Knocked Up – Knocked Over

my journey through pregnancy and hyperemesis gravidarum

Category Archives: Writing and Blogging


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Prolacta Update

You may remember the article I wrote about Prolacta and their lack of transparency when it comes to soliciting for milk from pumping moms.  In case you missed it:

Prolacta, For-Profit Milk Banks, and Predatory PR Tactics

Next Thursday, I will be sitting down with Scott Elster, Prolacta CEO and Susan Neumann, VP of Milk Procurement for Prolacta.  Susan has worked to arrange the meeting, and I hope it will be an opportunity to discuss the steps Prolacta needs to take to become fully transparent in its business.  More to come on that later.

In the meantime, I have a fantastic guest post that my friend Julie has been working on about her experience with Pinterest as a new stay at home mom.  It’s a fun article and I know you will enjoy it.  Look for that to come out tomorrow!

Also upcoming, Kombucha making, Sauerkraut making in the incredibly new crock my grandma gave me for my birthday, a few more hippie hygiene experiments, setting up a sidecar crib for your bed, and more!

Between now and then, hug your kiddos, kiss your babies, and love one another!

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It’s been a while

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It’s been a while since I have written.  There have been what seem like a million things pulling me in different directions.  It has been an eventful few months, and I hope to be back to writing very soon. nIn the meantime, I hope you enjoy a few pictures of my girls from Katie’s 1st birthday party. 

The photographer was Karis McEllroy of Emily June Photography.  Thank you so much for capturing this special day for us, Karis!

This gallery contains 15 photos


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Mamas at Work: A New Online Magazine for Working Moms

I’ve been working on a secret project and I’m so excited to finally be able to let you all in on it!  My friend, Cindy, and I are starting a new blog/online magazine that’s going to go live in a week or so. It’s a blog about our experiences as full time working away from home and trying to stay true to the principles of Attachment Parenting.
 
There’s this idea floating around that in order to build attachment with your children that you have to follow this laundry list of things.  You have to be a martyr to your childrens’ whims.  You can never sleep again.  You must not work outside the home.  And on and on.  Many sarcastic thanks to Time Magazine for promoting these myths. 
 
You know, those things just aren’t true.  We want to share with you the different ways we’ve made attachment parenting work for us and the ways we’ve found to balance career and attachment.  We want to support working moms and help them to find ways to foster deep attachment with their own children.
 
I’m so excited about the launch of this project.  Check us out:

http://mamasatwork.wordpress.com/

Rumor has it that we will be launching with a fabulous give-away, so keep your eyes open next week!

We’re looking for guest posters, so if you are interested you can email us at mamasatwork@gmail.com and let us know your ideas.

Thank you in advance for your support!


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Blogging and the Future

Wow. Doesn’t that sound dramatic?

I’ve been away from the blog for a while, which is a shame because there have been so many interesting things going on.  Everything from hippy hygiene experiments to breastfeeding revelations to parenting two to food adventures to returning to work and on and on and on.  With as busy as I am, I really feel like I need to come up with a different plan to refocus my energy for 2012 back into this blog. I’d like to revamp my posting schedule, focus on the quality of my writing, and reserve more attention to my readers and others in the blogging community.

With the frequency that I have been posting for the past four months, my 3 posts per week schedule is too much to handle right now. I’ve got two kids and a full-time job, so I need to get real about what I can accomplish.  Moving forward, I will drop down to post once a week, with that post appearing on Sundays.  With as busy as I am with the two girls, this will still be a stretch goal for me, but I need to post at least every week to keep this blog viable for 2012.

I would also like to focus on the quality of writing.  Toward the end of my pregnancy, and with the commitment to post 3 times per week, I found myself just cranking out posts as fast as I could.  I would write furiously, get my thoughts out, hit the spell check, and then post it.  I think I owe my readers a little more than that.  I have the ability to write well, and I owe you all and myself the courtesy of putting forth that effort. So, for 2012, I will put much more effort into crafting readable and interesting posts.  I do have a degree in writing after all.  It’s time I put my skills to use.

In a similar vein, I will manage the comments section of my blog more effectively.  During my maternity leave, I got lazy about my comments.  I wouldn’t check them often, and sometimes it would be a week or more before I got around to approving a pending comment from a new reader.  That’s really not fair to you all.  You took the time to read my posts and comment, and I would like to show my gratitude for that by approving your comments quickly and taking the time to reply to each of them.

From a networking perspective, I need to get back to reading the blogs I follow.  It’s been a while since I’ve done that and it’s time to get back to it.  There are some excellent new blogs that have cropped up since I had Katie and I need to update my sidebar with their links.  It doesn’t seem right to expect folks to read my blog if I’m not reading theirs, so I will put more effort into reading and commenting.  I am setting a goal for myself to read and comment on at least 3 blog posts each week. This will get me motivated to come on out of my bubble and get back into the blogging community.

So to summarize, here is what you can expect from my for 2012:

  • One article each week to appear on Sundays
  • A focus on quality over quantity for my writing
  • Quick response times in the comments section
  • Replies to your comments
  • Thoughtful comments from me on other blogs

I’m so grateful to all of my readers and I look forward to growing as a writer in 2012.


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2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 36,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.


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It’s been a while!

It’s been a while since I posted.  I think I have an excuse though, don’t you?

