As I tell new moms all the time, the first six weeks postpartum are always the hardest. I wrote about the six-week milestone at WEtv this week:

For one thing, the sixth week is when I can usually expect my milk supply to start getting in synch with my baby’s appetite a little better. Up until then, I never know what to expect: one breast might be twice the size of the other. Or one day the baby might seem to nurse frantically all day and never get enough milk and the next day there’s so much milk that she chokes and gags when she nurses, milk streaming everywhere as though she’d put her mouth around the garden hose and then turned it on full force.

read the rest…

If you’d like to read about what my belly’s been up to, head over to WEtv.com.

Anyone who’s interested in birth choices–or just wants to hear me spout off about mine–check out my newest Womb With A View post at WEtv.

I feel like I’ve spent the last few days running around in a blur of freezing temps, wrapping paper and shopping bags. Oh yeah…that’s because I have.

Still, there’s nothing as exciting to me as the lead-up to the Christmas holidays. I simply love everything about this time of year, even when it means braving some less-than-fantastic weather (Umm, really, Chicago? -30? And hey, Southwest Michigan, I know you want to give us a white Christmas and all, but lay off a little, wouldja–I’d like to make it to church and back tomorrow night in one piece.)

Between putting up new posts at my WEtv.com blog and Largerfamilies.com, I haven’t had enough time for many original holiday posts here this year. So I hope you don’t mind if I share one of my favorites from last year. Enjoy!

This week, faced with a last-minute shopping emergency, I took the kids to the mall, a place that, this time of year, I try very hard to avoid. After we made our purchase, I was dodging crowds of holiday shoppers with my brood in tow when they spotted him.

Santa Claus.

I’m not sure if I should be proud or ashamed of this fact, but my kids have never, ever sat on Santa’s lap. Belief in Mr. Claus has always been a much more abstract concept in our home. At least one gift for each child comes directly from The Fat Man himself, evidenced by different wrapping paper and “LOVE, SANTA” scrawled in block printing on the tag.

His milk gets drunk, his cookies get eaten, we read The Night Before Christmas and make the usual comments about how we think we hear Santa’s sleigh coming. Yada, yada, yada.

But I’ve never felt the need to cap the Santa experience by taking my kids to the mall, waiting in line to plop one of them on an actor’s lap, and then paying $9 for a crappy souvenir photo. After all, by the time most kids are five or six they’ve figured out that the real Santa is busy overseeing his midget labor force in December, not going mall to mall asking kids what they want for Christmas. As if he really needs to be told. He is MAGICAL, after all.

What intrigued me, though, was that it was my oldest kids—who by their own admission are no longer believers—who seemed the most interested in a visit with Saint Nick. “Look, Mom, it’s Santa!” Jacob said. “We—I mean William and Owen—should really go tell them what we—I mean they—want for Christmas, don’t you think?”

There’s a big part of me that was heartbroken when my oldest decided he was no longer a believer, and I wanted to indulge the little-kid side of him. Besides, what could it hurt? So the five of us headed over to Santa’s Magical Parent Trap and got in line.

But everything seemed to fall apart once it was our turn. The big boys, who had just a few minutes before seemed excited by the prospect of getting up close and personal with Santa, decided to assume a cool, aloof stance once we got there and refused to come inside the gates at all. Owen took one look at “Santa’s” gray beard—or perhaps it was the belly that jiggled like a bowl full of jelly—and refused to go anywhere near him. “No, mom, no, mom, no!” he cried, clinging to my neck as though I was trying to turn him over to an orphanage. Pointing at Santa, he tearfully declared him “’TUPID!”

I held out hope for William. After all, at just-turned-four, Will’s at prime believer age. To him, there’s nothing at all strange about the idea that Santa could be at thousands of malls at the same time, just like there’s nothing strange about the idea that an overweight man who likes to hang around with elves squeezes down millions of chimneys in one night.

But even William wasn’t going for it. He refused to make eye contact with Santa, instead creeping up to him sideways looking down at the floor. When Santa patted his lap and invited Will to jump on up, Will looked at me with alarm and said “Do I have to?”

“No…but don’t you want to tell Santa what you want for Christmas?” I asked.

“Can you just tell him for me?” he asked, making a hasty retreat.

“He wants a guitar,” I said to Santa, as William backed away, his eyes on the floor.

Santa nodded.

“He’s shy,” I explained, as William hid behind his brothers and Owen let out a fresh shriek. Santa just stared. Really embarrassed now, I turned and fled.

“You want a picture?” the helper “elf” called after me.

But it was too late. The five of us, holiday misfits, were already hurrying toward the mall exit.

Before we left, though, we spent the nine bucks we’d saved on a round of Aunt Annie’s pretzels.

I’ve been busy over at my WEtv.com blog, Womb With A View.

On exercise during pregnancy: I do this to myself every time I’m pregnant: I start off with the greatest of intentions at the very beginning (”THIS pregnancy I shall walk two miles daily, swim three times a week, and practice yoga morning and evening! I may even take up strength training and Pilates!”) Then I hit that so-exhausted-I-drool-on-my-keyboard phase where it’s all I can do to stay upright through the day, and all thoughts of exercise go flying out the window. read the rest .

On those fear-mongering birth-story-tellers: But perhaps even worse than the instant experts are the people who feel that it’s their duty to horrify pregnant women with gruesome tales of their own–or their mother’s, sister’s, cousin’s, or hairdresser’s–births. Just listen to the horror stories, heavily laced with hyperbole, that experienced mothers will often tell to try to “educate” a soon-to-be first-time mom and you’ll understand why women tend to be afraid of childbirth:

“Oh yeah? That’s nothing. I punched a nurse in the nose, wrestled a passing police officer to the ground, took his gun, drove to the anesthesiologist’s house, kidnapped him at gunpoint and forced him to come back to the hospital so I could get my epidural.” read the rest

I’ve also written about prenatal testing, unanswered third-trimester questions and my ever-expanding belly.

I’d love it if you left me a comment over at WEtv letting me know how you’re liking the blog!