Parenting

The reality is that any person I love, including my daughters, can deeply hurt my feelings. Does this mean that I hold my daughters to the same level of emotional accountability as my husband or my best friend? Nope, but for it damn sure doesn’t mean that I morph into some feeling-less version of myself because I’m a mother, either.

“Sleep when the baby sleeps” is the cruelest thing you can say to a new parent. It sounds oh-so-simple, doesn’t it? Just like my sleep advice sounded all those years ago, before I knew the harsh reality of parenting. It’s impossible to sleep when the baby sleeps if the baby is only down for 10 minutes at a time!

Most of my friends are my age or slightly older and yet virtually none of them want children… ever. They argue that women deserve respect and autonomy over their bodies. I passionately agree. A few of these friends are, like me, engaged or married, but even they don’t want kids. One of my engaged friends says she and her fiancé may want to adopt children later in life, after they’ve had the chance to travel extensively.

With bottle feeding, you are able to fill the bottle with a very specific amount of formula or breast milk and are able to physically see how much Baby is taking at each feeding. With breastfeeding, that isn’t quite as easy. We know that they are eating, but we aren’t able to tell exactly how much — until now.

We been made to fear that should we complain, lest it might be snatched from us, should we for even a moment wish we hadn't done this. Some sort of universal karma. A punishment for your lack of gratitude.

I was paying a price for how I was parenting my children. Even before this study was released — confirming that more empathetic parents can suffer health issues — I knew it to be true because I felt it, I was living it, every day.

My family stands out. My kids are Asian, my husband and I are white. Most people will (correctly) assume our children are adopted.

Being a work-from-home-mom, I used to kind of loathe summer because it meant balancing activities and still trying to get all my stuff done, but this year is different. I’m allowing myself to take it slow (probably because I have no choice, being 32 weeks pregnant) and enjoy being a mama this summer.