Attachment Parenting Burnout
September 29, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Do you think moms who practice attachment parenting are more prone to burnout? Have you ever experienced it? What did you do about it?
I’m going to be discussing this issue next week on the show and I want to hear from you. Please share you experience, either by calling our listener’s line at (214) 615-6505
Extension #2935 or commenting here.
Help me bring this important issue to the front so we can all support each other in having the best mothering experience possible!
Thank you.
How does the media disempower birthing women?
September 29, 2006 | Leave a Comment
If you’re an advocate of natural birth, you probably have a hard time reading most parenting magazines. They really do fill women’s heads with fear and create the belief that birth is scary and out of control.
If you’ve had a home birth or a birth with little intervention you exist in a different paradigm. Your view is that you had a lot to do with the birth experience you had, and only in the case of a truly rare emergency did things go differently than you planned.
What are some of your favorite disempowering statements you’ve read?
Natural Moms Podcast #24
September 21, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Our guests this week are Laura Pasetta of the Visual Guide, an interactive DVD that helps parents pack a nutritional (and fun) punch in their kid’s school lunch.
And Kim Graham-Nye of gDiapers, a new flushable biodegradable hybrid cloth/disposable diaper. Kim is sharing the “poop” on her product’s environmental and Mommy friendliness.
Download the Mp3
Natural Moms Podcast #23
September 7, 2006 | Leave a Comment
The following is a transcript of an interview that appeared on Natural Moms Talk Radio on September 7, 2006.
Carrie Lauth: I am joined this week by Maribel Hernandez of APMFormulators. How are you doing today, Maribel?
Maribel Hernandez: Good. How are you, Carrie?
Carrie Lauth: Very good. I have to say, first of all, that I am enjoying your product that you mailed me. The P&M Dermasalve and I got the chance to use it on my 3-year-old. She fell down and skinned up the inside of her elbow and it has been that way for a few days and I put some of the salve on it last night and this morning, it is looking a whole lot better.
Maribel Hernandez: Well, that is encouraging. That is good to hear.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. So, tell us a little bit about your background.
Maribel Hernandez: Well, I am a home school mom. I have been home schooling for 18 years and we have seven children from the age 22s to 4. We started studying family medicine because my husband, Pete, had developed a skin rash and we could not find solutions. When we went to the doctor for this, it was about 1994, the doctor told us that he needed to check liver enzymes. That was confusing because we wondered what does the liver have to do with the skin?
Well, we did not understand then, but oftentimes skin creams do show up in elevated liver enzymes. To make a long story short, we decided why not just start studying family medicine since we home school anyway, put it in the children’s curriculum and start doing that with them as well as with ourselves and it led to formulating the P&M Dermasalve, a blog and a newsletter, and some other things.
Carrie Lauth: Is that not one of the neatest things about home schooling that you can incorporate what you are learning as an adult in your life with your children and just going to get so practical.
Maribel Hernandez: Yeah, that really is true. It is interesting you said that because that is what we do, use the classical approach, and we fit that in with what we are trying to do in our children and you said it. That is why parents — one of the strong reasons I think parents love home schools. We are not dictated. We are not Ford engine models, we all look alike. We are all different and we come to the table of home schooling with different needs. In family medicine, families who study family medicine at home from a natural holistic point can capitalize on the weaknesses that their families are experiencing.
For example, one family may have issues with gastrointestinal problems. Well, they can curtail their home school curriculum and integrate in a very, very personal way. They can integrate all the medicinal herbs that have medicinal properties through their gastrointestinal problems.
Another parent may say to herself, “Well you know, I really don’t wanna use too many herbs. I wanna understand those long medical words.” Well then that family is better suited to learn medical nomenclature, which is just the study of medical language and the diversity goes on and on. It just allows for so much capability for parents to really, I mean in a very strong way, to really take hold and say, “No, I’m going to do this with my family. My family needs this.”
