Recently, I have sent several emails out to people for whom the email was not intended.  This could prove to be a dangerous mistake, but not so here. Twice in the last few months I have sent my students’ Challenge II study schedule for the week not to Megan, the 15 year old homeschooler from Connecticut, but to Megan, the senior at Amherst College who was in my Sunday school class last semester.  Then I sent the schedule out another week to Megan, my real TX/OK friend and blogger over at SortaCrunchy.  Both Megans kindly replied and notified me that I might want to re-send the 10th grade study schedule to the correct Megan.  Guess they already had too much on their plates to write up biology labs, or read British literature novels!

The point here is that I have A LOT of Megans in my Gmail contact list.  And believe me when I tell you ~ they are a pretty incredible bunch of ladies.

Let me introduce you to another one of the many inspiring Megans in my life: 

Megan McGrory Massaro.

I met Megan as a student at The University of Massachusetts and member of my church.  Her journey to Christ involves body piercing, but maybe she’d rather me not go into details. (I couldn’t resist, Meg.) Megan and I would occasionally get together for breakfast, and she, on a regular basis, very graciously volunteered to babysit my small (at that time!) children when I would grocery shop.

Well, now she’s all grown up, and has a handsome husband and beautiful baby girl all her own.  (Robert performed their wedding ceremony at Plymouth Plantation here in MA, and it was so lovely!)  And like everything else Megan has ever done ~ from her college education , to her teaching career, to her writing career, to her faith, Megan has approached this new mommy adventure with a wise and thoughtful passion.

Thankfully, she has also had the courage and inspiration to share it with other new mamas in the form of a book entitled The Other Baby Book.

If you’ve already seen her in my side bar as Going Green in a Pink World, you’ll have some clues about what approach to mothering you’ll be encouraged to embrace in The Other Baby Book ~ a very natural and “attached” one filled with healthy foods, wearing your baby, breastfeeding, cloth diapers, co-sleeping, and lots of play time.

Now, I’m all for this natural approach to parenting ~ have employed much of it in my own parenting through the years, but I had to giggle a little bit when I heard what Megan’s book was all about, because of a letter she wrote in my special 40th birthday gift book.  She recalled a time that she was over at my house when my kids were toddlers and pre-schoolers for the most part. (I just enrolled my first-born in Driver’s Education, so it’s been a while!) I had asked them to stop a certain behavior, or have the consequence of a spanking.  They didn’t stop. I don’t really remember any of this, but evidently I proceeded to tell Megan that I would now have to spank my children!  That’s right, I told the future author of the attachment parenting book that I would be giving my defiant children spankings in front of her! (Or possibly in the next room?? Oh, please let it have been in the next room!)

But I’m thinking that it may NOT have been in the next room, because she then recalled that I hugged them and told them that I loved them. (Whew!)

Anyway, “attachment parenting” advocates typically do not encourage spanking of any sort, of course, and that is where I part ways with many of them.  (See Proverbs.)  I also never slept with my infants, and tended to follow parenting books that encouraged sleeping through the night by putting babies on a feeding and sleeping schedule.  (Yes, the much maligned  Ezzos and Pearls, as well as Ted Tripp and Sally Clarkson.) All three of mine were on this type of schedule, and all slept through the night by the time they were 8 weeks old ~ some earlier. And, for the most part, I would follow their advice all over again.

None of my convictions, though, are reasons not to glean from Megan’s wonderful book about your baby’s first year of life.  I would definitely purchase this book if I was a new mama; the irony just tickled me a bit! I hope you will check out the website and blog, and possibly even contribute to the project with your own experiences and questions.  Oh!  And there’s a giveaway going on over at The Other Baby Book blog that you don’t want to miss!

Thank you, Megan!  You never cease to amaze and inspire me, and what an incredibly loving and gentle atmosphere you are providing for little Annabella.  She will be blessed, and so will many others in reading about your journey and being encouraged by your ideas. 

I will reiterate your own words, because now they are true of YOU: