Predictive Analytics- Not as Scary as it Sounds

Hi There!

This is a post I've had heavy on my heart; growing in immensity for about 2 years now in my brain.

I wanted to take a little time to do my best to break down exactly what I am studying and make it possible for anyone to understand.

But first, a little background.

I am a Registered Nurse, and have been for 8 years. I have been in healthcare for 13 1/2 years. About 4 years ago I took a position that actually removed me from the bedside but instead I got to be a part of helping to design and change our electronic health record in a way that improved patient safety and made more sense for nurses and physicians to use.

I remember within my first month on the job, I was quickly drawn to the fact that we could use this electronic health record to capture data and summarize data on hundreds of patients. Better yet, in this new electronic health record, we had abilities to build our own reports! Someone very influential to me, someone I think was placed temporarily in my life for the sole purpose of steering me in my life's direction, sat with me or initially two hours and gave me my first high level crash course in reporting. I-was-hooked!

From there, I continued to grow and expand the use of reporting and my passion for it became apparent. I became the person on my team that was known for being able to whip up new reports and to also be a whiz in Microsoft Excel. These skills allowed me to not only create and put together data from within the system, but to also summarize and track that data.

About a year or so into the job, I knew I had to advance my degree. I have a Bachelor's of Science in Nursing, but I needed more. I've always loved school and am a total school nerd. I enrolled into my local college for a Masters in Nursing with a clinical nurse leader track. I was doing well, about 2-3 courses in- but......I hated it. Guys, nothing felt more nauseating and not right to me in my entire life. It was all research papers and evidenced based practice and blah. Not for me. I didn't really know what else to do, so I switched to a Masters in Nursing Administration. In this track I started to see how cool the whole business aspect of the degree was, but again felt nauseated in what I was learning with regards to how broken our healthcare system is. I spent years on the floor doing my best and it was never enough to the same people that I was in a degree trying to become. Again, it didn't feel right. I took a break from school when I was pregnant with my daughter and in the post partum period as well. I thought long and hard about returning and what felt right.

Then I saw it: A new program at the same college- It was a sign! A Masters in Science in Predictive Analytics. Technically this isn't a healthcare degree, its a business degree. I always had felt that I had to stay in nursing because that's what my background was, even if I hated the pursuit of anything further in it. But this degree.... it felt right in my bones. Multiple people have told me that when I start talking about data analytics/predictive analytics, they can visibly see the light in my eyes go on fire, the rise in pitch and rate of speed in my voice increase, and I could talk about it forever. That right there everyone, is passion. And I knew I had to pursue it. I always joked in the last 4 years in my job that if I could wake up and spend all day in an Excel spreadsheet, I would love-my-job. Data to me makes sense. Its tangible but also infinite. It's like a math equation. There's an answer at the end but also infinite answers! It makes me jump up and down inside, can you tell?

So I started this program in January of 2019, when my daughter was ~ 5 months, leaving my husband to watch Abby for the 3 hours a week I spent in class. It sure has been a whirlwind ever since, and I still am spending 12-15 hours a week involved in the program with homework, reading and in class time. But, what's difference in this is that those 12-15 hours don't even feel like "homework" or "work". Sure I need to make sure I get it done within the deadlines, but its FUN! When I make a dashboard or create a model I get a sense of immense joy and celebrate in my newfound abilities. It kind of feels like what I imagine it felt like for Spiderman to suddenly wake up and realize he has superpowers. This is my superpower.

But, as I started meeting other moms and introduced myself and what I do or mentioned my degree, or talked with friends and family about it, I started noticing a frustrating pattern: No matter who it was, within a minute of talking about it, people's eyes started glazing over and they'd switch the topic. I told new people that I was getting my degree in Predictive Analytics and they acted as if I said I was getting the degree in astrophysical quantum mechanical engineering (if that's even a thing?).
It was sad for me because this was my passion and I wanted to tell the world about it. To me, at work or in school, it was all common talk and people understood it, but I wanted to be able to share it with more than that.

So, I'm here to break it down as best I can.

I don't want to give any fancy definitions of what it is, because even I don't understand those. Lots of statistics and blahblahblah.

To me, predictive analytics is as simple as using and understanding data from the past to predict future events. That's it!

Ok so let me break it down into a real elementary example, then I will advance a little from there.

This example brings in my love of epidemiology also, so its fun. Let's say there was a big gala held last weekend celebrating something. 100 people were in attendance. There was a lot of food served, but lets focus on 5 foods: They served chicken, salmon, filet mignon, and ham as the meat choices. They had a big salad on the side for vegetarians.  However, unfortunately, a few days later the party hosts found out that 20 of their guests got really sick! They called and blamed the food they ate. So the hosts had to find out, what was it that made everyone sick? So they interviewed each of the sick to find out what they ate. But what is important here, is where predictive analytics comes into play is not just interviewing what the sick ate, but what the non-sick ate too. For example, if the 20 sick people all had the ham, but so did 70 non-sick people, it's probably not the ham that made everyone sick. But how could we really say for sure? Well, nothing is ever really sure in data analytics. Data analytics treats words like "always" and "never" like the black plague.

So what we do here is treat each one of those food items as variables. (I'll explain that more). Each variable would be "Did this person eat the ham, yes or no?" or "Did this person eat the turkey, yes or no?"  By then viewing the list of the 20 people and what they ate, we could likely identify a pattern of the common thing(s) that the people ate that got sick. OK now stay with me- we can use that knowledge of understanding what we THINK got sick and assign them values. So perhaps those that ate the turkey were 80% more likely to have gotten sick and assign it a value of 0.8. We now PREDICT, will the rest of our guests get sick? So we take that list we have of our 80 non-sick people, and essentially run it through a model to determine a prediction of how likely that person is to be sick. If we found out that ham and turkey were the culprits that made everyone sick, if we took one of the non-sick people and found out he too had ham and turkey, we could give him a pretty accurate high prediction that he may end up also getting sick. However, if one of the non-sick people say they only had the salad, and non of the sick people ate the salad, we can give that person a pretty accurate prediction that they won't join their friends in the quarantine.

This sounds like a silly example, but its how these predictions work. In examples I am involved with at work, the "20 sick people" that are used to learn and understand the variables, is actually 500,000+ people (perhaps more likely in the millions). Taking data from only 20 people can lead to a lot of inaccurate predictions. Maybe they were lying or forgot details. But if we are seeing common patterns on half a million people, we can gain better accuracy in applying what we learn to future predictions. Instead of the "variables" being 5 food groups, we instead look at hundreds of variables to better understand everything we can about these instances. In this way, we actually can learn new things that may be correlated to a disease or effect.

Some examples I am working with in healthcare now are predictive models that can predict how likely a patient is to have a cardiac arrest event, or code blue. We use close to a hundred variables that were studied on thousands of patients that DID have a cardiac arrest (think back to the gala example-the people that DID get sick). By learning what was unique about those patients that did have a cardiac arrest, we can then match that set of variables up to a new patient that walks in the door, to see how closely they align to those variables. Perfect match? Yikes, lets get the code cart ready! Hardly a match at all? Pretty good chance they aren't coding on our watch (Again, nothing is certain).

