Book you might wanna read: Four Homeless Millionaires
In 2009 my wife and I sold our house in Winnipeg, Manitoba so we could spend a year traveling around the world with our kids. When we returned to Canada, we relocated to Vancouver Island and moved into a community house with another family and a few university students. (12 in total) We’re currently in our third year.
My brother-in-law is having a baby: how do I nominate myself for Offbeat Auntie of the Year?
My husband’s brother and his wife are having a baby! We are very excited as kids are great and we haven’t had any in the family for about, oh, 15 years now. Unfortunately we’re not super close, but we want to be — how do I initiate becoming an awesome offbeat auntie?
My partner and I stopped sharing a bed after having kids: why I love sleeping alone
Honestly, bed-sharing with my snoring, hard-to-wake husband might inspire more resentment between us, more sleep-deprived fantasies of pillow smothering. I don’t think sharing a bed would save a failing marriage, nor do I think separate beds would destroy a good one. But what do I know? I’ve only been married for 9 years.
How do I support a friend who says she wishes she didn’t have kids?
While the topics we discuss are different now than before kids, most of the time I think we’re getting along alright. Occasionally one of the new parents will make comments about wishing they were childless again, and I don’t know how to respond to these comments. I get blowing off some steam, but at what point is it more than just frustration and something I should be concerned with?
When love becomes thicker than blood
In January of 2012, I chose to become a single mother. I packed what I could I fit into our minivan and left my fiancé of five years, my “son” whom I had raised since he was six-months-old, and an unhealthy partnership. I parked in a parking lot, only blocks from our house and cried. My two sons slept quietly in their car seats.
How do you know if a birth center is the right choice for you?
I am pregnant with my second child and every bit of reading I’ve done has led me to believe I had an unnecessary cesarean delivery with my firstborn. At this point, I am not certain I trust any of the practitioners at my hospital and worry that a change of hospital may result in the same scenario being played out in a different location. I would absolutely never be able to forgive myself if I put my birth experience over the well-being of my child. How do you know if birthing at a center (or outside of a hospital) is the right choice for you?
How I decided to become an egg donor
I had been well aware that IVF was A Thing That Existed. For the longest time, though, I had only thought of it from the families’ perspective. The couple struggling with infertility, the single woman, or the gay couple, had been the faces of IVF.
Recently I saw a mention in an article in which the author, Jen Dziura said she donated her eggs right after she moved to New York. She said it was something that both settled her life and allowed her to work on her career. I recognized myself in that situation.
Co-sleeping families: are your older kids able to go to sleep without you?
I have not yet fallen pregnant, and already I have every mother I know telling me to sleep train. Women who co-sleep are social pariahs, and my family regard the biggest mistake that a mother can make as “taking baby to bed with you.” Friends who have babies who go to sleep at a particular bedtime attribute this to sleep training, and are able to lead fairly pleasant social lives after 7pm because of it. Some women I know even claim that baby sleeps through the night from the get-go with sleep training.