Month: March 2017

Why Do You Post? To inspire joy or jealousy?

HastonHelpingHands1 Comment
viv6
Dear Readers,
“She doesn’t have to smile..” I say this whenever anyone takes a picture of my child, mostly when I am holding her. I often have to remind myself of this when I take pictures of her.
She smiles a lot, which doesn’t require documentation, it’s nice when I get a picture where she happens to be smiling, AND I am learning to really put that camera down and live “in the moment” with her. Get on the floor and roll around with her instead of trying to take that perfect picture or get the perfect angle, because guess what, that isn’t life.. That’s a highlight reel of me showing you the best of my life so you start to compare your life to mine.
As I have said over and over again on this blog, I do my best to be authentic with you so I am telling you what’s true for me this week.
Monday was a very hard day for us, even more so for Vivienne since she got her 6 month vaccinations and in this visit our truly wonderful pediatrician told us we were feeding her too much food.
Ouch.
This is a hard thing to hear. So you mean after all the trouble I had with breastfeeding where I worried that I wasn’t feeding her enough, now I finally get that working ( going strong on 4 months now) and now you tell me I am OVERFEEDING her? Come on!!!
I got very upset and irrational because well, I started to compare her to other kids her size/age (forgetting she was 11 pounds when she first arrived!!!)  and say to myself, “We should have known…. what is wrong with us?” and other really unhelpful synaptic leaps. Over the last week, I have taken some time to really think about it, my first feeling was guilt. I said to myself, “We have been overfeeding her, it’s our fault, we suck as parents. Yep, that’s it, you are done, you have already screwed up your child.
I am not saying it was rational, I am saying it was my first reaction. Then after I sat with it awhile and we talked it out with the doctor, we made a new plan to feed her less, and logic started to take over and these thoughts came through-
1. We are new at this (and this is the hard part)– we are going to make mistakes.
2. How could we possibly know we were overfeeding her – Hello- it’s not like she can say “Mommy, I am full, please take away the food”?
And then, acceptance, – So we now know it’s a problem, what are we going to do about it?

At the end of the day, all that you and I can do is our best, every day to be as true to ourselves as possible and try really hard to not get caught up in the comparison game and start using other people as a measuring stick to what our child is doing or not doing in their life journey.

It’s never been more necessary to live a more realized and authentic life. I ran across a great interview with Simon Sinek discussing how dependent we are on our phones to wake, to notify us, to message us, to stimulate us and it’s all a vicious cycle because as soon as I take my perfect picture, I post my perfect picture and tag my perfect picture and then wait to see how many likes, loves, and comments (oh the comments) I get because each one is validation that my life is perfect and that everyone wants to be like me. Hold on, we have some falsehoods going on there.

First. I am not perfect.

Second. My life is not perfect

Third. My marriage is not perfect.

Fourth. My child is certainly not perfect.

Which begs the question, Why are we doing this?

What good does it do for me to post the “perfect picture” never mind that it took about 15 shots to get the right angle and the right expression to show you how perfect my life or my baby is which she is not.

Subscribing to this idea is what drives us nuts and the comparison game is senseless because there is NO finish line in this race.

I am saying it here and now, I am done with that kind of competition. Observe this very real, very unperfect picture. She is eating the dress and not even looking at the camera.

It’s hard because I want to take pictures of my baby, or myself or my shoes or my feet and get that perfect angle but it’s exhausting to try to hold yourself to that kind of standard and so I am done with the competition and the games. It’s going to be a progression of things.. like maybe I will reach for the phone to take her picture, but then put it back down again and really “be” with her. Or maybe, I will pick up the phone and take a picture but not try to get her to smile and just snap the picture when something strikes me as memorable. Progress is the goal, not perfection

I am the best mother that I can be for Vivienne, I am perfect in the sense that I am her flawed, complex and learning-how-to-do-this-all-important-job-of-motherhood one roller coaster day at a time. She is a happy baby, and she doesn’t have to smile in all her pictures to prove it.

Before you post your next picture – stop and think about it…and ask yourself- “Why am I posting this picture?” Is my goal to inspire joy or jealousy?

Think About It.

 

 

Whatever your size or shape, You are beautiful.

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Dear Readers,Joyphoto

Today’s post is dedicated to you and your beautiful body. Read that again.

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL! You are sexy! You are perfect just as you are!!

I am so excited to be in this show about positive body image and a show that promotes the message, “You are perfect, just as you are”.. The fight to tell you otherwise is subtle and unrelenting, and it is already starting for my daughter, She isn’t hearing it but I am. “She is so chunky” or “Gosh, how big is she?” — and “That’s a big girl”  things commenting on her size. I realize I am probably being oversensitive in this area, but I have to say it’s hard to hear it, I know people mean well,  sometimes they say it because they think it’s a compliment or they THINK it’s just conversation.