But think of how useful these models are to us, in healthcare and around the world (I'll get to that). By having a prediction like how likely a patient is to have a code blue, we can better prepare as healthcare workers to make sure that doesn't happen. We can better plan staffing ratios, adjust the treatment plan, get other specialists on board, etc.

I'm working on a few other models in healthcare right now, but there are more than I can even count that are actually out there. We are gathering the ability to predict who will experience a fall, who will contract sepsis, who will come to the emergency department, who will not show up for their appointment, who will come back to the hospital, etc. In each of these cases, these accurate predictions allows us to prepare.

But think of it more globally. These same concepts can and are applied to other "predictable" events. We could essentially predict tidal waves, hurricanes, tornadoes by understanding what variables or conditions were in place before those events happened in the PAST to help us predict the FUTURE. We could predict mass shootings by understanding conditions and variables that were attributed to past mass shootings. We could predict train delays or breakdowns, airport delays, stock markets, retail surges, etc. With the growing amount of data being made available to all of us, even you, we will have more and more ability to predict almost any event that can have attributable data to it.

Anyway, I hope I didn't lose you all! If you can't tell, this stuff is my life's passion and I can't wait to see where it takes me. This is really just the beginning. There is so much more involved to it all than what I wrote about in this blog, hence the need to get an entire degree in it (and even that will barely scratch the surface), but I wanted to at least get the concept out there as easily understood. Maybe I'll even inspire someone to go chase the dream for themselves, too!

Thank you for reading.

Toodles!

_ The New Motherboard

RISE: Made For More

This past weekend I have had the privilege of being able to attend one of the most unique experiences of my life; one I hope I get to remember forever. It is called the RISE women’s conference and was packed with approximately 4,000 women. It is led by Rachel Hollis, a motivational speaker and so much more. Guest speakers came in for talks such as Dave Hollis, Trent Shelton, Ruthie Lindsey, and Stacey Flowers to name a few. The whole concept of the 3 day conference was owning your past, present and future. Digging into your past and pulling out traumas, hidden things we have pushed away but that are affecting how we embrace the present, identifying patterns of the past and how they affect us today. Owning our present, teaching us about habits, how we get habits, how bad habits start with a trigger and how to identify our own triggers, how to be grateful, how to create new and improved habits, and how to overall focus on our own health and wellness and loving our body AS IS.

AS IS, LADIES, AS IS!

Owning our future was about turning our crazy passions and dreams into an actual, doable reality and how to get there. How to show up every day even when it’s hard, even when we forget our why. She gave us tools on how to remember our WHY and how to create the “How”.

What struck me the most and what I will always remember about this conference is the sense of community it brought. I am an introvert by nature, but thanks to years of theater, teaching others in front of a classroom, and having a job that necessitates extroversion in order to be successful, I am a pretty good extrovert when I need to be. Even though it’s scary and seems like 7^th grade again, I can go up to a table of women I don’t know that are talking to each other and ask if I can be their lunch buddy. However, this conference had such community that the whole concept was that everyone was approachable. There were no mean girls. Everyone- although so different- such different backgrounds, different traumas, different beliefs, different cultures, different futures- everyone was the same in that we all were here for the same reasons. If you weren’t approachable then what were you even doing here to better yourself? I met a handful of beautiful women that I had amazing conversations with, and I admire their story. Even after the conference, with the help of social media- us 4,000 women that were connected at this conference can stay connected online and use each other as constant reminders to use what we learned.

One of the most heartbreaking moments of the conference was a sector called “Stand up for your sister” which had the whole arena in total tears before lunch on the very first day. We each filled out a piece of paper, checking off boxes-anonymously- of experiences we have been through- traumatic ones. Experiences such as, “I have struggled with anxiety”, “I have abused alcohol”, “I have been raped”, “I have lost a child, “I have lost a parent”, etc. We had ample time to fill it out and wipe our tears in silence before we all folded our papers and handed them to our neighbor.  Then handed that paper to another neighbor. And another. And another. Until our paper was sure to be 20 seats in any direction, and we had a total stranger’s paper in our hands, full of tear marks. The concept of “Standing for your sister” was that when those traumas and experiences were called, if our paper we now held from a stranger had it checked then we stood for her, our “sister”. The idea was so that we could see the earth-shattering amount of volume of women that stood for things that I at least thought was supposed to be a small percentage of women. When you think you are the only one dealing with past traumas and current breakdowns, rape, divorce, abuse, anxiety and depression, but then see literally the entire room of 4,000 women stand up at once when “I struggle or have struggled with anxiety” was called. The amount of women that stood up when they read “I have been raped” was absolutely gut wrenching. I was personally shaking and this still brings tears to my eyes on the amount of women who stood for “I have lost a child” as I felt deeply for them as a mother. Ladies we think we are ALONE in dealing with these experiences because no one talks about them! We stick with high level small talk but don’t know that we all have the same level of understanding to help one another out on a deeper level. No one is alone! There was not a dry eye in the audience by the end, including Rachel Hollis herself.

               We learned about perspective- about how multiple people can see the same situation unfold and all walk away with a completely different understanding depending on their viewpoint. We were challenged to think, are we standing at the right perspective for the issues that haunt our own self? Are we giving something in our past too much weight that doesn’t even matter? Do we need to adjust our camera lens in which we view the world? Not one of us on this planet lives in the same world. We live on the same planet, but not the same world. We each walk through with a different understanding of how things work and why we are here. The biggest take away I got from this portion was that life is not happening TO us; its happening FOR us- And that is the camera angle I want to always see the world and remember when I am facing tough times or moments.

               We were challenged in finding a word that we can carry with us the rest of 2020. A word that we can pull up in times of great need to help us get through. A word to remind our self WHO WE ARE and who we WANT TO BE and who we need to always reach to be. The word is supposed to scare us, not be a complacent, easily attainable word. I struggled with this at first, tossing around a few. I liked ‘ambitious’, ‘autonomous’, ‘adaptable’, ‘audacious’, (for some reason I had a thing with “A” words I guess). But as much as I liked them, none of them felt right enough to be *my* word, a word I love enough that I could get tattooed on me if I wanted. But then today, I saw a word and I knew it was mine.

EXTRAORDINARY

adjective

adjective:extra-ordinary

1.      very unusual or remarkable.

