I hope this is the start of a trend toward more information-rich blogging among parenting posts. After all, the more we engage with our own children the more we need to learn about how to help them develop and the less we need other people to tell us how cute their kids are! 

5. Fish oil and its benefits to pregnant and postpartum women are just beginning to be understood, says this post.

4. What Adoption Usually Looks Like is an example of how the people search for the truth when an event gets so blown out of proporation

3. The popularity of this post shows that parents want to give their babies the best start in life. Waiting until the cord stops pulsing after delivery is one way to start that process.

2. The C-Section Recovery Omnibus contains links to all the recent research about how to recover quickly from a c-section. It has often been the second most popular post.

1. The most popular post is still the one about losing your libido after giving birth. Interestingly, I don’t think it’s popularity is as much about my original post as it is about the discussion that has been taking place in the comments section. It is very honest, often heartbreaking and occassionally joyful stuff.

Post from: Babylune

Now, picture me as a female Tom Cruise except I’m taller and my performance is less wooden. My long hair is tied back in a pony tail, sweat glistens on my brow as – under the punishing desert sun – I climb up the face of a cliff without a safety harness…

Of course, I have a diaper bag strapped to my back and, if needed, I can nurse while hanging onto the cliff by my toes even while my 4 year-old is pulling onto the straps of the diaper bag and shouting, “Mummy, I want some gummy bears right now!”

These are, more or less, the conditions under which most women recover from childbirth.

There have been some big changes at B5 Media and we’ve all been challenged to write a mission statement about our blogs.

This entry is mine.

My goal in writing Babylune is to encourage every new mother to do at least one thing to protect her own health and well being each day.

Not only do your children need a strong healthy mother. You need to be able to rely on your body to perform all the tasks demanded of you. More importantly, when you can’t perform all those tasks, you need to be able to rely on your psyche to say “OK, enough. I can’t do anything more right now. I need a break”

According to all my research, the first six weeks after giving birth are the most important to a mother’s recovery, but that the a full recovery can take up to 40 weeks…roughly the same length of time as the average pregnancy. If you’re a new mother who happens to be sitting down while she reads this, chances are that you are at least ten days post partum. If you’re less than that, I hope you’ve got a donut ring or at least a very soft pillow on your chair because I promise to be as thorough, as accurate and as entertaining as I can while you go through all the typical (and less typical) postpartum stuff.

Because, as I’ve always said, if you can’t be cool, you’d better be honest.

Post from: Babylune

Planned or unplanned, recovering from a Cesarian Section can be complicated. New research suggests that there is one more tool to speed recovery up. The challenge? Getting the new mother’s bowels moving again (motherhood is all about glamour).

According to study results reported in Maclean’s Magazine, chewing gum may help women get their innards back in shape faster:

• Early resumption of eating has been shown to stimulate bowel recovery after surgery, but has not been widely adopted. “Maybe old habits die hard,” says Dr. Bela Satija of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. “But also, some patients do not tolerate early feeding, and experience nausea and vomiting.”As an alternative, an innovative technique such as sham feeding has been described,” she says. “Sham feeding such as gum chewing mimics food intake … and achieves the goals of early feeding without actual intake.”Satija and her colleagues tested this approach in 32 caesarean-section patients, 15 of whom were randomly assigned to chew gum three times per day as soon as they recovered from anesthesia until the time they passed gas or had a bowel movement.

The researchers asked 15 women who had undergone cesarians to chew gum three times a day between the time the anesthetic had worn off and when they had their first postpartum farts (or poops). They recovered after an average of 28 hours. The 17 non-chewers in the study took 44 hours.

It’s a small study, but it can’t hurt to try something so simple to get things moving again. So, if you’re in labour or have a scheduled c-section planned, stick a few packs of gum in your purse and start chewing as soon as the drugs wear off!

Post from: Babylune

Post from: Babylune