Just recently, we had a wonderful friend come over for dinner. A wonderful lady I love, a good friend, who is a medical doctor and she said, “You know, Maribel, this is so exciting to be able to approach medicine from that end.” What she was referring to — from one on one, “What does Joey need?” “Well, Joey had wryneck the other week and now I have to find out what herb is going to straighten out that muscle and back disorder, so yes, I could not agree with you more.
Home schooling really does not just cater us, we are spoiled, we have so much good to dip into. There is just so much that a parent can take advantage of, but I want to say even parents who are not home schooling, this infrastructure that many are beginning to put into motion for their own family is growing by leaps and bounds. You know that because you do this radio show all the time.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. Well, when you were talking about the liver and the skin it reminded me of something that my husband told me several years ago. He is not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to natural medicine or health issues, but he was taking paint classes with the 3M Corporation and they — I have instructed him to be very, very careful when he is working with solvents and to always use gloves and to protect his skin and they showed him some information about how when the solvent touches your skin, you can find it in your liver within eight seconds and I thought, “That is just remarkable.”
Maribel Hernandez: That is amazing. I did not know that, how quick that was and that is just really — it is scary, of course. It is scary to us as moms. We love our husbands and we love our precious children. We do not want anything to happen to them. Carrie, it was frustrating that the doctor never even told me. He never said, “Pete and Maribel, I have to do these liver enzymes tests,” but I found that out years later when we started to study. It was like esoteric type of secret, though it was not said in that way and it is unfair. I think it is unfair to every human being to give them something to put on their skin in secret and not even know that it is going to affect the liver in the way that it does and then wonder later on, “Why dad is sick with the liver?”
I am not saying all of them because not all elevated liver enzymes are a cause for fear, but nevertheless they should definitely be looked into and so that was the reason why he compounded that for us. It was out of a need for our own family and for others. Now, it has just become a real joy and I just — we love doing what we do.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. So, tell our listeners more about your blog and your newsletter and what you offer.
Maribel Hernandez: Well, first of all, if anybody calls and then tells us they heard this show, on Natural Moms Radio, we are sending them, to all your listeners, a P&M Dermasalve for them to use when they either contact you or me or E-mail us. Some resources that we provide are the newsletters and this newsletter — I wanted it to be different, so we created it, so it is a loop. In other words, it will loop back to the one who posted it and people can actually contact others. “Okay, what did that midwife used for the breach condition? How did she position?” We have contributors, a bunch of contributors, who will contribute. So, it will not be just us talking about all of these issues. Everybody can loop back to each other, find the sources they need, find the textbooks they need, find the human anatomy and little toys for children that they need, that is one.
The other resource is the blog where we put in articles. I have put in a few lesson plans because since I am a home school mom, I tend to go that way and I want to go that way were teaching and showing… So, we do a lot of copy work and we have some copy work for students who want to take medicinal plants and learn copy work as we do that and a lot of high school educators do that. Of course, the P&M Dermasalve is the other resource and the other one, which I did not mention because we have been doing this for years at home, is pro bono. Do you know how lawyers have pro bonos? They will serve you without pay, voluntary services. We do that for families who are having issues with cancer, prostate cancer, liver issues, skin issues, and we will track back their diseases, find out what concomitant symptoms came with this present symptoms and do an analysis and if we have to send them for medical tests or labs, we can give them the names of the medical tests, they can in turn take them to their physician if they want and have them done.
We will also tell them, “Well, you may not want this test because if you have take barium, this could affect your liver,” and try to come at it from another approach. What I mean by other approach, I mean taking what has already happened, this disease or this illness or sickness, and trying to backtrack and find out what was the cause instead of just saying “take this.” So, that is a pro bono medical research that we do for families and that is done on a personal basis. Some of that is starting to show up in the newsletter where we will talk about those issues.
Carrie Lauth: Well, what do you recommend to a family who may just be starting out, wanting to increase their knowledge about how to handle illnesses at home? What are some resources that you would recommend for them to begin their education?
