by Tina Santiago-Rodriguez (Philippines) | Feb 5, 2014 | 2014, Maternal Health, Motherhood
The initial signs of labor — you already know them by now, if you’re a non-first-time mom like me. You know what to do and what to expect so you stay calm and maybe even continue going about the usual events of your day.
Then labor progresses and you feel that it might be a good idea to get to the hospital or clinic or birthing center or wherever it is you’ve decided to give birth. For those who choose home birth, you don’t even have to leave your home.
You let the process of labor continue naturally and try to remember to take deep breaths. You focus on the beauty of childbirth, the miracle that is taking place right this very minute inside your body.
You think of the life that you’re bringing into the world — a whole new being, separate from you yet very much a part of you. This baby — your baby — will be a part of your heart and mind for a very long time, until you are called to leave this world for good.
It may be a cliché but it is oh so true: being pregnant, giving birth, becoming a mother… all of it changes you. When you are finally able to push your baby out (or he or she is taken out of you if you deliver via caesarean section), you marvel at how this tiny, wailing little person can bring about different emotions in you all at the same time.
The strongest response of all?
Love.
An overflowing gush of love for your baby. Most likely every mother has felt it, whether she’s given birth for the first time or the fifth time. This is my child, my precious child, and oh how I love her! I would do anything for her!
And that’s the beauty of childbirth, my friends. It allows us to see beyond ourselves. It reminds us of the importance of living for others, especially the child who has been “given” to us for a special purpose.
As a mother of three, I can testify to how the birth of each of my children, and the events afterwards, profoundly changed me. Each birth, each child, each situation is unique and I know I am blessed and have learned a lot from all my experiences combined.
My children were born in different countries — two were born in the national hospital of Timor Leste (East Timor) and one was born here in the Philippines. They each have memorable birth stories. I rejoice because despite the challenges my husband and I faced after each of our kids were born, all three of them are healthy and happy now.
Sadly, this isn’t the case for many mothers all over the world. Thousands of moms have lost their children to infection and disease. In their case, childbirth did change them but not in the way they imagined it to.
But what if you and I could help make childbirth a more positive and safe experience for mothers? What if we could help women see the beauty of it all, so that they could really say “Childbirth has changed me for the better”?
Well, you know what? We can certainly do so through organizations like Cleanbirth.org, which aims to help provide clean birth kits, and train nurses and volunteers about maternal health. We can also just “be there” for a fellow mom who needs extra support pre, during and post childbirth (especially post childbirth!). We can do simple things like ask how she’s doing, or offer to watch the baby so she can take that shower she’s been longing to have, or maybe even just say, “Hey, I’m praying for you. You and your baby are in my thoughts.”
We can do all of these because, at the end of the day, I believe that of all the changes childbirth can bring about in your life, this one could be the most profound:
Once you become a mother — whether or not your child lives or dies — you’ll forever be connected to other mothers.
And that, to me, is a beautiful thing indeed.
To support safer births for the mothers of Laos in Asia, you can donate to Cleanbirth.org, share this post, and/or join in the Twitter conversation on maternal health tomorrow, February 6th with World Moms Blog, Multicultural Kid Blogs and Girls Globe from 1-2pm EST.
This is an original post by Tina Santiago-Rodriquez of the Philippines of “Truly Rich Mom”.
Photo credit to Cleanbirth.org.
Tina Santiago-Rodriguez is a wife and homeschool mom by vocation, a licensed
physical therapist by education and currently the managing editor of Mustard, a
Catholic children's magazine published by Shepherd's Voice
Publications in the Philippines, by profession. She has been writing
passionately since her primary school years in Brunei, and contributes
regularly to several Philippine and foreign-based online and print publications. She also does sideline editing and scriptwriting jobs, when she has the time. Find out more about Tina through her personal
blogs: Truly Rich Mom and Teacher Mama Tina.
