You are giving your baby a truly precious gift: an excellent genetic makeup.

As loving and responsible parents, we want the best for our children, even if it requires that we give up something–make a sacrifice. In giving up your own genetics, you give your baby something better: a greatly decreased risk of chromosomal disorders such as Downs syndrome. And donated eggs provide other genetic advantages, too: the young women accepted as donors by donor egg agencies and IVF clinics have excellent genetic histories, better than that of the average person. Most likely, better than your own.

Your baby will be every bit as unique as if he or she were your genetic child.

Your little one won’t be a “designer baby” or a “test-tube baby”; he or she will be created out of the love between you and your husband or partner, regardless of genetics. And speaking of genetics, they’re notoriously unpredictable anyway. You probably know people who are very unlike one or both of their parents or look very different despite a genetic connection. Perhaps you know an artist whose parents can’t even draw stick figures, a shy friend with social-butterfly kids, a neighbor with a great tan whose daughter has to pile on the sunscreen. Regardless of whether your baby has a genetic connection with you or not, he or she will have a very special and individual set of characteristics that will yield plenty of surprises and joys as the years go on.

You’ll get excited over the wonderful young women available as egg donors.

Most women do not start looking at donor profiles until they are actually ready to start the preliminaries for an IVF procedure. If you are facing the egg donation option but feel sadness about it, try jumping the gun and learning about egg donors currently available. Look at donor profiles available at egg donor agencies that post profiles online (or online with a free user account), even if you don’t plan to use a particular agency or any agency at all. You’ll learn what types of information you are typically given about an egg donor and can start to decide what characteristics are the most important to you.   Most likely, you will start warming to the choice when you see the wide selection of healthy, intelligent, and beautiful donors that you can choose from.

You will feel just as strong a connection with your child as you would if he or she had developed from your own egg.

Some people assume there’s some kind of metaphysical connection between biological family members that doesn’t occur between unrelated people. But think about your own parents, and your other blood relatives. Even if you have a good relationship with them, you are aware that they are individuals who are separate from you, with some things in common but many differences. You probably feel a stronger connection to your husband or partner, or other people who are not biologically related to you.

In addition, as humans, we are “programmed” to bond with babies and children that need us, even if they are not biologically related to us. This probably comes from our prehistoric days in which postpartum death was common and many young infants were left motherless. To ensure that our species kept its numbers up, we developed the instinct to raise these orphaned babies as if they were our own. And to feel just as if they were our own as well.

You are choosing a winning strategy.

Many women, when trying to conceive, find company and support on online infertility forums. If you are currently on a forum for women trying to conceive after age 40, you surely value the camaraderie and enjoy celebrating other members’ successes. But the number of disappointments can be discouraging. Take a look, instead, at forums for women undergoing donor egg IVF treatment. These forums are happy places with very high success rates. So often, members are busy high-fiving someone’s positive home pregnancy test, steadily doubling HcG levels, or an ultrasound that shows a healthy heartbeat.

And finally…

When plans change, your feelings need time to catch up. Don’t expect yourself to absorb it all right away and to be ready to jump forward immediately. But remember that numerous women have experienced just what you’re going through now. And many of those women are now mothers through egg donation and couldn’t be happier. One of those moms, who started out very unsure if she could accept the donor egg option, said after the birth of her son, “if someone could wave a magic wand and give me my own healthy eggs, you know what I’d say? ‘You keep those silly things; I just want a baby as wonderful as my little Andrew!’”

When someone tells you
They ” know ” what is ” good “
For you more than you do,
Know they are demonstrating
Their ignorance,
Simply observe their confusion
And listen to the truth / wisdom
Of your feelings, then take action
      – Orkie

Mother always knows best! When I hear this phrase I see a nagging mother shaking her finger at me and indirectly telling me I’m stupid and should listen to my elders because they know better then I do. When we get out into the real world we don’t realize how much this phrase and this way of thinking hurts us because we tend to look for answers to our problems from other people. People who are raised in this manner sometimes never learn to fully trust themselves. Only when we become older do we realize that our elders are as ignorant about solutions to our problems as we are.

The truth is that no one knows what is best for you but yourself. Everyone’s experience in life is different and no two problems have the same outcome because we all came here to learn very different things for our individual soul development.

Let’s take for example a very common issue that parents and their children face in making decisions. Young people today are strongly encouraged to go to college sometimes without knowing what career they want to pursue. Parents may say things like, “We know what is best for you and this is it,” or, “We’ve been there too and know you’ll be alright.” Some students are fed empty promises of a long lasting fulfilling career after graduation and are pumped through the college system like a factory assembled product only to end up with a mountain of debt and later seeing the vast amount of competitors that are after the same job. Most of the time parents pressure their children into taking out large sums of money on loan to go to school and sometimes even promise them that they will help pay half or more of the due amount. Sometimes this verbal contract between the parents and the child is null and void by the time the student graduates and the student is left fully responsible for the whole amount if the loan had no co-signer.

