WOW – do we have some things to celebrate around here!
First, A Midwife Nation celebrated a one year anniversary on December 2nd!
Our household was a little busy welcoming baby number three into the world followed by birthdays for the other two babes (fun fact: all my babes were born in December!).
Although it’s a belated blog birthday celebration, it’s absolutely one worth acknowledging.
To me, the year flew by since the first post! And although it has been a challenge to keep up posts in the past year (hello pandemic, mothering littles, pregnancy, midwifing, school…), I’m so thankful for each comment or follower and am so excited for the new year.
I was reading through A Midwife Nation’s mission and vision that I crafted last year and felt all the goosebumps as all of the sentiments still ring true. More than ever, women and midwives need education, inspiration and empowerment in every aspect of their lives.
With a few months of maternity leave on the horizon and many hours of snuggling (or nursing) a newborn planned, I’m excited to get back into regular posting on the blog and have been pondering my goals for the blog. This is a platform that I feel has so much potential for women and midwives, but also for children and family units worldwide.
These are my hopes for A Midwife Nation in 2021…
EDUCATE
My goal is for the A Midwife Nation’s education platform to increase exponentially! A specific downside to the pandemic is that community resources – such as pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding education – and social support systems all crumbled at the same time. This sent women and midwives scrambling to find education and support during the past 9 months and many were never able to find the education they needed. My own colleagues I worked with struggled to offer women resources that they could access from home! Pandemic or not – pregnancy and postpartum periods offer an amazing opportunity to educate women with knowledge that they will need and use for the rest of their lives. You can look forward to these things dropping on the blog this next year:
- Shared decision-making tools for women and providers
- Free tools for women to use during their pregnancy visits and postpartum periods to enhance their prenatal care
EMPOWER
What does empower mean? To make someone stronger and more confident. Women and mamas need strength and confidence. Every. Day. But how do you make someone stronger or more confident? To me, putting together content that is positive, uplifting and educational bolsters women across all the roles of their lives. Empowerment is one of my favorite goals of the blog because it’s all the littles things I gather across all the roles of my life. This could be a book, a podcast, a resource, a new baby or toddler toy, a patient handout – all the littles pieces that make the day, a pregnancy, a recovery, a toddler snuggle, or a bad day a little easier. These mostly show up in the Friday Five posts but you can also find a lot of them on the RESOURCES page!
INSPIRE
Let’s inspire more women by sharing birth stories – but also pregnancy and postpartum stories. Do you guys remember the old TLC show “A Baby Story?” That’s what we’re going for! One of the lessons I learned with pregnancy and baby #3 was that we have to keep sharing our stories! Each pregnancy, loss, baby and recovery story is different and there are beautiful lessons to learn in each phase and experience of our lives. Sharing your story is not only therapeutic, it offers others the opportunity to step into your shoes and learn from your experience. I just finished The Fourth Trimester by Kimberly Ann Johnson and she recommends writing your birth story within 48 hours of your birth to get the most benefits – I don’t know about you guys, but at 48 hours post-birth, I’m at home in a sleepy, dreary eyed state trying to figure out if I need to eat, drink, sleep or nurse and in what order! Regardless, having written my past two births stories it’s been amazing to write those down and take a few moments to reflect on my experiences (my third birth story is coming soon!). If you haven’t written your birth stories, block out some time to do so ASAP – and considering sharing them with women here. You never know what your story will do for someone else.
I hope your week is filled with family, friends, hot chocolate, Christmas goodies and beautifully lit Christmas trees. See you Wednesday for my favorite gifts for mamas 🙂
Jamie