VERY HELPFUL WEBSITES

www.belliesbirthandbabies.com
An online community for growing families providing support, information and resources, while honoring every parent's inherent wisdom. In turn, the professional connections between those who work with this community strengthen as we join together.
Bellies Birth and Babies is a resource to the community for:
Finding a birth professional - Explore bio pages, ask birth professionals questions
General information surrounding natural childbirth with links to resources
Event Calendar listing local classes
Supporting families during pre-conception, pregnancy, birth and as their children grow

www.brainchildmag.com
A magazine for thinking mothers.

www.coloradodoulas.com
A website for parents and doulas living and birthing in Colorado

www.literarymama.com
A literary magazine for the maternally inclined.

www.loveandlogic.com
Love and Logic provides parents and teachers with easy-to-use, practical techniques that help adults achieve respectful and healthy relationships with children. The Love and Logic approach to raising children puts teachers and parents in control, teaches children to be responsible and prepares them for the real world. We will help you raise children who are honest, caring, and ethical--children who are prepared to make positive contributions.

www.motheringwithoutamap.com
Join me in celebrating the good mother within yourself. This site offers books, workshops and an online forum for supporting mothers who grew up feeling undermothered and want to parent differently with their own children.

www.wideeyedlearning.com
Signing Smart: Open the door to early communication. This website offers baby sign language programs and products for hearing infants and toddlers.

VERY IMPORTANT BOOKS

Beyond the Blues: A Guide to Understanding and Treating Prenatal and Postpartum Depression, Shoshona Bennett and Pec Indman
Beyond the Blues contains the most up-to-date information about risk factors, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mood disorders in pregnancy and postpartum. Straightforward yet compassionate, it is required reading for all who work with pregnant and postpartum women, as well as for those suffering before or after the baby is born.

The Birth of a Mother: How the Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever, Daniel Stern
According to Dr. Daniel Stern, pregnancy and motherhood can have an enormous psychologically transforming effect on women, who find themselves guided by new hopes fears, and priorities. Yet these dramatic and frequently overwhelming emotional transformations often go unexplored in favor of discussions of morning sickness, exhaustion, and the relative merits of nursing and bottle feeding. The book is an invaluable sourcebook for new mothers, validating the often confusing emotions that accompany the development of their new identities, as well as a resource that helps prepare pregnant women for the life-changing journey they are about to begin.

First Feelings Milestones in the Emotional Development of Your Baby and Child, Stanley Greenspan
First Feelings is the first book to show parents how to recognize the key stages of a child's emotional growth while guiding and enhancing early psychological development.

The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer, Harvey Karp
In an innovative and thought-provoking reevaluation of early infancy, Dr. Karp blends modern science and ancient wisdom to prove that newborns are not fully ready for the world when they are born. Through his research and experience, he has developed four basic principles that are crucial for understanding babies as well as improving their sleep and soothing their senses.

Healthy Parenting, Janet Woititz
In Healthy Parenting, Janet Woititz, a leading therapist, contrasts what happens in a healthy family with what happens in an unhealthy family to show just how your own upbringing influences the way you raise your children, and what you can do to make their upbringing better for them.

How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk is an excellent communication tool kit based on a series of workshops provide a step-by-step approach to improving relationships in your house. The "Reminder" pages, helpful cartoon illustrations, and excellent exercises will improve your ability as a parent to talk and problem-solve with your children.

Infant Massage: A Handbook for Loving Parents, Vimala McClure Schneider
Vimala McClure, founder of the International Association of Infant Massage, and its premier proponent in the United States, helps you master the techniques of infant massage so you can incorporate this joyful and wonderful healing art into your baby's life. She shows you why a daily massage can be one of the greatest gifts you give your child...and yourself.

Kids, Parents and Power Struggles: Winning for a Lifetime, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
In Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles, she offers unique approaches to solving the daily, and often draining, power struggles between you and your child. Kurcinka views these conflicts as rich opportunities to teach your child essential life skills, like how to deal with strong emotions and problem solve. With her successful strategies, you'll be able to identify the trigger situations that set off these struggles and get to the root of the emotions and needs of you and your child.

