Why I'm Here

Coming from a big family (1 older sister, 1 younger sister, 2 younger brothers, and at least 35 cousins off the top of my head), I always thought that motherhood would be a natural thing for me.  Being an elementary school teacher made me feel even more ahead of the game.  When I started thinking about getting pregnant, I realized that I really didn’t have any clue how to grow and take care of a newborn baby, except for what I had gleaned from my mom so many years ago and from my big sister, my mother hen, LB.  LB had two chicks of her own at the time, my beautiful niece and nephew.  As I started to feather my own nest, I read every book, website, blog post, pamphlet, and handout I had access to.  I joined Facebook groups of other moms and constantly texted and called my mom, LB, my mother-in-law, and other moms in my life.  Luckily, I’m married to a Family Nurse Practitioner, so that helped, too!  I discovered that the most helpful information often came from the trial and error of a new mom trying to figure out how to live in the world around her. Every time I learned something new and useful, I filed it away in my memory to share with my little sister when her time came.  As you find when you’re pregnant, remembering anything is quite a task!  So, I simply started typing these ideas randomly into my phone during the minutes that I waited to see my OB.  As my bump grew, my list got so long, it would be overwhelming and impossible to share in its disorganized stream-of-consciousness format.  I decided on a more structured arrangement of blog posts to share the wealth of knowledge I had picked up from other mother hens and from my own trial and error.  So here’s hoping that I can pass to you some mommy wisdom that I’ve used with my little chick, Little LB!