Wine-ables

So I woke up on the couch at about 4:30 am this morning with a half eaten box of cheddar bunnies in my arms and a sip of red wine left in my glass. It was one of “those” kind of nights. I was on day 5 of being solo with the kids and maybe it was the lack of adult interaction that triggered me to drink an entire bottle of wine by myself or could have been because I had been puked on, pooped on and smothered in snot all day! Either way, there I was into glass #2 and I needed something to go with it. Since we don’t keep any snacks in the house for anyone over the age of 6 and, thanks to my latest clean eating craze, there was nothing in the cabinets that didn’t take more than 30 minutes and a blender to assemble, to the kids' snack drawer I went!! My wild Saturday night on the couch in my stretchy pants gave inspiration for today’s post.

Just because you no longer have time to put together a proper charcuterie board, you don’t have to lose the essence of class!  Fellow mother, and Certified Specialist of Wine, Elizabeth Slack worked with Parent Proof to expertly pair real life scenarios with your children’s snacks and the best wine. You’re welcome!!

Which Game of Thrones parent are you?

Daenerys Targaryen: POSITIVE PARENTING

If you are like Daenerys, you can look past your child's scaly skin and dragon breath and still see a future of wonderful possibilities. You strive to focus on how they can grow their abilities instead of dwelling on the things or people they have mistakenly set on fire. Positive parenting is about supporting children via guiding, mapping out, and brainstorming . . . with an eye on world domination. 

"Everyone who isn't us is an enemy"

Cersei Lannister: EXTREME ATTACHMENT PARENTING

While there can be healthy attachment parenting relationships, Cersei Lannister takes it to the extreme. In her approach, the parent is more attached to their children than the children are to their parent, and yearns for them to respond to the parent's emotional needs over their own. This unhealthy dynamic is often demonstrated when the parent keeps the child up past a reasonable bedtime or forces the child to serve as the parent's puppet regent on the Iron Throne. If you find yourself identifying with Cersei's parenting style in any way, place your baby in a box and leave him outside the nearest grocery store. We will all be safer for it. 

“You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your halls on a cold night.”

Tywin Lannister: DETACHMENT PARENTING

The opposite of attachment parenting, detachment parenting places sole focus on the parents' goals and achievements. Children are simply a means to carry on your family name until you can find a way to attain immortality. While your kids may spend their childhoods trying to win your love, you will pay the ultimate price in the form of therapy bills or being disemboweled by a cross-bow, so you may want to reconsider this approach before it's too late.

"Winter is coming."

Ned Stark: UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING

The King of the North was a model unconditional parent and showed his children and his bastard unyielding love and compassion. You believe your children can actually become people who can do good in the world and you are supportive of their interests no matter what they are and how they differ from your own. This approach can result in strong-willed and independent children, but it can also result in your beheading.

"I will not be a page in someone else's history book."

Stannis Baratheon: CONDITIONAL PARENTING

The conditional parent is all about loving his/her child when it's convenient and or makes them look like they have a soul. In short, this parenting style says "I love you, but if I even FEEL like I'm not going to get my promotion at work, I will END you as a sacrifice to whatever gods we're believing in this week." Advice for children of these parents--hide the matches.

"If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog, you'll be treated as a mad dog."

Roose Bolton: SLOW PARENTING

Slow parenting allows the child's talents to evolve over time and teaches them to approach life as a journey instead of a destination. "Slow" in this case refers to living in the moment as opposed to looking into the future or seeing things as results oriented. Children of these parents tend to be adventurous and free-spirited. Lord Bolton probably thought it was a sign of "creative thinking" when his bastard Ramsay killed the family raven at age 5 and painted the castle walls with its blood.  Slow-parented kids do not feel the pressure to bend to societal norms because their parents have allowed them to evolve into the special, sociopathic snowflakes they were always meant to be, fostering their homicidal tendencies and embracing their lack of empathy or concern for human life with unwavering support and love. 

Night's King: SPIRITUAL/HOLISTIC PARENTING

The spiritual/holistic parent is focused on appreciating that which IS and being connected to everything in the NOW. The Night's King believes in family, and he raises every frozen and deceased member of his clan and organizes them into a united front. His long, cold stares and a powerful work ethic motivated by a hunger for the flesh of the living inspires his spawn to march towards the unknown as a strong family unit. 

