17Nov 2023 by Sarah Glenn

One Baby, Please, Hold the Sugar: A Birth Story

All, Birth Stories, Breastfeeding, Health, Infants, Life, New Parenthood, Post Partum, Pregnancy, Relationships
One baby, please, hold the sugar is my daughter's birth story told from her perspective. These words are her own and don't necessarily express my personal views or opinions. I welcome all women to share their birth stories! Please contact me if you'd like to publish your birth story on The Incomplete Guide to Parenting. If you are interested in my doula or lactation services, please visit my website Disclaimer: No artificial sweeteners here I've gone back and forth about putting my story out into the world. I never wanted to scare anyone, and so when asked, I would come up with a glossed over, toned down version of my story, the "polite" version. But I recently read a birth story that was such a blatant bunch of sugar-coated bull****…
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12Nov 2023 by Sarah Glenn

The Trials and Tribulations of a Young Mom

Life, Parenting, Relationships, Teens
To understand the trials and tribulations of this young mom, you should read this and this first. Being emancipated at 16 certainly makes you feel like a full-grown adult.  Everything I did was with a responsible thought process, but I certainly wasn’t perfect.  Many times, I would act like a typical teen and just have a boyfriend or hang with my friends, but work, school and sports encompass your whole life and leaves little room for fun.  As adulting does to everyone.  Even learning to drive was taught by my older friends since I didn’t have an adult to guide me, but I managed.  With a bit of scrimping and saving I bought my own $500 car at 16.  It was a necessity, since you really can’t get around on…
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04Nov 2023 by Sarah Glenn

How to Find Your Mom Tribe

Parenting, Pregnancy, Relationships
Every woman should have a mom tribe. Even if you're not pregnant yet, start gathering information to use later when the time is right. Finding a mom tribe is integral to your well being! Here's a possible scenario: You’re a few days late with your period and decide to pick up an at home pregnancy test.  Once in the store, you’re overwhelmed with the options available.  Is the price predictive of a more accurate reading? Which one has better reviews?  Is one stick easier to pee on than the other?  Will you be able to understand the process and how to interpret?  With so many questions you may turn to Siri, google, YouTube etc. instead of a friend or family member because you want it to be a secret.  Once…
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03Nov 2023 by Sarah Glenn

Are You at Risk for Burnout?

Life, Parenting, Relationships
Just like a computer, sometimes your brain needs a reboot.  If you keep adding input without taking something out (making room or some of you might remember GIGO? - I’m aging myself) you can burn out the “machine.” Your body is a delicate symbiotic system that needs a chance to catch up (like the computer’s spinning circle of death).  We can’t possibly expect to have our machines working at their best if we don’t give it a little rest, discard the garbage, update it or shut down completely for a while.  The same can be said for the body builder. If she never gives her muscles a chance to repair, those muscles will be in jeopardy of falling apart and not grow.  Defeating the purpose.  While anyone can be on…
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10Oct 2023 by Sarah Glenn
The Fourth Trimester

The Fourth Trimester

Breastfeeding, Infants, Life, Parenting, Pregnancy, Relationships
It's strange to hear the newborn period referenced as the "fourth trimester." You've spent 10 (not 9) long months on a countdown through days, weeks, months and trimesters patiently waiting until the end of the third trimester for "this" to be over so you can meet your little one. Emotionally, those first three months postpartum are a time of transformation for you, your baby, and your partner. Learning how to be a family is taxing. Physically your body is adjusting to the new spaciousness, milking breasts, and the crazy hormone acclimation. Let's not forget the exceptional changes a newborn phase through. The cerebellum alone triples in size during the first year. Those early experiences outside the womb are integral to optimize brain development. Newborns are born slightly immature at full…
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07Oct 2023 by Sarah Glenn
My Young Teen Years

My Young Teen Years

Life, Parenting, Relationships, Teens
  If you missed My Younger Years, understand that I ended the story with my mother getting remarried when I was 11.  I was completely fine with it but wasn’t aware until they got back from Hawaii.  So… Let me preface this by saying, that I absolutely loved my stepfather.  He was a troubled soul and my mother was extremely preoccupied with saving him.  Unfortunately, it was all I needed to get into trouble.  Skipping school, hanging with the “bad kids” and sneaking out were easy to do when your mom wasn’t watching.  Through it all, I still managed to skip a grade in school due to my grades (went from 7th to 9th) but that didn’t matter.  The more I sought my mothers’ attention the worse trouble I was…
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07Oct 2023 by Sarah Glenn

My Younger Years

Kids, Life, Parenting, Relationships
My “Young Me” Story Follow my upbringing to see where I landed in my adulthood and parenting!  Start at the beginning... My mother and father were 18 and 20 when they got married (she was not pregnant).  Mom delivered me 2 days before her 20th birthday, in Brooklyn, NY. So, I grew up an only child with a single mom in an Irish catholic community in Rockaway Beach, NY (that’s a part of Queens). My parents divorced when I was a baby and I never met my father until I sought him out in my 20’s. Two of my aunts lived within walking distance and I spent a fair amount of time playing with my cousins.  Matter of fact, one cousin and I were “twins,” born 18 hours apart and…
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21Sep 2023 by Sarah Glenn

Teaching the Art of Giving

Kids, Life, Parenting, Relationships, Work
When children are very young, teaching the art of giving is hard for most to conceptualize. Since birth, they have been the focus of many gifts, and very little is expected of them, rightfully so. Some children will naturally have the personality to be a giver, sometimes too much, but the other personality types may need more convincing. It's hard to grow up watching the commercialism surrounding holiday seasons (and made up holidays). Everywhere children go, there is a message of receiving a present for whatever time of year it is. I mean Christmas alone starts in July- Seriously, I went to the boardwalk in August hoping to spend a lovely weekend soaking up the end of summer (I'm in NEPA) but instead was hit with Halloween and Christmas- EVERYWHERE! …
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15May 2020 by Sarah Glenn

They Told You the Baby is Posterior

Health, Infants, Life, New Parenthood, Pregnancy, Relationships, Third Trimester
They told you the baby is posterior, what exactly does that mean? Posterior fetal position (OP), otherwise known as "sunny-side-up," is a term used to determine how the baby's head is presenting when inside mom's belly. In the OP position, the back (occiput) of the fetal head is towards the woman's back (posterior), and the baby is looking "sunny-side-up." Babies have many challenging tasks to accomplish when going from in-utero to mother's arms. The majority of these efforts are done without mom having to do anything special to be successful in finding the optimal fetal position for birth. In a nutshell, babies are driven to find the correct way out of the water world. Most munchkins settle into the optimal fetal position between the 32nd and 36th week of pregnancy. Eager…
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13Apr 2020 by Sarah Glenn

Parenting in a Pandemic

Health, Infants, Kids, Life, Parenting, Relationships, Teens, Toddlers
Parenting in a pandemic can be overwhelming, even for the most level headed parents. We are called upon to dig down deep into our hearts and souls and find all the good we can to transfer onto the worried children we are trying to protect- much easier said than done! The majority of the universe has never lived through a pandemic such as this. It's not to say that we haven't had horrible things happen in our lifetime- including other pandemics- but the worst-before now-was in 1918 and most of that generation has left this earth. Not to minimize some of these runner ups: Spanish FluTuberculosisSmall PoxPlagueCholera outbreakSwine FluSARS coronavirusRussian FluHong Kong fluSerum run to Nome (diphtheria)MalariaWest Bank fainting epidemicHIV/AIDS I imagine you may have never heard of some of…
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