Far from the best times of my life, my mid-to-late twenties were an extended pity party. Professionally, emotionally, and physically, I was stuck in a place I didn’t want to be.

Hate is too light a word to describe how I felt there. It’s a perfectly fine place for some people to live, but for me, I was dying.

I felt bad for feeling so bad when I knew there were people in much worse situations around the world. So I heaped guilt on top of my sadness because I was safe, fed, and yet still miserable.

Many days of the 13 years I was there, I felt like life was a test I was failing, until I made some key changes that helped me survive.

As a direct result of all these, my life improved. I met new people and strengthened existing friendships. It was rough going, but eventually I found a much needed village that made a huge difference for the remainder of my time there.

We’ve been in our new city for over a year now, and every day I’m so grateful. I worried at times that we’d finally move, and I’d still be unhappy because the problem was me, not the place. People will tell you to bloom where you’re planted, but you can’t put a full sun plant in the shade expecting it to thrive.

There’s nothing wrong with not being happy where you are.

It’s not a shortcoming or a personal failure. What is a problem is to allow it to destroy you. Move where you can thrive when you can, and until that point, try some of what worked for me to get by.

Запись 10 Survival Tips For Mommies Who Hate Where They Live впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

Do you ever feel like life just keeps ‘happening’ to you? Like each day you’re just waking up to find out what it’s going to be today. Of course, sometimes things go your way. But, for the most part you’re just floating through the days and waiting for a miracle to snap you up from the craziness that just happens to be your ‘normal’. I’ve felt that way and it is not a happy place! I kept trying different things and then I came across Hal Elrod and his “Miracle Morning Routine”. I started carving out an hour each day to get away from everyone and everything and soon I began to feel like my joy for living had been resurrected and I could be myself again.

Now, when I say ‘morning routine’, I’m not talking about things like making the bed, eating breakfast or getting dressed. I’m referring to the rituals you practice to nurture your body, mind and spirit before taking on the world each day. If you don’t already have one, a morning routine is an excellent practice for regaining your sanity, directing your life and savouring some ‘me’ time. The big deal about designing your morning is that it sets the tone for your day. If you can develop the right mindset, plan out your day and give your muscles a blast of energy, then you’re much more likely to have a great day!

Hal’s Miracle Morning is a customisable routine built on 6 habits (Silence, Affirmations, Visualisations, Exercise, Reading and Scribing) that can be completed in 1 hour, 30 minutes or 6 minutes – your time, you choose. He selected these 6 habits after studying the routines and habits of highly successful people and found these 6 to be universal. The cool thing is that you can choose to apply the practice your own way. For example, I usually do it this way:

1. 5 Minutes of Meditation
You could sit in silence or go into prayer as well.

2. 5 Minutes of Affirmations
Great time for scripture recitation or reviewing your personal commitments.

3. 5 Minutes of Visualisations
If you have a dreambook or vision board, you can review them.

4. 20 Minutes of Journaling
I keep a gratitude journal then go through my schedule and plan out my day.

5. 20 Minutes of Reading
Personal development or educational content, but motivational audios are great as well.

6. 20 Minutes of Exercise
Stretching/Walking/Yoga – Whatever works for you.

The key to making a morning routine work is preparing the night before. This means going to bed an hour earlier if you plan to get up an hour before the rest of the family. Simple things like setting out your work clothes, packing your bags and even setting up the kids’ school stuff will make a big difference to keeping things low-stress in the morning. But, more than anything else, you need to recruit the support of other family members. Let your partner know that you need some time to be left undisturbed and find a space where no one will distract you. But, even if you can’t get alone-time before the house wakes up, you can still make it work for you. Just schedule it after the rush, but at least before 8 am.

Within the first 2 weeks of building my own morning routine, I could see the benefits. I was better able to focus on my priorities, get more clarity on my core values and personal goals and be more purpose-driven as I went about my day. Just being able to get my mind right at the start of the day, made me accomplish more of the important things and when you’re more productive and feel less overwhelmed, your confidence gets a natural and well-deserved boost. For so many mothers, just being able to sit in solitude for even 15 minutes will be life-transforming by itself. So, if you want to put yourself in the driver’s seat of your life, you might just need to start a Mommy Morning Routine. All you have to do is prepare tonight and commit to starting your routine in the morning. Try different activities within the 6 habits and find the routine that helps you disconnect so that your life can feel sane, successful and satisfying.

