Babies and Tots

From newborns and babies to toddlers and tots, these articles help you navigate and find encouragement during pregnancy and the early years of motherhood.

7 Tips For Battling Baby Blues

7 Tips For Battling Baby Blues

Baby Blues and Postpartum Depression (PPD) are very common after the birth of a beautiful new infant. You’d think this would be a magical time of snuggles, bottles, and miniature clothes–and it is–but it’s also a time of rapid life transition and physically demanding recovery. A combination of sleep deprivation, drastic hormonal changes, the pain and discomfort of healing from childbirth, and the demands of caring for a tiny little person can easily combine to create a perfect storm and leave you feeling absolutely miserable. As soon as you begin feeling overwhelmed, sad, anxious, or stressed, it’s important to address the issue right away so it doesn’t get worse or tarnish this special time with your precious little baby. 1. Tell Your Doctor. […]

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Comforting Thoughts For Moms on Rough Days

Comforting Thoughts For Moms on Rough Days

We’ve all had bad days. For me, personally, the best way to cope has been to find some inner peace. My kids are calmer when I’m calmer. My husband is less anxious when I’m relaxed. The phrase, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” has been proven in our home time and time again. Here are a few thoughts I have found comforting on bad days: “This too shall pass.” Tomorrow, today will be a memory. Next week, you might even be able to laugh about it. “I am loved.” When your children scream at you and pitch temper tantrums, remember that you are loved, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. “I’m their Mom, not their friend.” Disciplining your

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when you want to completely change your parenting style

When You Want to Completely Change Your Parenting Style

When my husband and I became parents, we had big plans about how we were going to mold and shape our children into respectful and respectable little people. We have now been parents for 10 years, and I have to admit we have learned more and become better parents in the past two than we did in the first eight. Two years ago we added to our family by adopting a 7-year-old boy from China. Adopting an older child from a difficult past means reading lots of books on trauma, attachment issues and the brain. Luckily, I have a great interest in these subjects, so the learning is fun. Putting the principles we’ve learned into practice with patience and grace is not

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Is-Homeschool-Right-For-You--A-Few-Things-to-Consider

Is Homeschool Right For You? A Few Things to Consider

As if it wasn’t hard enough to make choices in parenting—about feeding, sleeping, immunizations, organics and other options that plague parents from day one—there comes a day when we also have to determine what education option is the best for our child. We think age five is going to be a golden age of post-potty-training, semi-independent reading, and the ability to swim and ride a bike without us watching them constantly; instead, kindergarten looms around the corner with its myriad of challenges. How we educate our children is perhaps the most crucial of our parenting choices, or at least it feels that way. There is not only enormous pressure to choose the absolute best for our kids, that which seemingly will prepare

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How-to-Fly-With-an-Infant-10-Helpful-Tips

How to Fly With an Infant: 10 Helpful Tips

My daughter and son-in-law work for a large nonprofit in Haiti but come home every three months on furlough and stay at our home in Florida. Typically while they’re in the U.S., they take a weeklong trip to Texas to work at the organization’s headquarters, and occasionally fly to other states to meet with supporters of their ministry. My grandson was born 14 months ago during a stay at our house, but started traveling with his parents at about eight weeks old. Since then, we’ve all lost count of how many times he’s flown around the country and back and forth to Haiti. My daughter has learned some great tips for traveling with an infant, many due to trial and error. After

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An Easy Way to Teach Your Kids You’re the Mom, Not the Maid (Video)

— For more mom-ing advice, check out 10 Reasons Why You Should Fight Your Inner Mama Bear, Teaching Your Daughter How to Stand Out from the Crowd, 5 Tips for Managing the Teen in Your Life, Stop Calling Yourself Out on “Mom Fails” ; You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Be a Great Mom, and How to Handle Little Boys Who Think They Know It All #gritandgracelife

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what to expect from the 4th trimester

What to Expect in the 4th Trimester

When a pregnant woman asks for advice about what to do when the baby arrives, she’s usually greeted with hundreds of different responses from different women (and men!). However, somehow she still won’t have a fair idea of what’s to come. The first couple of months after a baby’s born are often referred to as the “fourth trimester,” because life outside the womb takes a while to get used to. Here are a few things to expect during your own fourth trimester: 1. You won’t sleep—much. There’s a lot of sleeping for the baby during the fourth trimester, but not a lot of sleep for Mom, or probably Dad either. Newborns often have their days and nights mixed up, or else no concept of them

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practical mom advice for breastfeeding and formula

Practical Mom Advice on Breastfeeding and Formula

Being a mother may seem like the most basic thing a woman can do. Because women’s bodies are designed to be able to carry a human life, it may seem like nourishing them would be easy and natural. The assumption is that breastfeeding is easy, and that it’s possible for everyone. Well, that’s just not true. Some women can’t get pregnant, or can’t carry a child. Some women have very difficult pregnancies. And the same is true for breastfeeding. It’s not always for every mother and child. Now, the generally understood medical opinion is that “breast is best” and hippie mamas everywhere will shout it from the mountaintops. However, there are many factors that I urge you to think through before you feel pushed—and dare I say it,

