Dear Husband, Please DONT Do this.

Lets just say I hope my husband never gets any funny ideas like this in his head! I did laugh for quite some time after watching this tho!

Guest Post:

As my second guest post (ever!) I am so happy to introduce Meghan, a dear friend of mine. She doesn't actually blog, but wanted to write a post for me! I thought it was fitting seems how July is Cord Blood Awareness Month and she actually has experienced banking her son's cord blood. I didn't know much about it, but thanks to Meghan I am fully aware! Here, Meghan describes her journey into motherhood- enjoy!

For any new mother-to-be, pregnancy brings on so many feelings and emotions that sometimes it’s hard to separate which feeling is which. For me, pregnancy brought on happiness—happiness that I was finally starting a family with my loving husband, Ryan; fear—fear that I wouldn’t be a good mother; and wonderment—wonder at how amazing it was that I was creating this little person inside of my body and wondering what sort of person my baby would become. When my son David was born, my whole world changed and refocused—my life was now all about my family (mostly David, of course) and I couldn’t be happier to begin on the journey of motherhood.

Pregnancy involved many more preparations than I had originally thought—I pictured a cute round belly and afternoons spent looking fabulous in cute maternity clothes while perusing baby shops, picking out equally fabulous clothes for my son. But life is full of transitions and fine details. With my round belly came morning sickness and swollen ankles. Trying to maintain my ‘cute maternity look’ required pregnancy exercise classes and not indulging in my ice cream sundaes topped with mountains of hot fudge. Small sacrifices for the big picture—a healthy baby boy.

More important than worrying about how I was looking and faring the pregnancy changes, was worrying about my baby’s future health. My side of the family has a scary history of leukemia that has taken loved ones too soon. Ryan’s side also has suffered from cancers and diabetes. There is no cure-all insurance to save my little David from future sniffles and ailments, but I wanted to do what I could to help him and his future brother and sisters from whatever sickness I could protect them from—this thought was what fueled my decision to use umbilical cord blood banking. After much research and deliberation, we chose to go through ViaCord, a private cord blood banking company. They we so helpful every step of the way! While there are few guarantees in life, we know that if anything were to ever happen to our David, (or another child down the road!), we have done anything and everything we possible can to help. 

David is a healthy, happy baby—although he is growing too quickly before our eyes! I’ve already started scaring Ryan with talks of our next addition to the family—I can’t help but love being a mommy!

A WOMB FULL OF MUSIC

 My husband and daughter woke me up today because they had music playing in the kitchen (louder than most people would play their morning music, trust me).  I went downstairs and saw the two of them dancing. My husband had our daughter in his arms and was spinning around with her. It made me tear up a little bit (I tend to go OD on emotions when I think things are cute).

So reflecting back, the reason I shed a tear was because it reminded me of when I used to dance around the kitchen by myself playing relaxing music while my daughter was still in the womb. Sometimes I would play music while cooking or baking, or sometimes just for the two of us to hear, to relax to.

I wanted to share this idea of playing music to your unborn child because I know some of my friends never heard of it when I told them about my kitchen escapades. I found an article on playing music for your baby while they’re still in the womb that said, “Prenatal stimulation through music heard regularly while in the womb might provide some babies with a sense of confidence and relaxation after they're born.” Of course there are probably studies that show there is proven stimulation through playing music for a baby in the womb, but the fact for me was I enjoyed it!

I've always liked a variety of music, country, classic, jazz, some hip-hop so Lily was exposed to a variety of music. I am sure I looked silly in the kitchen dancing around, but I found it relaxing and it always put a smile on my face.  I like to think Lily liked the music then, as she still likes it now!