Запись 6 Things Mommies Can Do Each Morning to Set a Productive Tone for the Day впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

After being ravaged by postpartum depression for most of 2015, my 2016 goal was to retain sanity — by any means necessary. Things had fallen apart soon after I gave birth to my daughter, with the pressures of work and new motherhood driving me to depression and sleep deprivation. To overcome this I was willing to manage a tighter schedule, hire more help, take more time off. But the hardest part of my recovery has been becoming an advocate for my own wants and my needs.

Women are conditioned to shoulder alot and think nothing of it. There are dozens of colloquialisms for women perceived as needy, complaining and dependent; ‘basic’, ‘bitch’, ‘shrew’, ‘nag’. And so we become accustomed to doing too much and saying too little. This Crunk Feminist Collective article entitled How to Not Die: Some Survival Tips for Black Women Who Are Asked to Do Too Much, sums it up perfectly;

“I believe the stress of weighty expectations and doing too much takes its toll on us.  It doesn’t happen all at once.  It happens over weeks and months and years of pushing our own needs and desires down until we can’t feel them anymore.  It happens, subtly, until it makes sense to do too much because that is just the way things are, the way things have always been.  That, too, is a problem.  It is a problem when caretaking (taking care) becomes something we do for other people and not ourselves.  It is up to us to survive and not just survive but thrive in our lives.  To not put work above living.  To not make ourselves our last resort.  To not wait until we are tired to rest.  To not wait until we are sick to make healthy choices.  To not wait until we have pleased everyone else to think about our own needs.  To not postpone our own happy.  To not just tolerate foolishness…

I worry that our foremothers were worked to death.  I worry that they didn’t see death coming because they were too busy taking care of other things.  I worry that they had too much to do and ran out of time.  I worry that they didn’t get to see themselves as celebrated and loved and worthy of celebration and love.  I worry that they worked too much, too hard, and for too little pay.  I worry that people saw them as strongblackwomen and forgot to see them as human.  I worry that our jobs, our families, our friends, and sometimes our supporters expect too much and we expect too little.”

Speaking up on my own behalf — day in and day out to my husband, family and friends — brought on a lot of anxiety. I soon became acutely aware of just how much I silence myself to make others comfortable. Squeezing my eyes tight and gritting my teeth I forced myself to vocalize my needs for rest, for quiet, for space and time.

‘Will everyone hate me? Will they get tired of me? Will they not want to be my friend?‘ These thoughts swirled in my head as I posted yet another Facebook status about how difficult my day had been, or told my parents, yet again, that I needed them to make the trip out to Chicago to help me with the kids.

And yes, I did lose some friends. Some thought I had become too big for my britches. Who was I, they wondered, to selfishly re-order my priorities around the provision of my physical and emotional needs? I was a wife and mother after all, and that was not wifely and motherly behavior. Others were uncomfortable with how candid I’d become about the ups and downs of my life, preferring my upbeat statuses about how well my various ventures were going or how beautiful my young family was.

But the people who mattered most stayed by my side. And I was surprised to find that my honest words unlocked a world of love and support I didn’t know existed.

My mother rallied around me, getting my father in line with the idea that bi-monthly trips to Chicago were a must, at least while their grandchildren were still very young. My husband acknowledged his need to shoulder domestic responsibility in a more meaningful way and approach it with the same fervor he would a 9 to 5. And my friends became meaningful sounding boards and partners in my self-care.

Perhaps my anxiety is rooted in fear that the real me — the sometimes annoying and hot-tempered and exhausting me — is impossible to love. So I stuffed it away, put on a veneer and tried to shoulder everything myself. But 2016 has been my year of understanding that, imperfect as I am, I deserve devoted love and a village to carry me. After all, part of sharing the load is being honest about how burdensome it really is.

Запись The Hardest Part of Recovering from Postpartum Depression Was Learning to Speak Up for My Own Needs впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

My children’s health, education, and well being mean too much to me to pass up this learning opportunity.

Mealtime is the best time to learn how not to be a jerk.