Synonyms: remarkable, exceptional, amazing, astonishing, astounding, marvelous, wonderful, sensational, stunning, incredible, unbelievable, miraculous, phenomenal, prodigious, spectacular, striking, outstanding, momentous, impressive, singular, signal, preeminent, memorable, unforgettable, never to be forgotten, unique, arresting, eye-catching, conspicuous, noteworthy, notable, great, out of the ordinary, unusual, uncommon, rare, surprising, curious, strange, odd, peculiar, uncanny, unco, fantastic, terrific, tremendous, stupendous, awesome, amazeballs, out of this world, unreal, wondrousremarkable, exceptional, amazing, astonishing, astounding, marvelous, wonderful, sensational, stunning, incredible, unbelievable, miraculous, phenomenal, prodigious, spectacular, striking, outstanding, momentous, impressive, singular, signal, preeminent, memorable, unforgettable, never to be forgotten, unique, arresting, eye-catching, conspicuous, noteworthy, notable, great, out of the ordinary, unusual, uncommon, rare, surprising, curious, strange, odd, peculiar, uncanny, unco, fantastic, terrific, tremendous, stupendous, awesome, amazeballs, out of this world, unreal, wondrous

I want to strive to be extraordinary for Abigail. An extraordinary mom. An extraordinary wife. An extraordinary sister. An extraordinary student. An extraordinary employee. This is my word!

            We were also challenged to face our past by thinking about writing our story. By deluging our memories, traumas, life on paper we can look at it from a new perspective and find patterns in our own life. By identifying past patterns and digging up hidden memories or parts about ourselves we forgot, we can enter the new time of our lives armed with new forces and plans to combat those patterns. Also, just being able to share your story in complete vulnerability is healing. I do want to try this and hope to start that project in 2020. As Ruthie Lindsey quoted, “If we don’t own our story, it owns us”.

            Rachel Hollis taught us about our fears of failure, about how they are all rooted into three main categories: Loss of security, loss of love, or loss of pride. Most fears all end up trickling down to a true root of loss of pride, but those are the fears we need to move past. We are not afraid of failing, we are afraid of people watching us fail. But what we really need to walk away with is failure is not something to be afraid of at all, and in fact we should chase failure and embrace it. Failure is a part of the journey, not the end. If you set out to write a book, or create a sculpture, or build a house, and everything was okay, you got to the end with no setbacks… Do you think that’s your best book? Best house? Best sculpture? Or how about the book you rewrote 100 times, or the house that fell over mid build and you made a new plan and made it even better the second or even third time? Failure’s are not the end. They are just curveballs we can use as momentum to keep going. They happen for us, not to us- and we are meant to walk with information to improve what we are trying to do. Failure is only failure if we give up. Rachel also engrained in us that if we compare ourselves to others, we will always feel like failures. If you want to start flipping houses and think “I will never be as good as Joanna Gaines”, but what you don’t realize when you have those thoughts is Joanna Gaines wasn’t amazing when she started out either. She probably had an idol she looked up to for inspiration but she carved her own path and kept on going and did it anyway. Do you think J.K. Rowling’s first copy of Harry Potter was any good? Probably not! Did Michael Phelps start out an award winning swimmer? No! No one starts out as perfect, they get there little by little. We SEE them as perfect because that’s when they are entering the public eye. Don’t believe it! Fears that are destroyed come back as confidence.

            The second day (yeah, that  ^ was all day one !) was all about owning our present. Owning who we are today and what we are doing about it. About how “Goal weights” are garbage and we need to throw those away. She encourages daily habits instead which will foster a healthy state which is all we should care about- taking care of our body that has taken care of us- not punishing it into a size 2 jean. If we don’t take care of what’s going on in our mind first, then even getting into a size 2 jean still won’t be enough. It will never be enough until we fix our mind. I have a lot of work to do with this mindset and it will be a daily struggle but the best thing I can do in the struggle is to adapt these positive habits, bless my body with good food, and every time I have a negative thought about myself I need to replace it with a positive one. With the help of Amy Porterfield on stage, we all came to the realization that people that feel like they are not enough on the outside (or too much on the outside- boobs are too big, our stomach is too big, arms too big, whatever) we compensate for these negative things by wearing more expensive clothes, or clothes meant to hide those flaws, or we compensate with our personality but those personality traits are FAKE. That’s not who we are and if we show up how we truly are, body flaws and real personality, that is the best thing we can do for us and our peers, for our children. Rachel’s powerful slogan is “Move your body- Change your mind”. Its not “CHANGE your body, just MOVE your body.” Know the difference. To truly love myself as is today, no matter what. To love my body for not just how it looks but what it can DO. To thank my body every day for what it can do. To love it every day for continuing to beat my heart every day and send blood to my brain. To be able to walk. To be able to hold my baby, to climb stairs, to play with my baby. It is an amazing body and I am making the next right steps to truly love it for what it is. We finished that segment with a hard exercise. We had to write down all the crazy things we hate about our bodies and then had to turn to our neighbor, a stranger we did not know, and tell her all the things we just wrote down. And I kid you not, we all wrote down the same things and yet thought each other were all beautiful!! I told my neighbor that I hated how big my arms were and how I couldn’t wave without them flabbing in the wind and she said she hated hers so much she got surgery, now she can’t raise them above her head and she regrets it every second. What is that?? It was an exercise I will never forget.

            Guest speaker Trent Shelton came and inspired us to adjust our mindset. To stop talking ourselves out of greatness. Instead of talking myself out of reaching for something because I am not qualified, instead replace that with a FACT of why I am qualified. To stop giving other people permission to place limitations on my own life- regardless of how close those people are to me, they are not me. To stop taking advice from the wrong people. To stop accepting the “cant’s” in your life- “I can’t do that, I can’t do this”. We can literally do anything. With research, determination and practice, we can do anything. People will judge us no matter what, its just human nature. They will judge us and hate us even when WE think we are our best selves or our worst selves. So, if they are gonna judge no matter what, why not just be our best selves then? My biggest takeaway from Trent, was he asked us to think about- when someone is around me, how do I influence them? If people hang out with me or have even a small conversation with me, do they walk away motivated and feeling good? Or do they walk away drained and feeling negative about whatever we were talking about? That really sunk in with me because it is easy to forget that what we go through does affect others. The way we carry ourselves and present ourselves to our family, friends and coworkers does affect others. Its so easy to think “I’m not doing great and not living my best life but its okay I’m just going to internalize it all and everything’s fine and no one will ever know”- but in reality- those people are spewing out sadness, negativity, doubts, and putting down others to bring others to their own level. So this may have been my biggest motivator yet- is that I want people to walk away from interactions with me feeling good about themselves, good about their space, their day, their world, the task they have to do- not dread, fear, insecurity. This is going to take a LOT of work! Its easy to complain to others when others are complaining to you and having a mini vent session! Others are complaining, you want to fit in and so you join in with the pool of complaints, so you feel connected! 100% the easier path. But nothing great in life is easy. I have to do the hard work to get on a higher path, and hopefully I will start noticing that I don’t as often hear negativity around me anyway because I have inspired others.

            On our last day we transitioned to the concept of owning our future and planning out how to turn out crazy dreams into a reality. One way that Rachel Hollis herself has done this is she started writing down her dreams every day as if they’ve already happened (past tense). If you write them down as goals, it scares your brain because they seem too big, too insurmountable, too lofty. But if you write them down as if they already happened, your brain gets used to it and even starts to accept it as reality. Then you can push past the fear and start living the life as if these things are true and make concrete steps to make them a reality. So, I am going to lay it out there and be really vulnerable. She challenged us to write down our dreams for where we want to be in 10 years, no matter how crazy or ridiculous they may seem. So here goes!