Let us assume that a student in this case graduates but is very unhappy with the skills he learned in school and no longer wants to pursue their major as a career. Because of economic and financial problems many people in this case stay with a job they dread because they have no money to go back to school or have a family to support.

In this case the student trusted their parents because they promoted the idea that they knew what was best for the child. Their child may have disagreed with their opinion but from the way he was brought up he gave in his parents’ idea. Think of a time when your parents or an older person you trusted advised you to take a certain path only later to find out that you should have trusted your feelings.

By embedding this dependent behavior in our children we produce citizens of society that cannot think for themselves and depend on other people to fix their problems.

Most of us appreciate our parents for bringing us into this world, nursing us, and sending us to school. Our parents put so much effort into our upbringing that they begin to believe they know what is best for us even when we are of age to make our own decisions.

One theory might be that mothers tend to cultivate this taught pattern in their children because of their fear of being alone. Subconsciously mothers know there is a fifty percent chance their spouse will leave and therefore they indirectly manipulate their children to think that they know what is best for them thus making the child afraid of making decisions and becoming dependent upon their mother and later their elders. Another theory is that parents view a child as an investment and whatever they put into the child financially they expect to get back in later years to benefit their needs. This is a sense of ownership over a child and controlling the decision making ensures the parent that their offspring will become dependent on their “wisdom.” Of course these are only two explanations and they do not apply to all cases. The point is we must teach our children to think on their own so they are able to make solid decisions based on how they feel and not tolerate the idea that surrendering their power is the answer to difficult situations.

As a society we can begin to change our ways by first becoming more attuned to our feelings. This does not mean one has to be emotional. All one must do to master this art is ask how a situation at hand makes one feel then having them acknowledge the feeling and finally make a decision upon that feeling. For example, your friend asks to borrow a large sum of money from you. You feel uneasy about the loan knowing from previous experiences that the friend spent the money on useless items and paid you very late. You finally decide not to lend your friend the money purely on your feeling of the matter and on some logical explanation. This is what it means to be in touch with ones feelings and this is the start to higher understanding of oneself; it is the first step in honoring yourself.

When we begin to honor our feelings we become more in tune to our inner truth and inner wisdom; we being to reach our higher selves, our souls, and are able to tap into that energy for guidance. Remember, just because we came into this world in a small fragile body does not mean we are inferior beings or lower in class and status. We were all born with the experiences and growth from our past lives and the more we condition ourselves to acknowledge how we feel the more we can tap into this higher wisdom and become our own teachers.

So the next time someone says to you they know what is best for you, simply listen to their ignorance and then listen to your feeling on the matter, your inner truth, and inner wisdom, then make a decision.

credit:dieraecherin via Morgue File

Marriage joins families that are poles apart even when you marry the boy next door. You start off looking for faults and everyone battles uphill from there. This can improve with time. Familiarity will breed if not affection, at least acceptance.

Maybe  you are too young to know about mother-in-law jokes. They always used to begin, “My mother-in-law is so. . . . . and usually she was fat or ugly.”  I don’t think people make them now because mother-in-laws are good looking and physically fit.  Therefore, don’t be shocked if your mother-in-law is out for a night of topless dancing.

credit: clarita @ Morgue File

What you can expect

There is this funny thing between daughters and mother-in-law and he is called her son. Mothers of sons always say, “If you have a daughter you have her for life, you have a son till he takes a wife.” It’s true really. A man can usually only manage one dominating woman in his life at a time and it’s a sensible man who makes that woman the one he is living with.

How well you get along with your mother-in-law is entirely dependent on your husband. If he loves and respects his mother above everyone, would never dream of offending her and his name is Oedipus, you are in for a rocky old time. You’ll be expected to be at her place for lunch every Sunday, every Christmas and other holy days, and he will drop everything at a moment’s notice to be by her side.

What you need is a man who has separated emotionally from his mother, who has an easy, friendly relationship with her and who isn’t frightened to say, “can we make that next week and not this minute?” Unless of course her house is on fire, in which case he should make it quite clear that your guest room is for temporary use only.

Probably, if you continue to like your husband and haven’t been completely beastly to him, you will get to like his family and perhaps have a good laugh with his mother. My mother-in-law, I’m sorry to say, is so dead that I no longer have a relationship with her. But I liked her a lot.

