Exact Plan

Sure, you could just go down the the store and have a cake custom made for you… but what fun is that? Not to mention the cost… Why not just try a few of these princess party cake ideas on for size?Turn your cake into a castle simply by adding some upside down ice cream cones as towers and decorating them with icing. A graham cracker and a couple of Twizzlers would make a nice draw bridge, and you could even use blue cotton candy to create a moat, or to make a castle on the clouds! (Tip: If you go for the cotton candy, don’t put it out until the last minute, especially if it’s humid out, as it has a habit of melting.)Another option is a crown cake. This works especially well with round cakes, just be sure to use lots of jewel-like candies, like gum drops and nonpareils to decorate it. (Note: If you have very young children at your party who might choke on the candies, be sure to remove them before serving.) Have a great party, and don’t forget the ice cream!

Big Foot Relay. Get the children get two shoeboxes with them. Magnetic Tape the hats onto the corners, then cut a one-inch-wide and four-inch long slit in every top. Have the contestants slip their feet into the slits in the boxes and race.

Batty Bowling. Recover a bit of silly or unique items that can be bumped over by a ball, much as a plastic milk carton, a candlestick, a stand-up dolly, a plastic vase of blooms, a pizza box, a column of empty cans, an umbrella stand, an empty oatmeal container, and a book. Draw them up like bowling pins and get the bowlers try to knock them over with volleyballs, tennis balls, or golf balls.

Cross Step. Draw a ten-by-ten grid on the sidewalk or patio with chalk. Have each player stand on a different square. One at a time, each participant must move to a new square after crossing out the square she or he was formerly standing in. The magic is that players cannot step into a square that is settled or crossed out. If a player cannot move to a fresh square, he or she is out. The game extends until one player is left.

Blind Snakes. Set up a figure of sprinklers in between a starting line and a finish line. Have the children try to run from one end to the other without getting sprayed. Have one of the kids hold the faucet, turning it on and off at random. Present ribbons to the children who play the gangliest without getting wet.

For the benefit of both the mother and her developing baby, please pass this information on to any pregnant women that you may know.

Being pregnant can be very stressful. It is a time of extreme change. Though a positive experience for many women, it can be impacted by the way these women deal with their stress. The main reason that labor and delivery is slowed (and sometimes stopped) is the direct response to stress and anxiety. Levels of pain and anxiety can be greatly elevated during labor and delivery as a result of poorly managed stress.

I know of one woman, who was neonatal nurse, and learned that after 28 hours of her own labor that her birthing progress had stopped and they had to perform a “C-section” to deliver her baby. She was very disappointed but understood that her response to stress had caused this undesired complication.

When I was in training in stress management and medical hypnosis, the pediatrician (and OB-GYN) physician who was teaching this part of my course, claimed that a “normal” labor and delivery should be a 3 hour event. He said that labor often takes much longer because women are poorly prepared for the delivery and to manage their levels of stress and anxiety. I was a bit shocked by this statement, but he had 30 years of experience and I did not.

When my wife was 39 nine, pregnant, and trusting in me, we began a program of stress management, visualization, and positive suggestions to encourage a “3 hour labor and delivery.” We went to “birth classes” and met a birthing coach to assist us with the pregnancy and delivery. She said that the stress management practice should begin as early in the pregnancy as possible. Even in the first trimester (first 3 months) was not too soon to begin. She said that the health of the developing baby would be improved by the mom’s relaxation by encouraging better blood flow with oxygen and nutrients getting to the baby more easily. It was also useful for the anxiety control of the mom. As the pregnancy moved along, we found that when my wife practiced the relaxation techniques, the unborn baby would feel her relaxation and begin to move around. For us, labor and delivery came a week earlier than the predicted due date. The contractions started around 11:30 AM and the baby was born a little past 3:00 PM about 3 and hours later. He was not able to make the 3 hour time limit because he was a bit bigger than predicted at 9 lbs 4 oz. but he was very healthy and my wife seemed to recover quickly for a 39 year old mother of the big baby.

I have done follow up research since the baby was born 20 years ago, and found that with women who had slow labor and delivery or problem births that when using the relaxation techniques and visualizations to control their anxiety, their subsequent births had fewer complications, were shorter, and the birth weights of the babies were generally a bit higher. Please consider these advantages for bring healthier babies into the world and helping their moms deliver with greater ease and grace.

Get more information about birth preparation from an experienced birthing coach. You may even get some assistance from your physician, but they are often too busy to spend the time for coaching you in preparation for your labor and delivery. It will require your time and motivation to allow this program to work best. Remember that your best results will come if you begin practice earlier in the pregnancy. Try to allow at least 8-12 weeks prior to your delivery date for the best results.

Please take good care of yourself.

L. John Mason, Ph.D. is the author of the best selling “Guide to Stress Reduction.” Since 1977, he has offered Executive Coaching and Training.

Please visit the Stress Education Center’s website at http://www.dstress.com for articles, free ezine signup, and learn about the prenatal stress management CD that is available. If you would like information or a targeted proposal for training or coaching, please contact us at (707) 795-2228.