1. I am a published author and N.Y. Times Best Seller and have gone on book tours and have seen the difference my book has made for other people.

2.    I am a successful and well known and sought after real estate photographer.

3.   I have written and sold scripts for multiple television shows and movies.

4.   I travel the world and show my daughter new cultures- and we fly first class.

5.  I solve world problems working hand in hand with world wide organizations like NASA, WHO, CDC, Google, Microsoft, etc. using predictive analytics and machine learning.

6. I speak worldwide to audiences to tell them about #5.

7. I am a successful innovator, having created multiple inventions and ideas and worked with big home and health technology companies such as Microsoft, Johnson& Johnson, Google, Apple.

8.  I have a successful podcast with a huge following, number one in its category.

9.  I have my own business and company with employees that has turned one of my business ideas into a reality.

10.  I work with big tech companies on developing new uses for virtual & augmented reality that’s used not for gaming but for training people and for therapy. 

Ahh! There they are, some of my crazy dreams! I don’t know how I will maintain a life where all of those are true at once but that’s beside the point!

            Dave Hollis came to speak and was excellent. He gives a much different perspective than Rachel as he comes from a past of being afraid to change and fearing who is wife was becoming on her own personal growth journey. Fear of losing her. So, he coached us in some new ways about how not to let others get in our way on our future journey. He warned us the people we hold closest and love the most will try first to get in our way; to say our dreams are too big and unattainable, to say we won’t do it and why don’t we just keep doing what we’ve always done because it’s working? They will attempt to keep us at their level with them because they don’t also want to go on this journey at this time but that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge that and still go on our own journey. He also challenged us to accept the fact that we get in our own way and need to change our relationships with social media. He challenged us to accept reality that when we are browsing facebook, Instagram, snapchat, whatever- if we see something that makes us feel uncomfortable, less than, smaller, negative in any way- UNFOLLOW THEM. Facebook has this thing where you don’t have to unfriend them and make it awkward (unless you want to), but you can just unfollow them and remove them from your newsfeed! On Instagram, no one will notice if you don’t follow them anymore. Remove the beautiful models that make YOU feel LESS THAN THEM because they are posting fake pictures of themselves because THEY are insecure! Remove people that make you feel like less of a mom or less of a wife. Remove things you see that make you upset in any way! Unfollow unfollow unfollow! And stop watching the news if it makes you upset! There are new ways now to stay connected to the news you DO care about without having to sit through stories of rape, abuse, murder, etc. Get that crap out of your morning routine! I subscribe to an app called “Medium” that allows you to pick what topics you enjoy and they send you emails every day with GOOD articles about these topics. Do not let room in for negativity. And don’t worry, if a huge world event is happening- you will still know.

            Dave also challenged us to change our relationship with our calendar. It should be reflective of our values and our visions, not obligations and things we do not enjoy. Not things that aren’t helping us get to that 10 year vision. He said something that really stuck with me- “When someone asks you to do something – if its not a HELL YEAH, then it is a HELL NO.” Period!

            Stacey Flowers came on to coach us on who we surround ourselves with and why we do what we do. She gave us a metaphor based on her years as a waitress. Women go to a steakhouse and want steak. We order a beautiful steak and can’t wait for it to come. We wait the 20 minutes and the waitress comes back and brings all our friend’s plates and gives us…… a chicken. We didn’t order a chicken, we ordered the steak we came for. She said there are four types of women. The first kind immediately says, “I didn’t order the chicken, I ordered the steak!” The waitress apologizes profusely and offers to go replace it but the woman says no, no no, I will just eat it, it’s fine. Everything’s fine.  It will be great, the chicken looks great. So she eats the chicken but the whole time is sad she didn’t get the steak she came for. The second woman says to the waitress, “how dare you bring this chicken, I ordered the steak! You got it wrong! I am standing up for myself and showing you how wrong you are!” The waitress apologizes and offers to replace it but the woman does not want to be further inconvenienced by waiting another 20 minutes and says NO, she will EAT THIS CHICKEN but she will complain to her friends the entire time. The third woman won’t say anything. She doesn’t want to cause a fuss so the waitress doesn’t even know a mistake was made! The woman just eats the chicken in silence and is sad she didn’t get the steak she came for! The fourth woman- she sees the chicken being handed to her and she politely tells the waitress, “I am sorry, but I ordered the steak.” And she waits the 20 minutes again for her steak to come because that is what she came for and that is worth waiting for. Now, which woman are you? The metaphor here is that the steak, the steak is our best self- it’s the person we want to be that we need to put in the hard work for (i.e. the extra 20 minute wait) but too many of us just accept the chicken because its easy. It won’t cause a fuss. It’s not an inconvenience. It’s easier than waiting for what I really want. So, start waiting for the steak!

Overall, I took away from this weekend five main points:

1.     I thought my dreams had an expiration date, but they don’t.

2.     I can figure ANYTHING out if I know my why and if I put the effort in and keep showing up, and keep trying.

3.     All women have the same fears and insecurities about themselves and turns out no one is judging you for how you look, they’re too focused on how they look!

4.     If someone has an opinion about you or something you’re doing and you don’t like it, who the F cares? Move on!

5.     Every experience that we have had and have every day, *Every little thing* has happened to us for a reason. Good, bad, traumatic, whatever- we have been put through these experiences to teach us something. We have survived. We have come out stronger and we are still here. Ever since returning I see the beauty in more things and can more easily pick out the new patterns I learned in other things I see now, i.e. TV shows, other peoples content, songs, movies, etc. Positivity is everywhere as long as you are open to seeing it.

            I really did think my dreams had an expiration date and I’m starting to see now that dude, I am only a THIRD of the way through life and I have so much more time. I have accomplished SO MUCH in the last 10 years and cannot wait to see where the next 10 will bring me. When I was a teenager/young twenties I had a lofty goal thinking I was going to be “the next big writer with a best seller and my selling point was that I was so young and boy look how talented she is and yet so young!” But now in my 30s I have subconsciously felt like a failure because I could no longer have that dream of people shocked at how such a good book could come from a “young” writer. But GIRL people publish their first book at the age of retirement! It is not over! Does it matter if I had written an amazing book at the age of 22 vs the age of 32, if its amazing either way? No! The point is that it’s amazing, and it will be written when its meant to be written. Life is not happening TO me, it’s happening FOR me. The book will come! The dreams will come.

            Ladies & Gents, I wish I could have summarized every single thing I learned and took away but ya’ll, these are just the highlights!! There was SO MUCH content jam packed into 3 days. If you have the means and ever get the chance to go to one of these conferences, I highly recommend to go, just for the experience. That being said, I am now re-listening to Rachel Hollis’ book (Girl, Wash your Face) and have been listening to her podcasts, and a lot of the same content I heard at the conference is in her other content as well. But the conference does give you something you can’t buy at a store- the sense of community, the participation factor, showing up, dancing with 4,000 women, being really vulnerable to present your true self in front of total strangers.


Thank you for reading!

