All posts tagged site updates

It’s here!

Modern Alternative Pregnancy is now live.  You’ll see our introductory post up today, and throughout the week — a super awesome giveaway!

You’ll have opportunities to explore the site and interact with our Facebook page everyday of the week, as well as interacting with our wonderful sponsors in order to earn extra entries into the giveaway.  It is an amazing prize package, and you’ll have to hop over there to see the details!

What Can We Expect to See?

Over at Modern Alternative Pregnancy, you’ll see all things surrounding pregnancy.  That includes:

• Fertility/infertility
• Getting pregnant
• Pregnancy discomforts
• Pregnancy nutrition and fitness
• Choosing providers/ birth location
• Preparing for birth
• Giving birth
• Birth stories
• Postpartum recovery
• Breastfeeding

The whole spectrum!

This month, our theme is Informed Consent.  We’ll be talking about what that really means and how you can ensure your rights are respected in a variety of environments.  If you’ve ever been uncertain what’s okay and what’s not, and what you can say and do — you’ll want to head over there.  If you’ve ever unfortunately been bullied during pregnancy or birth, then you definitely want to head over there to learn how to stand up for your rights in the future!

Our mission is to bring as much information to women as possible, and to empower them to make the choices that are right for them in pregnancy and birth.  No two women are the same, and neither will be their choices.  By having all the information they need, though, women can make the right choices for their situations and make sure that they know how to advocate for themselves.

Come on over and check us out!  We’d love to meet you!

What do you most want to see at Modern Alternative Pregnancy?

The good news just keeps on coming!

In two weeks, we will be launching our third sister site, Modern Alternative Health!  This site will launch just in time for the fall, right when everyone gets concerned about staying healthy!

I love to write about health on here (and I still will), but I just don’t have the time to get into all the nitty-gritty details of natural health and how to keep yourself healthy.  There are so many topics out there!  And there are new studies, treatments, and information coming all the time.  I wish I had the time.  But you can now find all of that at Modern Alternative Health!

What kind of topics can you expect to find there?

• Home remedies
• Alternative provider information (acupuncture, chiropractor, etc.)
• Herbal features (explaining the history, benefits, uses, side effects, etc. of one herb at a time)
• Treatments for acute conditions (strep, lice, fevers, and pink eye are just a few you’ll see in Sept.)
• New health research
• Healthy supplement use
• Exercise/diet (as it specifically relates to staying healthy)
• Mental health
• …and more!

If it’s health-related, you’ll find it at Modern Alternative Health! And of course, since it’s an alternative health site, you can expect that the vast majority of the topics will be alternative in nature, helping you to heal your bodies naturally and teaching you how to treat colds, flus, and other acute conditions at home.  We’ll also feature stories from time to time of people who have healed themselves from more serious conditions naturally…for informational purposes only, of course.  The majority of the contributors are not doctors!

Speaking of contributors, we have another excellent team!

First, there is our editor, Beth Grice. She’s a long-time MAM reader and is doing an awesome job creating and managing the site.  She has amazing ideas and has really helped this site take shape (wish I could share it with you now!).  Sadly you must wait.  But you can get to know her better on our Facebook page.

Then, there is our team of contributors:

• Sharon Wallace, Wood Wife’s Journal
• Jasmine Bass, Like a Mustard Seed
• Jill York, Jill’s Home Remedies
• Roxanne King, The Holistic Mama
• Katie Stanley, Mexican Wildflower
• Amanda Labrow, Natural Living Mama
• Jennifer Hunt, Vibrant, Sexy, Strong
• Angela Montgomery, Real Whole Health
• Nina Nelson, Shalom Mama
• Malissa McClintock, Tryin’ to Evolve
• Lynette Berger, A Hodge Podge of Randomness
• Nova Cox
• Tyson Perez, DC of West Coast Chiropractic of Carlsbad

This is an awesome team of men and women who are very experienced with herbs and other forms of alternative medicine, and I know you’ll benefit from it!

The official launch date is on Tuesday, September 4th (since Monday the 3rd is Labor Day).  I hope you’ll come and join us over at Modern Alternative Health at that point and check out the awesome launch week giveaway, as well as getting to meet the contributors and see the new information!

In the mean time, please get to know our team and our sponsors over on our Facebook page, which is live today.  Feel free to ask questions and to share topics that you’d love to see them cover in upcoming months!

What are you most excited for at Modern Alternative Health?

kris krüg via Compfight

Since our community has grown so much this year, I realized that I may have a few followers who pop in and out and who may not know what Modern Alternative Mama is really all about!  I thought I should go ahead and clear it up for you.  You’ll see that Modern Alternative Kitchen is posting a similar blog today.  We, as a network, want to just take this opportunity to let you know who we are.  This is a bit of a follow-up to last week’s post Bloggers are People, Too.

How Did We Start?