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From Pregnant Widow to Single Mom

From Pregnant Widow to Single Mom

This is part two of Ashby’s story. Read Part 1 here! Shortly after Spencer’s death, I drove out to Immokalee to the place where we used to live. Standing on the grassy bank of Lake Trafford where our Airstream once gleamed in the sunlight, I stared at the water with my hands on my swollen, pregnant belly genuinely not knowing what to do next. This empty space made my loss even more real. Every fiber of my being ached to go back and climb into our cozy home with my husband again, but this empty space was a very visual reminder that he was no longer here and there was not a home to come back to. In the Heartbreak and Confusion, What’s

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Remember This When Your Baby is Growing Up

Remember This When Your Baby is Growing Up

My husband and I are incredibly thrilled to be pregnant with our third baby. We recently had one of those trendy “gender reveal” parties and found out it’s a little girl. But then something happened that I didn’t expect. I felt sad. It’s not that I’m disappointed—I’m very excited to have another girl—but she might be our last baby. As soon as I realized it was a girl, the phrase popped into my head, “and they had three daughters,” past tense, and rather final. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for the future, but a piece of me doesn’t want this childbearing phase of life to end. I think whoever invented the idea of cherubs must have felt this same way, because babies

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10 Tips for Soon-to-Be Moms

10 Tips for Soon-to-Be Moms

I’ve had a few friends who are expecting their first baby ask for a little advice on how to prepare for the bundle of joy. So here are a few things that I figured out or know because a wise woman told me so. 1. Nursery Placement and Planning. When placing your nursery furniture, it’s important to make it look nice. It’s also important to make it convenient for you to use each of the pieces in the room. For instance, when you wake up to the cry of your newborn at 3:00am, walk in the nursery, and immediately smell something … terrible … you know that you’re gonna need to change a diaper, and probably clothes, blankets, and maybe sheets. You

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4 Don'ts of Great Parenting For Moms

4 Don’ts of Great Parenting For Moms

What not to do for your child: 1. Don’t fight all their battles. They won’t learn to fight for themselves. 2. Don’t fix all their mistakes. Consequences are one of life’s best teachers. 3. Don’t give them everything they want. What they want may not be what they need. 4. Don’t keep them from all hurt. They will never learn how to heal. Remember, while you’re protecting your child you must also learn to prepare them. The goal is not to only protect them from harm, but to prepare them for life. — For more articles with encouragement in parenting, start here: How to Be a #Girlmom Teaching Your Daughter How to Stand Out from the Crowd Parenting Adult Children—The Great Shift of Motherhood Raising

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When You Don't Feel Blessed as a Mother

5 Tips for Teaching Your Kids How to Pray

What does it take to make sure your children realize God cares about every little thing in their lives? Here are 5 suggestions: 1. Make it personal. List two things that matter to you and then ask your child to do the same. Explain that if something matters to you, then it matters to God, too. Then pray together. 2. When teaching them to concentrate by closing their eyes and folding their hands, make sure they are not walking at the same time. (Wisdom from Jenn Grassman.) 3. Be willing to pray on the spot. Yes, I have asked God to help me find the specific item on the grocery store shelf—out loud, in front of my kids—because I needed to get

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A Single Career Woman's Desire to Adopt

A Single Career Woman’s Desire to Adopt

This is Part 1 of a three-part series following Kendrick’s adoption story. We’ve fallen in love with her big heart and witty words. We know you will too… One thing you need to know about me before we go any further is that I’m a planner. I like to know the plan, I like to stick to the plan, and if the plan seems to go off track I consider it my duty to get things headed back in the right direction. This can be considered my strength, but it can also be my weakness; it leads to a desire to control any and all situations. I may or may not have been placed in the “control freak” category a time or

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Life With Skylar

Life With Skylar

This is part two of a four part series of a young mother’s story. We were so captivated by her journey we knew you would be too. Find part 1 here. As I left the doctor’s office, my heart sank. I knew the specialist discovered something terrible and wouldn’t tell me. Thirty minutes after walking out of his office, the phone rang. It was our pediatrician. I was sure the specialist called him as soon as I left, and now he was calling me to confirm my fears. The first words I heard were, “Ashley, it’s not good.” With our daughter being a month and a half old, and seemingly mentally alert, in my head, the worst case scenario was a lifetime of

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Running on Empty Mom

Running on Empty, Mom?

Running on empty, who is going to fill MY tank? I love being a woman, a Mommy, a business woman, and a nurturer……but there are times I just want to be nurtured because I am running on empty! Do you ever have those mornings, you wake up when you just wanted to sleep a little longer? As you turn over, you see…. Cute little eyes staring at you Tiny little fingers poking at you Loud little voices calling your name Mommy, I wet the bed Mommy, I’m hungry Mommy, I can’t reach the cereal oops, I spilled the milk Mommy, I can’t turn the water off in the bathroom Mommy, I had a scary dream Mommy, the dog jumped in the trash

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