They can’t possibly know how completely debilitating it was to me to hear things that were similar as I was growing up,”you have such a pretty face” or “you would be beautiful if you just lost a few pounds” “Your only hope is to marry rich” and all the times I heard it and things like it I steadfastly believed it..and it’s only very very recently that I have come to terms with my weight and my body and have learned to love myself just as I am.

I think the first time I felt overweight was in gym class, I literally couldn’t climb the rope. I remember holding on to it and trying as hard as I could to get myself up there but I lacked the arm strength and had a lot of weight to try to hoist. The only thing I had to show for my efforts were rope burns and chafed thighs.  I would be the last pick for dodge ball and I tried out for the dance team and didn’t make it. I certainly can’t prove that I wasn’t picked because I was overweight but it certainly didn’t help matters.

My parents didn’t really help me with this, they would tell me not to eat sweets and try to limit the desserts in the house but there was a lot of them and there were birthdays and special occasions and so then I would eat sweets, every chance I got I would eat them. Let’s not forget the ones I ate away from the house as well.

As an adult, I tried a lot of different diets. The cabbage soup diet, the Atkins diet, the paleo diet. The only time I have ever significantly lost weight was on paleo and that was when I was also exercising 3 times a week, and eating nothing but paleo. I lost over 75 pounds and had a glamorous photo shoot to celebrate. That was three years ago and remains a very happy memory as it was the beginning of where I am now on this journey to acceptance and body love.

Recently, I decided to give up dieting. I will eat mostly healthy foods and exercise but won’t be gazing at a scale for “results”. I will respond when the 4 year old in me says, “I want ice cream” because sometimes it’s really important to feed that 4 year old. It doesn’t happen every day, I would say roughly about once a month, I really crave ice cream. I had a pint in the freezer that lasted me almost three weeks, and then there are other times that I eat the whole pint in one sitting. So, it varies.

Here and now, I declare I am done with the guilt, since the guilt has never and will never cause me to lose weight or feel better, in fact it’s quite the opposite, it makes you want to eat more because you feel bad.

The goal will be to use food as fuel and if I want a cupcake or a piece of candy, to go ahead and eat that food. It’s a combination of the intuitive eating philosophy and my mentality about abundance. It also involves REALLY listening to your body. The other day, I wanted mashed potatoes, Jeremy being an awesome husband, offered to get them for me, and I said, no, I am just noticing that I want them, I am not sure why but it’s bubbling up in my head.When I waited a minute, the craving went totally away.

If you choose to diet or count calories, more power to you, but I have decided that way is not for me.

This dieting demon has haunted my menu and eating choices long enough and I am delighted to report that this show is exorcising that demon really effectively. I will be keeping an eye on how I feel about this and as always, report back to let you, my dear readers know how things are going.

Think about it….

My faith, my choice!

HastonHelpingHands2 Comments

Dear Readers,

On this blog, I do not make it a habit to beat you about the head and shoulders with my belief in God. Mainly because I have had that done to me and I don’t enjoy it.

I have never been a “shout it from the rooftops” type of gal when it comes to my faith. Yet, I find myself compelled to write about it because I am realizing more and more of the things that make me successful in life have a lot to do with my creator and it’s time I acknowledged that publicly. It’s way too easy to think I am the reason for my success.

I was baptized last year right before I became a mother. It was important to me to do this before my child was born for a few reasons. I had heard many tales of “mommy brain” and thought I might forget, I now realize how silly that is, but the more important reasons were these.

  1. I wanted an outward symbol of my inner belief in God.
  2. I wanted to be baptized.

The first time I was baptized, I was a baby and had no choice in the matter, the second time I was baptized, I was being manipulated into doing so in an effort to please my birth parent, and I felt major pressure to do so and have always regretted caving in to that pressure.

To see more of my testimony, here’s the video-

http://tinyurl.com/JenniferHastonBaptismWBCC

Here’s the actual baptism-

This time, it was my choice and I was really excited about it, (check out my picture!) Baptism2016.PNG

After the baptism, I have been working on my relationship with God and working my way from being a “baby Christian” and talking more to God, and thanking him for the many gifts he has given me. I am also reading my bible, and realize daily I am a work in progress and God helps me with having patience, and being grateful for the blessings and talents he has given me. I hope that whatever your beliefs you have, you are not afraid to share them, it’s imperative that we all work to be as authentic as we can be in this life. It’s the only one we get.

Think about it….

Dear Parents, Can we agree to stop judging each other?

