Progressive muscle relaxation isn’t just for adults—it can be a playful and powerful way to help kids manage stress, too. By turning relaxation into games—like blowing bubbles with slow breaths, dancing like stiff robots and floppy noodles, or squeezing toes in the mud—we can teach children how to notice the difference between tension and calm. The best part? When parents join in, kids don’t just learn the skill—they feel the calm spread through the whole family.
Today I am reflecting on the relationship between healthy eating and sleep. This morning, I was listening to the audiobook “The Sleep Prescription” by Aric A. Prather, Ph.D. I’ve been slowly working through his sleep “class” in HeadSpace and decided to listen to his audiobook as I work to improve sleep both for myself and for my clients. I’m just on day 2 at the moment, but this quote really struck me.
“Carb lovers, pay attention here: carbs are an interesting case. Studies have unearthed that while most carbohydrates will actually help you fall asleep faster, only certain types will help you stay asleep. Simple and sugary carbs (think pizza, white bread, bagels, pasta) can cause more wake ups throughout the night. In contrast, complex carbs (again, these are the more high-fiber foods like sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and whole grains) can stabilize your sleep patterns—possibly, Dr. St-Onge theorizes, because they also stabilize your blood sugar.[11]” Excerpt From The Sleep Prescription by Aric A. Prather, PhD https://books.apple.com/book/id1608147733 This material may be protected by copyright.
Lately I have discovered that my waking glucose levels are consistently in the pre-diabetic range. I have been using the Stelo non-prescription continuous glucose monitor and reading books like Good Energy by Dr. Casey Means and The Glucose Revolution by Jessie Inchaupé. And my sister-in-law gave me an extra Oura ring, which connects with the Stelo to give insights between glucose and other biomarkers! (Such an amazing gift… although I warn that there is an ongoing fee to use the Oura ring in addition to the up-front cost of the ring itself but also I think it’s totally worth it!).
The real reason I have my own business. Hint: It’s about you AND me.
Nesting parties ask us to re-think the way that we celebrate new parents and challenge us to focus on what the expecting parents need. It’s really less of a party and more of an opportunity to provide the family help.
Unlike baby showers, “Nesting parties shift the focus from stuff to support to help families prepare their homes and hearts for life with a new baby,” explains Lara Elfstrand, the pediatric sleep practitioner of Little Elf Family Services.
Routines have been a fundamental part of my life since I got married (25 years ago!) and especially during times when I’ve had a young child and/or a dog at home (the last 16+ years). Here are some of my favorite sources of my favorite routines. The challenging part is to not try to do them all at once! Pick one or two to start with! Break things into small pieces, and if you need some support, reach out to me and let’s chat!
At Little Elf Family Services, I believe that parenting isn’t about perfection—it’s about connection. Families thrive when they feel supported, equipped, and empowered, and my work is designed to help parents move from exhaustion and frustration to confidence and joy.
As a sleep consultant, marriage and parenting coach, and early childhood special educator, I blend evidence-based strategies with compassionate support. My approach draws from experts like John & Julie Gottman, Bruce Perry, Stewart Brown, Brené Brown, and Dan Siegel, helping families find solutions that align with their values and unique needs.
Parenting can feel overwhelming, but struggle and confrontation don’t have to be the norm. Clients often express relief when they realize they don’t have to panic over each new challenge. Instead, they learn to approach problems with a steady, thoughtful perspective, making small shifts that create lasting positive change.
“We knew we didn't need to panic when facing a new problem as you would be there, guiding us.”
“We’re also constantly amazed by how your parenting philosophy has minimized confrontation and struggle, and allowed us to focus on the happy and joyful moments that our child brings us.”
I provide resources, guidance, and encouragement—but the real magic happens when families take those tools and make them their own. My work isn’t about fixing families; it’s about helping them find their own strengths and rhythm.
"She won’t do the work for you—but she will give you resources, tools, and support to do it yourself. And she will be cheering you on every step of the way.”
From gentle start-up conversations (a Gottman-based approach that reduces conflict) to completing stress cycles (so parents don’t carry frustration day after day), my work is rooted in strategies that make a real difference. Laughter, connection, and small, consistent changes help families shift from surviving to thriving.