Baby Katie is doing quite well, but she is just keeping all of us very busy.

I definitely have a few future blog posts planned:

  • Our birth story
  • The aftermath of HG
  • Our nursing journey, which hasn’t been easy at all
  • Adjusting to being an older sister
  • Adjusting to being a Mommy of two
  • Our network of support

For now, though, I just wanted to check in and let you all know that I am still here, just very, very busy!

Many thanks for all your well-wishes and congratulations.  I’m not sure when I’ll be back to my regular blogging schedule, but I appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Also, please don’t be surprised by some visual changes. After making it through HG, I’m having a hard time looking at the old blog. It just dredges up memories.


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Getting back into the blogging

At the beginning of the year, I made some blogging-related resolutions.  I won’t rehash the post, but if you’re curious, here’s a link to it.

One of those resolutions was to blog on a schedule.  Specifically, I decided to post on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.  The idea was to keep myself blogging regularly, and give readers an idea of when to expect new posts.  I even joined the WordPress Post a Week challenge to help me stay on target.

When the hyperemesis really hit, though, all of that went out the window.  There was a period of a few weeks that I didn’t post at all.  At this point, it seems like I either post once a week or I hit you guys every single day.  There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to it.

I plan to, moving forward, go back to posting on the Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday schedule.  Since the HG isn’t quite as much of an issue at this time, I think I’ll add a twist.  Sunday’s post will be a post about natural living, whether that’s through natural/attachment parenting or bringing sustainability into our lifestyle.  I think this is an interesting direction to go, especially since we’re not a particularly crunchy family, and things like that don’t come as easily to us.  I also think it will help bridge the gap once the baby is born.  I won’t be pregnant forever, and I really do enjoy this blog.  I need to find a way to transition beyond pregnancy blog.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, so expect a proper blog post tomorrow.


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I’ve been nominated as a Top 25 Pregnancy Journal!

Knocked Up – Knocked Over has been nominated for inclusion in Circle of Moms Top 25 Pregnancy Journals!

I’m pretty excited about this.  It’s a great opportunity to reach more people and spread awareness about HG.

Click here to vote for Knocked Up – Knocked Over on Circle of Moms.  I’m pretty behind right now, so I definitely need help catching up.

You’ll also see a Circle of Moms badge in the right sidebar.  You can click on that to access the voting page.  It looks like this:

Please vote for me each day though May 18th!  I’d love the opportunity to reach out to more women who may be dealing with HG and need support.

Thanks!


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Blogging Resolutions for 2011

We’re going to continue down the bunny-trail of non-HG posts just a bit farther today and talk about handling the blog in 2011.

I’ve been working on my blogging resolutions for this year.  I’ve come up with the following ideas:

  1. Blog More Often.  WordPress has issued a blog more often challenge.  As a part of that, I’ve decided that I will post 3 times per week for the Post A Week 2011 challenge.  I will read the WordPress Daily Post for pointers and ideas.  It may be hard to blog this often, but I think it’s important to set this goal to make sure I stay connected when I get sick.   Staying connected when I’m sick, I hope, will stave off those horrible feelings of isolation I felt last time around.
  2. Blog on a Schedule.  I’ve decided to post on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.  Not only does this let you guys know when to expect posts, but it gives me, the Queen of All Procrastinators, structured deadlines.  I hope this added structure will keep me posting through the rough stuff.  I’m debating adding in a Wordless Wednesday post.  I’m a pretty sucky photographer, but I like the idea of showing sometimes as opposed to telling.
  3. Keep a running list of Ideas for New Posts.  This way if I feel sick and stumped, I can draw on one of my brainstormed ideas.  I have a lot floating around in my head, but I need to get them written down.  I’ll keep the list on a private page, so that it can evolve a little more easily than a paper list.  This will also keep it a little more accessible if I have to blog from a borrowed computer.
  4. Network more with other bloggers.  I want to read more blogs and comment more regularly on blogs.  I tend to get a little shy about commenting on different blogs, but I just need to do it!  I need to get over my feelings of intimidation.  I also want to search my keywords a little more frequently to see if any new HG blogs pop up.  It’s nice to connect with other women who are or have been suffering with this same disease.  Having that sense of community can be really meaningful when you’re suffering and alone.
  5. Tweak the blog front page to better suit my needs.  There are a few sections that I have added for whenever I do get pregnant.  I want to keep a weight journal to track weight loss and gain over the long haul.  This means I had to learn a little HTML to get the table set up.  I also want to keep track of how much this disease is costing.  I was so floored by the cost of the Zofran that I’m curious to compare how much a well-managed case of HG costs with and without insurance.  I want to find other ways to tweak the front page of the blog to provide more complete information.
  6. Read blogs on blogging on a regular basis.  I’m a new blogger.  Reading post with blogging tips, hints, advice and pointers will help.  Yes, I have a degree in composition, but that type of writing is a whole other ballgame.  Read about it, learn more, stay fresh.

So those are my resolutions.  I think they sound pretty good.  Nice and achievable, but with a little stretch in there to make the goals a challenge. 

Thanks for reading y’all.  It’s so exciting to actually have people who want to read what I have to say.  I’m looking forward to the 2011 blogging year!

Next week, we’ll be back to our regularly schedule HG blogging.

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