Here are some pictures throughout the conference:

Year One in the Books

Dear Abigail,
Today you are exactly one year old.

You know, as you get old you will probably hear the saying that time flies by. Well, it does in a way. However, the days can be long but the months and the years go by fast.

You make it possible for one year ago to feel like yesterday but also an eternity ago. Seeing the difference you have made in not only myself, your father but also seeing you grow has been remarkable.

364 days ago, a day after you were born, your daddy and I were in the hospital with you at around 11pm and you were screaming your little head off and we looked at each other, terrified, thinking, what have we done?! She won’t stop crying! Breastfeeding was harder than I thought it would be and hurt. That first day you came home with us I had no idea what we were supposed to DO with you. I remember desperately wanting to go take a nap and leaving you with daddy, and yet I couldn’t sleep because I was still learning how to sleep with one ear open.

That first night you spent in our house I think mommy and daddy both took shifts sleeping downstairs in that bassinet you liked so much on top of the pack n play.

Mommy and daddy learned pretty fast how to clean poopy out of onesies (and just throw some away), go out in public with a baby, give a baby a bath, and live on very little sleep!

I loved our time together during maternity leave, but I am glad I had 3 weddings worth of picture editing to keep me busy, because I also learned I am not the type to just stay home all day. And you honestly didn’t too much besides nap, poop, tummy time and eat! But you already loved music and would love to spend some time in your swing listening to Disney castle shows on YouTube.

Going back to work was easy for me because I knew you were always in good hands with your Nana. Having a blank slate for me going back to work was something I really needed in my career, allowing me to see things in a different way and attack things with a new passion and vengeance. It was a hard adjustment learning to get through days without naps and snuggles and learning to pump at work.

The holidays were fun but exhausting. Halloween you were Wonder Woman, because to me, you were MY Wonder Woman and I think you’ll officially grow into that role. Thanksgiving and Christmas were certainly an experience and full of lots of love. You were about 3-4 months old and still too little to enjoy any good holiday food.

The winter was fun, seeing you see snow for the first time. You seemed to like it but were a little young yet to really quite grasp that it was something different. There were a few cold nights that mommy and daddy were anxious and had first parent syndrome worried about how cold your nursery was (even one night we brought you in our room in your pack and play and ran a space heater!) In our defense, it did get down to single digits here!

I started going back to school for my Masters in Predictive Analytics (hopefully by the time you read this in a few years I am done and doing a crazy cool job! I’ll tell you all about it!) which allows me to follow my true passion. Sometimes I think I am crazy going back to school with a baby under one, but Abigail, you’ve inspired me to do better. YOU have inspired me to BE better. That life is short. To get out there and GET IT DONE. Because having a baby shouldn’t squash your dreams but only augment them and inspire you to go chase your dreams even more. Abigail, I want you to know that you can follow your passion anytime you want and be whoever you want to be. Let me say it louder for the people in the back, you can be WHOEVER YOU WANT TO BE. I will always be on your side and your number one supporter.

This spring was when you really started showing your personality, learning commands and making signs back to us that we taught you. Your first sign was for milk! Mommy took her first work trip away from you and it was super hard! But Daddy was a superhero and survived the week with flying colors with you! A few weeks later in May we took our first trip to the beach to Ocean City, NJ with your nana and pop-pop and had a lot of fun!

This summer you started crawling, or rather, inchworming. You love to play, and are so good at independent play. You love to read books and will sit on the floor for quite some time reading through your books. You also love activity centers or anything that plays music. You love playing with your doggie sister Daisy, and have learned how to "pet nice". Daisy even helps you clean up all your food you throw off your high chair and even clean up anything left on your face!

In August we went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with your grandma , grandpa, Aunt Alli and Rob. That was fun and it was quite the experience getting to see you play on the beach and in the water (you LOVE LOVE LOVE to splash in the water).

Tonight we are two nights away from celebrating your first birthday with all of the family and friends that love you so much and I can’t wait. Even though you won’t remember it, I hope you have a fun day.

I have overcome a lot of anxiety this year and still have a ways to go. I used to be terrified of the toddler years to come, and still am ( a little) but I have this overwhelming sense that based on your personality so far, you are going to be a calm child. You are incredibly curious and if anything, that will be what we have to monitor! You love to open things and see what happens when you do things so I am sure we will all find ours selves in trouble soon. So instead of fearing the toddler years, I am actually excited. As much as I LOVE baby snuggles and always will, I am so ready to hear you talk, answer your questions, play games with you, make artwork with you, show you all the Disney movies I love, and continue seeing you grow and learn.

Some days you make me feel like I’ve got this parenting thing down and we are all doing great, and other days you have me doubting my entire sense of judgment, self and decision making. I think this will be the pattern for quite awhile and thats okay! I keep reminding myself that all I need to do is show up every day, do my best and just keep trying. Be grateful for what I have and focus on today.
I’m excited for what the rest of 2019 and 2020 have in store for you and our family. I can’t wait to see you start walking within the next couple months.

I hope one day you will read all these entries and know how much I love you now, and forever more. I love you to the moon and back. Your smile brings light into my life and your laughter is so contagious.

The other day I was driving and a song came on that gave me goosebumps because each word rang so true in my heart. So I’d like to share it here.

"The Mother"
Brandi Carlile
Welcome to the end of being alone inside your mind
You're tethered to another and you're worried all the time
You always knew the melody but you never heard it rhyme
She's fair and she is quiet, Lord, she doesn't look like me
She made me love the morning, she's a holiday at sea
The New York streets are busy as they always used to be
But I am the mother of Evangeline
The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep
She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep
She filled my life with color, canceled plans, and trashed my car
But none of that was ever who we are
Outside of my windows are the mountains and the snow
I'll hold you while you're sleeping and I wish that I could go
All my rowdy friends are out accomplishing their dreams
But I am the mother of Evangeline
And they've still got their morning paper and their coffee and their time
And they still enjoy their evenings with the skeptics and the wine
Oh, but all the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time
From inside of the ages through your eyes
You are not an accident where no one thought it through
The world has stood against us, made us mean to fight for you
And when we chose your name we knew that you'd fight the power too
You're nothing short of magical and beautiful to me
Oh, I'll never hit the big time without you
So they can keep their treasure and their ties to the machine
'Cause I am the mother of Evangeline

Thank you, and goodnight all. Thank you for reading!

Weaning Away the Oz

Hello Everyone!

So Abby is 11 months old (technically next Thursday marks 12 months actually!!) We are planning her first birthday party and I just can’t even believe it. It still feels like a dream most days, honestly. I try and root myself in the reality but some days my mother in law will send me a picture of her while I’m at work and I can’t even believe how lucky I am and that I actually am a MOM to this beautiful baby.

Developmentally, Abby is doing great. She’s high in her percentiles and she is very tall! She is wearing about 18 month clothes comfortably, which is in-SANE. She recently started “crawling” or more so I call it, “inch-worming”. She uses her arms to propel her forward and she pushes off with her feet, basically like an inch-worm. My theory is since she’s very high in her percentiles for weight and height, she’s so big that she can’t developmentally lift up her body to crawl in the sense we imagine how crawling should be. Same likely goes for walking, but we will see.  She will now stand up against surfaces but only for short periods. Just last week she started sitting up on her own after crawling. So exciting!