Manners matter, and mealtimes are a great time to work on them. I’m talking beyond please pass the salt. Whoever helped to make our meal gets a thank you from everyone eating. While I enjoy being told, “Thank you Mommy for making this beautiful dinner, ” I like even more to be able to see my son’s pride when I thank him for chopping vegetables for our dinner. Dinner makes our team stronger.

We eat the same meal.

Since he’s a child, he can only eat what I prepare. Though his favorite food is probably bread with butter, he’ll eat just about anything that’s served to him because he knows that’s the only option.

Some nights he eats dinner willingly, and others he’s slow because he’s not into it. Yes, it can be frustrating and exhausting, but parenting isn’t always about sunshine and rainbows. I remind him if he wants to grow strong and be healthy, he has to eat a variety of foods. While he doesn’t have to eat the dinner I’ve prepared, there’s no other option, and he’ll have to wait until breakfast if he wants something else. I think he’s chosen twice to not eat, only to come back later and sit down and eat.

That said, I do try to make good tasting food I think everyone will enjoy, and most nights I’m successful. He’s learned that he doesn’t have to love every bit of food that’s presented to him. It’s just one meal. Life will go on. Chew, swallow, get over it. I find myself applying this lesson to so many things throughout my week. I hope it’s one that sticks with my kids.

We talk at the table.

We talk about our days, the books we’re reading, the music we’re listening to, the things that made us laugh, the food in front of us. We talk. We take turns. We’re modeling conversation skills and building our children’s verbal and memory skills.

It’s so fun to see what my son wants to share with his dad from his day. Often the parts that stood out to me are not the ones he chooses to share. I’m reminded that he’s his own person, and he gives me the chance to see his POV. I do the same for him.

We keep a stack of library books at the table.

We check out about 20 books a week from the library. If my husband is able to join us for dinner, he reads the page closest to him, and I read the one closest to me. Otherwise, the attending adult does all the reading. The catch is that we only read if our 4 year old is actively eating.

We aim to read through three books a meal at lunch and dinner. If the story is good enough, he doesn’t care what’s on his plate, as long as we keep reading.

I love that there’s built in reading time in our day. I never have to ask if we’ve read any books. Between lunch, dinner, and bedtime, we’re reading so much. I love that my son can now read some to us.

The result of all this that is dinner time is no short affair in our house. It’s at least an hour most days. I consider the time an investment in my family.

Запись How I Use Mealtime for Discipline, Conversation and Education впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

I had always been curious about camping. Something about a tent, a fire, and marshmallows sounded like a lot of fun, but when I brought it up, no one in my family wanted to sleep on the ground outside when we had perfectly good beds inside.

With a child’s eye, I began to notice that other black families seemed to share their sentiments. I was too young to understand the history behind some of it.  Much like why “black people don’t know how to swim, ” many black people don’t camp for historical reasons such as segregation and violence. Being isolated in the woods was not exactly a welcoming place for blacks not so long ago, and beyond that, camping takes resources such as transportation, time, and equipment that I know, for my parents’ childhoods, would have been a constraint even if Jim Crow hadn’t kept them at home.

That all said, though my parents still can’t swim, they made sure that I can, even if the water is still very frightening to them. Sometimes the best parenting decisions for me are the ones that push me out of my comfort zone, so last year we went camping.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t a little uneasy. Not having a door to lock unnerved me in a way I hadn’t expected. I felt so exposed. Despite any fears I had, the most negative experience we had was simply being colder than we anticipated.

Life’s not always about climate controlled comfort.

I love how camping challenges the everyday conveniences such as a thermostat. While it’s easy to focus on what’s lacking in the woods, what it offers in return is substantial.

Of course the scenery is great. I used my camera more than I had in years. Plus, you can really see stars. I didn’t realize how bad light pollution was until I was in the middle of a desert looking up. It was like a new sky, one I had never seen.

We had the most amazing conversations.

Out of consistent cell range, the conversations were free of technological distractions. Since we traveled with friends, it offered the perfect time to reconnect.

I was especially impressed by the intense science and nature lessons my then three-year-old son had while we visited different landscapes. With each stop, he learned more than he ever could in a classroom. Coming up on a year later, he’s still talking about climbing boulders and hiking in the desert.

I loved watching my child in the wilderness.

His curiosity had never been so strong. Always a child with a question, he was absorbed with all the new sights, sounds, and smells. He loved all the opportunities to climb, touch, run, and jump.