HastonHelpingHands1 Comment

Dear Readers,

I have to be totally honest about this. Before I had my daughter, I really didn’t care about breastfeeding, but I took the class and went through the motions with the plastic baby and took copious notes in class and thought to myself, I am not going to to get worried about this because I really don’t know what is going to happen, it’s different for everyone, and right now I am just freaking out about the fact that with every childbirthing class, this whole idea of A LIFE YOU ARE BRINGING INTO THE WORLD IS REALLY NOT JUST AN IDEA BUT A PERSON WHO WILL CRY AND SLEEP AND EAT IS ACTUALLY going to be here and soon!!!!

So I told myself, it’s a natural thing, but I don’t know if she will or won’t so I am not going to worry about it, because until she is here, we don’t know how things will go.

So I reiterate, I didn’t care about breastfeeding. That is until they told me just hours after she was born that we had to supplement with formula because my milk had not fully come in yet. So less than 24 hours as a mom, and I already sucked at it. Totally irrational? yes. How I felt? yes.

So I sat in the hospital bed and tired and sleepy and miserable. I started to cry because the most “natural” thing in the world, wasn’t happening. She was losing weight so it was pretty urgent for us to supplement, I kept telling myself it was ridiculous to be so upset about something that just 24 hours ago I hadn’t cared about at all.

It is maddening and frustrating to have such mercurial mood swings but hey, that is hormones for you. So we supplemented that first night, and I used the nipple shield and kept trying. The lactation consultants I had were pushy and in a hurry and not ONE of them told me it was normal to struggle, they were very matter of fact about how we had to keep trying and even though I was exhausted and so frustrated I wanted to scream, I kept trying because I felt guilty for not being able to nurse my child.

She was fussy and hated it, and never fully latched and the nipple shields (helps to shape your breast to make it easier for the baby to eat) helped a little, but it hurt and it was not fun for either of us so I started to pump (for those that don’t know, this is a machine that simulates what your baby would do and gathers milk from you so you can feed a baby through a bottle but still give them your milk)  and made the decision, okay, she is still getting my milk and nursing is just so frustrating for us both, I am going to just pump, I mean it’s not going to hurt anything if I do that so I made the decision to stop trying to nurse.  I called my mom to talk to her about it, and she said, “Who is her Mom?” I said, “Me” and she said, “right.. so when her life is hard or there is something that is challenging are you going to let her give up?” I said, “No”.. there was a long silence on the line, and I realized what my Mom was saying was that I needed to keep trying so I did.

So we got home from the hospital and tried every position and it still wasn’t clicking. Occasionally there would be a glimmer of hope and we would have a good session (I went back and looked at the “milk logs” and I celebrated when she nursed continuously for 7 minutes or more, and then we would have one of those sessions where she was fussy and wouldn’t feed. Then a good session, then a bad one.. So it was still hard, it still hurt, and it sure didn’t feel like a “bonding experience”. We kept going, and about 20 days after she was born, my milk supply started to lessen so when I pumped, I wasn’t getting as much, of course I started to worry, which is actually a factor in milk reduction, so let me get this straight, worry about not enough milk can cause you to produce less milk? Are you kidding me?!

It’s not bad enough the milk isn’t here, now that I am worried about it, it actually makes it worse not better? Come on, give me a break!! So I reached out to my friends and fellow mothers and asked them what they did and how they coped. Several of them were kind enough to say, ‘It’s not you, it’s really freaking hard!” “I gave up after the first day, it was pissing her off, and pissing me off and it just wasn’t worth it”- ” I couldn’t nurse, and I have always felt bad about it” , “It took a while but we finally found our groove” -“Keep trying, it’s super hard and frustrating and painful and know that WHATEVER you decide is right for you and your family” so I persisted, though very frustrated and really ready to give up.

Thankfully, we have a great pediatrician who suggested we get a lactation consultant, I had not considered that because it reminded me of the ones we had in the hospital who were so off-putting and I HATED to admit that I NEEDED help. Why? Why? Why? Why do we have such high expectations for ourselves and have so much pride that we can’t say, “I don’t know what I am doing, please give me advice!” or you know, admit you need help and call a professional? – I am lucky enough to have some very kind friends (You know who you are) who put up with my constant texts and phone calls in those early days- So what made me finally give up and admit I needed help? My daughter.

