In moon represents woman at her fullest: pregnant. After that, though, comes the blue moon, the postpartum period and the first phase of new motherhood. With this comes the new role of mother (or multiple times a mother) recovery, adjustment and an entirely new life. Babylune started out as a blog about this first phase of new motherhood, as an information resource for the recovery from childbirth.

And, it has become a lot more. While I still seek to fulfill my mission, this blog is just as much about the woman who writes it as it is about reproductive health. After all, motherhood is about more than just giving birth or sharing your life with children.

It’s about you. It’s about who you are, what you choose to do with your life and what you need. I think, those are all important things to write about and discuss. What about you?

moon image souce

Post from: Babylune

The Babylune Formula:

B is for baby (see above).

A is all about abdominal amnesia.

B is for blueberries.

Y is for yam, the fertility fruit.

Lucky me (see above).

U is for what’s under there.

Normal, as in, there’s no such thing.

Embracing every challenge (see above).

Edit: This post has been annotated here.

Voting is now located here.

Quote:

IT’S TIME FOR PROJECT BLOG! In case you’ve not been staying up to date with your Reality on Bravo news, Project Blog is the blogger’s answer to Project Runway. We’ve got the best of the best in bloggers ready to go head to head in weekly competitions for the grand prize:

• An autographed picture of Jackie Warner, courtesy of Sky Sport and Spa (Jackie Warner’s gym from Work Out)
• A pair of shoes from the newest line from Jonathan Kayne (one of my favorite Project Runway Alums)
• A Soffe college hoodie, courtesy ofBCS Frenzy
• Gold-plated earrings from Aurora at Between the Sheets
• A pet portrait, courtesy of Intricate Art
• A set of bud vases from Top Design’s Jonathan Adler

And as a reader here are Reality on Bravo, YOU CAN WIN TOO! Every week, Reality on Bravo is teaming up with some awesome sponsors to offer prizes for lucky readers. This week is the first in a two-part series, so anyone who leaves a comment on this post or on the voting post will be automatically entered to win the super-awesome prize next week.

As for the competition, you have a say in that too! Every week after Project Runway, I’ll announce the weekly challenge and our 10 competitors will scurry away to write some amazing posts. Read them, and on Friday, vote for your favorites. Your votes, along with the opinions of our amazing judges, Bethany (the winner of the RoB “Create Your Own Reality Show” contest) and April (an extraordinary professional writer and blogger), determine who stays and who “goes home”

And now, here’s what you really want to know – THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE:

On Project Runway, the contestants had to design menswear and surprise, surprise, most of them had no clue what they were doing. It came down to one thing – making it work with styling. In order to survive the week, the designers had to style their models to make up for what they were lacking. Some used safety pins because they didn’t have time to hem. Some used fabric in the place of shirts they didn’t have time to make. Some relied on hair and accessories.

Your competition is simple – show us your style! This week, you can write a post on anything you want – absolutely anything. Just write us a post for your blog. The catch? You can only have 50 words. Exactly 50 words, actually (no more, no less). We want to see how you “style” your post to make the most of what you do have, even if you don’t have a lot.

The blogtestants:

1. Winnie, Watching the View: “The State of the View Address”
2. Sally, Style Fix: “Deck My Halls with Lights, and Ornaments, and Shiny New Dresses”
3. Kate, Babylune: “Fifty Words on Babylune for Project Blog”
4. Jodie, Gossip on Sports: “The Supermodel Effect”
5. Mark, Get Incensed: “Project Blog #3: Conveying the Get Incensed Style In 50 Words — Like Speed Chess, Only Harder .. And No, The Headline Doesn’t Count Because Then It Would Be Practically Impossible”
6. Kara, Colorado Review: “Stuck at Denver International Airport?”
7. Cynthia, TV of the Absurd: “And Now a Song.”

Post from: Babylune

Christina at Solomother has tagged me in the Ten Things That Happened to Me meme. Babylune is about recovering from child birth and I think I should stay on topic at least sometimes, so here are ten things that happened to me when I was trying to get pregnant, pregnant, giving birth or recovering from the experience.