Why husbands turn out like they do

Whether he likes it, fights it or not, your husband has inherited his parents genes and so he will grow old and be just like one or  the other or a combination of both of them.

Credit: Click @ Morgue File

Areas of discord

You are most likely to fall out with your in-laws over the children and your husband’s health. Your child-raising methods will almost certainly not be theirs and you will have to explain this to your children before or after they go to stay with them. Then the children will tell their grandparents what you have said and there will be frosty silences all around until your husband has a quiet word with you on the way home. Then his mother will complain about his poor health and you will tell her if she’s that bothered she can have him back.

They are his family after all – don’t force him to choose

Still, they are his family which makes them your family. And sooner or later, you will recognize them as your  family. You will throw their bad points at your husband whenever it suits you and he will throw your family’s bad points back at you. Therefore, it is a must that if you want to survive that you have some ammunition for sneaky counter-attacks.

Marriage might not be the way to go in our society but the relationship between connecting families is just as dodgy. There’s a rich vein of bitterness in the whole in-law set-up but having these tips will help you to start loving your mother-in-law from day one!

In my opinion, married people who have affairs are less likely to divorce.  Why?  Because they get all that sexual tension out of their system when they have sex with another human being.  Many will attack Senator John Edwards for impregnating his mistress while his wife was undergoing chemotherapy, but he was just doing what feels good.  If you think about the consequences every time you want to do something that feels good, you’ll feel miserable all your life.  Yes, there is STD’s out there.  But that’s why people wear condoms.

My wife use to cheat on me all the time with another man.  Surprisingly, that other man was my brother.  I was angry at her first but then I realized why she did it.  She did it because it was suspensful.  She risked being caught and it made the affair more adventurous for her.  After talking with her, we came to an agreement. If we have an affair on the side of our marriage, then we have to take each other out for dinner every single week.  So I get to enjoy being both married and dating 2 seperate women.  And my wife gets to do it with 2 seperate men. Me and my wife’s marriage couldn’t be happier because of the promise we made to take each other out on a date every week.

Now I know you women are a bit scared of having an affair due to the fear of getting pregnant.  Thanks to the wonders of science and technology, abortion has never been easier.  When my wife was cheating on me, she was shocked when she learned that she was pregnant.  We agreed that if I was going to let my wife continue dating other men, then she would have to get an abortion.  So now whenever she is pregnant, she gets an abortion and the process is really easy and painless.

I know we live in a conservative nation, and most likely people will look at this article and think it’s satire.  This article is not satire, nor am I joking.  I am dead serious with this article, and I feel America would have a lesser divorce rate if people would stop going crazy every time their wife or husband cheats on them.  It is based around my true beliefs that love should be free and marriage should not tie someone down if they want to fool around.  Marriage is just a piece of paper.  It’s not ownership of your soul.  Married women should have all the sex they want with anyone they know and not feel ashamed about it.  I know there are many words like “whore” or “slut” that get used about women who fool around, but that’s only because men think they should be the only ones allowed to cheat.

Once they’ve reached school age, check that your children are having a good nourishing breakfast before leaving home each day. Make sure they’re not spending all their pocket money on undesirable snacks and that they’re showing, a healthy appetite for school lunches or those provided at home.

All children are naturally energetic, so there should be no need to prompt them to  exercise. Any sudden or prolonged state of lethargy calls for medical advice.

At this pre-teen stage, spots and pimples should never appear. If they do, you can be sure the cause is either the wrong sort of diet or they’re not properly cleansing their face.

Just as young girls love dressing up and staggering about in Mom’s high-heeled shoes, so do little girls love to imitate their mothers’ beauty routines and make-up techniques. If you know you have a pair of inquisitive eyes watching your every move, you should become more meticulous. This won’t just pay dividends in your own appearance, but also in the way your daughter looks after her skin, hair and later on, her make-up.

There will be times (perhaps rather too many of them) when curiosity overcomes a beauty-conscious moppet and she’ll be rifling through your handbag or make-up drawer in order to add a little color to her life. It might well be aggravating to see the last of your lipstick being smeared inexpertly over a childish mouth, but try not to be cross. Instead, teach the painted doll before you, how to remove the mess — in the correct way.

Give her the sort of beauty preparations designed for her age group. These include, of course, bath oil or the bubbly additives which make bathing a pleasure rather than a chore, body lotion to keep her skin smooth, and colorless lip salves to help prevent chapped or sore lips and to make a Modern Mini feel really grown up.

Save pretty cosmetic containers that you can pass onto your daughter that she can use for her own personal products.
 
