Did you leave your job and awesome health insurance when you got pregnant?
My husband and I are in our early 30s and we really want to start a family. We got pregnant last August, but sadly had a miscarriage in October. Before becoming pregnant we decided that after the baby’s birth I would quit my job so I could finish my master’s and move on to a doctoral degree. I hate my current job (and I don’t use the word hate lightly!)… but it’s in the same universe as what I want to do, has really great pay, and awesome health insurance. On paper it’s an amazing job, but I find it wholly unsatisfying.
We share our one-bedroom apartment with our baby and we like it this way
My husband and I were usually met with three or four questions after we announced that I was pregnant. From the benign “When are you due?” and “What are you having?” to the rude “Was it planned?” and a fourth question was posed: “When are you moving?”
I’m glad I told my best friend I was devastated when she got pregnant
In February, my BFF announced that she was pregnant. After almost a year of trying and two early miscarriages, this news was incredible. Her excitement was obvious and beautiful — so I was shocked by the way I felt. Beneath my happiness I was… devastated.
Making room for motherhood in academia
If you’re a woman in academia and at all maternally inclined, then you’re probably familiar with the book Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life. You have either come across it — it’s been recommended to you, you’ve read about it, or you’ve been given it as a gift. Like those little green Bibles that seem to flood campus about once a year, finding their way into every dorm, surfacing in corners of classrooms and generally sneaking their way into the hands of welcoming and reluctant recipients alike; Mama PhD has a similar way of circulating among the female and the scholarly.
How can I support my partner during a custody case?
What can I do to support my partner (a single father) while he is in the middle of a custody case for his child? I am not a legal stepmother to this child, though I am a part of his every day life and love him with every bit of my heart. I am not getting involved in the legal aspect of things, as it is not my place, but I am completely at a loss as to what I can do to support my partner and this beautiful child, and our little family unit we’ve created.
I walked out of my house and left my husband and kids
Five months ago, I took one of our twelve suitcases out of storage, dusted it off, opened it up, and crammed in all my clothes, three photo albums, my mom’s journals, a bag — (ok, fine, three bags) — of assorted hair and makeup products that I had collected before leaving Los Angeles, the soft zebra dress my daughter wore as a baby, and the tiny cotton onesie with the sheep parading up and down the middle that my son wore for the first month after he was born… and I left the kibbutz.
It turns out nurturing your young child may help them regulate stress
I am super intrigued by this article, Nurturing Moms May Boost Children’s Brain Growth. Researchers are positing that children with nurturing mothers may experience brain growth in the hippocampus, the area of the brain that processes memories and helps you deal with stress. So… nurturing mom = mellow kid? We’ll see.
An adoptee explores her relationship to motherhood
I was six years old, and that was my reality. One day we were a family of three, and the next, four, and later, five. Pregnancy skipped a generation in my family. While I vaguely understood how other people’s babies might be welcomed into the world, I believed my existence began at day three when I entered my family. Offices were where I came from and were where you went to get siblings. In fact, it wouldn’t be years until I witnessed pregnancy firsthand by watching my co-worker’s belly grow daily.