Mothering Without a Map, Kathryn Black
Every woman's most powerful maternal role model is her own mother. But what about women who grew up feeling "undermothered"-whose mothers were absent, distracted, emotionally distant, depressed, or fell short in some vital way? How are they to become the good mothers they aspire to be? Through the voices of ordinary women across the country, in all stages and ages of mothering, Kathryn Black learns that there are ways to become a good mother without having had one of one's own. A beautifully articulate blend of memoir, research, and moving interviews with mothers and daughters, Mothering Without a Map is a powerful and self-affirming book that shows how "wounded daughters" can indeed become "healing mothers.

Mother Nurture, Rick Hanson and Jan Hanson
Psychologist Rick Hanson, acupuncturist and nutritionist Jan Hanson, and obsetrician/gynecologist Ricki Pollycove offer hundreds of practical ways a mother can lift her mood, stay energetic and healthy, build teamwork and intimacy with her partner, and be at her best for her family during the stressful and crucial first six years of her child's life. They also explain how the strains of motherhood can literally deplete a woman's body, draining it of important nutrients such as minerals and amino acids--sometimes so severely that she experiences Depleted Mother Syndrome (DMS). Covering everything from stress relief in the middle of a crazy day to gettting more sleep, eating better, balancing home and work, sharing the load fairly, and keeping a strong love alive with her partner, Mother Nurture is the first book to present a comprehensive program that helps a mom take care of herself while she takes care of her family.

The No-Cry Sleep Solution, Elizabeth Pantley
Pantley's successful solution has been tested and proven effective by scores of mothers and their babies from across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Based on her research, Pantley's guide provides you with effective strategies to overcoming naptime and nighttime problems. The No-Cry Sleep Solution offers clearly explained, step-by-step ideas that steer your little ones toward a good night's sleep--all with no crying

Parenting From the Inside Out, Daniel Siegel
In Parenting from the Inside Out, child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., and early childhood expert Mary Hartzell, M.Ed., explore the extent to which our childhood experiences actually do shape the way we parent. Drawing upon stunning new findings in neurobiology and attachment research, they explain how interpersonal relationships directly impact the development of the brain, and offer parents a step-by-step approach to forming a deeper understanding of their own life stories, which will help them raise compassionate and resilient children.

Raising a Secure Child: Creating an Emotional Connection Between You and Your Child, Zeynep Biringen
Written by the foremost researcher on emotional availability in parent-child relationships, this guide will change the way parents relate to children, resulting in more fulfilling relationships on both sides. The first part of the book explains the eight general principles of emotional availability, and uses a wealth of examples to illustrate these principles in action. The second half of the book applies the principles of emotional availability to a wide range of ages, situations, and special needs.

Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
Siblings Without Rivalry guides the way to family peace and tranquility with humor and compassion for both parents and children. Illustrated, action-oriented, and easy to understand, it's packed with sensitive yet sensible ways to turn quarreling siblings and frustrated parents into an open, communicative family.

This Isn't What I Expected: Overcoming Postpartum Depression, Karen Kleinman and Valerie Raskin
A major addition to both maternity and psychology literature, here is a guide to self-help and professional treatment of postpartum depression--one of the most misunderstood and misdiagnosed mental illnesses. The authors debunk the myths surrounding PPD and provide compassionate support and solid advice for women with PPD.

When Your Kids Push Your Buttons: And What You Can Do About It, Bonnie Harris
It's a given, kids push their parent's buttons like nobody else can. Too many mothers and fathers can be provoked to react with harmful anger, and children learn to manipulate their parents' emotions repeatedly, resulting in unhealthy life-long patterns. In When Your Kids Push Your Buttons, the focus is on the parent. By showing parents that it is their ideas and perceptions that push their own buttons, the responsibility is taken off the child's behavior and the theory that the child becomes the teacher to the parent is developed. Filled with anecdotes from real families, this book is destined to become a parenting classic.