Hi, I am Amber. And, welcome to Mark it with an S. I am so happy that you are here. We have been working for a long time to finally get this blog off the ground, and are really excited to finally make it happen. When I was pregnant with our first daughter, I did all of the things to prepare for the baby to be here. I had the perfect stroller, the best car seat, all the bottles. The baby shower filled our closets with first toys, first spoons, cute outfits, and the best bath assortments. But, what I wasn’t prepared for was for me. For what I was going to endure navigating a complex pregnancy (sickness, breech baby, suspected pre-eclampsia, etc), an ever changing birth team (my first provider dropped me at 16 weeks because she was no longer doing labor and delivery) into an unknown practice with a revolving door of practitioners, known of whom seemed to know me or my husband or have our best interests at heart.
I was uneducated and underprepared to ask the right questions, know my rights, and know how to advocate for myself and to help my husband do the same for me. I ended up in the hospital, totally unsure of my situation, and pushed into intervention after intervention, a full room full of strangers, and no one looking out for me, or my babies, best interests. With a doctor I had never met before (of course, the one physician in the practice I had not met), after 3 hours of pushing my sunnyside up baby had her shoulder stuck and I was forced into an emergency c-section after a failed epidural. The entire experience was traumatic, including the week-long hospital stay with issues with my catheter, too many meds, and unable to breastfeed with no support. Armed with an SNS tube and not much else, we were sent home to care for this precious newborn with trauma and no idea what to do next. This began my deep rooted understanding of the issues in our healthcare system, especially when it came to women and children, and my DEEP, internal need to find my #momroar. Fast forward 2 more biological kids later, more birth trauma, some crazy FEEDING issues, and 2 additional foster children, my #momroar is deep rooted and I am no longer an unseasoned, uneducated woman, and I am ready to help fight back and help others do the same.
There has been so much happening behind the scenes leading up to this. We have launched our first course, Managing Feeding Issues in Children, to help families like us navigate the ins and outs of why your child is struggling to eat – ages birth to 6. This has been the heart and soul of why this blog was started. We had to navigate so much on our own through the birth and growth of our three kids and each one has been challenged with different issues. This includes, of course, learning to trust our gut, and advocate for ourselves and our kiddos.
We have felt really isolated, lonely, and many times, unsupported. And, we didn’t want others to go through that too. That is why we decided to create this blog and the course – so we could connect with other families like us that are navigating this journey as well. We wanted to build a support community that could help each other, listen to each other, and share ideas, recipes, tips and tricks that help your family to grow and thrive.
So, here we are! We are going to be posting about motherhood and parenthood, working full time with kids, childhood asthma and breathing issues, tongue and lip tie procedures, reflux and laryngomalacia, food allergies and FPIES, sleep apnea, birth, #mombossing and more. On top of that, we will talk about how to live with these things, travel, and thrive and everything in between.
We look forward to building this community with you together. Welcome to Mark it with an S.
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