If you are looking to promote your training or coaching career, please investigate the Professional Stress Management Training and Certification Program for a secondary source of income or as career path.

When couples attend Pink Kit classes, they often ask, “Why should we be preparing for birth? We’ve made our birth plan and chosen our care provider.” What is important is that the women is driving the car, not just taking a journey by car, which can imply she is the passenger. What we’re trying to get people to understand is that developing birthing skills is a necessity just like learning to drive a car. These couples include people planning homebirths with independent midwives and people planning hospital births with continuity of care team midwives or a GP or obstetrical specialist. Common Knowledge Trust (CKT) has discovered that analogies may help answer this question.

The Journey

First, we tell them labour is like taking an unknown journey by car. Even if you’ve taken this road before, each journey is different and unknown. It can be very strenuous and demanding. It might be long. You might get tired. Someone or a few people might accompany you. Throughout this journey, others might try to help you out in order to safeguard you and make certain you reach the end safely. Some professionals might suggest that you skip the journey. Circumstances might actually require you to do that. Other professionals will encourage you to take the journey because it might become a highlight of your life.

Then we ask, what is the difference between that scenario and labour? After many responses, we tell them the real difference is that you have already learned to drive a car. If you had to take such a journey and didn’t know how to drive, would you be willing to spend eight to 12 weeks learning beforehand? Where is the birth professional in this analogy? Some are encouraging you to make the journey and others might think it’s too dangerous, or you might think you don’t need to do it, fly instead. The birth professional is usually the low or high tech mechanic.

Next, the couples talk about their relationships to the professional care provider. Their midwives are encouraging them to choose a birth plan. They have decided where to birth, and the doctors are often telling them what they need. So we present analogies to other common professional relationships. We are all passive when we go to the dentist, yet most of us take care of our teeth every day. If we took this approach to birth, we would prepare beforehand, but in the presence of the professional we would be passive. Not ideal.

Giving birth is more like learning to sing, dance, paint, throw pots or play an instrument. We probably seek a professional teacher. Yet we have to do the work to learn, as well as show the teacher our progress. If we took this approach to birth, then the birth professionals would be our musical instrument instructors, yet even midwives don’t often take that role. The Pink Kit is the driving lessons, so this analogy still doesn’t give us a clear understanding of what other similar professional relationship is like labour and being cared for.

By the time the class works through all the analogies, the couples begin to understand: only the woman is going to labour. The father, partner, friend or relative is there to help her on the journey, which will occur around and through whatever professional care they receive.

The Kit

Since The Pink Kit information developed in the U.S. in the late 1970s and 1980s, thousands of couples have used the preparation and then laboured in hospital. Having done the preparation ahead of time, the couples work together with directed breathing; they use positions that keep the woman open. There is been a great deal of ‘best positions’ that have been theoretical and not worked for women, because they didn’t know enough about their bony structure or how the muscles reacted to positions. They do hip lifts and sit-bone spreads and carry out sacral rocking so their sacrum is mobile. This developed instead of the counter pressure on the sacrum that closes the space the baby needs, although it relieves the back pain. Learning to keep the sacrum mobile, gives the baby room and the woman relieved regardless of assessments, monitoring or other procedures going on around them. They just go on working through the process of labour. Staff and doctors often comment on what a “good labour” they had. “Weren’t they lucky? One woman responded: “I wanted to grab that person by the neck and shout, ‘You don’t know how hard We worked for that good birth!’”

The Skills

When we ask couples what their mothers and fathers taught them about managing labour, most say: “Nothing,” “Not much,” or “It hurts, you’ll get through it.” If they haven’t been taught by their mothers and fathers how to manage labour, where are they getting the information, and how useful is it?

Whenever people need to accomplish a new task, it’s vitally important that they learn appropriate skills and then apply them. Because so few people have been at births, they have no idea what appropriate skills are. If a woman perceives her contractions as manageable, she will use her breath sustainably, create self-relaxation responses, get into” labour and accept the process. If she perceives them as painful or very, very painful, she will respond with ragged breathing, tensing her body and using other struggling behaviours. What CKT is teaching expectant couples (lessons they will eventually teach their own children) are the sustainable behaviours they can put into place regardless of the woman’s perception, particularly when she does feel her labour to be “painful

The fact is that these are the universal skills that any woman can use, not just another ‘theory’ or ‘technique’. People are continually saying that what they learned in ‘childbirth education’ classes went out the window, which means, to date, those skills aren’t universal enough or not useable. Why would a woman want to respond to labour with frantic behaviour? It’s the lack of appropriately learned skills.

As women learn these appropriate skills and apply them to the task, there is more consistency in how women respond to the process of labour and how their partners can help them stay on a sustainable behaviour track. Because labours are so similar, we can define, hear, see, experience, practice, model, remind, encourage, remember and know appropriate responses to the experience. A woman who is struggling with labour may hold her breath or scream, groan and moan, whereas a woman who is managing her responses to the sensations will tend to breathe in through her nose and out through either her nose or mouth in a manner that sounds “right.” Because most people have no idea what sounds right, we have to show them so they can develop the skills.

