First Blog-iversary

One year ago, with my tiny month-old baby boy on my chest, I signed up for blogger and wrote my first post. Pretty soon, I will be up to 100 published posts!

So far, blogging has provided me with a lot of great opportunities to learn and grow and share what I learn with others. I am still figuring out how to balance blogging with the rest of my life. One thing that seems to help is scheduling posts in advance so that I'm not putting pressure on myself to finish a post within a certain amount of time so that my blog doesn't sit stagnant for too long. AI like to schedule them five days apart. You may have noticed that sometimes this causes me to publish a post quite a while after I read the thing that inspired it (this is the case with both my Brewer Diet post, for which I was really surprised at the response--it is now my 4th most viewed post ever, and my last post on Doulas and Cesareans). So, if I'm really behind in the online discussion, sorry. This is what is working for me right now!

Stay tuned for more interesting and exciting posts!

the Women in the Scriptures blog is having a giveaway

Visit Women in the Scriptures to see how you can enter to win some really cool prizes. The blogger, Heatherlady, is a collaborator on the book, The Gift of Giving Life. She is a mother and a doula. Her posts explore the lives of scriptural women in depth and she also writes quite a bit about birth.

We are Daughters: my guest post at the Gift of Giving Life

Clicking on the title of this post will take you to a guest post I wrote for The Gift of Giving Life called We Are Daughters: Preparing Young Women for Pregnancy and Childbirth about how key parts of the Young Women program in the LDS church apply to pregnancy and birth. The story behind the post is quite amazing. Felice (aka Mother Earth) and I both feel that this is something that should be shared with Young Women, so please share it with the Young Women or Young Women leaders you know.

It's a Blog Party! (No-Go BlogHer Blog Hop)

I found out about the No-Go BlogHer Blog Hop from Semi Crunchy Mama's blog. I'm not going to BlogHer, so I thought I'd join in!

• When did you start blogging?
  

I'm pretty new to blogging. I just started this year*, soon after the birth of my second child, my little boy who was born in March.

• Why did you start blogging?

I wanted to share all of my insights about natural birth and hypnosis and document my journey in pursuing a childbirth career. I had been a member of an online natural birth forum for over two years at that point, and I felt that sometimes things I posted there were more suited to a blog format (I'm still involved there, though!)

• What is one thing you are going to do this week that is WAY cooler than going to BlogHer?

Right now I'm snuggling a sleeping baby, which is always cool. And waiting for the guy to come back and fix our fridge. And doing laundry. And telling my two-year-old "No, you can NOT watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse right now!" Don't know if that stuff is cool or not...

• Share a post that you think says a lot about you or is your favorite.

The posts in my sidebar are my favorites and/or ones that seem to be reader favorites. But, I'd like to share one different from those five, so here is "Let them to this and not fear" which is about childbirth traditions in my husband's family heritage.

*I later realized that this is actually not my first blog. I had a xanga site which nobody read when I was in my second year at BYU. I just found it. I was really embarrassed by how immature I was.

August 1-7 is World Breastfeeding Week

It's World Breastfeeding week! To learn more about this year's theme, visit http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org.

I don't normally post a lot about breastfeeding, since the main focus of this blog is birth, but I am planning a post or two more, in addition to last week's post from the Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival, about breastfeeding, to honor the occasion.

By the way, I changed my blog design again. I went back to a basic blogger template, with a slightly different layout (wider, different header). I hope this one is a little softer on the eye. I also designed the new "Birth Unplugged" badge in my sidebar. I needed a graphic so that when people post links to my post on facebook, they can select it as the thumbprint. It may need different colors, but it is what it is for now.

new blog background

My old blog background expired, so I went back to The Cutest Blog on the Block and found this one. What do you think? Too dark? Too pink? Too funky?

I'm not sure I'm going to keep the text colors as I have them now or not. I'm not sure about the blue...