MamaViva

Khalil Gibran – The ProphetChildren
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.”

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Looking back one year I can’t believe I had a tiny new baby in my arms. Having just given birth I was filled with excitement and anticipation as to what mother hood would be like. little did  I know the intense emotions I would go through and the joy that being a Mum would bring.

In the last year I’ve experienced life in a whole new way, as my little boy has grown each day I’ve seen the world as in a different light as each object is a discovery, that is a mystery in his eyes. I never knew that salad tongs could be so entertaining, and a vacuum cleaner can use up a good half an hour, which in baby time is the equiviliant of about three hours.

I’ve experienced the tender loving care of a baby who just loves to snuggle with Mama while feeding and gaze up at me withthose deep blue eyes.

I’ve experienced the exhillarting joy of those first steps which soon turned into him charging through the house, tearing cupboards open, smashing teapots, cups, glasses and anything else he can get his hands on.

The intense emotions of the last year have taught me many things, which may seem ironic as before you become a mum you may invision yourself teaching your little one many things but never do you imagine how much they will teach you. As a  great writer once wrote how before you have children you think you are a nice person but once you are a parent you soon realise that you aren’t so nice after all. Having Joshua my son has taught me many things, the greatest being ‘to live in the moment’. I often have my own agenda and want to hurry on with my day nd get all my jobs done, but this is not the way things go with a baby, as he may just want to sit and play or spash in the bath for another half hour, or as I am rushing out the door he suddenly decides he wants a feed and now. This has taught me to go witht he flow and follow his cues rather than having my own rigid plans. After all he will never remember how clean the house was so I may as well postpone the cleaning and be engaged with him.

Another great lesson I have been taught is to have a sense of humour, this was emphasised a couple of days ago we were finishing our cleaning for second our big inter-state move  this year, having just had the carpets professionaly cleaned the cleaner had also left blue toilet cleaner on the floor, which some how Joshua managed to open (I thought those things were baby proof) and liberally spread over the carpet. We quickly did our best to mop it up, while we were doing that he then went into the kitchen slipped over banged his head and when I picked him up he then vomited on me. I was beside myself with worry thinking he had serverly hurt himself but two minutes later he was up and toddling around, then while I turned my back he proceeded to open my suitcase getting the Cacao powder I had put in it and tip it all over the carpet too, so we were left with a pile of powder with no way of cleaning it up as our vacuum had already gone. At this point my husband and I were both at breaking point and started to shout at each other he stormed off to th balcony with me following to hurl more abuse at him, as I went to shout at him my words all came out in the wrong order, resulting in us both laughing histerically and finally seeing the funny of the situation.

So thank u Joshua our great teacher and happy birthday

xxxxx

Over the last few weeks I have found myself becoming rather tired and stressed.

One of the reasons I put this down to is the fact that we are moving again.

Moving is never that easy, and especially when you have an 11 month old

and are moving interstate for the second time in 6 months. I had started to find

everything more difficult, I was feeling depressed, furstrated with Joshua, as I

felt like he was so clingy and needed so much attention.

I even felt like stopping breastfeeding.

So yesterday afternoon I lay down on the couch and fell asleep!!!

(This is pretty rare for me) I then proceeded to go to bed at around 9.30 and wake at 8.30

this morning.

After having slept so much I awoke with a completely different prespective.

I realised that I had been overtired and that with moving was taking my stress out

on Joshua, when in fact he was probably wondering what was going on, and why none of

his toys were round anymore. This made me realise how easy it is to become detached

from what is going on around you and how your baby may be feeling.

I also realised that this time is so precious where he comes to me and

wants me to hold him and be involved in everything I am doing, In a few years I

will be wanting these times again. So from now on I an going to enjoy this period

of dependancy and be reassured that nature will take it’s course and soon enough he

will be telling me to go away and mind my own business.

So my resolution is to enjoy the here and now!!!!!

As I am sure many Mums find they can feel overwhelmed with the amount of things they have to do.
But I have come to the realisation that this doesn’t have to be the case. This came to me when I
looked at my daily habits and routines.
I’ll give you an example, when I walk in the door I often just dump my keys on the side, and put
the post on the side. This creates mess and clutter in my home, so when I rethought this I realised
I can just put a box that I can place keys in and immediately sort out the mail that has arrived.
Now it doesn’t take a genius to work this out, but it means that my surfaces are clutter free, and
it helps me to feel positive about my home environment.