"We are better parents, a better couple, and better people for knowing her and having worked with her."
Whether you’re navigating infant sleep, toddler emotions, or the ups and downs of parenting, my goal is to help you feel rested, connected, and confident—so you can focus on what truly matters: the joyful moments in family life.
**This post was created by ChatGPT to summarize my work and includes real testimonials from real people that I have served. I love it and it fits me beautifully, so I am sharing it here. 9/4/25 I am also adding links to blog posts on related topics.
More Than Survival Mode: A Valentine’s Retreat for Real Connection
Blow big bubbles to practice slow, calm breaths. Then see how you can blow many small bubbles when you breathe faster!
While we are on the topic of breathing, here are some other breathing strategies that I recommend to my clients often:
Kira Willey’s Mindful Moments for Kids
Conscious Discipline breathing exercises for kids and parents (YouTube playlist)
While researching for this blog post, I also found this cute puffer fish that goes up and down as you breathe and I kind of love it!
Also I love to remind parents that blowing bubbles is an awesome way to practice breathing! Blow big bubbles to practice slow, calm breaths. Then see how you can blow many small bubbles when you breathe faster! Can you blow bubbles with belly breathing? Just know that shaking bubbles or waving the wand inside of the bubble solution will make the solution get foamy and stop working.
Reminder: Why practice breathing with your kids? It builds calm. It tells the brain that they are safe, which can help them to think more clearly and make better decisions. It can help to reduce cortisol, which can be helpful as part of a pre-sleep routine to help prepare the body for rest and shut off from a busy day. It also helps with gut health, according to Dr. Elisa Song of the book Healthy Kids, Happy Kids.
April additions: One of the things I love to do is to use the things that kids already know and love and build on it! So recently I found:
What would YOUR kids add to this list? Can you find some videos on YouTube? Share them with me!
Spreading Calm: Lessons on Sleep Training from Charlie
The Importance of Mindfulness as a Parent
Calm Evenings Start with You—Reframe the Bedtime Routine for a Smoother Night!
Stress. We’ve all got it. We sometimes prefer to ignore it. Our bodies need a way to manage it so that it doesn’t make us sick—either physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Lately I’ve been working with my coaching clients on the concept of completing stress cycles. What that means is that we need to tell our bodies that the stress is done. So for example, if we were our ancestors who were out in the woods and we were being chased by a lion, we could fight the lion, we could run away from the lion (fight or flight), or if the lion really is going to get us, we could freeze and play dead and hope that the lion goes elsewhere. So our stress response system generally goes into fight, flight, or freeze. If we conquer that lion and either fight them or run away and we escape, we run back to our tribe. We jump up and down. We can big hugs and we tell our bodies that we feel safe. Whew! The danger is over!
But in the society that we live in today, most of the dangers are not like being chased like a lion. Most of them are things that are pervasive and more long lasting. And so we need more intentional ways that we complete the stress cycle by telling our bodies that we are safe. So on one hand, we need to deal with the actual stress or the thing that caused the stress. And on the other hand, we need to deal with our body that we really are safe. We need to do that on a daily basis, because the stress is going to build up on a daily basis. We need some routines that can help to reduce that stress and manage it and complete the stress cycle.
The most powerful way to complete stress cycles for most people is going to be exercise about 30 to 60 minutes of exercise at a level that raises your heart rate. If that doesn't work for you for some reason, some other options to think about are to experiment with things like:
breathing strategies,
meditation,
affection,
a six second kiss with someone that you love and have a trusting and safe relationship with,
a 20 second hug—long enough for you to feel that melting feeling
go take your dog for a walk or go on a walk by yourself. If you take your dog for a walk, maybe you get both affection AND exercise. The book doesn't talk about sunlight being good, but my understanding is that sunlight can also be something that can help to complete the stress cycle.
And interestingly, being nice to other people and having a positive social interaction can help to complete the stress cycle. Just going to your local coffee shop and saying, good day to the person who serves you, your coffee is another one.