As every mother knows, she spends more time and money in children’s shoe stores than she does in any fashion store! But it’s time and money well spent — for growing feet need special care. Children should be taught to scrub and cut toenails as frequently as fingernails. Let them run barefoot indoors as much as possible and always make sure that shoes are a correct and comfortable fit.

By following these guidelines your daughter will start developing good grooming habits that she can use for a lifetime!

If you have given birth, your baby begins, your pituitary gland (screenplay), requested the production of the hormone propagating increases.

This stimulates the cells of the breast. These cells begin to absorb nutrients from the blood and use it to produce milk. Since this process is very little time is required, the first days after birth, the breasts produce and the fine, white fluid, called colostrum. That the milk, colostrum is nutritious and has antibodies. After 3 or 5 days of milk production of propagating, the crowd control, so that the more milk the baby takes time, more and pituitary propagating produce more milk. If the baby breast milk production, are not kept within a week or two. Milk flow is controlled by the closure reflexes. Otherwise, constantly licking milk from the breast. When the baby sucks the nipple by sensory impulses to the hypothalamus in the brain react.

Equal to the orders of the pituitary gland to produce) the hypothalami hormones (especially which travel through the bloodstream. When they arrive at the chest, the cells of the alveolar cavity in which milk is stored, and thus shrinking the breast milk. The entire process takes 30 to 60 seconds. Once the milk is the reflection of the “Stop” and “progress” is easily triggered. Often, the sound of weeping stimulated reflection. However, stress may conflict with the reflex.

In this case, we need people to support you if you are breastfeeding. If you are sore nipples while the baby sucks feel it may be a small crack in the nipple. Your doctor will advise a healing ointment. If you feel a little hardening in the breast, a bottle of milk ducts are blocked. Try massage and hot towels. If the song does not disappear, call your doctor because you have an infection in May

If so, you need an antibiotic. Normally, you can continue to maintain, against infection. propagating is usually to protect against pregnancy. It is preferable, however, since they are not neglected in the time of ovulation, breast feeding, even if no rules. If you stop breastfeeding, unless it gradually, your breasts swollen and painful for a few days to dry milk.

The woman he has the bottle from the beginning of the same problem.

Your doctor may prescribe medication to suppress, to the milk. If that can not be used to apply the breasts or a bag of ice down bands.

Image via Wikipedia

It wasn’t long after the birth of my second child when I realized she was colicky. I was well aware that if you are nursing a colicky baby you should go off dairy products. So I did this, or so I thought. My baby continued to cry endlessly… but only at night. We took her for drives at two o’clock in the morning. She would fall asleep and then wake up the minute we arrived home. I would lie on the living room couch at four in the morning, the baby in the infant swing, while I sang like a drunk “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…” Then my husband got up to relieve me. We laid her over our knees and rubbed her back, laid her on the floor and rubbed her back, sang endlessly to her, to no avail.

We took her to the doctor, during the day of course. She wasn’t crying then. The doctor said she seemed fine. I said she cries all night long so the doctor recommended we give her formula in the evening, soy formula. However, it wasn’t the evening feedings that were the problem. She continued to cry and, also at the doctor’s recommendation, I gave her infant over-the-counter medication for gas which she promptly vomited. Thank you, baby.

I’m sure my baby could feel my frustration and fatigue. I really needed some sleep and when my husband was on shift he was not getting up in the night to help me out, even when I was covered in vomit.

One day about two months in I came down with a bout of the stomach flu. I couldn’t eat or drink anything. I lay on the sofa in the family room, the baby on the floor in her car seat. Thankfully she was peaceful. Of course, it was daytime. But then, that night, she was still peaceful. No fussing, no crying. I searched my weary brain to find a reason. The answer was right there in front of me – I did not have a cup of tea that morning; a cup of tea with a drop of milk in it. Yes, MILK! My baby was getting that tiny bit of milk I ingested in the morning when I breastfed her at night! I stopped putting milk in my tea and my baby stopped fussing.

The problem wasn’t completely solved. When she got older and it was time to take her off the formula, we moved her to homogenized milk as was the recommended feeding plan for growing babies. I held that ten-month old child in my lap and she vomited all over me. No whole milk for her! We determined that she was probably lactose intolerant. Anytime she got a cold, which was a lot when she was little, mucus congestion caused her to vomit. After months of dealing with this we cut her off milk completely and eventually gave her lactose-free milk.

Wikipedia

At 13 years of age she no longer needs lactose-free milk. She only has regular 1% milk on her cereal, which she eats a lot of, and drinks water with her meals. If she gets a cold she is cut off milk completely. She is strong and very active playing soccer year round and participating on all school sports teams. She has a tiny waistline but she is almost as tall as me (5’3”) and still growing.