Written by: Alice

Suggested New Episodes of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood

Good news for moderate parental negligence—a study soon to be published in the Journal of Children and Media found that watching the PBS Kids cartoon Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood may help preschoolers develop social and emotional skills. For those of you who have not yet been inducted into the Daniel Tiger cult, each episode deals with a common issue for toddlers and preschool-age kids—fear of starting school, separation anxiety, a new baby, sharing, resolving conflict with peers, etc. There is always a catchy “strategy song” that reinforces the message after the show ends. One of my son’s favorite episodes is “Daniel Visits School,” and I sing the strategy song fairly often to remind myself that he’s the kind of kid that needs extra reassurance during transitions: When we do something new, let’s talk about what we’ll do. C is also obsessed with all of the episodes that feature Daniel’s baby sister Margaret, which is just about enough to make my heart completely explode with love and forgive him for all of his general ass-hattery.

Given Daniel Tiger’s proven success at imparting macro-level life lessons about kindness, empathy, and managing negative feelings, I figure the show’s writers might be equally effective at helping us parents handle some of the more micro challenges of daily life with toddlers. To that end, I have created a list and summaries of suggested episodes I would like to see produced in the near-future:

Episode 501: Daniel Leaves His Shoes on in the Car

Daniel is riding in the car to the grocery store! He is going to leave his shoes on for the entire ride to the store and the entire ride home because he understands that even though it’s only June, it’s already 98 degrees outside, and the last thing Mommy Tiger needs is to be crawling around the back seat of her black station wagon trying to find his forty-dollar Sperrys. Daniel is also going to stop unbuckling his chest clip repeatedly and dumping the entire bag of Goldfish crackers he insisted on holding into his lap.

Strategy Song: No matter how itchy the infinitesimally microscopic piece of sand on your toe is, you still have to leave your shoes on.

Episode 502: Daniel Diversifies His Musical Tastes Beyond Uptown Funk and The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Everyone loves Bruno Mars! Golden Oldies are great for dancing! But seriously Daniel, there is an entire universe of musical genres yet to be explored, and if Daddy Tiger tries to hit the high note in “Whimoweh” one more time, Mommy Tiger is going to file for divorce.

Strategy Song: What About Beyoncé? Everyone Loves Beyoncé. Even Taylor Swift is fine, whatever, anything but the Bieber.

Episode 503: Daniel Displays a Little Bit of Flexibility When We’re Out of Cream Cheese

The Tiger family is enjoying Saturday breakfast together! Daniel is having his customary morning meal of half of a whole wheat bagel, cut into quarters and prepared to “medium” heat, meaning Mommy Tiger toasts it to a golden brown and then puts it in the freezer for 45 seconds, no more, no less, to achieve ideal temperature. Oh no, looks like someone forgot to put cream cheese on the grocery list! No worries, Daniel is not going to start shrieking like he’s fallen into a quicksand pit made of yellow jackets, instead he listens calmly as his parents explain that they will go to the store later, and for now he can have peanut butter on his bagel instead. Or he can have a waffle. Or cereal. Or pickles and olives. The world is your fucking oyster, Daniel, just please stop screaming before the neighbors call the police.

Strategy Song: Life is full if disappointment, but that’s not an excuse to act like a turd.

Episode 504: Daniel Wears His Pull-Up Diaper All Night Long

My how Daniel has grown! He is so independent, and he loves to help Mommy Tiger out with Baby Margaret. Daniel has been fully potty trained for awhile, but he still has to wear his pull-up at night, because accidents can happen when you are sleeping. Accidents that result in lots of extra laundry for Mommy Tiger, who already spends about 95% of her waking hours doing laundry. Mommy Tiger didn’t graduate from law school just so she could dedicate her life to folding underwear! Daniel helps minimize the amount of laundry Mommy Tiger has to do by keeping his pull-up on all night long, even if he wakes up at 3:30am and decides that it’s scratchy.

Strategy Song: Keep your pee in your pull-up and not soaking through your $80 organic sheet set from Pottery Barn.

Episode 505: Daniel and Baby Margaret Choose Not to Coordinate Their Epic Evening Meltdowns

It’s been a long week for Mommy Tiger! While Daddy Tiger is away on business, sleeping in dark hotel rooms and conversing in full sentences with other adults, Mommy Tiger has been trying to sleep-train Baby Margaret while also dealing with Daniel’s latest nap regression. Uh-oh, Daniel has something in his eye…or is that pink eye? Time for a trip to urgent care during rush hour! In order to prevent Mommy Tiger from becoming a full-blown alcoholic, Daniel and Baby Margaret decide that rather than express their feelings about this stressful event through tandem sobbing, they are both going to go to bed without protest and sleep 11 hours through the night.

