NJ La Leche League conference info

FYI

registration for the 2012 Conference for LLL of the Garden State is now open. The conference is April 20-22. Please visit www.lllgardenstate.com to download the 2012 Conference Registration Booklet and Registration Form. A fantastic weekend is planned and we hope to see you there!

Of course, babies and children are welcome at all of our meetings. Refreshments are served and free informational reprints are available. As a mother to mother support group, meetings are a wonderful place to ask questions to other moms who have "been there & done that".

Membership: While a mom does NOT need to be a member to come to a meeting and receive the support she needs, we ask moms to consider membership if they feel they are benefitting from the group. We are a volunteer nonprofit Group and all membership fees go directly to helping moms and babies. Membership is $40 per year and includes access to our lending library and discounts for conferences.

If you have any questions about the meeting or individual questions about breastfeeding, please call one of the Leaders; Aleksandra: (973) 744-2971, Andrea: (908) 810-5645, Emily: (973) 218-1122, or Miriam (973) 533-6887.

ICAN meetings, Essex Cty NJ

ICAN of Greater Essex County Meeting dates
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Held @ Seton Hall University, South Orange
Arts & Science Building, Room 208A, 6:30 pm

This is shaping up to be an exciting year for ICAN of Greater Essex County!
We will be hosting our first meeting of 2012 on Tuesday, February 28 @ 6:30 p.m. Trish DeTura*, RN, CNM, MS will presenting on Mayan Abdominal Massage and about how it can help moms recovering from birth, particularly our moms who have had c-sections! Not to be missed!
We will be celebrating our first anniversary this March.
Elaine Diegmann, ND, CNM, Director of the Nurse-Midwifery Program at UMDNJ will be presenting in April. She will speak about the work happening at Newark Beth Israel to reduce their c-section rate and to move from Worst to First! Trish DeTura will also give an encore presentation for those who could not make the February 28th meeting. So excited to see the transformation in our community! If you plan to attend any of the meetings, please RSVP either by email or on our Facebook page, under events. Looking forward to seeing you at the next meeting!

* Trish is amazing - you owe it to yourself to get in to see her!

we all need to hear this: Mr. Rogers' farewell

"I like you just the way you are"

a lovely, UPbeat look at Down's

Do yourself a favor and check out Ups and Down's Syndrome with sabrina bean photography. I bet it will change you in some way...I found this very touching, for I was once the doula in a very similar situation and that baby is surpassing all expectations now, just like this little girl...happy birthday to her.
The poem from their doula, which could apply to anyone's birth story:

“When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.

the picture says it all

a soldier meets his baby for the first time

what people think...Homebirth

lots of these floating around, I have to say, I'm enjoying them - this one is fun! (click on the picture to make it big enough to read)

snippet of motherhood: makes my heart melt 2

Every ski mountain seems to have a tree covered in undergarments that have been flung from the lift. Today when we were skiing, this is what I heard:

middle kid, age 11: "there's the bikini tree!"

youngest kid, age 7: "those aren't bikinis, they are bras"

middle: "same thing"

youngest: "actually, they are not the same thing"

I don't know why this struck me as funny, but it did

A nice moment later in the day: the youngest one (on skis) towed his snowboarding brother over a flat part so they could both get to the fun part faster. I heart them.

truly