By day two I was already a complete failure. But let me back up a bit, and start at the beginning. I saw on the Facebook that “Embrace the Crazy” was leading a 30-day challenge to change one habit. This is great! I thought with hubris. I can do this! Just one habit? YES! Ok, now I choose. What habit can I build? Well, my house is messy enough that it falls on the spectrum somewhere between “squalor” and “hoarder.” Perhaps I can do just five minutes of cleaning a day, changing rooms every day. That’s reasonable. A mere nudge in the right direction. Day one: I am a SUCCESS! I spent five minutes in my son’s room and made progress. In fact, I’m pretty sure the clouds parted and sun shone in that room and God gently patted me on the head. This will be a piece of… Day two: cake. Where is there cake? I need some cake. Because it was a mere five minutes of my life and I couldn’t do it. I could not bring myself to clean. Day three: no. I will not. I shall not. Not even for cake. Or birthday cake Oreos, and […]
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What’s Her Secret? Surviving Motherhood Like Beyoncé I’m no celebrity mom, nor am I a wannabe. I can barely hold it together when nobody is watching. The thought of 24/7 public scrutiny makes me sweat. Celebrities fascinate me, though. I read that Khloe Kardashian can’t wait to hit the gym after giving birth and I’m academically intrigued. I can’t say I’ve ever been that excited about sweating by choice. It seems we all love a superstar mom, as long as she doesn’t look like a mom. We expect hot post-baby bods two to four weeks after they give birth, and we buy up every magazine that promises to reveal their secrets. Last year, Beyoncé sent Instagram (and her husband) into a drooling frenzy with a selfie slideshow wearing a skimpy, skin-tight red dress just two months after having her twins. Meanwhile, I’ve never had twins and it still took me 18 months to lose the baby weight after my second. If you’re like me, these celebrity moms seem like they’re from another planet — their lives are out of this world. They have nothing in common with us average Janes – or do they? If one is to believe what […]
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I was barely six, but I knew our family tradition for Christmas. After purchasing a small tree, Dad would bring it home and wrestle with the tree stand until the evergreen stood submissively in the spot that Mother had selected. First the multi-colored lights were arranged, and then the familiar ornaments were hung. After that, it was my turn. The tinsel. Oh, the pain of hanging each piece of tinsel until one branch was completed. It seemed to take hours to hang all that tinsel, and if two pieces were stuck together, there was the unwritten rule that they had to be tediously pulled apart and each one hung separately. I don’t remember signing up for the tinsel-hanger job, but it didn’t occur to me to protest. It was my job – until my sister was born and was old enough to hang tinsel. I convinced her that tinsel hanging was an enviable station. Then came the waiting. Christmas gifts at my house were often home-made. One winter I needed a warm coat, so Mom cut up her coat and made a coat for me for Christmas. Looking back, I wonder what she used for a coat. Another Christmas, she […]
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For those of you who read my previous blog “When Life Doesn’t Go According to Plan”, our daughter, Viviana, was stillborn at 38 weeks in July 2011. At the time of her birth, we did not know what had caused her heart to stop beating. We decided to proceed with autopsy, and 3 weeks after she had passed, discovered there was a small abnormal blood vessel that had been present in her umbilical cord. This abnormality, called an angioma, had burst open and created a blood clot inside the cord. This blood clot then completely blocked off the circulating blood to her. When I heard this news, I felt some relief because I knew she hadn’t endured any pain, as she must have passed away quickly. Also, I knew the angioma was a condition that was very unlikely to recur with subsequent pregnancies. Many couples in the infant loss support group had a multitude of emotions when becoming pregnant after a loss- mostly excitement mixed with fear of losing another baby. However, knowing that Vivi had died from a rare condition actually left me feeling very optimistic and hopeful for the next pregnancy. We started trying six months after she […]
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We all love, and feel the need, to be in control of our lives. In control of our kids, our finances, our jobs, our marriages, our relationships, our health. But oftentimes, life spins out of control, and usually in the blink of an eye. For some, it could be a terrible car accident, an earthquake, or a sudden loss of employment. For me, when I think of a time when my life felt utterly out of control, was when I was pregnant with my daughter Viviana in 2011. I remember sitting on my couch with my then 1 year old, Nicky, eating the eggplant parmesan I had made to “induce” labor, when it occurred to me I had not felt her move since the late morning. I am an ob-gyn, and initially was not concerned, as neither she, nor my son, had been very active babies in the womb. I told my husband, Jack, I was going into my office to check her heart rate, and he insisted he come along. We made the 5 minute drive to my office (which by then was empty as it was evening), I lay down on the exam table, listened with the Doppler…nothing. […]
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Embrace the Crazy is about networking women together with those that are living life to the fullest with ALL their crazy. It's not a pit stop, a when I arrive or a when I get thru this...but a path to always taking the next step to living life as it is intended... in relationship with others to complement, equip, and encourage and not to compete.