We ask fathers or the support people to look at the woman’s face and forehead when she is relaxed during labour . Usually when relaxed, a person’s forehead is smooth. When a woman wrinkles her forehead in labour, the father understands that her internal sensations are intense, and he can observe whether she is responding to them with tension. He can then help her reduce the tension using “common body language” or “common body touch.” If she is breathing more raggedly, he can model directed breathing to remind her to use breath as a focus.

If the partner sees the woman standing on her toes, with shoulders around her ears and bum muscles tight, a father working with The Pink Kit is less likely to tell her to relax, drop her shoulders or come off her toes. Using his skills and knowledge, he’ll just tell her to relax inside the pelvic clock and minnie mouse muscles (her bum muscles). She’ll know what he is talking about. She would have done that herself, except the sensations were a bit too much at the time. She still might not like the experience, but she’ll love how she managed herself. She’ll love her partner for knowing specifically what she needed to do rather than giving her a general direction that could elicit: “I’m trying to relax!” “Shut up!” or “You try!”

One woman said after her birth: “Before each contraction, I set up my directed breathing. The contractions were fine. So I thought to myself, ‘maybe the breathing has nothing to do with it,’ and I just let the next contraction happen. It was off the planet in intensity. What scared me was that it took me four to five more contractions to get it back.”

What the statistics (on our website) don’t show is how empowered both mothers and fathers feel; that the woman knew she could turn to her partner for the coaching skills; that their partnering and parenting relationships are enriched.

There is no doubt that if we had all been at 100 births, we would see and hear which mannerisms are sustainable and which indicate that a woman is struggling with her perception of the experience. But the skills haven’t been passed on generation to generation. Common Knowledge Trust wants that to change. All the couples who use these resources tell us the same thingthey will pass the knowledge on to their sons and daughters. Women will labour, whether at home, in hospital, with a midwife, with a doctor, whether having a natural or a medical birth. Skills work well in all situations.

Knowledge is power. It reduces fears, increases confidence, builds skills and encourages conscious response rather than impulsive reaction to an intense experience. It develops a strong and deeply personal sense of accomplishment for both women and men. Most important, we’ll pass it on to our children.

Winter green is trustee and founder of the Common Knowledge Trust based in Nelson, New Zealand. The trust promotes the Pink Kit Method which gives private childbirth lessons for use in ones own home. For more information visit the Birthing Better website

It’s best to start a bedtime routine as soon as possible with your baby. As young as 6 to 8 weeks, your baby can benefit from establishing a bedtime routine. Having a nightly pattern will allow your baby come to appreciate the consistency. Knowing what’s coming next helps your baby to relax. Being relaxed helps your baby to go to bed easier and fall asleep faster. Even when you are away from home, try to keep your baby’s routine. While trying to settle down your baby in an unfamiliar place, the routine can help make it easier.

Giving your baby a bath, putting on pajamas, story time, or playing a game are some ideas to include in your routine. Choose activities that are calming to your baby instead of being exciting so it is easier to fall asleep.

A bedtime routine is not only good for your baby but for the parents also. It gives a special time for bonding at the end of a long day. Here are some ideas for bedtime routines you may want to try.

Sometimes before settling your baby down allow him or her to release pent up energy. Having a horsy ride or bouncing in a bouncer or on a knee is great ways to let off some steam. After all this excitement, be sure to follow up with an activity that is calming and quiet. Only do this if your baby falls asleep easily when it’s bedtime otherwise it’s probably too much excitement.

The bedtime ritual that has a soothing effect is a bath. Your baby gets warm, clean and usually relaxed. Try using lavender scented baby wash for an aromatherapy bath. It’s probably best to skip the bath for a nighttime ritual if it awakens your baby or your baby doesn’t like them very much.

Play peek-a-boo, stack blocks, or have some floor time. Playing quiet games add some fun to your bedtime routine.

Reading a bedtime story to your baby is one of the most popular routines parents establish. This benefits your baby by exposing him or her to a large vocabulary, which helps with language skills.

Playing CDs or tapes of classical music, lullabies, or kids’ favorites can drown out outside noise. This may help your baby go to sleep faster if they listen to the music. If you don’t want to play music, use a sound machine instead. Sound machines usually play nature sounds like rain or ocean waves. It is a good idea not to let your baby rely on music or sounds unless you plan to take it with you should you have to travel.

Try singing to your baby at night. Sing a well-known song and start a tradition in your family. Your baby will eventually learn that after the song is complete, it’s time for sleep.

As you’re taking your baby to bed, say good night to household objects, pets, people, favorite toys or other items. This is a fun way for your baby to recognize bedtime and no favorite stuffed animals are left out.

There are many activities you can include in your bedtime ritual. Have fun experimenting with the different methods and choose the ones that work for you and your baby.

Michael Russell Your Independent Baby and Toddler guide.