Topic Archive: motherhood

November 30, 2011

Motherhood is a Full-Time Job

Lately I’ve been struggling to adjust to my increasingly full-time mommy-hood. My husband, a university professor, had the quarter off from teaching, so his schedule has been blessedly flexible since our son was born nearly six months ago. Unfortunately, that’s not quite as wonderful as it sounds: it means he can choose which 18 hours a day he works, and where. So when school started again at the end of September, he started going up to campus more and more, as I knew he would. Around the same time, my in-laws’ nearby sublet expired, so we no longer had childcare and support just around the corner.

What’s more, starting right after my son was born, I had been working on a publicity campaign for a product that launched in early September. It was nice at first, because it gave me something outside of dirty diapers and breastfeeding to focus on, a reminder of my pre-baby life to help me transition into parenthood. But once the product was out and the publicity effort was over, I was suddenly left with no work, less support than I had before, and an increasingly alert and active baby who is no longer interested in just lying around, nursing and sleeping.

Gulp.

Luckily, after four months with my husband, my mom, and my in-laws all helping out, I finally felt like I was starting to get the hang of this whole mommy thing. Through trial and error, and with a whole lot of tears along the way, I was finally getting to know my son and how to take care of him, and no longer felt like quite such a hopeless amateur. By the time I was on my own most of the time, I could handle spending entire days with him solo — and here I know I am lucky, as most new moms have to face long days alone with their child mere days or weeks after coming home from the hospital. (more…)

November 12, 2011

Do it – Baby! – One more time?

So there I was, 38 years old with two boys in school, working as a freelance writer, volunteering at school and at nursing homes with my dog and *finally* enjoying a lot of the freedom I had longed for while the kids were little. I was able to manage my own work time again, could spontaneously go out to lunch with friends, read a book or soak in the bathtub. I shopped leisurely without a child in the cart, cooked more adventurous meals without a toddler to feed and regularly went on dates with my husband. I had my body back after nursing both kids for a year and even ran a marathon. I had secured a part time teaching position at a university and was ready to get my writing career off the ground!

And there it was – that thought that had been lurking in the back of my mind over the past years and now hit me full force: I wanted another baby! Badly. The feeling that our family was not complete quite yet and that I wanted to hold a newborn again before my biological clock ran out, was breath-taking, overwhelming.

What was I thinking? Not only would I give up the aforementioned freedom for a return to sleepless nights, constant nursing, a body out of shape and a mountain of diapers. How would I balance the need of two teenagers and a toddler? Was it fair to bring a baby into a family that was already busy with many activities? What about our big vacation plans to Asia and Africa – we certainly couldn’t take a baby to the jungle! (more…)

August 29, 2011

What I Would Tell My Pre-Kid Self

I came across a video called “Reflections of Motherhood” where they asked moms, if it were possible to go back to before having their first child, what would they tell themselves? And so I wondered, what would I tell myself?

I admit that before having kids, the thought of motherhood scared me. Mainly because I was happy with the person I was and the path I was traveling through life…for the most part. Why did I want to shake things up? Especially when the examples of moms I saw on TV, in the movies and in magazines were stereotypes of over-tired, over-worked, over-worried women who had forgotten themselves, and were consumed by their children and the fruitless efforts of attempting a “balanced” life. These moms seemed like simple and flat caricatures of women. I did not want to become one of them. (more…)

April 28, 2011

Modern Communities. A New Way To Learn About Parenting.

Lately I’ve been wondering: have we lost the traditional community of womanhood, of one generation teaching the next about pregnancy and motherhood? Or has the generational passing on of wisdom simply taken on new, subtler forms? I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the final months of my pregnancy, as I prepare to enter a new reality that most of my girlfriends and I have barely experienced, and then only second- or third-hand.

Traditionally, girls were exposed to pregnant women and infants from a very young age, so by the time that they got pregnant themselves, they were already old hands at the whole mothering thing. But in this day and age, at least in the first world, things are different. My girlfriends and I have managed to reach our early thirties having little or no experience with either pregnant women or newborns. (more…)

April 26, 2011

Moms, Can’t We All Just Get Along?

I recently had to remove myself from a few “mommy” websites.  I loved the content – articles and blogs and forums created by other moms.  As a self-declared birth junkie and mother of three boys, I love that stuff.  However, I just couldn’t take the comments from random readers anymore.  These moms were so mean-spirited and hateful that I had to stop following.  Unlike the warmth and open-ness embraced by PregTASTIC listeners and panelists (insert shameless plug here!), these women were ruthless. One even wished cancer on another one and called her the “b” word!  Seriously?! (more…)