Strategy Song: When the baby is crying, instead of crying too, why don’t you do something useful like open Mommy a bottle of wine.

How about you? What episodes of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood would you like to have custom-tailored to your particular parenting dilemmas? I hear PBS is struggling with the recent decreases in federal funding, so perhaps they could turn made-to-order TV shows into a new revenue stream. You’re welcome, Big Bird!

Written by: Kathleen

41 ½ Weeks

It wasn’t supposed to happen to me. Second babies are never overdue, I thought, and I was pretty sure I read somewhere that most women have all of their kids around the same point of gestation. My son’s labor began at 38 weeks and 3 days, and so while my daughter’s due date was December 25, I informed anyone who asked that she would most likely be home in time for Christmas. But the holidays came and went, and as I stared down the final days of the year, my Google history filled with increasingly desperate searches:

how to induce labor

do late babies sleep better?

has anyone ever been pregnant forever???

The weekly emails and updates from my pregnancy apps stopped comparing my fetus to a fruit and started questioning my sanity. “Are you sure you’re really pregnant?” They asked gently. “Maybe you should see someone.” Strangers no longer smiled warmly when they saw me waddling down the sidewalk and instead crossed the street like I might have some infectious disease. My phone lit up with calls from the bravest among my family members, gleefully posing the dreaded question:

Have you had that baby yet?

Medical induction wasn’t an option for me, so I turned to the Old Wives for their recommendations. Black cohash sounded sinister, like something an ancient Greek philosopher would use to poison his rival. Evening primrose oil required more flexibility than I possessed at 10 months pregnant. Castor oil had the most promising data behind it, but I was not quite prepared to poop myself into labor. I drank red raspberry leaf tea and walked for an hour every morning, which did succeed in getting the baby into the entryway, but did nothing about opening the door.

“Anything you recommend?” I asked my doctor at my 57-week appointment, after she informed me that if it was possible to be negative-dilated, I was.

“There is one thing,” she said.

I reconsidered the castor oil.

New Year’s Eve came and went. One evening, while hauling my substantial bulk off of the yoga ball and lowering myself into a forward-leaning inversion, I turned to my husband and said, “I think we’re going to have to try.” He looked like a third-string quarterback that had just been called in for the final play against Alabama. A squirrel that fell into the lion cage. The young squire thrown into battle. For God and country, we were going to get this baby out.

“I think I have a headache,” he said.

The Saturday night before the Monday of my scheduled repeat C-section, I gave up. My husband and I stayed up late talking, mourning the lost chance of a spontaneous labor and a VBAC, pointing out all of the benefits of a scheduled birth. At least we would be well rested. We went to sleep at midnight, at peace with the way things were going to be.

Labor began at 3am.

My baby girl was born 26 hours later, at 41 weeks and 4 days—just a few days shy of forever.

41 weeks pregnant, feeling as sexy as a beluga whale.

WARNING: Pregnancy will lead to some really yucky stuff

If you could see past the Trojan horse that is pregnancy and labor and did any amount of reading on what happens after the OB spotlights fade, you know that tummy deflation and the regroup of body parts is far creepier than anything having to do with carrying or expelling a fetus. Think of your vagina as a dam. When the dam bursts, the reservoir fills but water continues to flow through the broken walls bringing with it, the trees, fish and small boats that washed up along the way. Note, that some of these items are so far "up river" that they won't even make the appearance until weeks after it bursts. If you've gotten lost here; A BUNCH OF JUNK COMES OUT OF YOUR VAGINA AND OTHER WEIRD SHIT HAPPENS TO YOUR BODY FOR A GOOD WHILE AFTER THAT BUNDLE OF JOY MAKES THEIR APPEARANCE!!!

Let’s start from the beginning. You’ve welcomed your sweet, bluish offspring into the world and while you are awestruck and trying to convince yourself that a human just came out of your body, you are forced to push something else out. The placenta! That magical, life sustaining organ that resembles a blood filled jellyfish. It’s worth getting your doctor to let you have a good look at this thing as it, hopefully, is the only time you’ll get to look at one of your organs on the outside of your body while conscious. Take advantage. Check that horror show off your list and let’s move on to the next Discovery Channel experience.

