The daily struggles of a sometimes SAHM
So I’m not gonna try to hide the fact that I am a basic bitch. I love fall. I love flannels. I love buffalo plaid. I love Starbucks. And I love pumpkin spice. No shame!
I also have a baby that has decided to cluster feed overnight and my milk supply is struggling to catch up. So when I was about to stir up a batch of my favorite no-bake lactation cookies, I decided to put a pumpkin spice spin on the recipe.
Continue reading “Struggle Helper: Pumpkin Spice Boobie Bites”
I recently saw a friend whom I hadn’t seen in many years. She used to be my best friend and roommate, but life and my bad habit of losing touch had allowed us to drift apart. In the years since we’ve last spoken, we both have gotten married, I’ve had two kids, and now she’s pregnant with her first. When I was in her area, we got together and had breakfast with my family. The night before I was so nervous, because I realized I had nothing to talk about except my kids. I had no idea what else her and I had in common anymore. I feared to ask her the same dull, asinine questions that everyone asks pregnant women.
“How are feeling?”
“Are you nervous?”
“Have you picked any names?”
I hated having to answer these over and over when I was pregnant, but now I hated that I couldn’t think of anything better to say.
When I was pregnant with my first child, H, my mom made me and my husband an advent calendar for my final month of pregnancy. She asked our friends and relatives for parenting advice and wishes for us and the baby. One of my favorites came from a friend and co-worker who reminded us “Always clean the neck folds.” Her advice came from her own experience with two chunky babies and a memorable moment where she thought, in her words, “Why does my baby smell like ass?”
I have two kids and breastfed both of them. My son until he was one, my daughter for four months so far. Breastfeeding was never a question and was a very important goal in my process of becoming a mother. But — and I’m already steeling myself for the comments — I’ve started to wonder if that one choice has done more or less good for my relationship with my husband and my own personal identity as a woman.
Continue reading “Today I’m Struggling With…Breastfeeding and Emotional Labor”
Last night, as I struggled with the thought of spending all of the next day alone with my toddler and newborn, my husband sensed that I was “off.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m just really not looking forward to tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?”
With that simple question, something was unlocked. Continue reading “Today I’m Struggling With…Empathy”
Remember when I said I was tired of feeling gross? Yeah. About that.
Everything about my experiences with my two children has been opposite. My son, H, turned three two days after my daughter G was born. Where he was a spastic, sporadic eater who struggled to latch due to a short frenulum (tongue-tied), she is a hearty, efficient eater who can drain one side in seven minutes. With H, my struggle was more emotional than physical. Breastfeeding is hard. Like, really hard. While I did have a baby that would eat for 30 minutes, fall asleep for 30 minutes, and then decide to eat again – creating a never-ending nursing marathon that rarely allowed me unburdened time – what I didn’t have was physical issues. I used a nipple shield to help him latch, gave him a pacifier after a few months, and he took a bottle quickly and easily. Unbeknownst to me at the time, all of these things that made my life easier were also making me susceptible to thrush. But I never got it. Not even once in the year he was breastfed.
Flash forward three years, and just three weeks after G was born, my sister noticed a white spot on her tongue. “I think she has thrush,” she said with an apologetic smile. I sighed heavily, realizing this was going to be an issue I really did not have the energy to deal with. By the evening, my nipples were bright red and itching like crazy. So it was clear, without a shield, pacifier, or bottle to blame it on, we had thrush. Continue reading “Today I’m Struggling With…Thrush”