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by Olga Mecking | Feb 3, 2014 | 2014, Awareness, Being Thankful, Bilingual, Culture, Education, Expat Life, Humanitarian, Inspirational, Language, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Millennium Development Goals, Motherhood, Moving, Netherlands, Philanthropy, Shot@Life, Social Good, Stress, World Motherhood
Until a friend of mine had a terrible tragic accident in the Himalaya mountains that left her in a coma, I had never donated to a charity. We collected some money at our wedding to give to her husband, and my mom also donated some money to a charity that takes care of her, but that was it.
Since moving to another country and having children, I have been looking for ways to help others. I want to donate to more charities. I am just looking for the right one.
It isn’t easy. I have heard of many charities that have turned out to be scams or which just took people’s money and ran.
My situation is especially difficult because I live in a foreign country and do not know about the charities here. Though my Dutch is fluent, I still have trouble communicating in this language sometimes. In the Netherlands, many people go house-to-house collecting money for charities.
I think it is interesting to find out about charities that way because they’re often ones I’ve never heard of before. They are often small scale actions rather than big ones. But I think the mistake they’re making is the following one: before I contribute, I’d like to find out more about the organization, whether my friends have heard of it, whether there is something about them that raises red flags.
I think I might even agree to donate money if they were willing to leave a business card or something I could find them by. Instead, they want me to make a monthly commitment. Again, because I do not know them, I am not so keen on giving them my credit card number.
At the same time, my heart breaks for all the little children going through invasive treatments; who are terminally ill; who look like little ghosts because they have lost so much weight from all their chemo; for all the sick people who can’t get the treatment they need; or for children who are not so fortunate as mine; or moms in poorer countries, who have to travel for many days if they want to give birth in a hospital.
I really want to help. Since I became a mom and later a World Moms Blog contributor, I have been made aware of needs and dreams that can’t be fulfilled because of the bad conditions all around the world.
But the fact is that finding the right charity isn’t easy. I mostly say no to these door-to-door people. I do it with a heavy heart. I just want to make sure that I am really helping people in need, and not wasting my money.
Luckily, while looking for a charity to donate to, there is a lot I can do:
- In my circle of friends alone, there have been situations where help was needed, including domestic violence and pregnancy problems.
- I am considering taking the Shot@Life pledge and becoming a Champion.
- I can learn as much as I can about actions such as #MDG’s and participate in our Twitter Parties.
- I can find local communities, organizations, charities and brands.
- Many of my friends are absolutely talented people and use their talents to collect money for a good cause, and I can help them spread the word and participate.
I know this sounds like nothing, and I am not telling this to show off how good of a person I am. It is just to show that even though it sounds like nothing, we all can make a difference. I am still very new at this social good cause. I still have a lot to learn. Already I have asked my fellow World Moms Blog contributors for help choosing a charity I can actually trust and they have come up with great charities.
I need to do more. I want to do more. I will do more.
Do you have a charity or cause worth supporting? Tell us about it and help spread the word
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from Olga Mecking in The Netherlands.
The image used in this post is credited to Images Money. It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Olga is a Polish woman living in the Netherlands with her German husband. She is a multilingual expat mom to three trilingual children (even though, theoretically, only one is trilingual since she's old enough to speak). She loves being an expat, exploring new cultures, learning languages, cooking and raising her children. Occasionally, Olga gives trainings in intercultural communication and works as a translator. Otherwise, you can find her sharing her experiences on her blog, The European Mama. Also take a while to visit her Facebook page .
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by Natalia Rankine-Galloway (Morocco) | Jan 31, 2014 | Babies, Humor, Kids, Life Balance, Marketing, Motherhood, Parenting, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Since my son turned two, I have been getting questions about when another baby might be on the way. But the fact is that I have already have a second baby….my start up. And I’m just barely kidding. My business demands only marginally less time than a baby and gets talked about only a little less than baby number 1 on my Facebook page.
However, I will say that this first business of mine is, as my second child, benefiting from my experience with baby number 1. What I knew about starting a business could have fit on a postage stamp when I began. But I had at least a modestly sized pamphlet’s worth on being a mother.