Maribel Hernandez: I would start out with three — there were three operatives I was thinking that I had in my mind that would be good for parents to start out; first, for parents to not to become dismayed. It is so easy to become discouraged in this area because there are a lot of resources, yet a lot of them are very superficial. They will say — it is just like a rehash, Carrie, of what has already been printed out there. What I would say is for parents to do three things, collect the knowledge they need and when I say knowledge I am talking about books, materia medica type books, herbal books that will give them the information that they want for now, not try to overwhelm themselves and feel “I’ve gotta have a command of this subject right now,” but just start out with baby steps.
A good text — well, there is many, many, many, but a favorite that I like is Clark. It is a three-volume work by Dr. Henry Clark and it is a complete materia medica and it gives a great overview of quite a few hundred plants, medicinal plants. It gives you their botanical names and their Latin names so that when parents do order, they know what they are ordering. Parents should never order by their counterpart, their English name, because you can actually get a subspecies of what you really want or an adulterated form. So, that is a good thing. Get the information, the knowledge stage of the plant, locate the books you want and all of these that I am mentioning, these three operatives that I am mentioning, I am going to get into detail in the fall when we issue our first newsletter. So, that is the first operative, get your textbooks if you want to call them that, materia medicas, herbal books, they go by many names. Medical botany is another, but they should always, these textbooks, should always give the parent what they want. So, I like to look at them first before I buy them because a lot of them as I said are rehashed.
After the parent has that knowledge, the parent will want to necessarily move into the understanding. Knowledge is good, but it is not that good if it is just sitting on the shelf and makes no sense and that is why I say that they have to have the understanding. Understanding what? Understanding the facts that they have just read in their text and then for parents to move into the third stage, which is where a parent synthesizes an outcome, “Okay, I’ve got this textbook or this materia medica, I look up Hydrastis canadensis, which stops hemorrhaging and now I want to do something with the knowledge that I’ve learned.” So, the parent moves into what we call the last stage, which is called the rhetoric.
The first is the grammar stage, the second is the logic and the last is the rhetoric. That is just in a nutshell. That is the classical approach. Anyway, in that last stage is what a parent does with that knowledge. When the parent reaches that last stage, it is almost as though he or she says to himself, “Wow, I actually learned something that a pediatric doctor knows.”
Now, that knowledge becomes not only valuable, but it also frees up their checking account. We saved well over $30,000 in obstetric bills and we talked about that on the newsletter as well, how we did that and break down the figures, but it is amazing how much money and how much heartache a parent can save.
Talking about parents, I just wanted to mention briefly Lucy Meriwether, the famous mother who gave birth to her son, the famous explorer. She was his first teacher at home. She gave birth to Meriwether Lewis and it was he who took care of so many of the explorers when they did get gastrointestinal sicknesses and how she taught him at home and she faced the challenges that we face as parents today. It is quite encouraging to know that there is a long wonderful history of mothers who are actually medical doctors at home, teaching first their children and then helping neighbors.
Carrie Lauth: Well, I would be interested in hearing more about, briefly, how you were able to save $30,000 on obstetrical costs.
Maribel Hernandez: Well one of them and there are many, but one of them was when we had — we have seven children as I told you, but in that first one, the first two we had, we had come across doctors who just basically ripped my placenta and really caused incredible heartache and damage to me. As a result of that, I was told that I would never be able to have any children and if I did, I would die.
I have seven now and I am very grateful and it is not that I took the doctor’s position and I just belittled it, but I tried to understand why he said that. Well, he was wrong and I am grateful that he was wrong because he was the one that had done the damage, the doctor when he was pulling out the placenta created a lot of injury to me internally.
Of course, needless to say, we never went to a man doctor again and that is not to say that all men doctors are bad, but everyone is different and not all men doctors are evil, although I prefer not to go to them. Anyway, when that happened, we decided, “Oh, we really need to get to apprentices.”
