The biannual ritual of changing our clocks for Daylight Savings can be a mixed blessing. Both shifts can disrupt sleep patterns, especially for families with babies and toddlers. If you're a parent, you're likely familiar with the challenges of maintaining a healthy sleep schedule for your little ones. This blog post, with insights from a certified pediatric sleep consultant, will guide you through the process of managing the "falling back" transition during Daylight Savings for babies and toddlers and big kids.

Bringing a new life into the world is a beautiful and transformative experience, but it's also an incredibly demanding one for a mother's body. As such, postpartum recovery is a crucial aspect of the journey to motherhood. In this blog, we will delve into the essentials of postpartum recovery, emphasizing natural, holistic care, and exploring the role of essential oils and herbal remedies in this healing process.

Several professionals have emerged to lend a helping hand during the postpartum period. In this blog post, we'll explore the differences between four key figures: postpartum doulas, night nurses, newborn care specialists (NCS), and night nannies.

It has come to my attention recently that parents of newborns are wanting to sleep train their babies.  Newborn babies are not ready to sleep train until 4-6 months of age! 

Using oils can bring your birth experience to the next level. For the past 8+ years, I’ve been using these oils at the request of my birth doula clients. Essential oils are a powerful tool to use for birth. The following list of essential oils has been compiled to help you in making selections for your birth.

Parents often ask me about my favorite infant sleep books. I recommend reading up on baby sleep while you are still pregnant so you can be more prepared for when your newborn arrives. Baby and parent sleep is important for health, wellbeing, and recovery.

Want to have your best birth possible? In addition to taking childbirth education classes, preparing your body physically and your mind mentally, there are natural, pregnancy-safe tools that can help with your emotions and actual pain management during labor and birth. Enter… essential oils! You can use essential oils as natural medicine for a number of ailments, concerns, and calming properties.

Whether you have an infant, toddler, elementary aged kiddo or teenager, you care about sleep in your household. Infants need up to 16 hours of sleep a day, toddlers need 11 - 14 hours of sleep, preschoolers need 10 - 13 hours, school-aged need 9 - 11, and teenagers need a minimum of 8 years a day.

It’s fun to share this journey and we hope it continues to educate, inspire, bring hope, and build awareness. A question I have been asked several times is, “Will you be attached to the baby?” I love this question because it’s not something I ever really thought about until people started asking. For me, the whole process and relationship has been crystal clear from the very beginning. But for those of you wondering and trying to understand, I did a video recording to better explain.

I finally edited the names out of some of my video updates (I had forgotten and said the IP's names or the doctor's name in LA). I'll use Part 7 as our VLOG (video blog) update station and keep it all in the same place. It's fun to look back and see the virtual documentary of parts of the process. You'll notice a huge gap in video updates between pregnancy confirmation at the end of February all the way through 24/25 week update in July.

We're nearly to the end of the second trimester now. In the part 3 post, I shared the products and treatments I used to prepare my body for the IVF process and getting pregnant. In part 6, I want to share with you the supplements, treatments and self-care that I’ve been using during pregnancy.

So up to this stage in the pregnancy, the girls hadn’t really noticed my growing belly. But around 21 weeks, Maia did make three separate comments like, “Oh wow, look at your big belly - are you pregnant or something?” The reason we did not tell them until after the amniocentesis results were back is because if anything happened with the pregnancy, we didn’t want to have a conversation about termination or miscarriage (because this decision is 100% up to the IPs). But now that all looked great, it was time.

Picking up where we left off - the blood test confirmed I was pregnant. Now we had to confirm heartbeat with a 6-week ultrasound with the reproductive endocrinologist here on O’ahu. I had to continue daily progesterone shots and estrogen medication- still managed to do them myself most days, but did have some bruising and soreness.

I wanted to tell you about the products I used to prepare my body for the IVF process and getting pregnant. As you know, I am a health & wellness educator and birth & postpartum doula. Over the past 4 years, I’ve educated dozens and dozens and dozens of mommas on how to prepare their body for conception, use natural solutions during pregnancy, and support their birth and postpartum experience with essential oils and other holistic supplements & treatments.

Alright so next stop, Los Angeles. I was already booked to attend a DONA birth doula training in Seattle, so it was convenient to add the California portion of the trip. We scheduled our medical screening with the IVF doctor for the week of Thanksgiving. Brad, the girls and my Mom met me in LA, and we went to D*I*S*N*E*Y*L*A*N*D and Thanksgiving dinner with our extended family (my Momma is from Orange County). At this stage, not even my Mom knew we were going through this process. We kept it very discreet.

We have news! I’m 27 weeks (6 months) pregnant with a baby girl. Yay! But the baby is not ours. I’m a gestational carrier for a wonderful family based in LA. The baby is not genetically related to me or Brad. She is her parent’s daughter and I have the privilege of carrying her until she arrives earth side. We are thrilled for them, and excited to share our journey with you. We have been keeping this news to a small group of friends and family for so long, and now we are making it internet public.

Today I wanted to revisit three reasons some people claim you should not use essential oils for health care. I am all for freedom of expression and all that jazz, but these are simply unfounded.

We prevent head lice with essential oils. Our “Uku Spray” is 3-5 drops each lavender + melaleuca + rosemary essential oils. Fill up a 2 oz. glass spray bottle with water (regular tap water is fine), then add your essential oils. Shake up, then spray all over the head.

Frankincense has a variety of uses and has been utilized for centuries. It is known for its ability to rejuvenate skin, and to promote cellular health and immunity. Frankincense supports the central nervous system, and is great for emotional balance too. It can be applied on soles of feet, or base of skull. For older kids and adults, it can be taken internally – either under the tongue, or in a capsule and swallowed. Frankincense is also an amazing oil to help manage inflammation.

There are some fantastic essential oils for camping that can really come in handy and can make for a much more enjoyable experience. Today I’m going to give you a list of 4 essential oils you should bring along on your next camping adventure.