I have been expanding both knowledge bases as my two babies have grown and I’ve noticed a substantial amount of cross over. Here are my five rules about running a business….or raising a baby…whichever. (more…)
Natalia was born a stone's throw from the Queen's racetrack in Ascot, UK and has been trying to get a ticket to the races and a fabulous hat to go with it ever since. She was born to a Peruvian mother and an Irish father who kept her on her toes, moving her to Spain, Ireland and back to the UK before settling her in New York for the length of middle and high school. She is still uncertain of what she did to deserve that.
She fled to Boston for college and then Washington, D.C. to marry her wonderful husband, who she met in her freshman year at college. As a military man, he was able to keep her in the migratory lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. Within 5 months of marriage, they were off to Japan where they stayed for a wonderful 2 and one half years before coming home to roost. Baby Xavier was born in New York in 2011 and has not slept since.
A joy and an inspiration, it was Xavier who moved Natalia to entrepreneurship and the launch of CultureBaby. She has loved forging her own path and is excited for the next step for her family and CultureBaby.
Natalia believes in the potential for peace that all children carry within them and the importance of raising them as global citizens. She loves language, history, art and culture as well as Vietnamese Pho, Argentinian Malbec, English winters, Spanish summers and Japanese department stores...and she still hopes one day to catch the number 9 race with Queen Liz.
You can find her personal blog, The Culture Mum Chronicles.
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by Tinne from Tantrums and Tomatoes | Jan 27, 2014 | 2014, Being Thankful, Belgium, Communication, Health, Life Balance, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Relationships, Stress, Tantrum and Tomatoes, Women's Rights, Working Mother, World Motherhood
If you Google bullying, there is a whole plethora of websites to choose from. Most of them deal with how to prevent your kid from bullying, how to react when your kid is bullied/being a bully, how to talk to your child about bullying.
But what if it is you—a fully grown adult—who are being bullied and there is really nothing you can do about it because the bully is also an adult…and your boss? And you cannot afford to lose your job.
Here is the situation: years ago I worked for a small, family owned business (You will understand why I do not name any names). I can best describe my boss as the Belgian cousin of Miranda Priestly, the Devil-boss who wore Prada. Believe me she had her down pat. From the sneering “that’s all,” the calls outside work hours, the berating because I could not divine her thoughts and causing her to suffer the indignity of having to actually tell me what was expected, the pout…
Oh yeah, they were related all right.
After little more than a six months, I was actively looking for another job. And then, a week before I planned to resign and tell her to go do something to herself, I found out I was pregnant. And the game and the world as a whole changed completely.
We had just started building our house, there was no way my husband’s salary would cover all the bills and finding a job while you are pregnant is not easy.
So I stayed on. But it was obvious right from the start that they did not like the idea of having a young mother as employee.
Since I was competent at my job they had no reason to fire me outright and because Belgian legislation is rather protective towards pregnant women in the workplace, it became almost impossible to fire me when I handed over the medical bill announcing my pregnancy.
And so the bullying started.
Little things at first. Saddling me with a huge amount of work half an hour before I was due to clock out. Making a mess of the client contact database, insisting it was my fault, even though there was actual proof that it wasn’t.
But when they noticed that I was relatively unaffected things got BAD. In capitals.
While the company was closed for the summer holidays I got a letter detailing every little thing that I had done wrong after I announced I was pregnant. And I really mean everything, like putting one (1!) sheet of paper for an invoice the wrong way up in the printer causing them the loss of a whole eurocent in paper because I had to reprint the page. After that it got even worse than you can imagine. Belittling me in front of clients, calls at all hours, at all times, screaming, yelling, throwing. One day I came into the office to find that my boss had emptied my trashcan all over my desk. Fun times… I can tell you.
You must wonder how I dealt with the situation. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I did not deal with it.
No, that is wrong. I did deal with it, but not in the way you might imagine. I did nothing.
