Hey Mama! Welcome to the crunchy club.

I'm glad you're here.

No matter where your crunchy path began (or if you're still trying to find it), you're in the right place. We're all doing the best we can for our kids with the information we have at the time.

At least the information we can remember. We're a little sleep-deprived up in these parts.

(According to reliable source Urban Dictionary)

Crunchy parenting is a slippery slope. Your friend lends you a book and suddenly you find yourself injecting tea tree oil into your wool dryer balls for a load of organic cloth diapers, wondering how you got here.

But it doesn't happen all at once. Five years ago I lived on white pasta and coffee, took hormonal birth control, and had a cabinet full of pills for cold symptoms. Now, even my husband reaches for the neti pot and asks me where the essential oils are.

When I got pregnant with my son in 2012, I started to research. Like any modern pregnant lady I dutifully trotted my digital self over to BabyCenter and signed up for my birth club.

O. M. G. You. Guys.

There are some seriously crazy people out there, and they flock to BabyCenter like flies to honey laced with cocaine. A few of their articles are helpful, but most left me shaking my head.

I looked up attachment parenting (AP), but Dr. Sears' The Baby Book made me stabby. I wanted a drink, but that was out (or was it? So confusing!). Shouldn't something exist between the choices of "just do what your doctor says" and "only sustainably-raised organic virgin unicorn tears should touch your baby or he will die?"

So I decided to find and make it myself.

I'm a compulsive researcher, so friends who got pregnant after me started asking for my lists, compilations, and spreadsheets. They even sent them to their friends. That's when I decided to create the resource I wish I'd had in the first place.

I'm not here to tell you what to do. I want you to make educated decisions that work for you and your family, not just go along with mainstream advice because that's all you've heard. It's like the argument against abstinence-only education: you should really know what your options are--just in case.

...And that clearly didn't work because you're knocked up! (Congrats, by the way.)

I hope you feel comfortable here. I promise not to kick you in the ribs OR the cervix, so I'm one up on your baby already.