So, we found some wonderful midwives who allowed us to apprentice under them and as a result of that, the last three births have been wonderful births and births that Pete, my husband, and older children have done. They have been a blessing. It is just a small word, it is not really what I want to describe it as, not only of course that it saved us because Carrie at that time when this incident did happen with me, the births I was paying for back then were $10,000 for private care delivery. I do not know what they cost for now.
So, based on those alone, that is where I got that figure from, but that was just the minimal. Then we had ear infections and throat infections and we started buying otoscope, stethostocope. It is amazing what a parent can do with a professional grade otoscope. A parent can learn and I think really should learn, exert the effort. I know it is some work involved, but it is really, really not difficult to use. It is quite simple and it is a lot of fun and it is a lot of fun when you start passing this tool around with caution to your younger children and they start touching and handling say, “Wow. If mom and dad did it, maybe I can do it too,” and the money that we have saved by not even seeing a pediatrician who would have and have had in the past tell me “well, this is streptococcus.”
How could he know that it is a streptococcus infection when he never even tested the bacteria? It is amazing — the faulty logic that they push on parents and all — what Pete and I really want to say is that parents can. They can do so much for their families. They just really need to push themselves just a little further.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah and that is a very empowering thing because I have always said that as a parent it is my responsibility to care for my child’s health. Now, I may delegate that responsibility to someone from time to time, but the end decision is still mine. It is no one else’s. It is not the doctor’s. It is not the government. It is my decision, but it is interesting because I was reading this very popular blog recently and the subject of — I think it was a measles outbreak that the person was commenting on and they were saying this outbreak is the reason why we need to remind you to make sure your children are vaccinated.
I am not sure how you feel about that, but some of the comments were very interesting because one of the commenter said something along the lines of, “Well, parents who question vaccines really have too much time on their hands.” I thought well, that is interesting because my experience has been quite opposite. In other words, parents who do not accept the status quo, but really want to know what is going on with their child, they are more likely to be informed and educated about their choices. Do you not find that?
Maribel Hernandez: Oh, I could not agree with you more and I hear the same argument because we vaccined our first two and Carrie it was nothing, but infection. I was constantly at the pediatrician. Some people said to me, “Well, Maribel, that is kind of bad logic because you are using an inductive argument,” but you know if you have oil, hot oil and it spills on you, guess what? You are going to get an oil burn. I would take them to the pediatrician and get those vaccine shots and they were so sick as a result of it.
Our older daughter, the 18, had developed this nystagmus, this horizontal nystagmus. It has come under a lot of control now where she can just sit and focus, but she was never the same after that. She was a very playful little baby and very agile. Of course as a parent, I cannot even begin to tell you how horrible I felt. Why is it Carrie that they make us sign those forms if there is nothing at risk? Well, then if there is nothing at risk, why do you ask me to sign this form? That is very illogical to me and further if you go into the Physician’s Drug Reference Manual, I have the 1997 edition, and you look up polio, you will see clearly that their raw material is monkey pus. That is their own textbook. If they want to argue against themselves at least make yourselves clear, but do not lie to the public. It is not fair. So, those arguments are very ludicrous and oftentimes downright lies.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. Well, if they are so safe then why are they asking you to remove their liability?
Maribel Hernandez: Yeah, right. We can go a step further here. I called the — there is a 1‑800 number for physicians. They are supposed to fill out a form if they want to. It is cool and voluntary. I think it is called MedWatch, but it is in that textbook that I just referenced and it asked the physician if your patient did have a reaction to the vaccine, which is — I do not think that is a fair word, but if they have had a reaction please let us know. Well, what are you doing with that data? Well, I decided to call the number and when I did I said, “When reactions are reported, do you make this data available to the public?” “Oh, no, no, no” they told me on the other line.
Well, then you know what? That necessarily puts all parents into a first responder. Parents need to be first responders because no one else — I should not say no one else, but there is not a lot of help for parents. Parents are thrust into this position to seek out information, to become more savvy if you will, to become learned to not just take things for granted when a professional tells us something. Weigh it, think about it. Does it make sense? Are there any fallacies to it? That is really important.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. I find it interesting that parents will research things. For instance, you will find parents on message boards that research for hours and hours to find the safest infant car seat, the one that has been tested in crash tests and what does consumer report say and what do the other parents say and this and that, but do not think to research about something that is being injected into their child’s body. I do not understand that.