There are loads of other habits that I have been breaking in order to help me from getting a build
up of mess which results in me having a break down and feeling overwhelmed.
Here are some more examples:

• when I cook I clean up as I go.
• put a cloth and cleaning spray in the bathroom so I can give the sink a quick wipe everyday.
• getting everything ready for the morning before I go to bed

Taking on these simple routines helps me keep everything in order and leads to a happier less
stressful day. Yay!!!!

Every Morning I try to practice a little Yoga.
There are two main reasons for this, firstly I think it is a
great way to stay fit and healthy, and secondly it helps me to
have a clear mind that is calmer than my usual chaotic thoughts.
When doing yoga one of the hardest things for me is balancing poses,
which require me to stand on one leg. The reason for this is that I
was born with a club foot (Talapies) so one of my legs is a lot stronger than the other.

Therefore one side of my body I can remain in a one legged
balance for ages, whereas on the other side I wobble and sway a great deal more.

However since practising yoga I have found my balance has greatly improved due to being aware
of my body, and concious of how I stand.
This is also mirrored in other areas of my life, as I was pondering today
how easy it is to become overly focussed on one thing and before you know it you have
become out of balance,  burnt yourself out, and damaged your health.
But when we practice mindfulness, we start to create awareness of not only our physical selves, but also our
spritual and mental.
This is therefore an encouragement to me to never give up practicing those challenging balances, which may create a
little furstration when I fall out of them, but I know that they are doing me good in creating awareness of my weaknesses
and helping me to strengthen them.

I am writing this on a glorious sunny day here in South Australia. Being a lover of the sun, I have always been fairly slap dash about applying sun screen, and being blessed with fairly dark skin, I haven’t needed to worry about getting burnt. But having a young baby has forced me to re-think my attitude towards the sun and I have had to be aware of his skin.

Now the first thing most parents do is to reach for the sun screen, but when you see the list of chemicals on any your conventional child’s sunscreen, is it enough to make your chest go tight and make your skin itch, literally!!!!

Now the idea of putting these chemicals on a child’s skin seems to defeat the object of using sun screen as the chemicals will surely do more damage than getting a bit of sun. (however if your child’s skin is at risk of burning it is of vital importance to ensure that their skin is covered with light loose fittung clothing)

This seems to go by the radar of many parents who slather on the creams, drenching their child’s skin in toxic chemicals, and at the same time according to recent research often leaving their child deficient in vitamin D. Drs. Frank and Cedric Garland of the University of California, San Diego found the incidence of colon cancer was nearly three times higher in New York than in New Mexico, the Garland brothers hypothesized lack of sun exposure (resulting in a lack of vitamin D) played a role. They published their hypothesis, entitled Do sunlight and vitamin D reduce the likelihood of colon cancer? in 1980 in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

It is also important to note that vitamin D deficiency has also been linked to childhood obesity, with a recent study that was published in an issue of Journal of Adolescent Health.
People who are vitamin D deficient risk weakening their immune system, their protection against various forms of cancer, and heart disease. Now I am not suggesting to allow your child to bake or burn in the sun, but I do recommend allowing them to get a healthy daily amount so they do not become deficient, and not using sun creams unless they are made naturally. For more informatio I suggest going to vitamindcouncil.org where you can read about in depth research that has been done, and find out what level is of sun exposure is safe for you and your child.

This week I have had the challenge of getting serious about

cleaning as here in the southern hemisphere it is spring time. This
has included a bit of an internal spring clean with

me reassesing my goals and deciding to move inter-state again after

just moving state 3 months ago, but they say a change is as good as a holiday,

and spring is a great time for change and for new beginnings.

With this in mind I decided tomake some new chemical free cleaning products
which has been heaps of fun.
Here is my favourite one for a multi-purpose cleaning spray take

• 500ml of hot water

• 2 tblspoons of borax
• 2 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar
• a few drop of eucalyptus oil/ tea tree oil
• with a few drops of lemon essentil oil,

shake it all up and pop in a spray bottle.

It help to clean kitchen and bathroom surfaces and leaves a fresh aroma, which is perfect for spring time freshness.

I have recently been reading a book in which it interviews various women who are all highly succesful in their line of work or specific field.

The idea of the book is to inspire us ‘women’ to live our lives to the full and be inspired by these other women.

One of the highlights of this book for me is the idea of goal setting to help us achieve the things that we want to achieve.

