Why I’m not letting tragedies stop me from having kids
My thoughts turned to my friend at work who had given birth that day, and her baby who would always share a birthday with this tragedy. I thought of my other friend who is planning on welcoming twins into this world in October and taking the rest of the school year off to be with them. I thought of my childhood best friend whose daughter is almost a year old. And I thought, I am so lucky to be childfree. How do you deal with questions from a young child about why and what happened when these tragedies inevitably take place? I wasn’t even sure what I would tell my high school students in class the next day.
I deleted the photos, and put the phone down: letting go of nostalgia for the future
I recently tried to sync my phone and couldn’t because it was too full. I couldn’t even update my podcasts because of all the pictures and videos taking up space — so I had to pare down. Deciding which photos and videos to save and which to delete was a challenge: what if I had a few minutes on the subway and wanted to look at pictures from a few years ago? I wasn’t ready.
3 age-appropriate ways to talk to kids and teens about media portrayals of sexual assault
I have this super awesome talent for thinking of the perfect thing to say hours later. A talent which is not in any way useful — unless you have a blog. In which case you can blog about it and get it all out. So here are three possible, age-appropriate, conversations you can have with your children about rape that I came up with.
Dealing with death: how I told my daughter her grandfather had passed away
Almost a year ago now, my father passed away. I received the news in slow motion; anyone who has heard this kind of news knows exactly what I mean by that. Of course I felt the initial pain of my own loss, but my attention immediately turned to my daughter. How was I going to tell my little girl, who at that time was two months shy of turning three and so in love with her “Umpaw,” that she would never see him again?
I processed my miscarriage by talking about it
In the end, I told more people about my miscarriage than I had even informed that we were expecting another child. When the horrific reality of having lost my pregnancy set in, all I wanted to do was talk about it. I couldn’t stop replaying the events in my mind — from seeing that first blood drop to sitting in the waiting room of my clinic, surrounded by glowing pregnant women and their boisterously rotund bellies, knowing that our baby was pronounced dead just minutes ago.
Confession: I suck at being a working mom
Friends and family often wonder how I “do it all” but the truth is there isn’t any magic to it. I think of how much time I spend apart from my children, and launch into panic mode. I know I’m being a responsible parent by providing the health insurance, food, and security that my job affords my family, but I can’t help but feel that just as not every parent is meant to stay at home, not every parent is meant to be away.
Breastfeeding was crazy hard — then it clicked
Of all the things people felt like giving advice on while I was pregnant, no one ever told me that breastfeeding might be hard. One person warned me that sometimes it just doesn’t work, but I didn’t really get it. Why would it just not work?
Infertility and a wedding: what if I can’t have children?
Having a baby always felt like a given — I’d get married, have a baby and live happily ever after. That’s the way it works, right? Six pregnancies and seven miscarriages later (one set of twins) we find ourselves facing the very real possibility that I simply can not carry a child to term. Three months seems to be average, though one pregnancy was lost at five months.