who are “trained” not to express their needs may appear to be docile, compliant or “good” babies. Yet, these babies could be depressed babies who are shutting down the expression of their needs.’

Babies can indeed be ‘brand new and blue’ with an actual diagnosis of clinical depression. Often the predisposing conditions for depression in infants are beyond our control, such as trauma due to early hospitalisation and medical treatments. However, if we consider the baby’s perspective, it is easy to understand how extremely rigid regimes can also be associated with infant depression and why it isn’t worth risking, especially if your child has already experienced early separation. You too would withdraw and become sad if the people you loved avoided eye contact, as some sleep training techniques advise, and repeatedly ignored your cries.

Leaving a baby to cry evokes physiological responses that increase stress hormones. Crying infants experience an increase in heart rate, body temperature and blood pressure. These reactions are likely to result in overheating and, along with vomiting due to extreme distress, could pose a potential risk of SIDS in vulnerable infants. There may also be longer-term emotional effects. Babies need our help to learn how to regulate their emotions, meaning that when we respond to and soothe their cries, we help them understand that when they are upset, they can calm down. On the other hand, when infants are left alone to cry it out, they fail to develop the understanding that they can regulate their own emotions. There is also compelling evidence that increased levels of stress hormones may cause permanent changes in the stress responses of the infant’s developing brain. These changes then affect memory, attention, and emotion, and can trigger an elevated response to stress throughout life, including a predisposition to later anxiety and depressive disorders. English psychotherapist, Sue Gerhardt, author of Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain, explains that when a baby is upset, the hypothalamus produces cortisol. In normal amounts cortisol is fine, but if a baby is exposed for too long or too often to stressful situations (such as being left to cry) its brain becomes flooded with cortisol and it will then either over- or under-produce cortisol whenever the child is exposed to stress. Too much cortisol is linked to depression and fearfulness; too little to emotional detachment and aggression.

Stress levels in infancy may have implications for learning, too. While it seems fairly obvious that a calm baby will be available for learning, studies have shown that children with the lowest scores on mental and motor ability tests were those with the highest cortisol levels in their blood. There is also research showing that children with anxiety disorders have a higher level of sleep difficulties as infants. Although these studies weren’t about controlled crying and I am making no direct connection, my point is that perhaps some of the babies who are presenting with sleep difficulties are infants who need extra help to regulate their emotions or are more sensitive to stress, so it is possible that these little people would be more at risk if they were exposed to controlled crying.

One of the arguments for using controlled crying is that it ‘works’, but perhaps the definition of success needs to be examined more closely. In the small number of studies undertaken, while most babies will indeed stop waking when they are left to cry, ‘success’ varies from an extra hour’s sleep each night to little difference between babies who underwent sleep training and those who didn’t, eight weeks later. Some studies found that up to one-third of the babies who underwent controlled crying ‘failed sleep school’. A recent Australian baby magazine survey revealed that lthough 57 per cent of mothers who responded to the survey had tried controlled crying, 27 per cent reported no success, 27 per cent found it worked for one or two nights, and only 8 per cent found that controlled crying worked for longer than a week. To me, this suggests that even if harsher regimes work initially, babies are likely to start waking again as they reach new developmental stages or conversely, they may become more settled and sleep (without any intervention) as they reach appropriate developmental levels.

Controlled crying and other similar regimes may indeed work to produce a self-soothing, solitary sleeping infant. However, the trade-off could be an anxious, clingy or hyper-vigilant child or even worse, a child whose trust is broken. Unfortunately, we can’t measure attributes such as trust and empathy which are the basic skills for forming all relationships. We can’t, for instance, give a child a trust quotient like we can give him an intelligence quotient. One of the saddest emails I have received was from a mother who did controlled crying with her one-year-old toddler.

“After a week of controlled crying he slept, but he stopped talking (he was saying single words). For the past year, he has refused all physical contact from me. If he hurts himself, he goes to his older brother (a preschooler) for comfort. I feel devastated that I have betrayed my child.”

It is the very principle that makes controlled crying ‘work’ that is of greatest concern: when controlled crying ‘succeeds’ in teaching a baby to fall asleep alone, it is due to a process that neurobiologist Bruce Perry calls the ‘defeat response’. Normally, when humans feel threatened, our bodies flood with stress hormones and we go into ‘fight’ or ‘flight’. However, babies can’t fight and they can’t flee, so they communicate their distress by crying. When infant cries are ignored, this trauma elicits a ‘freeze’ or ‘defeat’ response. Babies eventually abandon their crying as the nervous system shuts down the emotional pain and the striving to reach out.

One explanation for the success of ‘crying it out’ is that when an infant’s defeat response is triggered often enough, the child will become habituated to this. That is, each time the child is left to cry, he ‘switches’ more quickly to this response. This is why babies may cry for say, an hour the first night, twenty minutes the following night and fall asleep almost immediately on the third night (if you are ‘lucky’). They are ‘switching off’ (and sleeping) more quickly, not learning a legitimate skill.

Whether sleep ‘success’ is due to behavioural principles (that is, a lack of ‘rewards’ when baby wakes) or whether the baby is overwhelmed by a stress reaction, the saddest risk of all is that as he tries to communicate in the only way available to him, the baby who is left to cry in order to teach him to sleep will learn a much crueler lesson – that he cannot make a difference, so what is the point of reaching out. This is learned helplessness.