Walking through the doors of your home with your new baby is like walking on the moon-exhilarating and terrifying! This is why Sarah is now making house calls. Our office receives so many calls from frantic parents requesting further instruction and reassurance that everything is on track and they are doing fine, that she is now providing in-home post-partum consultation. For those living outside the Bay Area, she is available by phone to walk and talk you through common new parent challenges: feeding, sleeping, crying, soothing, support, relationship, safety, gear…the list goes on and on. www.mcmoylermethod.com

*Reprinted with permission from www.giggle.com

This Sunday’s NY Times featured an article about a lactation consultant (LC) in Brooklyn who has made a great impact on successfully assisting new mothers through the many challenges and hurdles that often accompany breastfeeding newborns. I loved her reality based approach: Rule 1, enjoy the baby. Rule 2, feed the baby. One new mother was quoted as saying through a frenzy of tears, after the blissful first week of her daughter’s life ended and reality set in ” I want to do this all naturally…I know other people have challenges, but not me because I do yoga!” The LC responded with “She’s OK, she’s nursing, she’s going to grow, and she’s beautiful.” She wants the baby to get the breast milk and the mom to enjoy the experience of feeding her baby…Rule 1, enjoy the baby. Rule 2, feed the baby…which sometimes can include the F word: formula…don’t lose your minds over this. At the end of the day, they are all going to kindergarten!

Hi Sarah!
We just wanted to thank you again for your class… what we learned
was (and still is) very helpful! Hard to pinpoint all the “best
parts,” but a few things that we were very thankful to have some perspective on in advance:

1. The labor breathing techniques. Again, due to Cathy’s situation,
we were both somewhat expecting (perhaps me more than her) to have a C- section with no labor at all. When her OB allowed her to labor, we
were obviously glad we’d paid attention to that part of the class!
Cathy specifically said the “primal, guttural, breathing” techniques were exactly what she needed at the time.

2. The partner’s/father’s role in the whole process. I really felt like we did this together from start to finish. I expected to feel like I was helping her do it versus us doing it together. Certainly easy for me to say considering I was in zero pain (haha)… but surprisingly, Cathy does agree. Very cool experience for us both.

3. Breastfeeding. Cathy learned a lot that was very helpful…
including, of course, that every nurse will have a different opinion
and you just need to find what works. She’s had some challenges
since then and has consulted many other books and a couple of
appointments with a lactation consultant at Newborn Connections.

Many other parts were great, of course too… just wanted to name a
few. Again, many thanks for your help! This is truly an awesome
experience and we are loving every minute of it (well, maybe not ALL of the crying minutes but we’re doing our best to keep those to a minimum… and he’s still cute then too!).

Just heard a highly respected physician speaking out about the rise in childhood diseases that had essentially been eradicated until recent years- the reason that there is a 20% increase in measles: some parents are opting to NOT vaccinate their children; “600 deaths a day from measles.” This is only one example of the misguided decision to not vaccinate; thereby increasing their risk, along with the rest of the population, to developing life threatening diseases.

He finished with this irony: there are parents who will risk life and limb by driving their cars to purchase organic vegetables for their families- and will NOT protect them from the real dangers of contracting one of these life threatening diseases…

Dear Sarah,
My husband and I had what I consider to be a perfect childbirth experience… and are now the proud parents of what I consider to be a perfect baby girl! She was born on January 21 and is the picture of health and beauty!

My intention was to have a drug-free labor… but my birth “plan” was more of a wish list than anything in the end. I was in labor for 23 hours. I labored at home for the first 7 hours and made it drug-free for another 12 hours at the hospital. Long story short, I stopped dilating at 6 cm and spent a solid 5 hours at that stage before they started Pitocin and I begged for an epidural.

I had always heard bad things about Pitocin - basically that hospitals push it in order to maximize how many babies they can deliver in a day by speeding each delivery up as much as possible. Something you said in your class though was so true that it stuck with me and changed my perspective on the issue. You said that the doctors and nurses have one motive - keeping each delivery safe for baby and mom. So when
Pitocin came up, I felt perfectly confident that it was necessary.
And I had my beautiful baby 4 hours later. (And she began breast feeding immediately following her delivery when they placed her on my chest - it was an AMAZING thing to watch her find her own way to food!)

Thank you for your class. It made a stressful day easier to put my trust the medical professionals caring for me and my baby. Plus, my husband was an awesome partner to me during the best and worst times of labor and I honestly believe he would have been clueless without your class (shh).

has arrived! Please click onto the link to meet his parents Evelyn and Jamie, who talked with me 2 weeks ago as they wait in anticipation for his arrival. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_0_I-NoYMk

Baby Julian is now one week old, a beautiful 9 lb.3 oz baby boy who “looks just like me when I was a baby!” says proud daddy Jamie. Evelyn’s biggest concern was breastfeeding- well, I am happy to report that she is nursing like a champ! They are in that unique place of adjusting to life with their new sweet boy, finding their footing, coming up from the fog of bliss and challenge; may all new families transition so well into new parenthood…