WellnessWinz

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Category: Motherhood

  • My Plan to Reduce Toxic Masculinity and Improve Women’s Health

    I turned to my husband one evening recently in tears. It wasn’t about any one thing in particular. Rather, I was crying about ALL the things afflicting women over the last few years. To name a few: increased rates of domestic violence declining rates of women in the workplace following the pandemic combined with overall…

  • My Top Prenatal Care Tips After 5 Pregnancies

    Today is my oldest son’s 6th birthday and I’m just weeks away from my third child’s birth. As I prepare to bid farewell to the years spent TTC, being pregnant, coping with loss and medical complications, and recovering from childbirth, it seems appropriate to take a moment to reflect and share a bit of advice…

  • “Women Can Have It All” [the myth that hurts our wellness the most]

    I was reading a news article recently and was caught off guard by how angry it made me. I get worried, stressed, fearful, and frustrated but seldom truly angry. Now, before going on, I *don’t* want to get political here. That’s never been what WellnessWinz is for or about. So please discard that idea as…

  • Pregnancy After Loss Is…

    I’m approximately halfway through my 5th pregnancy and hope that it will be my 3rd healthy live birth. Having suffered two losses before, I’m quite familiar with pregnancy after loss and the many complicated emotions that accompany it. I’ve become more entrenched in the pregnancy loss community since losing my 3rd son in the second…

  • Trauma Recovery & Mental Health Support for Mothers

    The last year has taught me a lot about recovering from trauma and coping with grief. The healing journey is never linear and yet it remains a steady part of my daily life. As anyone who has endured trauma will tell you, it can flash in and out of your life with unpredictable speed and…

  • My Emergency C-Section Recovery

    Some of you already know that I experienced an emergency back in October when we lost and said goodbye to our third son at roughly 4 months gestation. When I went in for a routine D&E I experienced extremely rare complications and one of my uterine arteries ruptured causing excessive blood loss, several blood transfusions…

  • Glimmers of Joy Amid Grief, Loss and Loneliness

    I’ve been quiet on the blog and social media for the last month or so – and for good reason. Starting in mid-September, my husband and I started to get some bad news about the prognosis for our third son’s health and pregnancy outcome. We were devastated thinking about a child being born into a…

  • How I Managed to Breastfeed Two Difficult Babies

    Breastfeeding…ugh. Even after three collective years of doing it, I’m still baffled by how difficult it can be. Breastfeeding is by far and large the most challenging thing I’ve done in my life. Period. And that’s saying a lot for someone who has rehabbed an injured back following getting hit by a car. I’ve run…

  • Encouragement for Moms Struggling to Lose Weight

    As if we needed any reminders that mothering is hard, we now have a pandemic that’s hammering that message into our sleep-deprived mom brains. Caring for babies is an around-the-clock job, toddlers have excessive energy-expending needs and curious little brains (“Why do the scientists say the parks have to be closed?”), and I hear from…

  • How I Lost the Baby Weight (Again)

    It’s important to start off by saying that my ability to lose the baby weight within the first six months postpartum has very little to do with the fact that I’m a fitness professional. I haven’t used any voodoo magic for my body or resorted to any intensive training programs to lose weight. I also…