I feel like a “bad mom” for giving up residential custody
I strongly believe that one gender does not parent better than the other. I fully believe men are just as good at parenting as women when put in the same situations. And that the societal idea that men are idiots when it comes to kids and don’t know what they are doing is ignorant.
So why is it that, as a strong feminist, I cannot help shake the guilt that I am sending my child away, or that I am a failure or a bad mom if I let my daughter live with her father?
When baby sleeping techniques fail, will our marriage survive?
I don’t know what I expected regarding sleep with a baby, but it certainly wasn’t that he’d be waking up every hour to two hours at night at six months old, having done this for several months.
We fully intended to follow the National Health Service‘s guidelines on reducing SIDS — keeping him in our room until six months old before moving him into the nursery down the hall. Because of course, by that point he’d be sleeping through that night.
Surprisingly, that isn’t where we are now. And I had given little thought to our relationship would cope in this situation.
My ex and I are amicably co-parenting a year after a contentious divorce
Connecticut mandates that all couples with children who are seeking a divorce attend a series of parenting classes (not together, thank GOD.) The classes are intended to offer advice for co-parenting post-divorce. These classes were long. And often boring. And filled with a lot of “Well, duh” information. But I learned a few good tips that I assumed I would never use because I was certain we would never be able to effectively co-parent.
7 ways motherhood shocked the hell out of me
Full disclosure: I have been a mother for nearly six weeks now. I didn’t think it’d be easy, but when my pregnancy went extremely smoothly I got to thinking that maybe, just maybe, my baby would be easy and being a Mom wouldn’t be too hard. Lo and behold, there are definitely a few things that shocked the hell out of me in both regards.
Four things that help my ex and I happily co-parent
We are both kids from divorced families, and we both realized that we should both be equally and amiably involved in our daughter’s life to raise a happy and secure child as best we could with the circumstances. We take her to dinner together a few times a month, spend holidays together, and try to make sure she knows that even though we are in two separate houses, we are still a family and still her mommy and daddy.
Learning to co-parent with an onbeat ex
Amy and her more Onbeat ex-husband haven’t always seen eye to eye (to put it mildly) when it came to raising their daughter, but the two now work as a team (along with their respective partners).