An old soul, a new soul, and a four-footed soul
Diana and her husband experienced a string of family losses and injuries while expecting their first child, but gained a surprising new furry friend in the process.
Sobriety and motherhood: I stopped drinking for my baby
I am a self-admitted alcoholic… or was until I became pregnant. It took impending motherhood to rid me of my alcohol abuse, and I’m so glad it happened.
What NOT to say to someone struggling with infertility
At the grocery store today, I was browsing the “family planning” section. Of course, there are the things that help prevent pregnancy, but I was obviously looking at the things to help promote pregnancy. As I was reading the back of every box of “ovulation predictors” and trying to decide which was the best one, a female employee that was probably in her later 30s came up to see if I needed any help.
Sex Ed and the four-year-old
One summer evening, I piled the kids into the car for a pre-bed ice cream run. As we’re waiting in an impossibly long drive thru line, my 4 year old pipes up from the backseat, “Mommy, turn this music down. I need to talk about things.”
I cooperate and turn the radio off, asking what she wants to talk about.
“Let’s talk about babies.”
Losing a sibling as a teen changed my feelings about parenthood
My thoughts about parenting have generally existed in a continuum that ranges from, “I definitely don’t want kids” to “Kids seem like this fantasy thing” all the way to “If I have kids, I’ll do this …” But no where in those ricocheting and often short-lived conceptions of potential parenting has there ever been a moment where I’ve thought, “Yes, I’ll have kids.” Mostly, I’ve been wading about in the gray for a long time. And for the most part, the question-and-answer game of my parenting or non-parenting future exists in a way that is anxious, but non-pressing. And a great deal of it, I now realize, stems from my most well-known observations of parenting, a lifetime spent watching my own amazing, instinctive, and infinitely nurturing mother raise her two children, and then watching her lose and grieve one.
8 tips for coming to terms with “bad” genetic testing results
At 16 weeks pregnant, I had a (fairly) routine blood test done. Two days later, my midwife called and said that based on the results, the baby I was carrying had an elevated risk of having Down’s syndrome. We scheduled a sonogram with fetal and maternal health specialists and a genetic counselor for two days later. Nothing was found, but they asked us to come back a month later because they were having difficulty getting good images of the baby’s heart. We leave happy that our risk has been downgraded, and come back a month later.
Does my special needs daughter really eat lunch alone every day?
It began with a simple question at the grocery store last night. We were choosing all the pieces for Schuyler’s lunch and were trying to change things up a little. We wanted to get her some new drinks but were unsure if she would be able to open the bottles. Schuyler’s polymicrogyria has some big features and some small ones, and one of its less frightening but still annoying impairments involves her fine motor skills. We asked her if she thought she would be able to open the bottle. She said she thought so, but still seemed a little unsure.
That little plant is going to make it: making it through a miscarriage
The week before last Christmas, a friend of mine from work asked me to take care of her Poinsetta plant while she was away from the office. I don’t have the greenest thumb in the world, but of course, I agreed to help out. After all, how much damage could I do in a week, right?
That week, I had my miscarriage.
Needless to say, I forgot about my promise to water my friend’s plant and e-mailed her as soon as I remembered my mistake. My note said something like, “Sorry I forgot to water your plant… but I had a miscarriage.”