Abby is so smart and it blows me away every single day that simple things we teach her actually make a difference. She follows commands extremely well (when she’s in the mood) and will imitate a wide variety of sounds. Her favorite thing to imitate is “Ho-ho-Ho” (no kidding) so she’s in PRIME shape for meeting Santa! She will say “Dada” and “mama” now and seems to say it appropriately. She will also point to items, such as “where is the blue circle?” Or “where is the pink diamond?” Or “where is the red crab?”. I am so proud of her but not sure how we are going to afford Harvard! Haha just kidding. But who knows! Her cutest new trick is opening her mouth and saying “ahhh” when we say “What’s in your mouth??”. She also is appropriately signing “more please” which is super cool!

Anyway, my main struggle lately and motivation for writing is struggling with breastfeeding/weaning/eating. Quick backstory, when I first started our breastfeeding journey I had a HUGE oversupply. I would be able to completely feed her just from one breast and let the other breast empty to a collection container, often times up to 4-5 oz per session! I never thought that my overabundant glorious oversupply would someday become what feels like a barren wasteland. When I came back to work at first, I would need to use two bottles per pumping session, often times filling one at 5 oz and halfway filling another to about 3 oz, total of 8 per session. Now, at 11 months old, I am lucky if I pump about 3 oz COMBINED in one session, and this has been this way for approximately 2 months of trying lots of different supply tricks. I have felt like not being able to produce what my child needs has been one of the hardest parts along this journey and feels like natures attack on your ability to be a good mother. The voice in my head is constantly telling me “Do not measure yourself in ounces! Stop!” But it’s hard to not let it bother you. I feel heart pains when I send her off for the day with only a limited supply of milk and it literally kills me. I worry every day she’s not getting enough.

One of the hard lessons learned that I plan to fix for future baby #2, is that I let so much frozen milk go to waste. Here’s why. Like I said, in those early days I would get 4-5 oz just from the other breast draining. I froze that. I probably froze about 150 oz of doing just that. When I went back to work, I still had an oversupply and Abby couldn’t use enough of what I produced before it would need to go into the freezer. So about November more bags started trickling into freezer supply. From November to May, I never had to dip into freezer stash for her daily supply. Then I had to go on a trip for work and we had to prepare what freezer stash she would use. Although I knew the golden rule was safe for 6-12 months, part of me felt skeevy giving Abby the old August/September milk. Not only was it my oldest milk obviously, but I was worried on its collection process. Since it wasn’t pumped out, it likely had very little fat in it since it was just drained milk. Secondly, the device used to collect the milk was basically just rinsed in between sessions, not sterilized. Go ahead, Gasp. I didn’t even think about it at the time. My priority at the TIME was “how can I realistically collect 5 OUNCES of breast milk into a device so that it literally doesn’t SOAK my shirt every 3 hours??”, Instead of the thought I should have been having “am I collecting and storing this milk in the best manner in case I need to actually use it one day” (DUH).

So, for baby number two, I am going to do a system that right off the bat to use my frozen milk as soon as I go back to work, and freeze the fresh milk, creating a rotating recycling system. Somehow I had it in m head this whole time that fresh was exclusively better than frozen and I felt like taking frozen out of the freezer was a failure on my part, meaning I didn’t have enough supply. Now I know that’s preposterous and I wish I could use all that old milk!

My plan to wean has been interesting, as I still have no idea what I am doing. I started two weeks and it seems to be working well. Here is her current meal plan:

7 am-breastfeeds

9am- breakfast foods & water

12pm- lunch and water

1 pm- I pump at work

2 pm -6 oz bottle

5 pm- dinner foods and water

8pm- formula 6 oz

10 pm- I pump before bed

So the new addition is formula…The girl that naively thought she would have her oversupply forever suddenly found herself staring at all the formula options in a field of panic in target. I tried so hard to exclusively breastfeed but when it got to the point where it was stressing me out daily to make enough ounces, I bent. So now with giving her formula, I can make an extra 4 oz that’s not being used for her bed time, allowing me to essentially pump 7-8 oz a day now. I now see 2 fresh full bags in the fridge and I can take a breath. I no longer cringe if she doesn’t want to finish her bottle, thinking how the breast milk is wasted.

Update on pumping/ weaning: the above information was written about 2 weeks ago. Since then we have survived our first family vacation. Between stress, not pumping correctly, not drinking enough, my supply dropped even more. I decided to drop another pump session this week and I am officially on the slope to weaning down 100%. My new schedule for pumping is:

Breastfeed - 7 am

Pump - 6 pm (I no longer have to bring pumping bag to work YESSSSSSSSS)

Pump before bed.

I will phase out the bedtime one next week and basically breastfeed at 7 and  pump ~ 7 pm every day. I’ll only produce about 3 oz doing this but will supplement everything else she needs in formula.

I’m not sure what the rules are for nutrition after she turns 1 officially. I know they say you can start supplementing with cows milk instead of formula but I personally refuse to give abby cows milk just based on personal belief and research. So I’ve been researching other alternatives and haven’t come up with a decision yet. Based on preliminary research I have found that Pea milk (made by Ripple) seems to be a really good next in line milk with the necessary fats, protein, carbs and nutrients that kids need. I am hesitant about it because when I drink it it makes ME gassy, so I am afraid it will make Abby gassy. We’ve tried little bits so far and haven’t seen too many upsets so far.

As for solid foods, I feel like I am not feeding her enough. She seems content. But I find myself in a rut always going to serve what she likes and what’s easy to make. She loves grilled cheese like its her full time job, and she loves carbs/breads just as much as me. I’m trying to push the veggies but she seems to have lost interest in her solid veggies since introducing carbs (I wonder why lol). I try and counteract this by serving puréed veggies before offering solids. I follow some mommy toddler nutrition blogs and they are helping with some guidance !

I also started reading “Toddler 411” and I highly recommend! It really helps break down how to deal with what is about to come with entering toddlerhood.

Well, for those of you that stuck in here and read this whole post, thank you! I don’t write to satisfy anyone’s need for intense plot twists, I mostly just want to record my journey and hopefully, hopefully, help another momma out there that may find my journey helpful.

With love,

The new motherboard. 

The Summer Train

Tonight, my grandma came to visit my daughter and I from Heaven. And I have to get it all out paper before the experience leaves me.

Do you ever have memories that just stick with you forever, and ever? Not traumatic or exciting memories, nothing particular happens, but for some reason you will always just remember just being there, the sights, the smells, the sounds?