I showed up for work, I let them scream, I let them yell, I let them belittle me, when they called at 6am on a Sunday I answered the phone and made no complaint. Nothing. When I arrived at the office I did my job. Business as usual.
This was my defense strategy. I did my job and because I continued to do it well, they never had an excuse for firing me.
Yes, I could have filed a complaint for harassment and started a legal procedure. I even started collecting evidence in case I should one day be forced to do so. Chances are very good I would have won, since the evidence was pretty rock solid. Yet, this was never really my intention. I was 29 at the time and legal procedures in Belgium can take a looooooooooooooooooong time. Dragging my employer to court would take ages, it would cost a lot of money and it is the kind of thing which haunts you forever. I still had my way to make in the world, my career was just beginning. A court case was likely to follow me around for my whole life and I did not wish to bring this kind of baggage with me.
I collected—and still keep—the evidence just in case.
In retrospect, I should have gone to my doctor, explained the situation and asked him to declare me unfit for work. But I did not do that. As soon as it was legally possible I resigned and the happy dance I did on my last day of work might have come straight out of a Broadway musical. I never looked back.
Has this situation ever happened to you? What did/would you do?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our writer in Belium, Tinne of Tantrum and Tomatoes.
The image used in this post is credited to Elizabeth Atalay.
Born in Belgium on the fourth of July in a time before the invention of the smart phone Tinne is a working mother of two adorably mischievous little girls, the wife of her high school sweetheart and the owner of a black cat called Atilla.
Since she likes to cook her blog is mainly devoted to food and because she is Belgian she has an absurd sense of humour and is frequently snarky. When she is not devoting all her attention to the internet, she likes to read, write and eat chocolate. Her greatest nemesis is laundry.
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by Meredith (USA) | Jan 24, 2014 | Adoption, Babies, Bedtime Routines, Being Thankful, Birth Parents, Communication, Family, Husband, Infertility, Life Lesson, Motherhood, Parenting, World Motherhood
I am the first person to admit that I had no clue about adoption before I adopted my son. I remember when I was growing up, I would tease my brothers that they “were adopted”. There was a girl in my first grade class who was adopted, but I was always told not to talk about it to her. I came to think that adoption was something that was a secret, and because it was a secret there might be something wrong with it. (more…)
Meredith finds it difficult to tell anyone where she is from exactly! She grew up in several states, but mainly Illinois. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana which is also where she met her husband. She taught kindergarten for seven years before she adopted her son from Guatemala and then gave birth to her daughter two years leter. She moved to Lagos, Nigeria with her husband and two children in July 2009 for her husband's work. She and her family moved back to the U.S.this summer(August 2012) and are adjusting to life back in the U.S. You can read more about her life in Lagos and her adjustment to being back on her blog: We Found Happiness.
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by Mama B (Saudi Arabia) | Jan 22, 2014 | Bedtime Routines, Childhood, Discipline, Family, Home, Kids, Motherhood, Parenting, Saudi Arabia, World Motherhood
“Your house is a dungeon of rules” is what one of my child’s closest friends said to him last week.
That was a unique way of saying something I’ve heard many times before. “Your house has so many rules!” “Is it true you make them go to sleep at 7 on a weekend?” “Why can’t they play on the iPad during the week?” And “What!!! No coke??”.
Just for the record, my 7 and 10 year old don’t go to sleep at 7 on weekends or on weekdays. They fall sleep anywhere between 8 and 8:30 on weeknights and 9:30-10:00 on weekends. They both wake up at 6:30. Most experts would agree that 10 hours of sleep is healthy and needed. Some might even say that my 7 year old needs more sleep.
Weekdays are screen free unless it’s homework related and yes, it’s true, no coke or any other fizzy drink full of sugar for the kids. I’m not saying they have never had it but it’s not allowed in my house, the “dungeon of rules” house.
Our other house rules include: only healthy unprocessed foods, a blasphemously early dinner time (by Saudi and Arab standards), no eating in front of the TV, limited screen time when they have friends over, no backing out on a commitment (like after school classes, parties or visiting friends), and making eye contact and being polite.
