Stress, 'corrosive cortisol', and your baby

Highly recommended book for all parents:

Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain

by Sue Gerhardt

A highly readable and lively book about the neuroscience, psychology, and biochemistry behind the shaping of your baby's nervous system, this book confirms many important correlations between love and brain development. The chapter on 'Corrosive Cortisol' alone makes the book worth reading. Secure emotional attachment is vital for a lifetime of mental and emotional health.

Persistent powerlessness (the very nature of babyhood) and unrelieved, chronic stress are clearly identified as causes of damage to mental and physical health in babies. The importance of tender, protective parenting cannot be stressed enough. However, many parents are so stressed themselves that offering this type of parenting is challenging, to say the least.

The link between emotional insecurity and cortisol dysfunction is clearly documented. Tuning in emotionally and being available to your child is vitally important. Creating optimum support for yourself as a parent is a wise and powerful choice. Ensure that you are available to your child on this level.

Please contact me at

www.BabyShaman.com

for details on how I provide coaching by phone and email for busy parents.

Support for Your Own Parenting Wisdom

Dealing with any parenting challenge is easier with solid support from a source you know and trust. Particularly during the first year or two of parenting (and plenty of times after that, as well), we question our own abilities to deal with the ongoing challenges. This is for good reason, as most of us have never embarked on a role more challenging or stressful. No career experience can prepare one for parenting.
This questioning can easily spiral into doubt, lack of confidence, and provide fodder for disagreements with our partner, family members, and friends. Often a second or third child brings up new issues that are unfamiliar and difficult.
It's fascinating to me that while much time and energy is devoted to all the nuances of decorating the baby's room and signing up for all the 'right' activities and classes, it's often unclear where the parent will turn when there is a question or challenge that is not addressed in the readily available channels.
New parents are typically stressed with just making it through the day and week. They are handed dilemnas and questions on a daily basis, some more pressing than others.
What if you had a wise and trusted person in your life with whom you could consult regarding parenting as needed, to vent, ask questions, reflect, or any combination thereof? How would you benefit from increasing your own skills in accessing your own parenting wisdom, while understanding more about this path of great opportunity?
Ingrid at babyshaman.com is dedicated to working with you to evoke the best parent in you, keep you learning about yourself, and support you in your choices in parenting.

Rewards of Conscious Parenting

Deciding to use parenting as a journey for growth is indeed a wise choice. The many challenges and lessons that come our way in the various stages of parenting create a rich series of opportunities to look at ourselves in new ways.

Our children, even from their very youngest moments, reflect some of our own qualities and trigger some our our most difficult emotions. While most of us experience great joy and wonder looking at our offspring, it isn't long before some pattern emerges that reminds us of something we haven't quite worked out ourselves. That is the prime moment for growth, if we choose to use it. That is the opportunity to reflect on what is being triggered in ourselves, where it originates, what purpose it serves in our present lives, and the choice to release and go forward, or not.

No one talks much about the incredible opportunity for self-examination and growth in child-rearing. Maybe it's because young parents are exhausted, overwhelmed, and accepting what they've been told about the realities of parenting. Still, in those instances where it is welcomed, we have the chance to look at who we are, how we are, and what we might want to edit out of our own behaviors.

For expert and experienced support in being the parent you want to be, contact me at 303.776.8100
Ingrid Johnson
www.BabyShaman.com

Support for New Parents

After all the books, all the advice of family and friends, the job of parenting comes down to you and your partner's choices. Today is an opportunity to look closely at what you most value, where your skills and natural strengths are, along with where you are not necessarily particularly well prepared as a parent.
Even in the very best circumstances, where your own experience being parented was healthy and nurturing, when we stand in our own roles as parents, many challenges appear.
Many of us choose not to repeat all the ways in which we were parented. Inventory needs to be taken, and deciding which familial patterns to continue can be balanced with your own choices for parenting in healthy, loving ways.
As a mentor and guide for the early parenting journey, I offer ongoing support by phone and email. I help you clarify your vision and implement practical strategies.

Personalized parenting education and coaching is a valuable investment in the life of your family.

Look for my new website

www.BabyShaman.com

coming in the next few days!

Ingrid Johnson
303.776.8100

Mom's Breastaurant

Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair in Fort Collins, CO, featured this wonderful and practical respite for nursing mothers. How nurturing for both mother and child to have a place where nursing is unhurried and comfortable. It's time this concept spread to more public places, so that breasteeding is the easy and obvious choice for moms and their young.
Please visit www.momsbreastaurant.com for more info.

Ingrid Johnson
www.BabyShaman.com
303.776.8100

Trusting Yourself As A Parent

There are many influences, ranging from the media to our own relatives, that can steer us away from our own wisdom and knowing when it comes to parenting. At times, it seems the media is bent on portraying "super moms" and "super dads", who somehow emerge from full days of work and still have the perfect meal ready, the 'quality' time to spend with their young children, and of course appear flawlessly groomed and attractive themselves. Any parent who is successful over time knows they have chosen to let go of things they thought were indispensable in order to get it all done.

The tricky part is making the choices on what is truly important to you, what is moderately important, what is marginal, and what you are already willing to cut loose. It varies for each of us, so if your friend with a toddler is refreshed and uplifted by going and having a manicure, you may choose something entirely different. It might be a yoga class, a regular meeting a friend for coffee - what matters is that it works for you. What matters is that you take the time to identify which small things can be added in, changed (sharing a chore with a partner?), deleted entirely - and you may want to revise the list frequently.

Your intuition and inner guidance are valuable and the more you apply them, the more effective you will be. There is not necessarily a lot of external support for doing this, and for that reason, the services I offer can be most helpful in keeping you on track. Consistent support for tapping in to your wisdom - a path for parenting that reflects who you are and what you want for your child.

Ingrid Johnson
303.776.8100

Appreciation

At any age, we all respond positively to appreciation. Listening to an adult describe the rewards of acknoweldging individuals in the workplace, I immediately think back to my experience this week with a delightful 23-month old boy.

My young friend had a somewhat bumpy transition to being a big brother 2 months ago. Still in the baby/toddler stage himself, he had no way of understanding how a baby sister would impact his life.

As I held his baby sister and quieted her (first time Mom and Dad have left her with other than a family member), her big brother repeatedly wound up her musical mobile, brought over baby books, and waited patiently for me to be available.

When we were getting ready to write about today's events in his journal (I'll write more about that later), I looked at him and said, "I'm so proud of you. You did a great job as a big brother," he absolutely beamed. He was so obviously happy to be appreciated, and of course his behaviors are reinforced and will be seen again.

Don't forget to take the time, whatever the age of anyone you interact with today, to acknowledge and appreciate them, right where they are now, just as they are now. It's a powerful gift for us all to give each other.