When I was a small child, I don’t remember quite how old, but I am guessing around 7-8 ish, I was on a trip with my mother to visit my grandma and grandpa in North Carolina. My grandparents had let my Mom and I have their master bedroom during our stay and so my Mom and I shared the bed. What I specifically remember vividly to this day is waking up the next morning. It was a summer morning, before dawn, and my mom was still sleeping. The bed was positioned in a way where the headboard was up against a wall where there were two windows just up above us. I laid there, looking around. The morning light was just barely starting to poke through the room, giving that glowy peaceful look that kind of bounced off the colors already in the room (carpet, walls) to make this sort of light green sense throughout the room. A breeze entered above us, just gracefully embracing our cheeks, just enough to enjoy curling up under those morning warm covers. The air smelled of that early morning summer smell, like dew and grass cuttings. It was absolutely silent outside besides what seemed like hundred morning birds talking to each other through the trees behind their house. But what really seals the memory together, is I heard a train in the nearby distance. For some reason, on top of all the other beautiful senses in that moment, hearing the sound of the train horn and on off in that early morning was just absolutely peaceful to me. I fell back asleep curled up in the covers listening to the birds and the train, feeling the breeze on my cheeks, smelling the morning dew, and for some reason, that memory has stayed with me forever. It has always been a memory of peace and one I will always think about in relation to my grandma who has passed away.

My grandma had passed away in 2011, and since then I have had moments where I knew she was near and watching over me. But she has many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to watch over so I consider it a true blessing when she stops by to see us from Heaven.

Tonight, I went to put Abby to bed. I was nursing her in a rocking chair right next to an open window. We’ve been struggling trying to get Abbys nursery to an acceptable baby-safe temperature, so we have been trying to keep the windows open in the nursery when we know the weather will be stable overnight. So we sat there, with her in my arms, next to the open window. And the first thing I noticed, looking down at her nursing, is the green light. Our nursery curtains are a light green, teal almost. The dusk light after sunlight was fading fast but was just enough to shine through those curtains and create a green hazy glow around us. Looking at that green haze hit her beautiful blue eyes was something I want to remember the rest of my life. Then I noticed the breeze gracefully entering through the window, pushing the curtains slightly toward us occasionally hitting my arm. I also heard birds out the window chirping as they settled in for the night. It’s a beautiful summer night, mid-sixty degrees, and the air just smelled of a jar full of summer. And I thought, this seems a lot like that memory waking up at my grandmas. The light, the sounds, the smell, the feeling, the peace. The only addition was seeing my daughters wondrous bright blue eyes looking up at me as she nursed, and her fingers wrapping around my finger. And I speculated that maybe, just MAYBE this was my grandma coming in to say hello to let me know she was in the room and with Abby and I. But who ever really knows?

But then, I heard it. A train horn sounded at a nearby distance.

We have a train near our house but even though we have been here for 2 years, I have never noticed a specific pattern with when the train comes, although I’ve heard it before. It just seems to come randomly. But the sound of the train sounds to be the exact distance away as when I heard it many years ago on that early morning. That on and off sound of the train horn with the train hitting the tracks in between.

That was when I knew. My grandma was definitely here and saying hello to Abby and I, letting us know she was here and maybe might even stay the night. I said hello, I missed her, thank you for visiting and for giving me that experience, and I let Abby know her great grandma was here too.
Goodnight Abby, Goodnight Grandma in Heaven, Goodnight World.

Love, the new Motherboard. <3

Wait, Where's That Rule Book?

Well, the day has come, our little Abby is half a year old! That is nuts! Actually, today she is 7 months old. I have been meaning to write this blog for 4 weeks now, but life has been busy!

So I thought I would collect my thoughts on how the past 6 months have gone, record memories of what Abby is like now and any lessons learned! 

Abigail is at the 90th percentile in her height, measuring at 27.5 inches! We don’t know quite how she is so tall because I am short and her dad is average for a male height. Our pediatrician said she will likely grow to be taller than I am. Better get her signed up for basketball now! She is 17 lbs and 9 oz, which is about 70% percentile for weight. Our arms are definitely getting stronger! 

Her personality lights up any room and it is so inspiring to see her do new things and new traits every day. Seeing the biggest smile on her face when she sees me after a long day is the BEST THING in the entire world. She loves to cuddle and one of my favorite things in life right now is when she is tired, she falls asleep right on my shoulder or chest. She tries to fight it at first but I start rubbing her back and her eyes drift off and she plops her head right down and we snuggle. It is the best thing in the world. She can do this the rest of her life if she wants to, my shoulder will always be here. 

Abby Is SO smart. It impresses me daily. We have started doing some sign language with her. We started out with signs for milk, eat, more, all gone, play, change diaper, sleep, light, and now working in mommy and daddy. Within about a week she picked up milk and is signing milk to us when she’s drinking the milk! At times we have caught her signing milk when she’s not eating, but we aren’t quite sure if she’s actually hungry for the milk or just doing it. I don’t know if she’s quite made that connection yet. But just the fact that she signs milk while she’s drinking means she connects milk with the sign! Woot! 

She is just starting to fully sit up by herself now after weeks and months of flopping over. This is so cool as this now leads to some independent play which is cool to watch. She mostly just loves to bang things together or touch new textures. We turned our newly remodeled “dining room” (it was never really a dining room but that’s what the floor model states) into her playroom, complete with lots of toys and a puzzle play mat! So watching her sit up in the middle of it and play independently with her toys is so cool to see those brain connections forming! She has awesome dexterity (which kind of reminds me of a gorilla the way she grabs things). Crawling is a different story, she literally has zero interest in moving anywhere. We have tried enticing her with attractive things, demoing crawling, helping her into the position, but nope. The doctor said it’s a little early yet, so I am not too worried. I figure one day she will just surprise us all and just do it or she may skip crawling and go right to walking. She has great posture when she help her stand and does well standing on her own with minimal support, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we see those feet moving before crawling. The doctor was impressed on how well she’s sitting so I will take that! 

Music is one of her favorite things-albeit the new hit song “baby shark” seems to be her absolute favorite, which is hard to hear over and over. But she seems to love all music, from lullabies, to rock n’roll! It will most days, turn a frown into a laugh when she hears music. When it doesn’t, we know it’s a sign she needs to take a nap or eat. 

Solids! Ah, solid foods! I have no idea what I am doing, Sorry Abby! We are starting her on puréed foods and so far she LOVES them. I have no idea how much to give or how often but were kinda winging it and it seems to be going okay. I am trying to stick to mostly veggies and some of the sweeter veggies at this point to try and foster an early love for veggie taste before we allow straight up bananas. (I’ve tasted banana baby food and it’s GOOD so I wouldn’t want veggies again after eating that either!) But then there is all this talk of “baby led weaning” but I have no idea how to do that so for now we are kinda just winging it day by day. Just last night she showed an interest in taking the spoon by herself so we shall see! 