Being a fairly new mum it is all to easy to let the days go by with out getting very much done, and feeling that there is so much to be done but not even knowing where to start.I have seen in my own life that I often talk about things that I want to do, but don’t do much in order to see these dreams fulfilled.

One of the women in this books talks about how setting goals for herself has helped her to achieve the dreams and desires of her heart.

The reason for setting goals and writing them down is that it gives you a clear focus, and it gives you a confidence boost when you actually achieve these goals.

Take for example in my own life I had said for years that I was going to learn to drive, but have been putting of. Finally having a baby and wanting to buy a house has given me the push to set this as a goal. So this week ( after setting the goal for myself) I took myself off and sat the theory test in order to start learning how to drive. I then had my first driving yesterday and can’t wait to continue on this figurative and literal journey of learning to drive.

So I am now starting to journal my goals week by week so I can tick of the things I have achieved and also set some long term goals so that I can continually be working towards them, this will help me to focus my time on the things that are of value to me, rather than dwindle my time away, but also be aware that once I have achieved the things for the day that I need to achieve I can then devote my full attention to my son, as my biggest goal is to have a happy, healthy, son who know his Mum loves him more than anything in the world.

Yay, for setting goals.

I once scorned upon juicers and could never understand why some people raved about them.

I just saw them as wasting heaps of veggies or fruit for a tiny amount of juice.

What I didn’t know was the benefits that this process gives to our bodies.

Benefits of Juicing

I previously hadn’t realized that when we juice veggies or fruits this process is similar to the digestion process when we eat vegetables or fruits. Therefore this makes the nutrients so easy for our bodies to get and use efficiently. This is so essential when the majority of people are lacking essential vitamins and minerals, and is such a great way to give your immune system and health a real boost.

Rules of Juicing

There are no real rules to juicing, but one thing I would say is that wherever possible use organic produce. The reason for this is that to obtain ultimate health you want to minimize any pesticides and chemicals in your body and the only way of doing this is to eat organically or if possible grow it yourself. If you can’t afford organic produce then at least try to buy produce that has minimum spraying.

The only other rule is to have fun and be creative, try any combination you like.

My favorite at the moment is

beetroot

carrot

celery

and

spinach.

Information on Juicing

The reason I became interested in Juicing was through learning about the Gerson institute and the Gerson therapy.

I have been reading the book titled “Healing the Gerson Way”.

This book outlines how to heal yourself from cancer and chronic disease, one of the main things being that our bodies need to be flooded with nutrition as well as detoxed. The best way according to the Gerson therapy is for the patients to have around 13 juices a day, as well as following other steps to get the fastest outcome of healing. The juices provide the body with the much needed nutrition to replenish toxic and damaged cells.

Therefore along with many others I have begun my journey of juicing!!!!

I have recently started baby led weaning,
after reading the book I decided to start giving Joshua
finger foods.
I wanted to use this approach as I felt it is more natural
for children/babies to explore foods themselves, rather than being force fed slushy mush, which all has the same flavor and doesn’t give them a true sense of different foods and their textures.

Because babies have an ability to know what foods they nutritionally require
and which they are allergic to, the baby led weaning approach makes sense to me.

As I have watched Joshua explore different foods I have noticed how his coordination has improved and his idea of how different textures behave, for example an avocado can be squashed a raw carrot can be bitten and not break.

I think this method allows us to trust our baby and their own instincts as to how much food they need, and what they choose to eat when you give them a variety of food.

The downside is the mess but this itself isn’t really a negative as at some point you have to allow your baby to feed himself,  if you put if off you just delay the mess, rather than let them make a mess at the beginning and then by the time other babies are feeding themselves your child will be able to do it confidently without making a mess.

Baby Led Weaning Concerns

Some parents are uneasy about BLW as they worry about their baby choking on small bits of food. I was worried about this also but have found that babies have a gag reflex which is close to the front of their mouths but as they get older this moves backwards, so if you start your baby feeding themselves at a young age by the time their gag reflex has moved further back they will have already worked out how to chew foods and swallow them without choking.

I must admit though that when I began this I was concerned about the amount of gagging Joshua seemed to be doing, but he is now 7 months and seems to be getting better at chewing foods before he moves them to the back of his mouth.

All in all this makes sense to me, as from the time they are born babies have the ability to regulate their appetite through breastfeeding and they know exactly how much they need, so why would this be any different with solids.

I highly recommend reading the book ‘Baby Led Weaning’ by Gill Rapley.