It was fall, 2009, and I had just discovered a lot of new information about health and wellness, largely because of my daughter’s food allergies.  We had discovered dairy, then gluten, nuts, peanuts, legumes, and a number of others.  It was overwhelming, yet I felt like my eyes had finally been opened!  We began to reject modern medicine (who could not, after repeated visits, tests, and treatments, help us with her) and look towards alternative treatments.  I spent hundreds of hours reading about alternative health while she slept.  I wanted to share it with everyone!

(If you’re curious, you can go back and read Rebekah’s Story and Rebekah’s Story, Updates to learn more about how this all started.  She’s now a very healthy, happy 4 1/2-year-old with no more food allergies and no speech delay.)

No one really wanted to listen, and in my eagerness, I often accidentally offended people.  I had no idea that the information I had discovered was so controversial!  When I first heard that flu shots might not be good for babies, I mentioned it briefly on a message board — and wow, did people get upset!  (I really, really meant it innocently and did not yet understand the serious controversy that was out there!)

Then I discovered blogs, blogs that wrote about the kinds of things I was interested in, from the perspective I wanted to write from.  The very first one I discovered and the one that motivated me to actually begin MAM was Keeper of the Home (I’ve been a contributing writer over there for almost two years now).  Stephanie showed me that there is a whole bunch of people out there who eat real food, practice alternative medicine, home school, entrust their family size to God, and live as Christians.  I had no idea!

So Modern Alternative Mama was born.

Growing Up

The blog grew slowly at first, and then much more rapidly starting around the 1-year mark, when I finally hit my stride.  Since then we’ve continued to grow fairly rapidly, and this year we are in the process of launching some sister sites.  Modern Alternative Kitchen was launched in early July, and Modern Alternative Pregnancy is due to launch in just over a week.  Next week you’ll learn more details about our next sister site!

It’s been a wonderful journey as we’ve expanded and our audience has grown.  This year alone we’ve tripled the traffic to the blog, and nearly tripled our Facebook fans too.  That’s so exciting!  But of course, with it comes new fans who may have stumbled on a helpful post, and may not have fully explored the site.  I also know we have a very diverse community.  And that’s wonderful!

But in case you’re wanting to know more about us, and if we, as a whole, are a good fit for you, I wanted to share a bit more about who we are (and are not).

Modern Alternative Mama is:

• Living as a Christian, based on following Biblical principles
• Leaving family size up to God/large families
• Christian/traditional marriage
• Natural/alternative health (including not using antibiotics or vaccines, for our family personally)
• Real/traditional food
• Homeschooling/unschooling
• Natural and Christian homemaking
• Homesteading/farming (coming soon!)
• Natural/Christian parenting (an area I’m still struggling to balance, frankly)
• Sewing and crafting (when something strikes my fancy)
• Natural birth/ pregnancy/breastfeeding
• A supportive, positive, and diverse community for those who are interested in any or all of the above

Modern Alternative Mama is NOT:

• Traditional medicine/pro-modern medicine
• Worldly/non-Christian point of view
• Junk food
• Feminist (as in, “must work outside the home,” “having it all” or the idea that homemaking is wrong, bad, or demeaning to women)
• A place for negativity, rudeness, swearing, etc.

In no way do I promote intolerance of those who believe differently, nor will I allow commenters to insult me or one another.  I promote my own worldview and aim to support those who share it.  I hope to help families become strong in the Lord, in their marriages, as parents, and with their health and wellness.

If we are not what you thought, no hard feelings!  We want to be honest and transparent about who we are and what we promote.  We fully understand that many of you will pick and choose what works for you, and we understand that many of our readers feel passionately about one of our subject areas, and may feel very differently on others.  That’s okay!  As long as everyone adheres to that last principle (a supportive, positive, and diverse community) we’re all good!

Why Does This Matter?

I don’t want to be shy about saying who I am and what I stand for.  I know that, especially as a Christian woman, wife, and mother, that there will be people who take offense to me and my beliefs.  I am okay with that.  I am still going to put it out there because it is important to share that I love God and I strive to follow Him.  I fail all the time and I can’t say I’m a shining example of a Christian in any regard.  But I still strive to do better everyday.

I want to attract a community that largely believes a lot of what I do, so that we can come to support and learn from each other.  I understand that my followers and I will never agree on everything and I love that we can share our differences respectfully.  I’m being up front now so that we can understand and appreciate any differences, and maybe some of us can connect on new levels!

Over the next few months, with the launch of our sister sites, Modern Alternative Mama’s focus will be shifting just a bit.  We’ll be talking a bit less about food, pregnancy, and the next topic (health!) and more about homeschooling, homemaking, and living as Christian mothers and wives.  We’ll still talk about food and health because those topics are part of being mothers and wives!  But the nitty-gritty details will belong to the sister sites.

Since we’re (still) hoping to move to a farm property in the next few months (ideally before baby arrives, but we’ll see…), homesteading and farming will be major topics too.  We’ll be talking about the “stuff of our lives” a bit more often!  I want to share with you who we are and the journey we’re on to continue “living the non-mainstream life!”

I hope that this is important and hopefully exciting to you!

What would you like to see on Modern Alternative Mama in the coming months?