1. My midwife canceled my home birth.

When I was 37 weeks pregnant with my oldest, I had to stop working. Pregnant women are supposed to stop working 6 weeks before their due dates in Germany for insurance purposes, but I was, as I am now, a freelancer with no rights and no maternity income so I continued to work until I couldn’t hide the fact that I was definitely due any moment. The moment I stopped working, problems started. I was in a foreign country without friends or family (except a husband) and easily overcome with boredom and loneliness. I wanted to have my baby with me. Since I was officially full term and I knew the baby was at least 8 lbs, I decided to induce labor myself with mineral oil. It didn’t work and, when I told my midwife, she was really angry because I hadn’t consulted her. At the time, I hadn’t seen the need. I come from the feminist school of thought, my body, my decision. My midwife, on the other hand, was worried that I wouldn’t listen to her if our planned home birth needed to be moved to a hospital and refused to attend.

” You’re so militant about how birth should be,” she said.

At the time, I was not yet a mother. I didn’t understand that becoming a mother involved giving up control and letting the child take its place as the center of my universe. My psychological preparation for motherhood was far behind my physical preparation. I think that’s why my son was born 8 days overdue and weighed 4500 grams, just a touch under 10 pounds. That said, it was a fantastic natural birth attended by a midwife with my husband and mother actively assisting. We all went home 4 hours later.

2. I had a successful mineral oil induction.

When my daughter was born, I was already a mother. No one saw any reason for my pregnancy to continue any longer than necessary or for me to risk delivering a child even larger than my first. The same midwife who assisted during my first birth gave me the instructions for induction and stayed at our house the night before our second child was born. The birth was fast and very, very intense, but our girl was calm and happy to be out of me. It still took some time for my pregnancy induced stomach acid to calm down.

3. I prepared for a c-section that never happened.

For most of my pregnancy I had a low-lying placenta. It was covering the cervix and blocking the exit route. After 24 weeks, most low-lying placentas aren’t dragged upward and out of the way of the cervix as the womb stretches and grows. This is the point in pregnancy when placenta praevia is usually diagnosed and a c-section is scheduled for the 38th week of pregnancy. Long before the 24th week, I was put on a low-activity regime. I couldn’t stand or walk for more than 15 minutes at a time. I continued to teach, but I had to actually sit at my desk which made my lessons less interesting for everyone. My 3 year-old was wild with boredom. I lost all my muscle tone and even my digestive system sagged.

And then, at about 34 weeks, the growing baby had a growth spurt, my womb expanded rapidly and the placenta was dragged with it up and out of the way. Statistically, it isn’t supposed to happen, but it did and I didn’t need to have a c-section after all. Still, I gathered all the information I could about how to recover from one.

4. My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage.

This is my pregnancy book of choice. I like it so much, I’ve used it during each pregnancy:

Still, the book failed me once. My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage at about 7 weeks. The book does deal with miscarriage, but I was desperate for more answers than it could give me before it went on to explain the development of healthy pregnancies while mine, then, had ended.

When I did have a healthy pregnancy, it was a helpful resource, but between its pages I kept (and still keep) a print from my first pregnancy. A little black& white memento of a heart beat I once saw on a screen, I little flash of hope I absorbed completely. I would like to think it’s the hope that stays with me when I think of that image, but honestly, it is a sense of fragility that remains.

Recently, I was trying to think of ways to comfort a friend who recently lost her first pregnancy. It is very common and I constructed my own beliefs to get through my own sense of loss. What I believe, with no evidence that this is true, is that becoming a mother is a long process and, maybe, sometimes, your body needs a warm up to prepare itself for the trials of pregnancy. Maybe, some of our minds and bodies need a taste of exhaustion, morning sickness, vulnerability and the education of a miscarriage to adapt to it before we can go the distance.

5. My third pregnancy also ended in miscarriage.

I had a 15 month-old child who was still breastfeeding, my work life was in a state of flux, my marriage was in the middle of an unhappy time, the pregnancy was unplanned and three of us were already squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment with a year left on its lease. For a week, I worried about how we would manage and, to be honest, I was ashamed that I had let this happen to our family. I told one friend and our midwife about the pregnancy. And then, I started bleeding. I knew what was happening and asked the little flash of hope to come back later, when things were settled. I believe that is what happened to me (see point 2 for fourth pregnancy reference).

6. I lost my libido and got my groove back.

And, I am sure I have said enough about that topic.

