This giveaway is now closed. Please stay tuned for the announcement of the winners. Thank you all for entering!
This is a joint giveaway cross-posted on Hobo Mama, Hobo Mama Reviews, and Natural Parents Network. You may enter at one site only. Please find the section marked "Win it!" for the mandatory main entry and optional bonus entries.
In honor of Mother's Day,
Sacred Rose is offering our readers
a box of the hand-blended, organic herbal tea Matri: Tea of the Mother to
FOUR winners!
I had the opportunity to
review four blends of Sacred Rose tea, and
Matri intrigued me as being one of the most herbally pertinent for my life right now.
Matri is called "Tea of the Mother" because it contains
herbs that have been used traditionally for centuries to bring women through their childbearing years and to
prepare their bodies for childbirth. As the website puts it:
"Matri was blended to breathe women in birth in the most high and loving way."
As I enter my ninth month of pregnancy, I appreciate any tea that can do that!
Natural Parents Network has a
strong volunteer base of mentors, authors, moderators, and editors, many of whom maintain their own writing as well.
I'm so pleased today to share with you some of the
best posts from their own parenting blogs. (If you're not yet familiar with them, this is a wonderful group of blogs to subscribe to.) Enjoy!
Random inanity for your Monday pleasure.
The other night, Mikko said he had to go get a drink of water. (This is a bedtime stalling tactic that is so universal it has become cliché. How did Mikko pick up on it?) We said, Sure, and let him roam out of the bedroom. We heard him call to us from the sink:
"Which one is cold, on the right or on the left?"
"The right," Sam called back, and we waited expectantly through the pause.
Little voice calling from the hallway: "Which one is the right?" Yeah, thought so.
My current view in the mirror.
My stretch marks have angry red dots at the top (which you can't see so well in this picture — I didn't do any retouching, but I put the photo through a filter that washed it out a bit), where the skin is stretching again — and further this time. I was wondering if I'd get new stretchmarks or expand the ones I've got, and now I've got half my answer. We'll see what transpires in the next few weeks. My one concern? That they will
zip all the way up to my armpits.
I've been having those
vivid pregnancy dreams. My mom still likes to recount her own. I wonder if they're more vivid than usual, or if we just wake up more than usual in the third trimester so get to remember them.
I had a dream that my baby was born unassisted at home but premature, brown, and flat as a pancake, weighing about a pound, with small dark eyes on the front of his squished face. I wasn't concerned. Because his mouth (it was a he, despite not having any genitalia) was too small to suck, I squirted breastmilk over his face so some would drip into his mouth and then debated taking him to a doctor or not. Yes, debated. And decided against it.
Later on, the sweetness of the breastmilk attracted flies, and I felt bad.
Oh, and then he was stolen from me and put out for adoption. That sucked. Then again, I hadn't really proved my mothering credentials, huh?
Speaking of waking up a lot in the third trimester, do you think it's trying to jar you into a life of catnaps? Because you always get that advice to
"sleep when the baby sleeps," but it's hard to follow if you're used to being up all day and then getting a straight eight or so hours at night.
I'm a total catnapper now.
Welcome to the Sunday Surf! Here are some of the
best links I've read this past week.
Taxes are filed. Is that why I'm lethargic? Or is it this parasite … er, fetus … that's draining all my energy?
Said parasite has forced my bellybutton inside out.
Here are a couple links, anyway!
- "Why I No Longer Have Birth Regret" from Mamas and Babies: Moving beyond blaming others and herself for her birth experiences -- a lovely story of 5 different types of births.
- "Not Really Breastfeeding" from The Practical Dilettante: On how the language we use as advocates should be inclusive instead of unintentionally critical of those who have different experiences.
- And speaking of breastfeeding older children, check out this lovely FAQ "What is it like to breastfeed an older child?" from Dulce de Leche: I love how straightforward this is and how it makes nursing older and multiple children sound just as normal as it in fact is.
Welcome to the April Carnival of Breastfeeding on the topic of "Extended Breastfeeding" hosted by Blacktating and The Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog. Read to the end for links to the other participants' posts.
When I started breastfeeding, I planned to go as long as my baby wanted to … but I sort of thought it would be shorter than it's turned out.
At six months,
I was staunch. How silly to stop breastfeeding just because my little one might technically be ready for solids (which he wasn't really, but that's another matter).
At a year, I was determined.
Why did I have to stop just because my infant was becoming a toddler or starting to speak? (Which, again, he wasn't yet, but he's caught up since…)
At a year and a half, I started
feeling squeamish about nursing in public — but continued since he still needed so many frequent nummy breaks.
At two years, I started to wonder. How long exactly would he keep going? But it didn't matter. He still wanted it, and he was still a baby to me.
At three years, I was undeterred and unsurprised.
It wasn't as if he had flipped a switch overnight, after all, just because he'd had a party and some cake. He still loved nummies, all day but, thankfully, increasingly less often during the night. How could I expect him to know three years old was beyond the pale of what most of his fellow citizens would consider too old to nurse?
And then I got pregnant. I had assumed, with our plans of wide spacing between our children, that I would have weaned long before I became pregnant again. And it was a long, hard decision to go ahead and try to conceive, knowing my pregnancy might affect my milk supply, my physical comfort, and therefore Mikko's ability to find comfort and nourishment at the breast.
And it has been hard — both harder and easier than I expected. I'm in my
third trimester now, and breastfeeding throughout this entire pregnancy has hurt a lot more than I was bargaining for. I lost my milk early on as well — and with it, that easy supply of calories, nutrients, and antibodies it was supplying my growing and picky boy.
I'm Lauren Wayne, writer and natural parent. I embrace attached parenting with an emphasis toward green living. 