You’ve no doubt heard of lochia. Otherwise known as YUCK! This mass of blood, mucus and uterine tissue will unexpectedly gush out of you from time to time postpartum. The biggest gushes hit when you are nursing or when that girl you never really liked from high school swings by to say hello and check to see if you’ve lost your baby weight. Luckily, the hospital or your midwife will equip you with pads the size of a life jacket. When you first see them you can never imagine actually utilizing their full capacity of Lake Michigan level absorbency, but you will. Cramps are a sweet warning signal that will let you know the flood gates are opening.

While one orifice is free flowing, another is setting up a barricade. The stool softeners they give you in the hospital are not a suggestion and you will need to make sure you are fully stocked when you return home to get you through the next few weeks. This is where Amazon Prime pays for itself in spades. You are saved from having to endure the shifty eyes of the cashier at check out and you can get relief in 48 hours without having to leave the comfort of your donut pillow. If you’re not up for the pills, there’s some great tea, Smooth Move, that really delivers ;)

Next up!! Night sweats. If you’ve never had the pleasure of sweating profusely without any exertion, get ready for the good times. These usually hit a week or so postpartum when your hormones decide to jump ship without a care for the havoc that will be wrecked on your body. Night sweats yield bed wetting level moisture so best to prepare your spouse and the rubber sheets. The hormone rampage doesn’t stop there. Did you enjoy the full mane that pregnancy provided? Along with your sex drive, so goes your hair. This side effect sneaks up on you just when you feel like life is getting back to normal and you’ve planned a girls’ night out. You take a look in the mirror when getting ready and realize that you have a bald spot that will require a Trump level comb over to disguise. 

With the hormone party that hits postpartum, it’s a wonder that schools feel the need to teach kids sex education at all. Your really just need to tell teenage girls that they will lose their hair and their stomachs will look like their great grandmother’s if they get pregnant and tell boys that unprotected sex puts them at risk of not having sex again for at least another year, two if the baby never sleeps.

Written by: Alice

Potty Training 2.0: It's just a bunch of sh*t

So it’s been a while since I first wrote about potty training. That’s mostly because we are still in the trenches and the trench is currently getting deeper and longer so forgive me while I waste your time complaining about my problems. I didn’t realize how much worse it could get. We are literally having arguments with an almost 3-year-old about how peeing on the couch is not okay. While I understand that arguing with a child is futile, it happens when you’re losing patience and you start to believe that you can rationalize with them. More and more I realize that toddlers are really just drunk frat boys, Chapter “Sigma Pi Pi”. They pee on your kitchen floor and act confused when you get upset, they insist that you reward them for any minor personal hygiene upkeep, they crap their pants at the most inconvenient times possible, and they are adamant that dark liquor must be mixed with coke on game day.  

We thought we were off to a pretty average start with our daughter going long stretches without a diaper and showing that she could hold it. But then things took a turn. She would pee all over her chair during lunch or poop in her pants while watching a movie. Now I know that all the books say that this is normal and we should approach these situations calmly and try to defuse any stress, but it is really hard to find Zen when scrubbing feces out of your carpet. So our first plan of attack was to put a reward system in place. I have been adamant about not using food to get her to use the potty. I have an irrational fear that she will one day reward herself for making the JV basketball team with a whole box of Krispy Kremes when that is clearly a treat for someone who worked hard enough to get to Varsity. Anyway, I decided to go with stickers. I bought the really horrible ones that don’t actually stick to anything. They were working great for about a month until she lost interest and decided to resist all things potty. At this point daycare decided to get their skin in the game. They starting doing charts for the kids at school and mandatory potty breaks. Just when I thought we were off to the races, they have some teachers quit and shuffled classrooms. With those adjustments, we were told that they were going to be putting potty training in the class on hold. “Um what?” You don’t open someone up for surgery and then say you would like to take a break while they’re bleeding out!!!!!! After crying in front of the other kids and parents in the class, I pulled myself together and decided we would just forge ahead on our own because nothing makes you feel more like a parent than the constant reminder that you can fail at the simplest of tasks.   