October 30, 2016 11:47 p.m. She is inconsolable, wailing and will not stop crying, no matter what I do, she will not stop crying, I fed her (botched attempts at nursing (AGAIN) and changed her and walked her up and down the floor, I have rocked her and I have done everything under the sun to try to calm her down and she just will not settle. I put her down in the crib and walked away because I could not take it any more. Funny thing, when I put her down and walked away, she fell asleep…I passed out on the air mattress we had in her room from sheer relief. When I woke up the next day (well-rested and clear-headed for the first time in many days), I was going to call a lactation consultant, i didn’t care what it cost but I was going to get some help and if they couldn’t help, I was going to give up on breastfeeding once and for all because it was so heartbreaking for me to fail repeatedly at something so basic.

To Jeremy’s credit, when I mentioned it, he was extremely supportive and said, let’s make sure I am here so I can get some tips on how to help you because it was clear to him how much this meant to me. So I had to wait a few days for the consultant to come see me, but when she did, My God, so much relief! She weighed Vivienne before I attempted to feed her, and then weighed her after so we could gauge how much she was getting in each feeding, She took pictures of the proper positioning, she showed me exactly what to do and why what I had been doing was not working. All the while restoring my sanity by saying things like, “It’s normal to struggle.” – “It’s not innately a skill” – She sat with me for 4 hours and with every passing minute I was reassured that this could work and I could do this basic thing of feeding my child. I am not going to say that it got better overnight because it did NOT, It took a solid three weeks of trying all the different positions and instructions and then finally, finally GOD, FINALLY, we got a great latch and then another and then another, and then it was like we had always been doing this nursing thing.

Time is also an amazing thing, today marks 4 months of consistent nursing and a mix of formula for our child and she is thriving, healthy and happy. vivmombreastfeeding

I rarely post personal things, and to me, this is intimate and personal, but if my experience can help even ONE new mom feel better, it’s worth me being vulnerable about my experience.

I was inspired by something I saw online depicting how breastfeeding is hard and that it doesn’t come naturally to everyone, despite what movies and television try to tell you. It goes into some detail about how many mothers can’t nurse and how many supplement with formula and how much judgment they get from society, other mothers, not to mention the judgment we put on ourselves. So please, let’s all agree to stop judging each other and let’s go one further, let’s encourage each other to not judge ourselves.

If you breastfeed exclusively, that’s awesome. If you feed your baby with formula, equally great, I am not here to judge, or say one way is better than another. Only YOU can decide what works for you and YOUR child. I am here to support your right to parent in whatever way YOU see fit.I made my choice and I am happy with it.

What you do for your family and your body is YOUR choice.

Think about it…

Ask for what you want, it does work!

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Dear Readers,

As a Mom, I am learning that patience is a big part of this role. It also means asking for what you want. The other night, I got home and my husband let me know that he needed some “me time”.

My response was unbridled excitement! See the picture below? (unbridled excitement) sexyselfie

Okay, not so much my first reaction.

I will admit that my initial reaction was annoyance, but I waited to share my response which was excitement. You know why? Annoyance because I was looking forward to “family time” but after I thought about it, I got really excited about him asking for “me time” for himself. Do you know why? This next part is going to make him sound like a saint and he hates when I talk about him like this.. but I am going to do it anyway.

My husband RARELY complains. I mean it, he just doesn’t.

Even in the early days of our courtship, he worked two jobs and always made time for us to be together, despite us having polar opposite schedules.. (Literally, I would head out for the day and he was heading in to the house) – It was a tough time and I did a lot of complaining about it. We went through something similar early in our marriage when we were working 5 jobs between us to get out of debt. He still didn’t complain and learning from his example, I complained less.

I have since discovered in the more than 8 years that we have been together that he does have complaints, (shocking, I know!) they just need to be drawn out of him so back to last night, I sat back and thought about it and realized this request was actually cause for great jubilation throughout Hastonia.

For two reasons-

  1. He felt secure enough to tell me he needed a break
  2. He also made a plan to give me some “me time” soon

I know without a doubt, that his “me time” will make him refreshed and better able to “be” with us and not feeling drained when it’s time for “family time”. Some of the best marriage advice I have ever gotten having a healthy marriage/relationship/partnership is this.

  1. Try to see things through the other person’s eyes.. and really pretend you are them and feel very strongly about the thing that you are disagreeing about.
  2. Ask yourself, will this matter in 30 years?

I will admit that it’s not the easiest advice to follow, especially that first one… stepping out of your own viewpoint is hard work, AND it’s absolutely worth it.

See this picture? It’s the tunic I bought myself on my shopping trip yesterday, see that happy face? It comes from asking for what you want and getting it and of course loving yourself and buying yourself something pretty (in the budget, of course!)

Now, I fully grasp that there will be times that you ask for what you want and don’t get it (as my loving husband pointed out while I was discussing this post with him) AND if you don’t ask, you definitely won’t get what you want.

Think about it…