My Plea to All Would-Be and First-Time Moms

It was a Sunday morning when my husband's little sister knocked on the door and relayed heartbreaking news.
A baby girl of about 3 months was found abandoned in her parents' house, alone with her tiny legs full of rat bite marks. Someone had informed my father-in-law, a Kagawad official of the barangay, about it, so he asked for the baby to be brought inside our home.

10 Important Tasks a First-time Mom's Gotta Do

Just found out you're about to have your very first baby? Congratulations! Those 2 red lines represent the start of a journey that will forever change your life.

Let the feelings of euphoria and nervousness sink in. Allow yourself to bask in the realization that in the next 40 weeks, you will be experiencing a miracle that only we women are blessed with.

But this miracle is a precious one, something that you don't just toss from one hand to the other. And because it is precious, it can break at the slightest sign of carelessness and neglect. Don't ever allow this to happen to you! Start taking good care of yourself and your baby by keeping these 10 important tasks in mind:

Baby Journals: How to Keep Your Baby Books Updated, the Do-it-Yourself Style

I have here with me a stack of three journals. One is a Taschen, the other is a Piccadilly, and the third is an unidentified good quality hardbound.

These are my family’s baby books, one for each son. These are where the memories and keepsakes of each of my babies’ growing-up years are recorded. These keepsake journals are not the usual kind that you can buy in stores. Inside these books, there are no illustrated pages of pink and blue cutesy designs, color coded according to the child’s gender. There are no specified areas to fill up with milestones and growth charts and baby’s first everything.

New Mom Blogger Kelly: Queen of All Trades

Kelly with little Kaaro

Now that you've met Steffi, let me now introduce our next, new mommy blogger. Mommy Kelly is mother to three boys (four, including her adoring husband, Marlon) with whom she's made a home in Cagayan de Oro.

She and her husband are both artists and between mothering and working online, it amazes me that she still finds time to curate museum exhibits, organize artist directories, spearhead conventions, and who knows what else. She even home-schools her younger boys. Lately, she was just in Boracay, where she attended a tattoo convention and learned about the basics of tattooing.

New Mom Blogger Steffi: Young, Tech Savvy, and Hardworking

Mommy blogger Steffi, hubby Jayson, and their little Holly

Mom Notes would like to welcome two new mommy bloggers, Steffi and Kelly, both of whom I also consider good friends, aboard! Work and duties at home make it a little more challenging for me to update and even though I vow to post something whenever I can, two new minds and two extra sets of hands should keep Mom Notes alive and kicking. We aim to inspire other moms by sharing our experiences and hopefully, new knowledge and useful/fun/practical information, too.

Let me first introduce Steffi who, like me and Mommy Kelly, is also a stay-at-home mom. We actually met at a local online community for writers and although we may no longer be active in said community, our friendship remains. The bond of motherhood and the things we go through as online writers also have a lot to do with it. Steffi is mother to Holly, who will turn 1 next month, and happily married to Jayson.