I updated our reward system. We were now going to have a tracking chart with fun squares to color and potty prizes (dollar bin). I introduced the chart to D and the concept of prizes and she was immediately successful . . .for about a week. At this point I decide to throw all structure out the window and stop fighting her to use the potty. I put her in pull ups and offer it to her from time to time and she goes occasionally. Long car rides are the worst. “I need to go potty” “Okay honey, thanks for telling me. Can you hold it or do we need to stop?” “No you hold it.” “I can’t hold it. Do you need to go potty now.” “Yeah. Can you hold it?” “Wait what? Okay no. Let me find somewhere to stop.”—We make it into the nastiest gas station bathroom you’ve ever seen and I line the toilet with toilet paper and manage for her not to touch anything—“No I don’t want to sit on the potty!!” “But that’s how you GO potty.” “No, I not!” “You said you needed to go potty so lets just try.” “No I don’t need to go potty.” “Please just sit and try.” “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I DON’T NEED TO GO POTTY!!” “Okay fine, but we aren’t stopping again.”—load back in car, get on highway, 3 minutes later—“Mommy, I need to go potty.” Make it stop.  

So as it stands today, we just aren’t there yet. You can read this and feel better about your parenting abilities or know that you have a kindred spirit in the land of the forever diapers.  

Daddy Meltdowns

Most of us are familiar with the joy of a toddler meltdown, but for those of you who have been living under a rock with your pal Ted Cruz, let me enlighten you. A toddler meltdown involves a complete loss of rational communication and motor skills resulting in a screaming, kicking, snotty pile of child. Public arenas are favored for this behavior and the rubber necking of passers by excites the situation. A close cousin to this behavior is the lesser known Daddy Meltdown or “DM”.

The DM is a special creature all its own. Not unlike the toddler meltdown, the DM is irrational and frantic, however, there's typically less kicking (this does not apply to dads from South Dakota). They also occur more frequently in the home than in public and confirms the notion that you never really grow up, you just learn how to act in public. DMs usually have two root causes: #1 he has just realized that he is no longer allowed to be the most immature person in the household #2 there is living proof that his wife is a stronger person and better at everything. Take these two notions together and you've got an adult male who is going to lose all sense of control.

When faced with a full-scale Daddy Meltdown, proceed with caution:

1)    Identify yourself in a calm and appeasing tone.

2)    Back away slowly, preferably in the direction you came.

3)    Walk, don’t run, and keep your eye on the daddy so you can see how it will react.

4)    If you are with other people, stand together to present a more intimidating figure, but do not         surround the daddy.

5)    The use of pepper spray is not recommended as it will only agitate the daddy’s state.

6)    Re-direct the daddy to something he finds comforting—a beer, a movie, his batman cape . . .

7)    If all else fails, sneak out the back door with offspring in tow. Typically cool down takes 2-4 hours depending on the severity of the reaction.

DMs are most likely to occur:

·      In the home during the kids’ bedtime routine

·      In the home during dinner

·      In the home during breakfast

·      In the home during bath time

·      In the car

·      In a restaurant when he realizes you can't take a toddler to a white tablecloth establishment

·      Anytime dad is feeling the slightest bit sleepy

·      On a Tuesday

Suits, high heels, and breast pumps!

“Do I really want to change out of my stretchy pants for a silly job?” For new working mothers this can be a really hard decision. You knew when you got pregnant that you would, without a doubt, return to the workforce and not turn into one of those mothers whose whole world revolves around her baby. You would even roll your eyes when you saw fellow co-workers leaving meetings or work events early to get home to their offspring. You told yourself, “I will never be like that”. Then the last week of your maternity leave rolls around and you realize that not only did you not complete Season 4 of Scandal like you planned, but you are not ready to leave your little miracle with a bunch of strangers for 8 hours a day.  

Oh no!!! Are you turning into one of “those” mothers? The answer is YES and it is okay. Your baby is the most demanding person in your life and you cannot feel guilty about wanting to respond to that. Besides, there are many more things that you will feel guilty about down the road. Mergers & Acquisitions just don’t seem important after you literally created a future employee in your stomach. You just have to CHECK YOURSELF LADY!! Your baby will be perfectly well cared for and you will even look forward to having conversations about things other than reflux. You may actually feel confident that you have the skill set to accomplish the tasks that are put in front of you—something you can never feel as a parent. I am not saying there won’t be hard days when you are late to work because your darling angel had a massive blow out just as you were putting him in his car seat and you don’t even realize that you have poop all over the side of your shirt until you are walking into a board meeting. This will happen. You have to let it go and join the ranks of the rest of the parents in the office that are all doing their best to make it all work.  

