In the modern world we live in, almost everything we use includes chemicals and artificial ingredients. Understandably, many pregnant women are wary of exposing their unborn baby to harsh, unnatural substances. Here are a few simple changes I made during my pregnancy to avoid exposing my baby to harmful substances.

On a mid-summer's night, as I was leaving work, I saw my boyfriend standing outside in front of a limo with flowers in his hand. He looked nervous and sweaty. Bewildered, I greeted him with just as much nervousness. Later that evening he proposed, and suddenly I was a fiancée.

When we think of a modern mom, we may picture a woman in a business suit, rushing to the door of an elementary school with her kid trailing behind. She's got to be at work in 20 minutes. Her son is not going to be late today! She's got her...

Get up. Get yourself up because if you roll over it will be far more painful to get up later and you won't have gotten a work-out in. Get up. Whatever you do, remember the passport forms today.

Drive. Push it push it, spin, spin, spin. Do you want to...

Today something really interesting happened to me. I went to the mall and two people told me how much they loved my hair. They loved the colour and they loved my curls. They said they wished they had hair like mine. My response? "For the low cost of $26.99 you...

I am hardly ever wrong. And when I am, I hardly ever apologize for it. I know it's a problem -- both thinking that I am always right and hardly apologizing. There are many reasons that have led to me becoming an unapologetic person. Whatever the excuse, I am afraid...

By Andrea Ashby

So I stood there, pantless and confused.

Looking at my reflection, I didn't see anything drastically different about my appearance, as I had always known it to be. I concluded that I was maybe slightly thinner than usual, but my stride told me that "slightly" was a...

I am a 34-year-old wife and a mother to a nine-year old daughter. From the age of 15 on I began to develop anxiety. The majority of it hit me while in high school. I was a perfectionist and aimed high when it came to grades. As soon as I...

Last year, at the end of Mad Men's season 5, we were given reason to speculate about Don Draper's ability to change his philandering ways. "Are you alone?" asks a woman at the bar where Don sits. He turns to her with a look of indifference...

I don't want to miss this. My kids are young, and I'm the most important person in their world (other than dad, of course). Some day they will have their own lives and wives and babies and won't need me any more. I imagine one day I'll be a 60-year-old...

When I became a mother five years ago I naively assumed that having a child meant a woman had grown up. Gone would be the petty insecurities, comparisons and judgements that women so cruelly share during the teenage years and beyond.

I was wrong.

Two children, two cities and many...

Twitter can be noisy. Silly. Crude. Mundane. Commercial. Self-promoting. Therapeutic. Wait, what was that last one?

I won't lie, the reason I got into Twitter had to do with the second-last descriptor. When I set my sights on publishing a novel for teen girls, I thought I should...

When I was 25 years old, I went mute. Not for a few seconds, not for a few days, or weeks, but months.

A conversation that went beyond a minute or two would have me in the throes of heart palpations, hyperventilation, and sweating. Talking, for me, evoked acute panic...

To My Dearest Mommy Friend,

We've known each other since we were practically babies, since before we can remember even knowing each other. Now you're a wife and mother to a four-year-old with another baby on the way. I, on the other hand, am still single, trying to...

Every Monday night I need both of my boys asleep by 8 p.m. I eat my dinner on my lap, and I have a pint of coke with ice in it. After a day of targets and sales pressures, this is my escape. I tell my wife that whatever she...

The first two days with my newborn were hell.

Those weren't exactly the words I'd expected to come out of my mouth as a first-time mom, but from the moment my new little man laid eyes on my breasts, his reaction was to scream. I had intended to breastfeed,...

In 2005 my life was very different than it is now. A job in advertising afforded me a very indulgent lifestyle and I spent every cent on purses, high heels, and enjoying myself. Having a child was the last thing on my radar.

In fact, from a pretty young age...

"From an early age, I second-guessed myself. I didn't have the confidence to put myself out there." Not the words you'd expect from a popular TV personality.

Every morning, along with her co-hosts Kevin Frankish, Jennifer Valentyne, and Frank Ferragine, Dina Pugliese interviews,...

You cannot flip open a newspaper, a magazine or scan Facebook without noticing the rise in anxiety and depression amongst young teens and adults. Many articles call it an epidemic, documented by a severe spike in suicides, prescriptions and counselling appointments on university campuses.

As a counsellor at a major...

By the age of 34, I was somewhat of an expert on "types." I had dated them all. I have been like a casting director in my own dating show. As soon as I saw one characteristic that was categorized under a type that I wasn't looking for, I'd think,...