If you hire a contractor to come to your home, let us say, you hire an electrician to come, give you a bit on something wrong with your electrical system, you are going to make really sure that you trust what that person is telling you because it is a huge outlaid cash. You might be spending $6000 or $7000 to have this person rewire your home or change your panel or whatever and you are not just going to sign that check right away. You are going to do some research. You are going to get a second contractor to come out and take a look because this person is earning a living. They have a vested interest in you hiring them.
Well, doctors are just the same and what is interesting about these outbreaks that occur, it has been shown that when vaccine compliance is higher, doctors are less likely to make a diagnosis of, say, pertussis. They are less likely to have that throat cultured and look for pertussis, but when vaccination compliance is lower, they are more likely to do so. So, those numbers are not correct. They are very much viewed by the opinion of the person who is doing the testing or not.
Maribel Hernandez: Is that not true? Their hypothesis always fits so nicely. They frame it. These people know this. There is a textbook, I cannot remember now the name, but I have it. It shows you how they misconstrue data to fit their hypothesis. Well naturally, when they structure these arguments it looks favorable, but you know what? When you bring the magnifying glass to it, you will see that it is filled with [unintelligible], with all kinds of illogical fallacies. They just do not make sense and moms, like you were referencing before, moms make up three-fourths of the medical infrastructure of natural medicine. What I mean by that is a lot of families are starting to put into motion these initiatives. Well, they will take their symptoms and they will start researching.
Now, it is true that some moms are more driven than others, but even the moms who were not as highly as driven as the ones who are, they will seek out the other mothers. PEW, I think it is PEW, did a research on that. It was really amazing. Moms leave — there is no rock they leave unturned. I think that has a lot to do with that God-given ability that He has given us to love, to nurture, to protect our babies, our families. I am the same way with my husband. Be careful with that because we love woodworking projects, Carrie. We do a lot of stuff outside in the summer and I take the summer for that purpose so we can have a nice fresh air breathing when we are working on woodworking projects. Mom, she is thrust as to being the first responder when accidents happen, when illnesses happen. Who has to be the first responder? Now, it is not always mom I know. It could be a grandparent or a legal guardian, but it makes just really good, prudent sense for parents to just begin, if they have not, to begin taking those steps, start creating a little library for themselves, getting the resources they need.
I am not talking about a first aid kit you could buy at the local Wal-Mart. I am talking about a first aid kit that is going to render you more successful, that will put you better in the driver’s seat. Not too long ago, we had a car accident. A truck rammed into us and hit five cars and my neck was — we walked away from it alive. Our car was crushed, but to make a long story short, the cervical collar, the collar that goes around your neck, it is called a C-collar, they charged in the hospital, when you get that emergency bill at least here locally, $60.
You are only allowed to wear it from the moment you are transported in the car, but when you get to the hospital, they take it off. I said to the paramedic, “Oh, please don’t take it off,” because when you immobilize it, it feels so good. That is why I have splints at home for the fingers, but I was not in the position to run back home. In any case, the point I am trying to make is that when the bill came in, they charged well over $200 for less than 20 minutes to wear that thing around the neck. It just does not make sense and you can purchase it, Carrie, for $20, a brand new one.
So, there are just — when I speak about first aid supply, I am talking about really just a lot of good supplies the parents can have and they do not have to buy the C-collar. There are so many other good things that they can get, a finger splint, all kinds of good supplies that you are not going to find at a regular Wal-Mart or pharmacy. So, we are going to be covering that in the newsletter too because I want parents to know, “Look, you can put this aside, you can have that.” The little herbal eyewash cups. Have you seen them? They are like glass. They come in glass or plastic. It makes it so much easier to deal with infections in the eyes than just using your hand. So, there are lots of neat little stuff. I think parents’ first aid box should look more like a paramedic’s if you ask me.
