Many new moms feel that one of the perks of breastfeeding is that they get a break from their monthly cycle a little longer and can feel safe relying on it (at least in the first month or so) as contraception. But as Tori Spelling can now attest, you can never be too careful if you're not trying to get pregnant again soon after having a baby.

Spelling recently revealed to People that news of her now fourth pregnancy came as a total shock while her third child was just 4 weeks old. The Craft Wars host told Today, "It was the second biggest shock of my life. The first was when they said [5-month-old] Hattie was a girl when she was born, because we thought she was going to be a boy. And the second was that I was pregnant after my newborn had just turned one month old. We were shocked. I can dispel the old wives' tale that you can't get pregnant while you're breastfeeding."

Though Spelling and husband Dean McDermott

Crystal Porter is a blogger who shares her thoughts with us at SheSpeaks

child discipline

I'm a mom of a 5 year old boy. I'm constantly telling him "If you don't stop, you'll have to sit in time out". I never follow through with it though. Recently he has started acting out more and getting sad faces in school.

I know, I know--I should follow through when I tell him things. I just don't want to be the "mean mommy". We take video games away from him, but that just doesn't seem to work. I need a way of punishing him.

I've read parently blogs where moms say that time out works for their kids, but I want to know from you. Does it REALLY work? How long do you put them in time out? How do you get the children to understand that time out is a punishment?

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Jeremiah Duggar lends TLC a helping hand in Birmingham, Alabama, after a devastating tornado tore through the town.Besides learning the basics of homeschooling, like math and spelling, we work with our children on something called character qualities, which we think kids are never too young to begin learning about. There are 49 character-building qualities, and each quality has an opposite so that we can give our kids more of a reference point.

Read More From Michelle: Michelle on Homeschooling: How the Duggars Learn Together

For a month we focus on that quality and memorize it together. For instance, we might learn about taking initiative and its opposite, unresponsiveness. We look for ways to practice initiative creatively. Once we decided we would have secret acts of initiative and help bless other people's lives with it. We would do something that needed to be done before we were asked to do it and try to do it in secret and then see if later in the day someone noticed it.

Read More From Michelle: Michelle Duggar's No. 1 Exercise Motivator

So somebody would come along and clean up

By Signe Whitson, LSW for GalTime.com

Are you aspiring to be imperfect? As a young girl, I idolized my mother.

From her blonde frizzy hair and slightly crooked teeth to her bumpy thighs, I thought she was perfect in every way.

As an adult, I now "get" that highlighting those particular features may not make for the most flattering description, but to this day, I am grateful for them.

Those loveable, wonderful, imperfect parts of my mom taught me everything I need to know about being a parent myself. Here's how:

As a mom, I make choices everyday: vacuum the insane amount of cat hair accumulating in the corner or go play at the park for an hour?

Exercise on my treadmill while my daughter watches TV or sit alongside her as we jointly build a staggeringly tall block tower? Spend an hour cooking dinner or lose ourselves in a Highlights Magazine Hidden Pictures marathon?

Rhetorical questions don't need answers, right? I've come to understand that cleaning and cooking are a waste of my daughters'

I had a part-time job when my kids were small, working nights and weekends opposite my husband's shift so we could keep them out of day care. However, I always thought of myself a stay-at-home mom. I was with my kids during the day, getting them dressed and feeding them endlless meals and snacks, taking them to play dates and appointments and finding ways to keep them entertained on those long winter days when it was too cold to play outside. I looked forward to going to my "real" job at night. I considered it a break. One day, in response to someone telling me stay-at-home moms had it easy because they didn't have to balance career and family, I recorded everything I did in a 24-hour period. I've kept this list stuck to my fridge ever since.


3:00 am -Baby woke up. Nursed him. Fell asleep holding him in the recliner.
5:00 am -Husband up. Went to bed and took the baby with me.
7:30 am -Baby and I woke up. Made myself oatmeal and nursed baby while eating.
7:45 am

Dad arrested for letting kids play unattended at parkSo this is what the nanny state has come to: Leave your kids, ages 6 and 9, to play by themselves at the playground, and you could wind up in jail - charged with child endangerment.

Awesome.

That's exactly what happened to a Pittsgburgh-area dad who left his kids at a playground for about two hours while he went shopping and took a shower at the gym - not necessarily things I would have chosen to do given a sudden kid-free few hours, nap time anyone?, but nonetheless, just normal life crap.

Related: 6 ways to prepare your child for getting lost

So while he went about his daily chores, his kids were happily playing at the park, but a busybody mother - who apparently knew the kids - grew worried and fidgety at the vision of children playing at a playground without some adult around to coddle them. Instead of approaching the kids, if she knew them and asking what was up, she called the cops.

Now, you know, I can understand this. Someone is worried. They think, however wrongly, that

Tooth fairy rates from around the worldIf you're like most parents faced with a wiggly tooth (hopefully your child's) you have to be wondering - what's the going rate these days?

It was a coin when you were a kid, but that was in the last century!

And don't make the mistake of asking your child what the going rate is. They have this racket down. I figured that part out after I asked my son a few years ago and he said "about a million dollars."

So to save you some grief, we had some parents weigh in on the going rate. Here are their answers.


Kelcey in New York1. Kelcey in New York: $1 - $2
Kelcey, of The Mama Bird Diaries says: "Dylan, age 7, I pay $1 or sometimes $2 if I've had a glass of Chardonnay and I'm feeling extra generous. But no more! I don't understand these moms who fork out the equivalent of college tuition for a dumb tooth. Come on. And it really makes the rest of us look cheap. I think $1 is plenty at least until gas prices come down a bit."
Read more at The Mama Bird Diaries














Related: The 10 biggest lies we tell our kids



Jennie in France2.