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Strollerderby
Midnight, really? I’m usually passed out by then unless it’s New Year’s Eve (when hopefully I’m still awake)!
I have a running joke in our house about getting up in the morning. Whenever we see a really funny YouTube video or a TV show depicting a person either enduring a bad-looking but laughable injury or someone screaming their head off, I say, “That’s how I feel when my alarm goes off in the morning.” It’s silly and makes the kids laugh, mostly because it’s unexpected.
Morning actually hasn’t always been my worst time of day. That has changed with the ages of my children. Before having kids, I don’t think I had a worst time of day … oh, the memories.
But babies change everything and as they grow up, we can’t even begin to imagine how swiftly life can transform until we’re knee-deep in the trenches.
Here are the worst time of the day for parents, broken down by age:
Motherhood can be a lonely road. New moms often find themselves, once the fanfare of the baby’s arrival subsides, isolated at home with a very needy little person as their only companion for most of the day.
How do these moms keep from going mad? As my colleague Danielle writes, friendships keep us sane.
But new moms often have trouble making friends, especially with other busy, tired moms. Yet those are the very people new moms need to connect with: each other.
Increasingly, they’re turning to Facebook and Twitter for connection. In a recent British poll, almost a third of new moms said it wasn’t important to them to maintain face to face friendships. Nearly a quarter said they don’t know any other new parents in their area. These moms are finding friends on Twitter instead of at the playground.
The survey authors described this idea as “incredibly worrying” but I think it’s just a sign of the times.
Impossible as it may seem, your baby isn't wanted everywhere you are
As most people who have a baby know, the world revolves around your baby. But the reality is, we all actually know that while the world should revolve around your baby, really it’s just your world that revolves around your baby. Still, sometimes it’s hard to imagine how other people don’t care that your baby had a solid burp or slept for 3 consecutive hours without requiring anyone’s attention. After all, that can be earth-shattering, life-changing information. To you, anyway.
Many women who have babies get married before giving birth. And if you can think back to a time pre-diapers and pre-bottles, perhaps you’ll remember being a bride. Many women who are brides think the whole entire world revolves around their wedding. When, in fact, it’s just their world revolves around their wedding.
So what happens when bridezilla meets momzilla? That issue is addressed in today’s New York Times.
I had never fully appreciated my mother's plight until I became a mom myself.
When I became a mom, I started to see the world in a whole new way. I became more patient, understanding, and instead of quickly summing up a situation, I began to think more about both sides of a situation and empathize. While a few of the changes that came from being a parent weren’t the greatest, like my newfound worry, most of the changes were enlightening. All along the way, I think that being a parent has given me the chance to really get to know myself more and contemplate life from a mom’s perspective. Through it all, one of the most unexpected ways that being a parent has changed me is that it helped me become a more appreciative daughter.
My mother was a single mom. She didn’t just work one job; at any given time she had two to three jobs at a time while raising my sister and me. When I was very young, I knew she was a nurse but I had no idea what stress and strain she went through as she traveled each morning to her hospital in Spanish Harlem, taking five trains each way back and forth. All I knew was that 5pm was the happiest time of my day because my mother would come home and Batman would come on TV. There was no better combination.
Is your newborn baby safer rooming-in or staying in the nursery that first night?
After a full day of labor and delivery, new mom Zelia Blomfield was exhausted. She had just given birth to her baby daughter, Bela Maddison Lee Heidrich and kept the baby in the hospital bed while she began to breastfeed. She fell asleep and when she woke up just an hour later, her daughter had been smothered.
Blomfield is now filing charges against the hospital and claims that her midwife helped position her newborn baby at her breast. She also says the midwife told her it was OK for her to fall asleep. Blomfield believes it was the hospital staff’s responsibility to check in on her to keep the baby safe.
Holding a newborn is not for everyone.
A recent Dear Prudence column on Slate.com heard from a woman who had a burning question about new baby etiquette. The reader was in her mid-twenties and her friends were starting families. She wanted to support her friends and congratulate them on their new baby, but did not want to actually hold the baby. She confessed she was “not a baby” person, although she did love kids.
Dear Prudence, AKA Emily Yoffe, had some advice which included faking a cough or a sniffle. If that didn’t work, maybe sucking it up and just holding the baby for two minutes and handing the baby back to mom would appease mom and get the situation over with.
The reader explained that as a female, she felt expected to want to hold a baby. I guess the question looming larger asks, is there something inherently wrong with a woman for not wanting to hold a baby?
I don’t think so.
Imagine having a four-year-old named Paris. Or a toddler named Tiger. Or maybe you just gave in to family pressure before the pain medications wore off, and woke up with an adorable little one named after Great Aunt Eustis.
Would you feel a little regret? Lots of parents do.
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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