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Caregiving Magazine
Emily Ellison wanted to help. She just wasn't sure how to manage everything.
The Wicker Park mom was juggling the demands of raising her 3- and 6-year-old children while caring for her 73-year-old mother-in-law, Barbara Friz-Ellison, who has Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and Lewy body dementia.
The diseases are difficult. Words go missing, and people have trouble maintaining a train of thought as they become more easily distracted. Anxiety, frustration, paranoia, and hallucinations can all happen to varying degrees, depending on the person.
"It's a hard disease on the person who has it, and it's a hard disease on the people who are caring for them," Ellison says. Especially when that person is also caring for people at the other end of the age spectrum.
Chicago Health Magazine
Feeding a child today can feel surprisingly complex. Between rising food costs, allergies (1 in 13 U.S. children has a food allergy), and time constraints, families are juggling a lot.
Megan McNamee, a registered dietitian and co-founder of Feeding Littles, is one of the most influential voices in modern parenting nutrition. With nearly 2 million Instagram followers, McNamee champions a mantra that resonates: “I want my kids to learn to eat, move their body, and take care of themselves by how it makes them feel, not by how it makes them look,” she writes in one post.
She’s not alone. Many parents today are hungry for practical nutrition advice — and overwhelmed by the flood of food products and expert opinions out there.
Not only that, but guidance for feeding children has evolved significantly. Here, three local dietitians share the latest thinking.
Laura Ott, 36, and her husband Greg Ott, 35, have three kids under age 4, including an 11-month-old baby and a bulldog named Kevin.
With the coronavirus spreading and their day care closed, the Mundelein family began self-isolating, working remotely from home by split-shifting hours to juggle Laura’s job as a senior talent acquisition partner for Zebra Technologies, Greg’s position as a senior sales executive at United Healthcare and child care.
Chicago Parent MAgazine
Pelvic health is not a topic most moms typically discuss. But there can be plenty of problems “down there," such as bladder leakage, that are the direct result of going through pregnancy and childbirth.
Missy Lavender, the executive director and founder of the Chicago-based non-profit Women’s Health Foundation, was one of those moms.
Best Hacks For Baby Playdates With Your DINK Friends
Chicago Parent Magazine (Hey Baby)
For those of us who mostly have DINK—Dual Income, No Kids—friends, it can be a difficult transition when baby comes along. You’ve got one foot in the carefree, do-what-I-want old world while still trying to make time for mom friends, work, a significant other, the baby and maybe, just maybe, an hour for yourself here and there.
Chicago Parent Magazine
Since the beginning of time, women have wanted to look beautiful. Ancient Egyptians were known for using dark gray ore of lead to emphasize their eyes. The Greeks used ochre clays laced with red iron for lipstick. And in 1500 B.C. the Chinese and Japanese used rice powder to paint their faces white. While our standards of beauty have changed, one common theme remains the same: women want to be sexually appealing.
‘It was like she was hugging me through the phone’
Chicago Tribune
Kim Greenberg knew something wasn’t quite right. Last year, she had just given birth to twins and had a daughter who hadn’t yet turned 2.
She knew things would be tough, but this was more difficult than she had ever imagined.
Caregiving Magazine
Taking care of an aging loved one is incredibly demanding — physically, emotionally, and mentally. In Illinois alone, 1.3 million family caregivers provide an estimated 1.21 billion hours of unpaid care annually. Prolonged stress from caregiving can manifest with headaches, body aches, insomnia, or moodiness. It can also show up as a lack of interest in activities you previously enjoyed. “These are signs of burnout,” says Amy Brennan, executive director of the Illinois Family Caregiver Coalition.
Planning Your IEPs During COVID
Chicago Parent magazine
Kimi Matsumura remembers the first time she attempted to get an Individual Education Plan for her daughter, Mei.
Mei, then 3, had recently aged out of Early Intervention, a federal program under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act geared towards infants and toddlers who have or have a high probability of developmental delays.
Matsumura, the founder and president of Chicago Autism Network, approached Chicago Public Schools and was told her daughter would need a diagnostic test to see if she qualified for Illinois’ Early Childhood Special Education services, which helps children ages 3 to 5. If she qualified, she would receive an IEP, a written legal document used for school-aged children (up through the age of 22 in Illinois) to define and address a child’s specific disabilities and how needs for learning will be addressed.
“CPS told me my daughter literally scored one point too high to qualify,” says Matsumura, who eventually got her daughter the services she needs, but not without a lot of work.
Chicago Parent Magazine
Let's be honest: There's no such thing as a perfect romantic relationship. Throw kids into the mix, a professional career or two, lack of sleep and it's a recipe for disaster.
There's plenty to fight about. Sex. Money. Who's going to change the diaper at 3 a.m.? Who's going to stay home from work with a sick child?
So how do couples deal with the conflict, and more importantly, make time for each other in the busy world of parenting? A few Chicagoans and experts offer their advice on how they make things work.
CHICAGO MAGAZINE
An increasingly popular reference tool for soon-to-be parents, a nameologist suggests baby names based on everything from family history to numerology.
With the help of two local couples, Chicago tested out one of the country’s most-sought-after practitioners, Maryanna Korwitts of Naperville, author of Name Power 101, and two of her competitors, a California couple and a Cleveland-area mother of two.