So, to all you new mothers nursing colicky babies, please check your diet. You will save you and your baby a lot of grief.

          Telling a sister, brother or someone in your extended family to back off and you breathe is easy but when it comes to a parent its one of the hardest things you could ever do.

          I debated many hours even days on how I was going to address the problem and came up with a little game plan on how to address it this time and how to say enough is enough next time.

          I started by doing the one thing that probably brought my relationship back to where we needed to be I apologized for letting my mother run my life and the one we were trying to start together as well.  I had to sit down and make my mom shut her mouth and listen. So step one really would have to be speak your mind and don’t let them interrupt you until you have said everything you need to. Next calmly talk about what lead up to the discussion you are having. If you feel like its getting too intense stop and separate yourselves for about fifteen minutes to kind of cool off and recollect your thoughts. This step could only happen once in your discussion or it could happen twenty times. Do it when and as much as you feel is necessary to make sure you are able to get through the issue. Lastly once you have stated everything and so has your loved one make sure you both understand that there are no hard feelings so that it doesn’t cause a wedge in your relationship with each other.

          Here are a few tips to make sure you don’t have to go through another discussion again.  1) Make sure your voice is heard when it needs to be 2) Don’t let someone walk all over you just because they are close to you 3) Keep your cool! Don’t argue if you don’t have to and last but not least 4) Always remember if it is your life they are trying to run it is still your life and you have the final say in everything!

I told myself then that I would not grow up to be like my mother. My kid’s would have choices I decided. They would have freedom, and not have to account for every little moment of their lives. Kids need privacy too.

Then I became a mother. The world suddenly seemed a much more dangerous place. My children, I decided needed to learn so many things in such a short time. I needed to teach them to be responsible, learn to make wise choices, and most of all I needed them to be safe.

My oldest son was twelve when I heard myself saying to him. “No you cannot go to Jimmy’s house until your room is cleaned.!” As he headed back to his room mumbling about how unfair I was.

I watched him go with one thought in my mind. “Help me, I have suddenly become my mother!”

Over the course of the next several years, more and more I noticed that things I said were my mother’s words. Things I did, were my mother’s actions. What is more. These words and actions came naturally to me.

Finally, I understood what I could not understand as a child. My mother did not say and do these things because she wanted to have “power” over me as I had thought. She had said and done these things out of love and a desire to protect me and prepare me for the future.

She wanted me to be safe and grow up to be a worthwhile person. Just as I wanted those things for my children.

It took me years to understand how truly caring and committed my mother was. Now when I see things in myself that reminds me of my mother I feel pride. She was a great mother, caring, attentive and determined. Those are traits I have learned to admire in others and in myself.

Now when I have moments when I think that I have become, in some ways like my mother, instead of feeling a sense of horror I feel pride.

Whenever someone says to me. “You are just like your mother.” my heartfelt response is “Thank You!”

So why am I saying what I think a mother should be, because I want to tell you what my step-son’s mother does to him and her grandchildren.

The first thing is that when they get their food stamps, she lays up on them and eats up their food stamps.  She then leaves and does not give them a penny of money.  If they call her for help she charges them for anything she has to do.  They have to pay her to baby-sit her grandchildren, and that is even in emergency situations.

Now here is a good one for you to wrap your head around.  She purchased a mobile home in her name but was letting them live in it.  My step-son was making all of the payments.  However due to unforeseen circumstances they got behind some.  Well, the mobile home was going to go into foreclosure.  Instead of trying to help her son and grandchildren by paying some on the payments, she signed papers to let the mobile home go back to the dealer who then gave my step-son, his wife, and their four children ten (10) days to get out of the trailer.

She went to baby-sit her grandchildren on her son’s and daughter-in-law’s wedding anniversary.  However, she told her grandchildren (the oldest is 12) that if their mom and dad were not back by 11:00 P.M. she was leaving them there by themselves.  She had to get home.

She expects when she does one little thing nice she either has to be paid back or makes her son do something in return for her.  That may be fine if it was not for the fact that she will baby-sit her grandchildren for an hour, but her son has to repair her car which takes all day.

They have asked her to help with their bills if they got a little bit behind.  No way in this world.  She told them they would just have to turn their lights and gas and whatever it was off.  She was not paying their bills for them.

So, what is a mother?  A mother is not just the person who gives birth to you, she is supposed to be your best friend.  However, as you can see in this situation, my step-son’s mother will never win any type of “Mother of the Year” award.  In fact, I am not too sure I would call her a mother.  How about you?  This is all in my opinion type words.  Yet they are all the true facts of how cold-blooded some “parents” can be.