So, while I am sad that I might not clearly remember what it feels like to have a chubby toddler hand in mine or a ginormous preschooler hug on her first day of school...my hope is that in their place I will experience my fingers entwined with that of a woman’s as we prepare for her wedding, or the tight hug of a young adult as we drop her off for her first year at a university.
Maybe it's because I haven't left the house in days. Maybe it's because of the wine. Maybe it's because I was lying next to my little girl, who does not yet know that there is a world outside of this sweet, dependable love right here. A world that is so incredible and so beautiful, yet so hurtful and so deeply flawed. The reality is, I can't protect her, just as my mother couldn't protect me.
How you feed your infant is your choice. The Motherhood Collective supports your mental, physical, and emotional well-being. It is of utmost importance to us. In a world full of mixed messages, you need to be assured that you are the best mother for your child. You are innately able to care for your baby. You are strong. You are powerful.
They say the days are long, but the years are short. I think most of us can attest to that. In today’s “Mom Confessions,” moms share their thoughts on embracing (or maybe not) all things related to parenting. These fellow mamas will definitely assure you that you are not alone in this thing called motherhood.
We love sharing what day-to-day life looks like for different moms. Here, Jenna shares what two different days a few weeks apart looked like for her as a work-from-home mom. We may get Jenna to share a follow-up soon, as she recently transitioned to being a full-time stay-at-home parent, and her days probably look even more different now!
Looking back, I wish so much that I had done something sooner because I barely remember that stage of my life, and as we as moms know, the early baby stage is so fleeting even if you are fully present. If I can leave you with anything, it is this. Please don't wait to get help. Please know that you are a good mom, an amazing mom. If you are going through something that you need help with, please get help as soon as possible, you will not be judged. If this is something that you did go through, and it has passed, please know that you did everything you could. Enjoy your now. You may not remember those scary and hard days in the beginning, but you can make memories starting today.
Applying these things to my fourth trimester helped tremendously during our transition to a family of six. I still had a few bad days, but they were few and far between. Because we had “been there” and “done that”, I knew my limitations and my husband knew when to step in and help me where I needed support.
Birth is transformative. We meet women every day who could describe their births from many years ago in vivid detail. And we’re all familiar with the war stories... Part of our mission here at the TMC is to transform the culture of fear surrounding birth. We encourage women to educate themselves and create a supportive environment for birth. But the truth is, we all must enter birth with open hands. The stories we would write for ourselves are not always the stories that make us the strongest mothers for our children.
Looking back, these were the longest days of my life and I look back on them with such sadness for how I wanted it to be and how it really could have been. Having come off of such a high from an amazing birth experience to having the furthest from ideal hospital stay was like being hit by a truck heading into Ezra’s first few weeks of life.
Dictionary.com says that Foster Care is, “the raising or supervision of foster children, in an institution, group home, or private home, usually arranged through a government or social-service agency that provides remuneration for expenses.” I don’t think that this gets to the heart of what Foster Care truly is, either, despite its neutrality. The simplest way to explain what being a Foster Parent is, is this: providing a safe place for hurting children to just be children.
I’m a mental health professional and I hate the phrase “mental health.” Just like I hate the term “mental strength,” in case you had the joy of seeing that blurb go around Facebook last year. Why? Because it suggests polarity. If there is mental “strength” or “health,” then there must also be mental weakness, mental illness. For the record, mental strength (and by extension, mental weakness) are made up, pop-psychology, BS terms that mean nothing. I’ve consulted multiple versions of the DSM and those phrases are poppycock. That’s right, I said poppycock. Ok, all done there.
In light of yesterday's post on picky eaters...today we are sharing our next installment in our “Mom Confessions" series. Today’s confessions focus on that ever-changing battle of all things related to food. These real-life thoughts from other moms will certainly put things into perspective, and hopefully even provide a good laugh or two.
I had completely forgotten about this cookbook, and the yummy meals it had afforded me in college, until my two-year-old claimed that broccoli—a vegetable that he had gobbled just three days before—was “yuck!”
I dug through some old boxes, and there it was, my beloved cookbook! Now, a perfect mother would veggie-fie every meal, but since she doesn’t live at my house, I simply choose one weekend a month to get my Deceptively Delicious out, hunt for recipe ideas, and plan some veggie-infused meals.