All our house rules feels right to me, like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. So why has a comment made by my son’s 10 year old friend bothered me so much?
I think it’s because I know that the older he gets, the more he will be hearing these kind of comments. Or probably because when I was young, I did live in a dungeon of rules. Unfortunately for my mother, there was no ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ alternatives to the junk others were having.
Growing up, I did feel like my mother imposed too many rules on us.
As an adult, I know I’m a better parent for it. My mother planted the seed of wanting my children to eat well and be healthy in me. She made me realize that children cannot always get what they want, or think they want.
I had a lovely childhood full of freedom and excitement in ways other children never had. For example, I could always choose what I wanted to wear, so I always wore an outfit of a sleeveless top and ruffled skirt that was black with a purple line around the edges. When that was in the wash, I looked like a hobo. We never had a million adults around us all the time just a nanny who didn’t worry about us getting dirty. We explored and imagined and had a whole troop of explorers with us who all had different rules than ours and we survived.
Children now talk more openly to their parents and other adults and I am always amazed at how comfortable they are telling me things I would have never dreamed to say to an adult when I was a child. Maybe that’s the only difference. The fact that I know that our house is called “the dungeon of rules”.
Will my children end up feeling deprived that I don’t let them stay up late? That’s probably the biggest obstacle I have. That, and trying to keep them from eating junk. I can handle being known as the strict mother but can my kids handle being known as the ones with so many rules? (Another gem was when one of their other friends said at dinner “In my house I have no rules! No one says no to me”.)
I am trying something new in my parenting now and it seems to be having a positive effect. I tell them what they’re working towards. They do have rules, but in return for how well behaved, independent and responsible they are (which they really work hard at and achieve brilliantly most days) they get more freedom than any of the kids with ‘no rules’.
I respect them and their opinions. They have the right to say they don’t like a rule and I as a parent have the duty to enforce it. They have choices in their lives and a say in how they want things to go, as long as they continue to prove they’re responsible enough to make them. I’m toughest when I know they’re doing something that is beneath their ability or their character. I find it hard to stay positive in those situations. I believe in them so much that it’s difficult to see them doing something that’s not a reflection of their ability.
Many mothers have told me I’m expecting too much of my children but I’m so immensely proud of them and what they achieve, how self reliant they are in the environment they’re living it, how they take responsibility for their actions and how they effect others. I believe none of that would have happened had I not expected so much of them.
As for the rules, the basic fact of the matter is that children cannot be healthy, happy and productive if they are sleep deprived, have an unhealthy diet and if they rely on passive entertainment such as iPads and TV’s. So, if it takes a dungeon of rules to make them happy and healthy then I’m making a neon sign and sticking it on the roof!
Do you feel you have too many rules?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Mama B from Saudi Arabia. She can be found writing at her blog, Ya Maamaa.
Photo Credit to Dave Hamster who holds a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Mama B’s a young mother of four beautiful children who leave her speechless in both, good ways and bad. She has been married for 9 years and has lived in London twice in her life. The first time was before marriage (for 4 years) and then again after marriage and kid number 2 (for almost 2 years). She is settled now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (or as settled as one can be while renovating a house).
Mama B loves writing and has been doing it since she could pick up a crayon. Then, for reasons beyond her comprehension, she did not study to become a writer, but instead took graphic design courses. Mama B writes about the challenges of raising children in this world, as it is, who are happy, confident, self reliant and productive without driving them (or herself) insane in the process.
Mama B also sheds some light on the life of Saudi, Muslim children but does not claim to be the voice of all mothers or children in Saudi. Just her little "tribe." She has a huge, beautiful, loving family of brothers and sisters that make her feel like she wants to give her kids a huge, loving family of brothers and sisters, but then is snapped out of it by one of her three monkeys screaming “Ya Maamaa” (Ya being the arabic word for ‘hey’). You can find Mama B writing at her blog, Ya Maamaa . She's also on Twitter @YaMaamaa.
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