Breastfeed in public while preserving your modesty

I am reminded today of my very early days in my first pregnancy. I had my first ultrasound when I was only nine weeks along... so I guess that means the gestational age was only 7 weeks.

You ever take your child to a restaurant and put her in a booth or chair and it's just a tad bit too low, even with a booster seat? It is amusing to watch a child try to eat normally in a short seat and she is too big for the high chair. Most of the tasks she can handle by herself, but when it comes to drinking out of the open cup full of soda with her straw, things get real interesting!

Someone told me recently that since my fourth child was delivered by C-Section, all of my subsequent deliveries would have to be done the same way! I was livid to hear that. Some hospitals consider the V-BAC a dangerous practice and will routinely do all subsequent deliveries by cesarean if one has been done in the past.

Arianne was five years old. For the first time since she was born, I went on a business trip out of town and was gone overnight. I had a babysitter. She went to school that day, first time in a dress. The weather was beginning to cool down and shorts were no longer a comfortable item. It was her first year in school.

Yesterday, Valentine's Day, was my first child's eighteenth birthday! I can't believe I am old enough for an adult child! I am blessed because people think we look so much alike and I am so youthful that people confuse us all the time. If I show a picture of us together, when she was thirteen, they get it wrong all the time and think she is me! But the fact remains that I am now old enough for an adult daughter!!

Sunday is Valentine's Day. I have never been a big fan of Valentine's Day after having no family and a husband who did nothing nice for me. I never got flowers or candy or special dates. But one year, I got a baby.

I was a single parent at the age of nineteen. I had been engaged, but he turned out to be more trouble than he was worth and so I was alone.

This is a product recall blog. If you have purchased a Generation 2 Worldwide or ChildESIGNS drop-side crib from Buy Buy Baby, Kmart, or Wal-mart, they have been recalled after the death of three children.

The drop sides can detach and mattress supports can break away from the crib frame. Both defects cause a gap in which children can become trapped and suffocate or strangle.

Once again, if you have either of these two cribs, they are being recalled after the deaths of three children. The cribs were made by Generation 2 Worldwide, which went out of business in 2005.

This is the third and last part of a three part "Stranger Dangers" series. I spoke in the first one about how some news stories shaped the way I chose to protect my daughter. The second one discussed how I thought she was understanding, and how she spoke to a stranger who approached her. I thought she had understood the danger and had developed a healthy fear, but then I realized she hadn't.

I talked last blog about two frightening stories from when my first child was an infant. These stories shaped the way I ensured my daughter's safety. As time wore on and her personality came forth, I was glad I had made those choices in the beginning.

I heard two really frightening stories when Arianne, my first baby, was quite little. Both happened before she was a year old. One story was about a little boy in Brittian, who was standing next to his mother at the butcher's shop. The little boy was somewhere between three and five years old. An eleven year old boy came by and quietly snatched the smaller child. The mother didn't even notice, as she was involved with her meat purchase. When she was finished, she went to retrieve her son's hand, but it was not there. It was with her son.