I put myself into hypnosis to deal with the pain of breastfeeding

Wow, breastfeeding. It’s one of those things I always knew I wanted to do, but until I experienced it myself, I had absolutely NO IDEA how challenging it could be. I thought, “We’re all built for this, so it will just automatically happen and it will be easy.” Unfortunately, that was not the case for me.

Breastfeeding did happen, but it certainly wasn’t easy. For the first two weeks, my milk didn’t come in so I pumped like crazy and gave my daughter syringes filled with milk donated to us by a neighbor. If you’ve ever had to use the syringe method to supplement your breastfeeding then you know that you need about six hands to be able to accomplish it, especially when both mother and baby are new at breastfeeding. But we got through that hurdle and my daughter started gaining weight. Hooray! read more

Learning is NOT Linear: The Ebb and Flow of Learning & Growing, Retreating & Regressing

When I first began studying child development I thought things happened in a pretty linear fashion. First you learn to crawl, then you walk, after that you learn to talk and so on. And if you study information about ages and stages, you can come to the same misinformed conclusion.

But after 20 years of experience with young people, I can tell you for certain, learning is not linear. Children might learn and grow in one area and retreat and regress in another and they can do it all at the very same time. When we forget about the non-linear life experience of learning and growing, we set ourselves up for disappointment and we have unrealistic expectations of our children. read more