7. Due to poor parenting decisions, I haven’t slept through the night in more than five years.

8. I became a hypocrite.

Instead of doing what would have been best for my recovery from childbirth, I blogged.

9. I’ve always been a big reader, but motherhood made reading a necessity. I need at least a chapter a night before bed to disassociate from the events of the day and relax. This wasn’t true for the first three months after each of the kids were born, but it is now.

10. I am not the most important person in my own life.

I believe in making time to take care of myself to take care of my health, my character, and my finances, but the children always, always, always come first.

As usual, I won’t tag anyone, but I will read and post links to anyone who does the “ten things that happened to me” meme as a result of reading mine.

Post from: Babylune

Babylune’s mandate demands honesty and this childbirth recovery issue is highly-personal, but in the effort to give other parents hope, I can’t hide it in the comments section of the Lost Libido conversation.

Here is a revelation I am making a month after the fact. I am writing it while the experience is fresh but setting it to publish during a designated vacation day so that I don’t have to deal with comments until I am ready. A few days before my daughter turned 18 months, my libido came back. It was a bit of a surprise, a bit like being on the back of a runaway horse (OK, not exactly like that, I can’t resist the occasional romance novel reference).

I would like to tell you that one day, I just woke up, looked at my handsome husband and wanted him unlike I ever have before, but in retrospect I realize that it wasn’t so easy.

Here are the things that happened before my libido returned.

1. I still haven’t weaned our girl completely, but she is only nursing two or three times a day. A body that is dehydrated from nursing and sleep exhaustion is not wired for sexual pleasure.

It’s only been recently that there’s been enough energy juice (sorry, not the scientific term) for my body to make the lubricant that is the mark of female sexual excitement. No stimulant in the world can make sex more attractive than sleep when a woman is completely drained and depleted.

2. I lost a little weight. Not a lot, but about 4kg (8.8 lbs) in about 6 weeks. I don’t think I look any different, but I do feel a lot better about myself. I am inside my body again, not just running from task to task with the fear that I won’t have enough energy to keep going.

3. I had a little career-boost. I am not the business woman I once was, but having a taste of success in my writing made me feel like I wasn’t going to be trapped in mommy-track jobs and financial stress forever.

4. I stopped feeling angry. There were a lot of issues surrounding the birth of our second child that didn’t exist when our first child was born. After the first birth, we went through transformations separately and together. I had to become a mother, he had to become a father. When our second was born, there were no transformations to make, there was just twice as much work. We didn’t naturally work it out. I was involved and he was withdrawn, or that’s how I saw it and for a long time that perspective hurt.

Now, I am not saying my perspective was wrong. There were, I think, other factors influencing me. Physiologically, I think women do withdraw from their partners when the pain of childbirth is still raw. I think there may be a natural urge to withdraw to focus on the new baby, to nurture it and protect it and bond. The same withdrawing makes it possible for fathers to bond with their older children as the mother makes a bit of distance between herself and the older children as well. It’s not easy to negotiate. You have to want to come back.

5. I started giving more non-sexual affection to my husband.

When you’re a mother, hugs are never in short supply. When you feel angry, abandoned or used by your partner after childbirth, it is easy to just hug your children than to go to your partner for non-erotic affection. And yet, holding hands without swinging a toddler between you, or navigating a stroller, displays a connection between adults. Hand holding and other non-sexual touches between partners are reminders of promises made. I returned to them because I needed to remind myself and they have been returned a thousand-fold.

It hasn’t been all me. My husband has changed too.

After our first child was born, I worked mostly in the evenings once my husband returned to take over childcare duties. Once our second was born, I went back to work during the day. My reasoning was that if both children were in day care, then could all be together in the evening. If I’d stayed home with the baby while the older boy was in kindergarten and then went to work, I would never get to see the boy. The problem was that my husband never got the opportunity to parent both children without me there. I’ve since started working one evening a week again to give him some alone time with the kids. He knows what it is like.

My husband started planning more family time away. We’ve made three weekend trips in the past two months. We are budget travelers, we spend a lot of time outdoors, we do a lot of packing of picnics and we take a lot of walks through the countryside, but being away from the pressures of housework that is never finished and the work that is never done, gives all of us room to breathe.