Laughter is another one. That is a great way to complete the stress cycle because we can't be all stressed and in fight or flight and be laughing a good, really amazing belly laugh at the same time. I really recommend something like an improv class if you're up for it. Improv strategies are great for helping us to really celebrate failure and mistakes and to listen to each other. They're just great relationship tools and they make you laugh so much. So that's one that's also not in the book, but it's one that brings laughter.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to look at the list above, think about the things that are mentioned that can help to complete the stress cycle and to plan it into your day.
Laughter
Physical affection
Breathing
Meditation
Physical exercise.
How can you get those on a daily basis? This is important, because the stress is going to come, and it needs to be kicked out!
Thanks to Emily & Amelia’s book Burnout for this illuminating concept!
To learn more, read:
Nagoski, E., & Nagoski, A. (2020). Burnout: The secret to unlocking the stress cycle. Ballantine Books.
When you become a parent, you want to feel calm and confident, but that’s often harder than you expect. Obstacles can get in the way, and unprepared parents may feel overwhelmed. While your moods may fluctuate, your overall happiness level is like a muscle: it gets weaker or stronger over time. If you ignore symptoms of depression or anxiety and hope that the problem will go away, you are likely to find yourself feeling more depressed and anxious.
The Gottman Bringing Baby Home workshop prepares expectant and new parents for the excitements and challenges they’ll likely face. If you get the support you need, while building habits that feel good and are not too easy and not too hard, you are likely to get happier over time. And when you do things that you enjoy the pleasure pathways in your brain grow stronger!
Check out this article that I wrote for the Gottman blog. In it, I (a Gottman Bringing Baby Home educator and trainer) share mood enhancing strategies that parents learn in the Bringing Baby Home workshop.
Recently several people have asked for strategies that can boost the immune system for an exclusively breastfeeding mothers. Moms who are breastfeeding have to be so careful of what they put into their bodies and what they pass on to their babies.
So what's my answer? Interestingly, the research (as shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=625t8Rr9o6o) shows that contempt and criticism erode the immune system. So one of the best things that any new parent can do to boost their immune system and protect their baby is to WORK ON THEIR MARRIAGE! Strange, isn't it?
One of the best ways to work on our marriages as a new parent is to take the Gottman Bringing Baby Home program. It's research based and research tested to:
increase relationship satisfaction;
increase language and cognitive scores in babies;
help babies to cry less and smile more;
and to reduce the incidence and severity of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
It has NO negative side effects! It leaves you feeling empowered, knowing how to handle conflict and to strengthen your friendship so that your relationship can weather the storms of life. And it boosts your immune system by reducing criticism, contempt, and hostility.
Interested in a class? Let’s talk about it!
It makes a great gift for the expecting and new parents in your life! Gift certificates are available here or put the class on your registry at Be Her Village.
Our mission is: 1) register for pregnancy date night at pregnancydatenight.com, 2) attend our date night tomorrow evening (Friday, December 3), and 3) get started on your journey towards a healthy family.
Sometimes I struggle to describe the challenges of early parenthood because I never want to scare people or make anyone feel like they aren’t enough, or that they won’t be a good enough parent if they don’t do certain things. As a new parent sanity specialist, one of my primary goals is to help each of us as new parents to grow in our growth mindset, being able to ask for help, to make mistakes and learn from them, and to keep learning. We are all iterating our way to awesome, as Marisa Murgatroyd always says! And part of that is to encourage parents to ask for help from the very beginning. Why? As a new parent, you deserve to feel nurtured, protected, and cared for. You deserve to have a partner that knows how to nurture, protect, and care for you. And while they hopefully are great at that now, parenting is a new thing when we are first time parents, and your partner is not a mind reader. So if we’re going to be able to know how to care for our partners well, it’s important to solidify our skills to keep our friendship intact and to be able to regularly and clearly express our needs.
This week I spoke with Dr. Hannah Flammang about C-section scars. We talked about self care and things that we can do to help with recovery and healing after a c-section.
Dr. Hannah is a local chiropractor. She is opening her practice in Rocklin, but she does a lot more than just chiropractic. She really likes to work with women’s health patients, specifically in the prenatal and postpartum periods. C-sections are one of her favorites because she thinks it’s a very underserved population. You get sent home with pretty much no instructions other than: “don’t lift 20 pounds; watch your scar; make sure that it doesn’t have an infection; come back and see me in 6 weeks.” Then they clear you and say you’re good to go.