Though we go to zoos and watch nature programs, coming up on a wild elk on a trail is very different than seeing one on display. It stirs a whole different part of the soul. I realized if I want my son to be inspired to study science, the best way to accomplish this is just to take him camping.

I wasn’t surprised when I saw that studies have shown that nature exposure increases observation and creativity, reduces stress levels, and helps children with ADD perform better at school. Similarly other studies show that children who have regular experiences outside show more advanced motor skills including balance, coordination, and agility.

My son wasn’t thinking in these research terms. He was just having fun. He can’t wait to sleep in the tent again.

He’s not the only one. The trip came at a pretty stressful time in our lives, yet being surrounded by all that beauty brought me an unexpected calm. I wasn’t surprised later to read that nature is good for mental health. It’s hard not to see the beauty and wonder in life when you’re standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon or looking up at Redwoods so tall they never seem to end.

Now that I’m a person who camps, I have another shared experience with millions of others.

I love that my kids will grow up relating to that experience. They will feel that part of the world belongs to them too. This will contribute to their success because they won’t be held back by stereotypes of what they do and don’t do just because of their race.

Запись Why I Reclaimed My Relationship with the Outdoors as a Black Woman and Went Camping впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

You see, the world that we’re raising children in today, is so different from the child-rearing days of our mothers and grandmothers. We have more to do and less time to do it in. We are constantly being told to move quickly, work faster, multitask, and do more than the next person if we want to keep up. So, of course, we are prone to skip breakfast or have it on-the-go. It’s no surprise that we serve up microwave meals on the days when we can’t eat out. Plus, the restaurants encourage us to buy from their drive-thru windows and with all the different take-out menus available, it seems like everyone eats on the run. We often have ‘working lunches’ and if we decide to step away from the desk to take our lunch break, we’re usually in a rush to get back. When we eat, it’s ‘cut and swallow’; because when you’re busy and famished, something has to take first place – it’s not usually the stuff on our plates.

As the pace of life gets faster, more of us become overweight, undernourished and start operating off frazzled brains. It’s gotten to the point where we’ve forgotten the value of long, leisurely mealtimes and become blinded to the impact of how we eat, when we eat, why we eat and what we eat. As busy moms, we are expected to balance work commitments, social appointments, commuting and childcare responsibilities, and most of us are internally crying “unfair” as we struggle to juggle it all. We’re hurdling ahead, because we plan to die fighting, but the frustration, exhaustion, and the absence of simple pleasures, is certain to bring us to our knees, in our own tears – sooner or later.

But this doesn’t have to be the end of our stories, as 21st century mommies. We have to get back to the basics and that means a resolve towards self-preservation and a solid self-care routine. Since we eat to live, why not start with intentional and attentive eating?

It’s not as complicated as you might imagine. These are 5 simple strategies we can all employ to rediscover the joy of eating, manage weight, reduce stress levels and improve our quality of life:

1. Slow Down

Stop and pay attention. Decide to be present as you eat. Take the time to chew your food (5-10 times for soft foods and 30-50 times for denser foods) until it’s all smooth before swallowing. Rest your hands in-between bites, by putting down the food or cutlery while you chew.

2. Select

Choose a time each day to stop the crazy world and unplug for some ‘you-time’: snack time, coffee break or main meals. Choose to eat real food, and increase the amount of homemade meals you enjoy.

3. Schedule 

Three times daily, we get the chance to disconnect mentally from all the hustle and bustle, to nurture our bodies and enjoy the bounty of the earth. Don’t miss out on it! Take a seat. No walking or driving while you inhale the food. Step away from the busyness and make mealtimes an important appointment with yourself.

4. Silence 

Put away the newspaper or work report. Turn off the TV. Pull those earplugs out of your ears. Lock your phone-screen and put the laptop to sleep. Give your mind some breathing room. Forget, for just these few minutes, the problems you need to fix and the conversations on your favourite social media networks. It’s time, instead, to listen to your body.

5. Savour

Tune into all your senses for your meals. Inhale the aroma. Admire the shapes and colours. Listen as the textures get smashed between your teeth. Intentionally identify the flavours that swirl around your tongue. Be aware of the thoughts, emotions and physical sensations that different dishes generate in you. Give thanks!