My husband does the laundry. All of it. True, I fold it and put it away, but he puts it into the washing machine and hangs it to dry. We never discuss the laundry. For my perspective, the pile of dirty clothes just disappears and the same clothes reappear on the couch waiting to be folded. Sometimes, we even spontaneously fold clothes together in the evenings without discussion.

Laundry is one huge pressure I do not have to worry about because he takes care of it. It may be the best aphrodisiac on the planet.

So, that is my analysis of how I got my groove back.

That said, just because we want to, doesn’t mean we get to. The kids must know something is up because now they never go to bed, they insist on more attention while falling asleep and cling to us after they’ve drifted off. It’s a bit like being 17 again. Except, instead of being worried that our parents will catch us, we have worry that the kids will wander in.

Still, it’s a better problem to have than just feeling nothing in the libido department.

Post from: Babylune

5. The fifth most-popular post was the Recovering from a C-Section Omnibus. This post is almost a year old and contains links to all the previous posts about c-section recovery.

4. In the fourth spot is the C-Section Recovery post that explains how recovering from a c-section is more difficult than recovering from a vaginal birth.

3. The celebrity-studded What Adoption Usually Looks Like was in third place.

2. Dropping one place was the Lost Libido: Normal Sex After Childbirth post.

1. Coming out of nowhere to take the top spot for June is the tale of my own postpartum watershed rash.

Post from: Babylune

Post from: Babylune

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

The first six weeks after my daughter was born are full of memories that have nothing to do with her.

I was once afraid to get on the scale.

I was once completely unconcerned with my appearance.

I used to cry all the time.

I once had no time to myself.

Luckily. Those days are over. Well, except for the first one, but I’m working on it.

Post from: Babylune

5. Every new mother (or about to pop mother) needs the long list of discomforts as an easy reference to what happens to your body after giving birth.
4. The Eighth Heathy & Fit Family Carnival helped everyone’s year start out healthier.

3. Babylune’s Birthday Celebration Post, made the month a happy one.

2. Recovering from a C-Section does make for some special care.

1. Sex + Mother is still the most popular search term I’ve got listed. The post about losing your libido is #1.

Post from: Babylune

• Scientists divided 98 women into two groups. Every day, beginning at 20 weeks of pregnancy and continuing until the women gave birth, one group took a daily dose of 4 grams of fish oil, while the other took 4 grams of olive oil. Neither the mothers nor the researchers knew which supplement the women had received until the study ended.
• The researchers examined 72 children born to women who completed the study when the children were 2½ years old. In tests of locomotor ability, speech and hearing, vocabulary and practical reasoning, the children whose mothers were given fish oil during pregnancy scored slightly higher, but the differences were not statistically significant. But after controlling for maternal age, birth weight, breast- feeding and other factors, the children of the women who took fish oil were significantly better at hand-eye coordination than those of the women who took the olive oil supplement.

It isn’t only pregnant woment who should be taking fish oil supplements, says an article on Breastfeed.com. Fish and fish oil supplements contain docosahexaenoic acid, which is beneficial for infant brain development when passed to the child through breast milk.
“There is a lot of good evidence that DHA improves brain development in infants,” Luke R. Bucci, vice president of research at Weider Nutrition International told the web site. “Infants get DHA only from mother’s milk. When the mother eats a daily serving of fish with colored flesh, such as salmon, tuna, sardines or herring, to get enough DHA, or when she takes fish oil supplements, the benefits available to baby are optimized.”

The benefits of fish oils taken immediately after pregnancy and during breastfeeding helps to prevent and to treat postpartum depression. One summary of various studies published at ABC News put it best:

• Scientists first became interested when they noticed that countries with the highest fish consumption had the lowest rates of depression. They also observed that mothers in England who ate very little fish during pregnancy doubled their risk of developing postpartum depression compared to women who ate fish regularly. So scientists began a series of studies to see why.

A daily supplement of fish oil, rather than a daily serving of fish, is generally recommended due to concerns about mercury stored in fish such as tuna, shark and makerel.

For women who have just given birth, supplements are certainly not complete protection against the dangers of sleeplessness, stress and poor nutrition, but they can be a mild insurance against those problems becoming more serious once the newborn period is over.

Post from: Babylune