What do you say when your best friend's child is sick? What words of comfort do special needs parents need to hear? What do they NOT want to hear? Words of comfort for special needs parents: I received a text message from my best friend. Her daughter was admitted to the hospital (again) last View Post
5 Important Things Every New Medical Mom Should Do
New Medical Moms, Listen Up! I am the mother of four boys ages 8 and younger. One of our little ones is medically complex and was diagnosed a few days after his text-book-delivery via scheduled c-section. He spent the first two months fighting for his life in the PICU, in a medically induced coma View Post
Four Words That Will Change The Way You Parent
In hindsight, we all have defining moments in our lives that changed, molded and shaped us. Either we were changed against our will, improved after careful planning or shaped through serendipity. Before this experience, I considered myself a pretty good parent to our two young boys. But I View Post
You Need a New BFF! I Know I Do!
My newsfeed is blowing up lately with articles about friends. There are tips on how to meet like-minded friends, how painful it is to lose them and why we need them. Lately I have been disappointed, frustrated and upset with the concept of friends… and then it dawned on me… I DO have that View Post
10 Things Other Parents Need to Know About Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes
I am SO honored to have my friend Megan share her experience with Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes. Her beautiful daughter, Maeve was diagnosed several years ago when she was just a toddler. Megan and Maeve have done an incredible job spreading awareness and educating others of the devastating disease. View Post
10 Things Other Parents Need to Know About…
I am thrilled to introduce a new blog series called “Ten Things Other Parents Need to Know About…” Each blog post will feature a complex medical condition and a parent with an affected child will answer ten questions. These posts will be an invaluable resource to other parents with newly diagnosed View Post
Turn Your iPhone Into a Life Saving Device
If you are anything like me (meaning: “an average mom”) you have A LOT of important information and pictures stored in your phone. In order to safeguard our privacy, as well as protect our phones from grubby little toddler fingers, we take advantage of the latest iOS View Post
8 Ways to Keep Your Family Safe When the Unexpected Happens
“Tove, this is Tina from your children’s soccer camp. Your boys were not picked up by Susan today. They are still here in the office with me. I have been trying to reach Susan for the past hour, but her cell phone goes to voice mail!” (Names and locations have been changed.) Imagine receiving View Post
20 Stolen Moments of Sanity for Mothers
We are constantly on the go, rushing to and fro, trying to fit as much as possible into our already over-extended lives. We have to stop, breathe and find our focus. The frazzled rushing is counter-productive. We need a goal-oriented focus in order to be constructive. We are unfortunately unable to View Post
When Sickness Strikes, Keep Your Family Healthy!
When sickness strikes your home and a family member is sick, your challenge becomes nursing one person back to health without getting the rest of the house sick. While your first inclination may be to evacuate the healthy family members, remember they may already have been exposed. The only thing View Post
The Incredible Things You Realize After Your Kids Have Been Sick
We are just coming off a few weeks of back to back to back illnesses of varying degrees and origin. With four boys in the house there is often some type of germ, bug or other contaminant in the house. However, the past several weeks were more "interesting" and educational than I recall in recent View Post
To the Staff Treating my Medically-Complex Child
To say that the heart-mom community is a "village of support" is a gross understatement. We are a group of kindred hearts, a force to be reckoned with and a united front when it comes to welcoming new members and teaching newbie heart moms the ropes. We seek the truth and demand untampered View Post
Special Needs Children Need Friends Too!
I spend a lot of time writing about motherhood in an effort to empower and support my fellow moms. But somewhere along the way, the child with medical conditions and special needs is lost! Lost in the system, lost in the community, on the playground – just plain LOST – if he doesn't have friends and View Post
The One Mom Friend Every Mom Needs In Her Life
You just took a call from your child’s doctor. It wasn’t his staff calling with the results, it was the doctor himself - which we all know only means that the test came back positive for (fill in the blanks). You hang up the phone, maybe you remembered to wish him a “good day”, or not - regardless View Post