Mindful eating allows us to unplug from the overwhelming world we live in, to return with satisfied palates, nourished bodies and grateful souls. The practice can look different for each of us, and doesn’t require much more than a mental shift. Frequent opportunities to feed ourselves intentionally and attentively will always result in more contented and whole mothers. So, remember to pause and take a deep breath before your next bite.

Запись How to Practice Mindful Eating in the Midst of Stressful Living впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

When you hear the term “crack baby, ” you might picture the movie Losing Isaiah with the screaming baby suffering due to his mother’s drug habit.

He was the classic crack baby: disruptive, troubled, and fictional.

Crack babies aren’t a real thing

Yes, some children were exposed in utero to cocaine, but there is no scientific literature to support the theory of the troubled crack baby.

The story of the crack baby myth is one based in racism, classism, politics, and ratings. It began with a doctor who thought that babies exposed to cocaine were suffering unique, extreme effects that would only increase as the children aged. His report was ratings gold.

Doctors at the time questioned the existence

There were doctors who disagreed with the crack baby label and attempted to dispel the myth. Dr. Clare Coles had noted that many of the signs of a crack baby were normal behaviors for premature babies. Yet her rebuttal didn’t make good news.

“Coles’ findings were ignored, however, because they didn’t fit into cultural stereotypes and failed to feed the media narrative. Reporters railed about an estimated $5 billion annual strain on the government, and everyone got extremely worked up because the concept of the “crack baby” plays into sadly familiar ideas of race and class. Since crack was relatively inexpensive and far more prevalent in poor areas, it was convenient to use this fear to justify classist and racist rhetoric (i.e., “poor, black neighborhoods bring their problems onto themselves and cost the rest of us by doing so”), ” Callie Beusman wrote in the article Good News: 1980s ‘Crack Babies’ Epidemic Was Hugely Overblown.

In an interview to the New York Times, Coles said, “There are certain ideas that people want to believe that really fit in with cultural stereotypes, and it’s hard to get rid of those.”

The crack mother was the worst welfare fear

In her book Living Color: Race and Television in the United States, Sarah Torres, a professor of information and media studies, explains the racism behind the media storm: “As a composite “she-devil, ” the crack mother takes the image of the welfare mother, so prominent in the demonology of Reaganism, and fuses it with the sexually aggressive Jezebel. […] A particularly menacing image of fertility, the crack mother personifies an out-of-control black sexuality.”

Torres references quotes from leaders at the time such as Rep. George Miller of the Select Committee on Children who said, “We’re going to have these children, who are the most expensive babies ever born in America, are going to overwhelm every social service delivery system that they come in contact with through the rest of their lives.”

Similarly, a Florida juvenile court judge William Gladstone said, “These kids have enormous, physical problems, mental problems. They will go into a system that is woefully inadequate, woefully underfunded. They’ll grow up to be tomorrow’s delinquents.”

These children weren’t seen as medically frail victims, instead they were presented as a future criminals.

What the research really says about crack babies

The fears about these children were unfounded as current research shows that “[a]lmost every prenatal complication originally thought to be due directly to [prenatal cocaine exposure] was found to result from confounding factors such as poor maternal nutrition, use of other drugs, depression, and lack of prenatal care.”

The studies are not condoning cocaine use. Instead, they found that the actual health impacts are limited, and the children outgrow them.

Poverty and the “crack baby” label hurt the children more

Some researchers think that the low expectations of being a “crack baby” did the most damage. As Michael Lewis, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry, explained to the New York Times:
“in a doctor’s office or a classroom, ‘you cannot tell’ which children were exposed to cocaine before birth.

That report goes on to say that poverty related factors were much more damaging on children’s intellectual and emotional development. Researchers have also found that being labeled as a crack baby negatively impacted the children as they were stigmatized with every physical or behavioral problem being too quickly associated to the lost cause of being a crack baby.

The problem was discussed in an NPR interview with Dr. Hallam Hurt, neonatologist and professor of pediatrics:

Host Michel Martin: Do you worry, though, that a whole generation of kids [..] was written off essentially because people believed that they weren’t capable of very much? I wonder if you ever think that maybe more kids could’ve achieved at a higher level, if people had not been so quick to believe that they couldn’t do anything.

Dr. Hallam Hurt: I absolutely believe that. And I think that one of the most deleterious things is when a child might have been identified as quote, that pejorative term, crack kid, in school. And often they were written off.

