One of the main challenges of a growing family is balance. When you have a new baby, your older kids still have their own needs. I’m not talking about food and shelter here. I’m talking direct attention, affection, and affirmation.
Now hopefully, your friends, family, and postpartum doula were able to fill in for you in your weeks after childbirth while you cocooned with baby and enjoyed postpartum rest. But when your husband returns to work and the visitors fade, you’re your kids main squeeze again. I worried about this when my third was born – babies have rightful and all-consuming needs. How would my boys get the attention they needed?
One of my simple answers was reading books! Easy, right? We have a small bookcase full of kids’ books and I try every day to spend time with them in this way. I don’t know about your kids, but mine love books. As soon as I start one, their heads pop up like prairie dogs and they all scamper in to listen, no matter what they were previously doing.
I love the flexibility of this activity. If we read on our couch, I can hold and nurse a baby while my older kids snuggle in on each side. They take turns fetching books for me to read, all the while getting personal attention from me. It’s an easy way for us to connect every day.
After 756 hours spent reading to our kids, we have some favorites:
Click, Clack Moo: Cows That Type
Anything from Olivier Dunrea
Goodnight Moon and its parodies:
Goodnight Goon and
Goodnight Loon (especially awesome if you’re from Minnesota)
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
The Giving Tree, and anything else from Shel Silverstein!
Anything from Jan Brett: our favorite is The Mitten
Sandra Boynton Books
The Napping House (current favorite!)
How simple! To make it even more enjoyable, try my tea time idea or take regular trips to the library to freshen up your stock of books and find more favorites.
How does Marabou support women?
We live in culture where “bouncing back” is more valued than proper rest. As admirable as it may be for a sports star to get back on the field, the same rules don’t apply to postpartum recovery. The traditional resting period has been stolen from women through pressure to get back to their job or simply through lack of presence.
Grandmas, sisters and best friends who otherwise would have been there to help a woman transition into motherhood often live too far away to be of any help. Household chores and caring for older children inevitably fall on the mom. But she just delivered a new life! She needs rest.
Marabou Services is a unique gift registry which provides services instead of stuff. Most mom’s get too many onesies, too many baby blankets and not enough helping hands. Break out of a destructive cultural norm and start a Marabou registry today.
With a Marabou registry you can sing up for any service which will benefit you or someone you know during the postpartum recovery period.
Postpartum doulas for a first time mom
House cleanings for moms of multiples
Childcare for moms with older children!
Once your registry is created, add it to any other registry or post it to your Facebook and ask friends and family contribute to your postpartum service, rather than buying you more stuff.
More and more moms find they have to figure out postpartum alone. Is it any wonder why PMDs are on the rise? Or women are embittered by the journey of motherhood? We can change that by giving the gift of peace.
