Keep Calm & Mom

As many of you know, I do social media for a living and it always amazes me how many people tell me they hate it. Not because they say they hate my career, but because I truly do love it. I love curating and creating photos for my personal feed. I’ve always been into photography and find it to be a more creative outlet for me than writing is. I feel good when a photo is well received, when I get “ likes ”, and when friends, family, and strangers comment how much they love the post. On top of that, I have a number of friends and family spread out all over the world – Nevada, Alabama, Canada, Australia – social media is the best outlet to easily share updates and photos to those that are so close, yet so far. So why do so many people hate it?  Back in October, one of my favorite podcasts touched upon the topic of our two selves - the experiential self and the narrative self. More specifically as it relates to social media. Your experiential self will happily scroll through Instagra

I have to be honest, since Ollie was born my own self care has found a place at the very bottom of my priority list. Even taking care of the animals sometimes comes before washing my face. And it’s really not because I don’t have the time, Ollie's naps are lengthening so my free time when I'm home with him is expanding. I simply just forget.  
I think as moms (and even just as women) we tend to put everyone else's needs before our own. That includes housework and our furry children, in addition to our babies, significant others, work, side hustles and so on. Being a new mom, back at work, trying to juggle a personal life, the mom life, the wife life and the career life I realize how important it is for me to take care of myself now more than ever. But how? 
R&R Yesterday, along with my four best gals, I indulged in the greatest form of self care - a spa day ! Thanks to my mom for watching baby, I was able to spend five carefree hours giggling with my girls, rel

It was 3 AM. Ollie wasn’t even two weeks old. I was still taking medicine for my c-section recovery. I was exhausted. He was ready to eat, again. I had started on the left side when he ate not even two hours prior, which meant he had to start on the right. I looked down at my throbbing aching nipple and I began to sob. The thought of the pain of his latch (or lack thereof) on my right side was unbearable. I said to Jared, "I can’t do it." As the words came out of my mouth an overwhelming amount of sadness and guilt washed over me and I cried even more. I knew breastfeeding was going to be hard, but I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. I didn’t want to stop nursing, I wasn't ready to give up, so in that moment I made the decision to exclusively feed my baby on my left side because for some reason, he latched well there and exclusively pump on the right to ensure I kept up a decent supply.  Side bar - I gave birth in a hospital that was very pro-breastfeedin

Let me repeat myself: you can do it all. You don’t have to, but you can. There are so many times I find myself “taking a break” while baby naps but my mind is focusing on everything I need to do rather than relaxing and I end up not really getting that “break” that I so desperately needed. If your baby is like mine, naps are unpredictable. He could sleep for 30 minutes or he could sleep for two hours, warranting me having to wake him up. How does one effectively plan what to get done in an unpredictable amount of time? This is how I manage: I start by throwing in a load of laundry - it always needs to be done, takes me less than five minutes and can wash while I’m doing other things. Then I take care of myself – whether it’s brushing my teeth, taking a shower, or just enjoying a hot cup of coffee. Next, I try to do something in the kitchen – unload or load the dishwasher, wipe down the counters, clean out the fridge – but just one of these – you don’t have to do it all, re

It’s not always going to work out this way but for us it did, and I’m so thankful. When I say all of the babies. I mean All. Of. The. Babies.   About a month before I found out I was pregnant, our good friends found out they were pregnant. Then a month after we found out we were pregnant, another set of our good friends found out they were pregnant. And when I say good friends I mean in our wedding good friends. Then shortly after that we found out two of my sisters in law were also pregnant and due within one week of each other. Completely and totally unplanned. Some of us had been trying for awhile, others weren’t trying at all and yet, the stars aligned and the five of us got to go through pregnancy together, then birth, then breastfeeding and the newborn phase.  Having a close group of gals that I could confide in helped tremendously, especially when those extremely embarrassing questions arose. I understand this situation is incredibly rare, but do your best to

Mom - a noun, a proper noun, an adjective, a verb. We all have one and for those of us lucky enough, we become one. You may have noticed a title change for my blog. As my life has shifted, so has my preference in topics. As a writer, I know, my best pieces of work are those that are written on what I know and what I’m passionate about. Now, I am certainly not an expert. I have no medical history behind anything I write so please take it for what it is. In fact, my only true qualification on writing about motherhood is that I’ve been a mom for exactly four months, one week and one day. Shortly after Ollie was born , I found myself constantly researching blogs for advice. What do I do if: (insert some first time mom nonsense here) ? Sometimes I found what I was looking for, but a good majority of the time I didn’t. I wanted the real life, nitty gritty, I’ve been in the same sweatpants for three days, I can’t remember the last time I washed my hair, going on three hours of sle