These children were most definitely victims though the culprits turned out to be more complicated than drug abuse.

Had you heard this updated information? Are you surprised?

Запись New Studies Show the “Crack Baby” Was a Media Myth Designed to Frighten Whites and Criminalize Black Children впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

“Why would I want to think about my daughter having sex in the future?”

That’s when I realized how pervasively men fear the thought of their daughters doing what grown folks do. Somehow, I am able to objectively look at my little girl and understand she will not always be so little. She will grow up and she will want to have sex. That thought does not frighten me. It’s a fact of life.

I’m not saying fathers need to picture the act. No. Please note I am also not talking about sexualizing our children. I am specifically referring to the avoidance of seeing daughters as full human beings. We prepare our girls for sexual activity by telling them not to engage in it, because we refuse to see it in healthy terms ourselves. We frame female sexuality in shame and negativity and male sexuality in terms of virility and positivity.

I have never heard any man say they hope their son grows up to have a small penis. However, I have often heard fathers say they hope their daughters do not develop large breasts or big butts. I remember when Kanye West said in his song “We Major, ” “Until you have a daughter / that’s what I call Karma / and you pray to God she don’t grow breasts too soon.” The natural maturation of a young girl into puberty is not “payback” for the sins of her father. A daughter’s sexuality is neither the shame nor burden of her father.

But I sought to answer my husband’s question as best I could. Why should a father want to consider that his daughter will have sex in the future?

In order for parents to steer their daughters into a balanced understanding of sexuality, we must broach sex not as a calamity to be avoided, but an eventuality to be prepared for. That means the jokes about sending her to a nunnery? They gotta go. We can encourage responsible sexual behavior, even religiously based behavior (i.e. abstinence until marriage) without shrouding sex in a cloud of dirtiness.

Our children take their cues about sex both from their parents and from their peers. Parents have to work overtime to counter the false narratives and myths about sex that kids inevitably share with each other. Girls whose fathers make chastity belt threats are not likely to approach their fathers for guidance about sex. Yes, Dads, there are decisions your daughters will need to make about having sex beyond just “Don’t have it until marriage.” Even though most fathers I know would be more than happy to delegate that conversation to Mom, girls still need fatherly input.

But this means you have to be mindful that your little girl will not always be so little. She will grow up and she may want to have sex. It’s a fact of life. There is nothing gross or disgusting about that simple fact. There is nothing shameful about her having breasts, a butt, or an attractive body. And furthermore, the negative mindset that we project on our daughters about sex will seldom prevent them from having it, anyway.

Dads, your daughters will become sexual human beings. Deal with it. She absolutely needs you to.

Запись Dear Dads: Your Daughter Will Grow Up to Have Sex. Deal With It. впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

When we talk about weight loss and diets, the question that everyone asks is, “Am I going to be hungry?” Let’s be honest, no one likes to be hungry, and hunger can cause the best intentions to fail.

But with meals featuring whole grains, you won’t feel hungry. That’s because whole grains are full of dietary fiber.

Fat-melting and stomach-filling

Fiber ensures that as your meal digests, there is slow release of sugars into your bloodstream, and very importantly, fiber adds bulk and keeps you feeling full for much longer, reducing your visits to the snack box throughout the day. All of this while nourishing your cells for a more vibrant you.

Since whole grain foods are low-fat and cholesterol-free, they are an ideal way to build new eating habits for your flat-tummy scheme. But, the coolest thing about whole grain foods, are the resistant starch they contain. It’s that fat-melting, stomach-filling, metabolism-boosting carb that does not get digested.

It just moves through your digestive system while forcing your body to burn up the fat it has in storage. The only precaution for anyone who isn’t currently getting enough fiber in their diet, is to drink lots more water to help your body adjust to the increase in fiber once you switch to more whole grain foods.

Easy changes, big results

Nutrition experts tell us that a balanced diet includes fruits, vegetables, proteins and grains, and these are also fiber rich foods. An apple has 17% of your daily value of fiber, compared to apple juice which has 2%. In vegetables like potatoes, the fiber is in the skin. Fruits and vegetables are the only or even the best fiber source.

