The Benefits of Family Routines

Mothers have a variety of different roles in life besides being a mom. For someone who is a married, working mother it can be difficult to juggle so many different roles and responsibilities. Mornings are often hectic for a working mother, who must make sure her children are up, dressed, fed, and out the door before she leaves to go to work. These tasks can be complicated by many factors such as problems with the family pet, oversleeping, or trying to tie up odds and ends from the night before.

If you are a working mom who can relate to hectic mornings, one thing you can do to make it more manageable is to plan for tomorrow, today. By planning your morning ahead of time you will not only know what to expect for the following day, but you will also save yourself a tremendous amount of time and effort. Mornings become a lot more manageable if you don’t have to pack school lunches, sign off on homework, and clean up last night’s dinner dishes all before you walk out the door!

Another advantage of planning ahead is that children respond well to routine. A child who knows what to expect every morning is much less likely to have a major meltdown when it matters most. Research shows that children crave routines. Children that have scheduled routines surrounding daily activities such as getting ready for school, or preparing to go to bed, are much more likely to feel calm and secure. In addition, routines help to promote positive behaviors such as responsibility in young children.

Don’t complicate your life by being unprepared! As a savvy, hard-working, working mother you can reduce your stress and make daily tasks more peaceful for you and your children by establishing routines and sticking to them!

Related Articles:

New Research from The Ohio State University says routines can help prevent childhood obesity

Detailed overview of study from The Ohio State University - Routines can help prevent childhood obesity

Routines - How and Why they work

Three routines can reduce the risk of childhood obesity

What's your phone of choice for on the go social media marketing??

I'm and running a poll for the next week to see which type of phone New Breed Moms prefer to use to keep up to date with social media marketing on the go! Poll closes on 5/25/10 so cast your vote! ------------>>

Have more to say? Comment on this post to tell us why you love your phone for social media marketing?

The New Breed Mama Speaks out on Infertility

Today, I’ve decided to be brave. Today, I’ve decided to blog on a very sensitive topic; a topic that hits close to home for me and many other women throughout the United States and the world. According to the American Pregnancy Association, http://www.americanpregnancy.org/main/statistics.html, there are 60 million women every year between the child bearing ages of fifteen to forty-four. Of those, six million women deal with infertility. There are approximately 2 million married couples who deal with infertility annually.

Although the causes of infertility vary, the emotions associated with infertility seem to be similar for many women. Infertility can lead to depression, anxiety, and a host of other physical and emotional issues. Many women feel “defective” and blame themselves for the fertility issues. This can create a cycle where the negative emotions women often feel as a result of infertility can in turn cause undue stress on the woman’s body and natural hormonal cycles, thereby perpetuating the infertility problems.

The causes of infertility could be physical, emotional, or even environmental. The infertile partner may be the male or the female. For more information about causes of infertility check out the following links:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/infertility/ds00310/dsection=causes

http://www.ehealthmd.com/library/infertility/inf_causes.html

Infertility treatments for women often involve medications to stimulate menses (progesterone) and induce ovulation in women (clomiphene citrate). These medications can exaggerate the already intense emotions that infertile women experience. Woman taking a fertility medication like clomid find themselves spending a great number of hours charting their cycle. Fertility specialists often advise women to chart their Basil Body Temperature every morning and use other techniques such as monitoring of the consistency of cervical mucus as a means to predict ovulation. Some women opt to buy Ovulation Predictor kits to, well, to predict ovulation.

Couples struggling with infertility typically spend the first two weeks of a cycle charting temperatures, taking medications, and planning for “the big O”, which in the fertility community means ovulation. When that most important time arrives, the couple focuses their attention on ‘baby dancing’. After ovulation, the couple (mostly the female partner) then spends the next two weeks, the ‘two week wait’, agonizing over ever little physical symptom that might, just maybe, be a sign a pregnancy. Then, when those two weeks are up, it is time for the woman to POAS or ‘pee on a stick’ to see if the couple has achieved a BFP ‘big fat positive’ or if they have to, once again, face the dreaded BFN ‘big fat negative’.

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Some Common Infertility Acronyms:

TTC – Trying to Conceive
The Big O – Ovulation
BD – Baby Dance
BFP – Big Fat Positive
BFN – Big Fat Negative
OPK- Ovulation Predictor Kit
CM – Cervical Mucus
TWW – Two week wait
POAS – Pee on a stick
PCOS – Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
MFI – Male Factor Infertility
IVF – In vitro Fertilization
IUI – Intrauterine Insemination

The Stories of Our Lives: Field Trip to the Columbus Zoo

Last Friday I chaperoned Khegan’s field trip to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium http://www.colszoo.org/ and we had a great time! At first we were afraid it may rain, but the sun held out and it was beautiful day! The new Polar Bear exhibit was the main attraction for most of the kids. It was pretty awesome!

As a parent it is very cool to go to your child’s school and watch them interact with their teacher and peers. There were 22 children in the class and 11 parents chaperoning so each parent was only responsible for 2 children, but some of the groups joined together as the day went on.

The zoo is a great place to take the family. The children will love it and learn a lot all at the same time!