BREASTFEEDING & PARENTING

 Have you been told by your doctor while pregnant that you are obese but, in your eyes, you look and feel good? First of all, I hate the word obese. It just makes me cringe as if your some kind of spectacle and doctors tend to use this word often to tell you in a nice way your fat. You call yourself curvy, thick or big boned especially if you're a woman of color. Yet as a pregnant woman, we have to take into consideration that what we eat may affect our pregnancy.  See most overweight women have no problem delivering healthy babies, however, obesity or being overweight by the doctor's standards during pregnancy puts women at risk for serious health problems such as preeclampsia, blood clots, gestational diabetes, blood pressure disorders, and heart attacks. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 33.4% of women 20 to 34 years of age are obese, and 58.4% are overweight. According to the Mayo clinic, obesity and diabetes are risk factors for heart attacks and disease in pregnant women.  I had no clue that a woman could have a heart attack while pregnant. We will leave that for another day. The quality of our food has changed significantly over the last 30 years. Many of us cannot afford to go to whole foods or buy organic. Sometimes it's cheaper to get a meal at Mcdonalds than to cook a nutritional meal with value. Have you noticed how cheap fast food has become these days? Its almost impossible to resist sometimes.

Do you ever wonder what it feels like to not be able to have a child? We assume that this is a natural process of the womans body but many women find it difficult to conceive naturally every day. Some women have the ability to conceive but are unable to carry a baby to full term. Sadly, miscarriages are a very common occurrence. According to miscarriage statistics, sources vary but many estimate that approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and some estimates are as high as 1 in 3. When you think of what the role of a woman is you tend to correlate it with homemaker, mother, wife, caregiver and child bearer.  Mind you these are all worthy titles to live up to but sometimes unattainable. In many cultures, if a woman cannot conceive she is looked down upon, shamed in her community and made to feel inferior, as if having a child is her only identity.

If you have ever had a mammogram, it could be one of the most difficult examinations a woman will have to experience in her life.  In this day and era, it is crucial that women are tested for breast cancer. I know someone who has either had breast cancer or died from breast cancer. Regrettably, I didn't believe breast cancer would affect my life until my aunt passed away a few years ago.  She was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and had undergone chemotherapy to combat the illness. I was under the impression if you contracted breast cancer early you had a better chance at survival, but my aunt was defeated by this horrible disease and our family was devastated. We were taken by surprise how quickly cancer had spread to other parts of her body. It was one of the worse days of my life.  I was forced to look at breast cancer in an entirely different way.

A picture can be worth a thousand words. Hmmm... this is a tough subject for me to discuss, yet alone write about it, but it is something that we as Mothers deal with on a regular basis, especially me. I came across a story featured by Good Morning America, about Anupa King, a beautiful proud mother who posted a picture with her and her two lovely young boys. The photo embodied a mothers love and joy. Anupa appeared carefree and totally her authentic self. In her post she mentions how much love was shining through the photo and how beautiful her boys were. What struck me about this post was how happy they all looked and the fact that she pointed out that the old version of herself would have criticized how big her mouth looked and not have posted the picture at all.