The national healthy eating guidelines encourage us to consume about 6-ounces of grains every day. Now, if you’re not a bread-lover, you may think that 6 ounces is a lot. But, a 1-ounce serving of grains is easily eaten in your regular snacks and meals. For example, as:

1/2 cup cooked oatmeal (8% fiber)
1 slice whole-grain bread (8% fiber)
3 cups popcorn (15% fiber)
a 6-inch tortilla (8% fiber)
1/2 cup cooked, whole-wheat pasta (12.5% fiber)

So, if your breakfast is a serving of oatmeal and two slices of bread, lunch includes two tacos, and dinner involves some of your favourite pasta, you would’ve gotten all 6 ounces in without thinking about it. Not to mention if you had snacked on some air-popped popcorn throughout the day, total you’d be at 67.5% of your daily value of fiber. The rest would be easy to get with vegetables and fruit.

Beware though, it’s not about buying fiber powder or processed food with fiber on the box. It’s about eating real food.

Запись How to Lose Weight Without Feeling Hungry впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.

http://www.cincinnatibirthphotography.com/

When I delivered my daughter nearly four years ago, I planned on having a natural home birth. I had spent the majority of my pregnancy educating myself about the business of childbirth. I had a low-risk pregnancy and knew I wanted low-intervention childbirth for myself and my baby. But my daughter had other plans!

I was completely unprepared to end up in the hospital having an emergency Cesarean section. I quickly became part of an alarming statistic. According to the U.S. Census, Black women have higher rates of C-sections (35.9%) than their White and Latina counterparts. I felt too vulnerable to challenge doctors and nurses who assumed bullying, condescending tones to badger me into procedures. I was made to feel I could not trust my wishes or my body, in the face of their expertise.

Unfortunately, my experience was not unique. Jamilla Webb, a nurse and doula based in New Orleans, believes stereotyping is a stigma many pregnant Black women face. “Black women are looked down upon when it comes to our sexual health, ” she said. “Often, providers will treat you as if you don’t matter, as if you are uneducated.”

I am fortunate two other women in my delivery room (my mother, a health professional; and my aunt, a certified nurse midwife) became my voice when I could not speak. Their help was invaluable. I have been determined ever since to learn ways Black women can advocate for themselves in pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care. But if they need help doing so, like I did, what resources are available?

Although birth can seem like a one-woman sport, every woman can benefit from having a support team. One essential person in that group can be a doula, a nonmedical professional who provides physical and emotional support before, during, and after childbirth. Technically, a woman’s obstetrician or midwife should be considered as part of that team as well. But it can be difficult to have a positive birth experience with a medical professional who is at odds with your wishes as a patient.

Webb advises taking action sooner rather than later if you do not feel comfortable with someone on your birth team prior to going into labor.  “If you see someone who is not being a good team member, ” she says, “it’s time to open up the draft and start looking for someone else to help you win the game of health and of having a positive birth experience.”

Expectant mothers should definitely use the Internet to their advantage when looking for resources for pregnancy and beyond. Nicole Deggins, a certified nurse midwife with over 20 years of experience, founded SistaMidwife.com to give Black women a starting point in finding support for empowering childbirth experiences. The site provides a directory for doula services across the country, in addition to offering “education and training through teleconferences, webinars, keynotes and live workshops.”

The International Center for Traditional Childbearing is a midwifery and doula training organization that also hosts a treasure trove of resources on infant mortality, Black midwifery, and breastfeeding support on its website.

Ultimately, Black mothers need to know they have rights during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care. If you are unable to build a network of support, there are still ways you can advocate for yourself. Self-education is a powerful tool. Deggins suggests that women exercise their rights to informed refusal, to delay or decline unwanted procedures, or to ask medical providers if there is cause for concern if they have misgivings about consenting to a procedure.

If mothers need to inform authorities about improper treatment by a healthcare professional, they may contact their hospital’s ombudsman to make a complaint. Evidenced-based birth organization Improving Birth provides an excellent guide on how to file complaints.

The birth of our precious babies should not be cause to worry about mistreatment. But community support is invaluable in arming women with the resources it takes to get their voices heard. It not only takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a village to safely deliver them, too.

Did you have (or will you have) a birth support advocate during pregnancy and delivery?

Запись It Takes a Village: Resources for Black Moms to Advocate for Healthy Childbirth впервые появилась Baby & Blog | Celebrating Black Mommyhood.