Jenna & Trevor: From tree-hugging wedding to baby-hugging parents
Hello friends! Since Trevor and I said our wedding vows, I was a kindergarten teacher, then became unemployed, then became a photographer, then became a more-than-full-time-photographer. Trevor has been working away at the University where he’s employed. OH, and we adopted the most adorable baby boy!
I have zero expectations about my daughter’s future relationships
I think my solution is to refrain from assumptions altogether when I’m in public. I’ll stop playing along with other’s comments about her getting married one day, or meeting a man, or whatever. At home, I’ll adopt new words into my vernacular with her. I’ll illustrate differences through play — I can show her two girl Barbies kissing and two Ken dolls kissing.
What can I do to come to terms with a “bad” birth experience?
I’ve seen lots of resources online for dealing with poor labor care, lack of support, and unwanted interventions during childbirth, but none of those resources deal talk about labors and births that were just bad on their own. I had a precipate labor — which means from start to finish, the entire process took less than three hours and the baby was expelled quickly. My labor and delivery included falling down the stairs, choking in the car, having to consent to an epidural, barely getting it in time, etc (among other delights).
Here’s a list of all the stuff pregnancy books won’t tell you
Recently several newly pregnant friends have asked me if I had any advice for them, which has given me occasion to think over all the things that have kept my partner and me going throughout my pregnancy and our first nine months of parenting. While pregnant, I read as many pregnancy and parenting books as I could get my hands on, and learned a lot, both about what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do.
My son simultaneously wears a Dora apron and fights sexism
It started when my son decided he wanted cupcakes. I figured we’d make cupcakes and take them to work for our friends. I gave him one of my aprons but it was too big. The next week at the local farmer’s market I spied homemade kid-sized aprons. They had some robots and some flowers, but what really caught my eye was, of course, a Dora apron. It is bright pink and lacy but whatever — that’s not something that would register for Isaac.
Is it too soon to try to conceive?
My husband and I got married last month, but we have been living together for two years. We both have part-time jobs, we own our own coffee business, and we rent a nice apartment. I am 22, but I have always wanted kids. A lot of our friends and family tell us to wait a few years before we have kids. Wait til we have more money, wait til we have a house, etc. I see where they are coming from, but I also think we could manage having children now too.
The catch-22 of working motherhood
Now what’s the catch-22? Typically, the kids are so desperate for my attention when we are together that they resort to whining and crying and just generally being awful in order to get that attention. Surprising absolutely no one, that kind of behavior only annoys the shit out of me and makes me irritable. Which means I’m short-tempered. Which does absolutely nothing for my ability to properly deal with their whiny behavior. Which means it only gets worse. Which makes me tell them to just leavemealone! And the cycle starts again.
A tale of food, confidence and a 37-hour labor
Whenever I would tell a fellow Southerner about my plan to have a drug-free water birth, I would always receive the same reaction: skepticism and a lecture about how painful it would be. Although I would always answer their criticism with the same reply, “I have never been in labor so I know it may be too painful — I am just going to try.” What can I say? I am people pleaser. It is not in my nature to challenge those who seem more experienced. In my heart I knew I could do it. I could only think of one thing that might shake my confidence: a long labor.