Six months is truly an emotional conundrum! I see her turning into this beautiful, smart child and we cannot wait to experience new things with her, show her places, take her to interesting and new experiences, have conversations with her, but at the same time I want to freeze in time the baby ages too! I will miss her falling asleep on my shoulder. I will miss breastfeeding deeply. I will miss her tiny hands! This is the first time I have wanted time to speed up but also stay still at the same time! #parenting lol

Having a child brings on so many more emotions than you ever thought possible. Before being a mom to a human, I was a mommy to fur-babies. When I saw an animal being hurt or getting lost in a TV show, movie or heard about it in real life, my heart literally broke because I imagined those horrible things happening to my fur-babies. When I saw or heard about horrible things happening to children, of course it was terrible and heartbreaking but I couldn’t truly connect with those emotions yet before being a mom to a human. Now, I hear these stories of kidnapping, or children dying in tragedies or illnesses and it literally breaks my heart into a million pieces, imagining those same things happening to Abigail. The best thing I can do is hug her extra tight in those moments of anxiety, take the best care of her that I can, teach her good values and morals her whole life, teach her about danger and staying away, and always love her. I have to tell myself that every day to keep the anxiety at bay. If other new moms reading this can take anything away from this, I hope they know that post partum anxiety is REAL and it’s SCARY! But it’s OKAY and none of us are alone in it. It’s normal to imagine the worst possible scenarios happening to your child. It’s normal to have anxiety worrying about the future. I told my post partum therapist that I literally felt like I had the devil and the angel sitting on opposite sides of my shoulders. The devil is feeding all of this anxiety while the angel is grounding me and being realistic and telling me to focus on right now, focus on the present, focus on what is real. Right now, she’s with you. Right now, she is not sick. Right now, she is not hurt. Right now, she is happy. Right now, she is okay. Focus on that. Focus on right now. Focus on today. Focus on tomorrow, tomorrow. It’s a mantra! 

As for mommy life, life is busy! I have started my masters program in predictive analytics. I won't bore you with the details because everyone's eyes start to drift off to sleep when I try and talk about it, but it truly makes me SO.HAPPY. The hardest part is one day each week I can't put Abby to bed, but I have to remind myself it's for our future as a family. 

If anyone is curious about Abbys schedule for modeling it for their own use, here goes! But keep in mind, every baby is different, every mommy is different ! What works for me may not work for you and vice versa. And most of all, there are no wrong answers!

Weekday:
Baby:
Wake up- 6:40 AM

Breastfeeds-7AM

Bottle 9AM (5oz)

Nap 9-11:30 (this varies)

 Plays 

Solid foods ~ 12 

Bottle 1:30 (5oz)

Nap 2-3:30

Bottle (or breastfeeds depending on mommy schedule) ~ 5pm (5oz)

Solids 6,6:30 ish

30 minute nap 6:30-7

Breastfeeds 8pm

Bed, sleeps 8:30-6:45 (usually)

Mommy: 
Breastfeeds 7AM
Pumps 10:30 (4-5oz)
Pumps 2:30 (4-5oz)
Breastfeeds OR bottle at 5 
Breastfeeds 8PM
pumps ~2-4 oz 10PM

I'd be happy to answer any questions or offer any advice! 

Love, the new Motherboard

Lessons to my Child: Between a Rock and a Judgment

 

This picture is floating around the internet and seems to be centered around relationship building and understanding, but I don’t see it that way. To me this is a lesson on basic human understanding, judgment, empathy and compassion.

 Similar to how others have interpreted what is happening, when you first look at the picture you see a man trying to save a woman (relationship unknown). But that’s only the first layer, the first circumstance. When you look at it further, there seems to be a rock crushing the man at the top, and a hidden snake biting the woman’s arm inside the cliff. Now you might think, okay, so what does this mean?

Well, what if the woman is thinking, as she barely struggles to hold on, finger by finger, “why isn’t the man trying harder to save me? He should be strong and be able to lift me up, why is he only putting half the effort in??” But what the woman can’t see from her angle is that the man is being crushed by a rock on his back. But alas, he’s still trying to save her despite his obvious pain and suffering. He is doing his absolute best, and meanwhile the woman thinks he isn’t doing enough.  And the man might be thinking, “I am trying so hard to lift her up but she’s barely even trying to help herself!! How can I be expected to do all the work!?” But what he doesn’t see is the woman is getting bitten by the snake that’s crawling out of the cliff, and she’s afraid to use the ledge to help herself climb up because of the snake.

 Now this may be a strange example. I can't think of any situation where this might actually happen, but you never know! But that’s not the point, it’s the basic lesson of human empathy behind it.

We are ALL going through something, most of us are struggling with our demons, grievances, memories, fears, worries, every day. Maybe a physiologic disease or a psychiatric disease, emotional struggles, family struggles, marital struggles, losses, anything, what it "is" is different for everyone. One persons “something” might feel a lot worse to one person vs another, but that doesn’t matter. That person is still going through a difficult time. That person is still being crushed by a rock while someone else judges them for why they aren’t doing more.

 I post this on my motherhood blog because this is a lesson I not only want to share, but one I want my daughter to grow up knowing. It is basic human nature to wonder about other people, and often times our thought processes make us jump to conclusions and judgments that either aren’t true or we aren’t seeing the whole picture, thus we can never make an accurate assumption about what that person is going through. Even the people we love and know best, we can always jump to conclusions too fast.

 I want my daughter to grow up to always think, if she for a second has an impulse to judge someone for their actions, behaviors, looks, life-choices, clothing, etc, I want her to always stop and think, what could this person be going through? What else may be happening to explain this action I am witnessing? We can’t always help. Often times help isn’t wanted, we are unable, or its purely just not our business. But what we can do is try to understand. To think what rock might be crushing this person that is behaving this way? What snake is attacking this person behaving that way?

 

I try and practice this train of thought every day. Multiple times a day. And its hard! As someone speeds past me on the right hand lane when the rest of us hundred cars are in traffic trying to merge because a lane is closing, instead of letting my blood boil, I try to think of why that man might be in such a rush? Maybe his own daughter is very ill in the backseat, or his wife is in labor, or his mother is dying right now in the hospital, I don't know. I have to believe these things because I choose to believe good versus bad when I literally have no power to know what the correct reason was.

 

It’s easier for our brains to put us on the defense, to automatically make us think we are of course, right, and our opinion is always right that we make of someone. I’ve heard it said that we decide what we make lifelong impressions on people within the first 7 seconds of meeting them. Our instinct goes back to cave men fighting threats. The cave man sees a wolf in the wild and immediately analyzes the situation, decides this wolf is trouble and up to no good, and the man goes on the defense to fight the wolf or flee. But maybe the wolf just lost her baby wolf (cub?), or just got separated from its parents, or anything. When we come across behavior, actions or characteristics from other people that WE think are untrustworthy, bad, annoying, poor-parenting, poor life choices, horrible, devilish, etc, we immediately go on the defense. Our first thought on habit is to judge (this man is not strong and doesn’t care about helping me survive this cliff), and then we justify it with our own thoughts (He should be working harder to save me and that’s what I would do if I were him), and we decide that we are right and they are wrong. But we need to change that instinct habit, or at lease instead of letting the thought process continue- we halt it in its track and after we have that “judge mental” thought, we then think of what pressures that person is under? What rocks might be crushing this man? What snake is biting this woman?

 

 

PS I’d like to give credit to the original drawing, but can’t find the source, if anyone knows, let me know!