Dr. Hannah: A lot of times people want to work on them because they’re experiencing symptoms. They may have numbness in the area of the c-section scar. They may have hypersensitivity where you feel like you can’t put on underwear or wear jeans on that area because it’s just so sensitive to touch. Basically, you’ll have trouble connecting to those lower abdominals because things have been cut and moved around. Someone may come in to work on core work because they may have what we call shelfing: where the scar starts to develop a shelf and above the scar starts to fold over. That can definitely be helped by doing some scar mobilization and working on the area. So when patients come in to me for c-section scar work, it’s normally numbness; hypersensitivity and not being able to wear clothes, or things that are too tight or rub on that area, and having trouble with the abdominal region. That goes hand in hand with diastasis recti, which is the separation that can occur during pregnancy and postpartum. That can be heightened with a c-section because those muscles have actually been cut through and then stitched back together.
Dr. Hannah: Other than the baby and breastfeeding, this is a major abdominal surgery that unfortunately the medical system doesn’t really treat like a major surgery. I do a lot of sports rehab work as well, so I see people that have had ACL tears or they’re having rotator cuff repair on the shoulder, and they are given pre-hab (pre-rehab) to their surgery, and then they’re set up immediately with a physical therapist afterwards. I wish that c-sections were dealt with in the same manner, because it is a massive surgery.
So I’d say that the initial period should really just be around healing. I won’t work on anyone’s c-section scar, and I don’t recommend that anyone does any scar mobilization, if they are prior to six weeks postpartum. So if you’re in that zero to six weeks and you haven’t gone back for your six-week checkup, if your sutures haven’t healed or if you’re having any infection, then we definitely don’t recommend any scar mobilization at that point.
Once you’ve been cleared and there are no more stitches, then we can start to work on the tissues. First I have to start with, I am not your doctor and this is not medical advice. I highly recommend that you reach out to someone in your area, whether that’s me, or I can help you to find someone. But some of these things you can do at home.
So if you’re at least six weeks postpartum and you’ve got a nice scar, this is something to be proud of, not something to be embarrassed or hold a lot of fear around. I find that c-section scars become very emotional because sometimes it was an emergency c-section or things didn’t go the way that you wanted. You were planning for a natural birth, and it didn’t happen. And when you end up with a c-section, it’s something to be proud of. You birthed your baby.
We’re going to start with something I call scar desensitization. You’re going to use some things that you can find at home. I have an old makeup brush. It’s soft, not rough at all. And I have a little hand towel. C-sections cut through the superficial nerves that supply the sensation to the area, and it can give you all sorts of issues like numbness, tingling, and make that area hypersensitive to where you feel like you can’t put on leggings or jeans, and underwear rubs you. It can be irritating all day long. So with a healed scar and a clean makeup brush and a towel, we’re going to brush along the scar. We’re just trying to get that area used to a new stimulus. You can do it different ways. You can do it side to side. We can use the towel which is a bit rougher. We’re not pushing super hard. We’re not digging in with the towel. We’re just getting the area used to different sensations. If you have a pair of jeans that you can’t wear because of your scar, you can use that jean material just to get used to it. This is something you an do for like 5 minutes a day before you go to bed, just getting it used to different sensations.
Another thing that I love to get patients to work on is scar pulling. We’re not yanking. All of this is super gentle. We’re just going to pull in different directions. We’re just trying to get that scar to have mobility. Scar tissue gets a bad rap. Everyone likes to blame all their issues on scar tissue. But scar tissue is super useful because it heals things, and brings you back together. As we pull, we are working on getting all those layers mobilized that were cut through. In a c-section they cut through about seven layers: 1. Skin 2. Fat 3. Rectus sheath (fascia) 4. Separation of the rectus abdominis muscles 5. Parietal peritoneum 6. Loose peritoneum 7. Uterus. You may feel that one side feels tighter than the other, and that’s okay. That’s really normal.
