Pregnancy Affirmations

Often times, when I talk to pregnant women, I hear two different experiences. Some women love their pregnancy while some other despise every day of it. Being pregnant twice, I have been on both sides of the fence. My first pregnancy, I really didn't like the experience. I complained everyday of how miserable it was and how much I despised it. After learning about how my thought affects my experience, with my second pregnancy, I practice positive thinking to attempt to change my experience. And sure enough, I can say that I have enjoyed the second pregnancy. It is not because the second pregnancy is easier; the truth is I've never had so much pain and swelling in my life as I've had with my second pregnancy. My wonderful experience has come from me focusing on the good and repeating these affirmations on a daily basis:

1. I am a beautiful pregnant woman

2. I love carrying my baby while she/he grows peacefully

3. My body expands to make room for my baby and I love it

4. I am blessed to be able to get pregnant and stay pregnant

5. My life gets better and better as my pregnancy advances

Birth Affirmations

Here are some of the birth affirmations that I use to prepare my mind and attract positive energy for my birth:

1. I was meant to bring my baby to this world

2. My body knows how to birth my baby

3. I am strong and birthing is an easy task for me

4. I birth gently and peacefully

5. My baby comes to this world naturally and normally

Positive thoughts... positive birth

Have you ever wonder why some people seem to only have negative experiences or why when something bad happens to you, a ripple effect of bad things follow? When I was pregnant with my son, I decided to practice hypnobirthing (by Marie F. Mongan) as a way to deal with the pain. After hearing so many horror stories and seeing women agonize during labor and birth, I wanted to figure out a way to cope. Because I wanted to be "Knocked out" without using drugs, I first thought that hypnobirthing would be the way to go. I always thought hypnobirthing would be a method that allows women to go into oblivion, where your awareness would step aside and you would not be present to deal with the birth process. To my surprise, hypnobirthing turned out to be a way to change my thinking and attract a positive outcome through the practice of relaxation and positive thinking. I remember our instructor emphasising on not letting other birth stories or other people's experience affect our ways of thinking about our own births. This is not something easily done, especially if you are influenced by people you trust and love. And if you believe that what they tell you is good for you. For me, the concept of "Every birth is different" helped me through this journey. I am not the kind to dismiss someone's experience because I believe that when someone shares something personal with you, they are looking for acceptance and validation. To dismiss another's woman's birth is to crush one of the most important memory she has gone through. But with that said, it's important to realize that even if we do listen to or validate other's stories, that their experience will NOT be ours. We do not have to personalize other's experiences. When thinking about birth and labor, it is important to remain positive. The law of attraction teaches us that what we think is what comes to us. If you think birth is horrible and full of negative outcomes (tearing, episiotomy, pain... etc), then most likely you will attract those things to you. However, if you start changing your way of thinking, good outcomes will come to you. With the practice of hypnobirthing, I had a wonderful water birth experience just as I had thought about. The birth of my son did become an out of body experience that I enjoyed and would love to experience again and again.

Recently a stay home mom and don't know what to do...

When I first gave birth to my son, I tried to stay at home mom thing and could not stand to sit still and just watch my baby. Having been in the workforce almost all my life, this new stay at home experience was very strange and hard. So after the first three months, I hired a nanny and went back to work. I thought going back to work would be easy, but being away from my son, was even harder than I thought.

I had to find a solution that allowed me to spend the needed time with my son and work at the same time.

If you've looked for work-from-home opportunities like I had, you know that they are not easy to find, and sometimes they are not legit.

It took me a while to decide to start my own small business organization - http://thebamentor.com - a training organization that provides online training for business analysts. Once I got started, the journey wasn't as easy as I thought. I had to spend less time with my baby in order to get the company going. It was only after a good 6 months that I was able to stay home with Nathan for most part of the day.

With the new pregnancy and because the company is more stable, it has become possible to slow down and stay at home with my son.

The only issues is that now that I am here staying at home with him, I don't know what to do with him. My son is 2 and half years old. And because he spend 4 to 5 hours away from me during the day, it was easy for me to find activities to do when he was around. Most of those activities are geared toward his learning. So since he was 1, he knew his alphabet, he can count to 10, and how he is learning to read. We also do other fun stuff like going to the park, feed the ducks, library story times... etc.

It just seems that all of these activities are getting really old (at least from my perspective). We can't keep going to the park everyday, nor feeding the ducks all the time. I want to spice things up a bit with other activities during the day time. But what can I do in atlanta, ga that doesn't cost too much (preferably for free) with a two year old?

I am hoping to start a series of blog that will highlight my journey of things I find to do in atlanta, ga for my son and I (hopefully for free) while waiting for my daughter to arrive.

Birth plan contingencies

When I first became pregnant, there was nothing in this world more important to me than being the first person to have an impact on my child's life. And the truth is that as my child was growing inside of me, I knew that this was my chance to impact him in ways that no one could. A little evening prayer while rubbing my belly, a story time while rocking on a chair or sometimes a lullaby was my way of connecting with my unborn baby. As we approached the time of his entrance into the world, the urge to being the first person to impact his arrival overtook me. I call it my first act as a mother. I wanted my first act as a mother to be the most positive one given the circumstance of his birth.

I read everything about birthing that I could find and hired a doula to help with the birthing process. I learned that I had a choice between having a "no medical intervention", "less medical intervention" and "highest level of medical intervention". After reading about all those choices, I choose that my first act as a mother would be to provide the most natural possible venue for my child to enter this world. Which meant the "no medical intervention".

As a woman, this first act as a mother is a very natural response to wanting the best for your child. It is absolutely our nature's call to be protective of our little ones. Most of the time, we look at medical intervention as a harmful birth method. And anything that can cause harm to our babies, we want to avoid.

Fortunately, I was able to deliver my child without any medical intervention. However, while going through developing my birth plan, because of my background as a business analyst, I knew that in order for any plan to be achieved successfully, I had to think about the "what if" scenarios: What if my labor didn't progress? What if my baby got couldn't go through my pelvics? What if I developped preeclamsia?.... what if things didn't go as planned? What then?

I've lived enough life to know that life doesn't always throw at us the best possible scenario. As murphy's law says: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". Not that I am a pessimist nor even a realist. But knowing that there are always chances that things wouldn't go my way, I had to prepare myself for when things didn't go as planned.

I see and talk to so many mothers who see themselves as failures because they weren't able to protect their child from the medical procedures. Or I see women who are ashamed to share their birth stories because they weren't the birth they had planned for. The dissapointement and discouragement of these mothers breaks my heart.

As a doula, I have learned and am learning to always talk to mothers to be about birth plan contengencies. A birth plan contengency is one that provides a success scenario, one where everything goes as she dreams and a few other scenarios that would allow her to think through any major road block that may be thrown her way. The idea is to ensure that regardless of what happens, that the mother does get her dream or part of her dream. Mothers who have been put in a not so desirable circumstance, must understand that they are still protecting their child and providing them with the best entrance into this world.

If a mother was to have some complication with her birth and she or the baby was in any danger, then any medical intervention that could have saved her life or that of her baby is the best path to take given the circumstance.

It's very important to develop those birth plan contengencies in order to lessen the disappointement and discouragement that any mother may have if her birth plan doesn't follow the success scenario