Carrie Lauth: Yeah. Well, please tell our listeners how they can visit your site and your blog.
Maribel Hernandez: Just go to www.apmformulators.com and that stands for Alternative PhytoMed Formulators and just sign or send us an E-mail or click on the link that says Join the E‑loop and we will start sending them out as soon as the folk comes around and we will take questions if the people have any and they want to see a certain subject covered. For example, if somebody is dealing with a certain issue and they wanted that to be addressed, that can be a theme for a certain month.
Carrie Lauth: Well, great. I am looking forward to the information in your newsletter because I have four, but I can only imagine what is in store for me in the future with…
Maribel Hernandez: Well, Carrie, from what I have read, you have got a lot of resources there and I wish would have known what you know when I was younger and I was just starting out to parent. It just makes it so much better when parents start really taking it seriously when they give birth to children and say, “Our babies weren’t born with manuals and we really need to help them and take good care of them.”
Carrie Lauth: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your information and you had an offer there of a free sample of your product, which is wonderful and I am enjoying it very much and I love the smell, too.
Maribel Hernandez: Oh, good. Well, thanks for having us, Carrie. I appreciate it.
The Power of Yes
September 4, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I also love using birth as a metaphor for life. Birth is an experience that you cannot truly “control”. You must let go in order for it to happen. You have to let go of worry and just trust the process. So I really enjoyed this article by Julie, this week’s guest and thought you might also.
The Power of Yes
I was 20 hours into labor. Exhausted, lost, fading. And I was only 3 centimeters dilated. If I knew one thing, it was that I couldn’t do this. I was ready to throw in the towel. I would simply let go of my intention to have a natural home birth. I’d go to the hospital, take some drugs, and have someone else get this baby out. Although this thought went against the grain of every fiber in my pre-labor being, it now felt like the only viable option.
When my midwife approached me, looking serious, I figured that we were as good as on our way there. Instead, she gave me a few other choices, never mentioning the “h” word. Of those choices, one was to “just get behind my labor and do it.”
As a life coach dedicated to helping women discover their personal power, and as an individual who thrives on personal growth, I latched right onto this option despite my exhaustion and fear. I knew I was stuck, but I didn’t know why or how to get out of it. When I shared this with Monica, she simply suggested I try saying yes.
Even today I don’t know what she meant exactly, but I took her very literally. With the next contraction I opened my mouth. “Yes,” it said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”
(“NO!” said the rest of me. “No, no, no no no no no.”)
“Yes!” Said my vocal chords, my tongue, my lips. “Yes!”
“No,” said the rest of me, my fear, my anger, my pain, my hesitancy, my tears, my blood. “No.”
“Yes,” said my trust. ”Yes.”
“No, I can’t,” whispered my menacing demons. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes,” said the obstinate, bull headed, determined grimy gritty girl of my childhood. “Yes, I can do this.”
“Yes!” all of me said suddenly, filled with knowing. “Yes! I am doing this. I am.”
Suddenly, I was all power, filled with strength, with knowing, with confidence.
It had taken only about ten minutes to overcome all the doubts and fears that had held me back, lingering in pain and only slightly dilated for over 20 hours. Less than five short and determined hours later, I gave birth to my baby girl.
As I look back on this experience, I know that if I could turn my labor around like that, I can do anything with the power of yes.
Reflect
Where in your life are you holding yourself hostage? What words are you using to disempower yourself?
Respond
Use “Yes” to make a change in your life. Do it consciously and out loud. Whenever you find yourself saying “no,” inundate that it with yeses. Watch your life transform.
Julie Nathanielsz, CPCC, ACC, is a life coach and owner of Realized Potential. She works predominantly with expectant and new mothers, helping them uncover their most powerful, courageous, and authentic selves before they hit the delivery room or the roof. http://www.realized-potential.com.