Another thing we can do is called skin rolling. That looks like grabbing your skin. And we just want to remind you that everyone has belly fat. That’s normal. We’re going to grab the skin around the c-section scar. If it’s too tender to do over the top of it, we can go either above it or below it. We grab some of the skin and gently pull it and roll it. You can roll slowly over the scar. Most people will find that the edges of the scar have what feels like little knots in them. That is scar tissue from the healing, which is important. But you can use skin rolling to move those around and mobilize them. It may be a little uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t be super painful. If we’re pushing 6 out of 10 pain level then we’re either doing it wrong or there’s something else going on. You can even grab it and go sideways.
The next step would be to go even a little bit deeper, so I normally recommend that people do this while on their back. It’s great to do at night before you go to bed. We’re going to massage with gentle circles, trying to get things to move a little bit better. You’ll notice again that once side is typically more tender than the other. You may have more of those feelings of scar tissue on one side more than the other side. I’d suggest just 5-10 minutes every day.
Belly breathing is something you can do starting in the first few weeks postpartum. It has nothing to do with the incision itself, and we’re not doing any scar work, so you can do this in the first weeks postpartum whether you have a vaginal delivery or a c-section delivery.
There’s no right or wrong way to breathe, but one I like to work on with postpartum moms is working on getting our breath lower into the abdomen. This is easiest to lie on your back on a hard surface like the ground. When we take a deep breath in, I want everyone to see where their breath goes. You can have a hand on the chest and a hand on the belly if that’s helpful. We are going to take a deep breath in, and then let it all the way out. A lot of us are chest breathers, which is not a bad thing, but ideally we’re going to work on getting our breath lower in the abdomen so that we would consider ourselves more belly breathers than chest breathers. If you’re going to start to work on core strengthening, having your breath down low into your abdomen and using that to your advantage is huge.
To practice belly breathing, it’s easiest to be on your back. Put both hands on either side of your abdomen with your fingers on the side so that you can feel both sides of your abdomen. We’re going to take a big breath in, and we’re going to expand all the way around rather than just pushing the belly out. We’re trying to breathe into the outsides and into the back as well, trying to get that breath a little bit lower, helping to expand the area and bring awareness to it after a c-section or abdominal surgery.
A really good core exercise to work on postpartum is just bringing the legs up into a 90 degree position. We’re going to make sure that the back is flat on the floor, and we want our hips to be as bent as they need to be to help flatten the back so that we aren’t arching. We’re keeping our ribs down and ducked. And as we work on breathing into the abdomen, it’s a bit more challenging but it’s helpful to have the legs out because now you have something to push against. We’re going to breathe nice and low into the abdomen. Then we will slowly bring our feet down one at a time into a heel tap.
Lara’s note: this is good to teach our kids too! Common and Colbie Collait and Elmo have a cute song about belly breathing that you can check out on YouTube.
Hannah’s response: If you have a baby under the age of 2, watch them breathe. They are expert breathers. As life goes on and we get to school, we sit more often, we have more stress, and our breathing patterns start to change. If you watch babies, they are amazing belly breathers.
In the clinic I also use a lot of cupping. I use the little silicone cups. It is similar to scar rolling, where we are pulling up on the tissue. The cup is just a way to do that without having to use your hands, and it can get into smaller areas where it’s really hard to pull on the skin. You can use the cups to get the fascia moving better underneath the scar.
The website may not be up and running yet, but it will eventually be craftedhealthco.com. You can find Dr. Hannah on Instagram at @craftedhealthco. You can email me at Hannah@craftedhealthco.com. If you have a c-section scar or postpartum rehab that you would like help with, please reach out to Dr. Hannah.
Three of the top skills of a value driven professional—a person who excels in their workplace—are: they know how to de escalate drama; they know how to accept feedback as a gift, and they know the right way to engage in conflict (according to Donald Miller in his book Business Made Simple). And you know what? Those are skills that I teach in my coaching and in my Gottman Bringing Baby Home classes. They're also skills that make for a great parent and that help us to have a more peaceful, nurturing postpartum period.
Resources:
©Lara Elfstrand, MA ECSE, IF-ATMHP, CPSI - Little Elf Family Services, P.O. Box 5098, Auburn, CA 95604