Luckily, employers are getting better (or being strong-armed) about trying to find ways to keep mothers in the workforce. Make sure you talk to your boss and ask for what you need. You may be surprised at her flexibility. Or you may realize that your job is not flexible at all and that you need to find work that allows you to be a parent and a career woman, knowing that you cannot be exceptional at both all the time. Sometimes you win at work and sometimes you win at home. There are trade-offs, but most kids survive the process. In the end, 50% of kids with mothers who work are psychopaths and 50% of kids whose mothers stay home are psychopaths. Have more than one kid and may the odds be ever in your favor.  

SURVIVAL TIPS ON THE RETURN 

• Get on a schedule 
  • While a lot of mommies don’t like the idea of scheduled feedings, it may be a necessary evil if you plan to return to the workforce. A good resource if you are having trouble getting on a schedule is Baby Wise. It is a bit militant so just pick and choose what you want to pull out of it so that won’t go completely insane.  
• Block off your pump times on your calendar 
  • If you don’t have it as blocked time on your calendar, you are likely to delay or even skip your pumping sessions. This will also help your co-workers get used to the idea that you are unavailable 3 to 4 times a day because you are producing liquid gold and cannot be disturbed. I would often skip a pump because a meeting got scheduled and it caused my supply to drop faster than Mel Gibson's career.  
• Have a back up outfit in the car or in your office 
  • This will be a life saver when you accidentally spill just-pumped milk on yourself or leak through your top while watching a YouTube video one of your co-workers sent you about a tiny kitten’s daring rescue from a tree by four exceptionally attractive firefighters. 
• Use your lunch breaks for errands 
  • While I would love to suggest that you use this time for yourself and take a break, no one has time for that. Utilize the time to hit the grocery store by yourself and get whatever frozen dinner you need for that night. 
• Just say “no” 
  • Now is the time to flex those boundary muscles. You are going to have to draw the line between work and personal life. Make sure you are upfront with your boss and co-workers about your inability to work late nights and/or take on someone else’s workload.  This is when it really hits home that you have transitioned from the young, hip crowd in the office to the "mature" lot with mortgages and pest control issues. Hang in there. Those reckless youngsters will have an after work tequila night that will land one of them in the delivery stirrups in no time. 

What a typical day back to work will/could look like for you:  

5:00-5:30: Nurse 

6:00: Get out of bed lazy head 

6:00-7:00: Shower, throw down breakfast, and pack pump bag, bottles and baby’s daycare bag while your little one happily sits and watches the chaos from a swing 

7:30: Drop off baby and swallow the guilt that is in your throat 

8:00: Start your day at a job where you are actually rewarded for your competency 

9:00: Pump 

12:00: Pump 

3:00: Pump 

5:30: Retrieve bambino from cage at daycare 

6:00: Nurse 

6:30-7:00: Bath (b/c daycare is a germ breeding ground) 

7:00: Bedtime for babe 

7:30: Pour yourself a big bowl of cereal because you are too tired to cook 

8:00: Pump 

8:05: Fall asleep on the couch while trying to catch up on Game of Thrones 

9:30: Milk dripping from your pump and through your shirt wakes you enough to stumble to bed 

2:00: Nurse (if you haven’t yet gotten the little one to sleep through the night) 

Oh yeah, you forgot to work out. I’m sure you’ll fit it in tomorrow between the crawl to bed and the midnight feeding. If not, you’ll be eligible for the silver sneakers discount at your gym in no time!  

A few resources that will make you feel better about going back to work:  

Lean In: inspired by Sheryl Sandberg’s book, this site does a great job of inspiring you to stay engaged in the workforce. Get the audio version of the book for your commute. I couldn’t ever stay awake long enough to read it.  

The Working Mother: This site gives you several resources and information on “mom-friendly” companies and how to survive the workforce.

Feeling guilty about going back to work? : A great article from HP on how staying at home isn’t right for every woman.  

How to Rock a Newborn Schedule: A realistic look at scheduling from Incredible Infant.

New Baby Etiquette for friends, family and the lady at the grocery store

So I know everyone wants to beat down the door to be the first to see a new baby and decide for themselves whether or not the father is really who the mother says he is, however, I urge you to approach this momentous time in someone else’s life (yes someone else’s) with the poise of Emily Post. There is always that one friend or relative who oversteps boundaries when it comes to a newborn, and while those lines are different for every parent, I encourage everyone to err on the side of being too polite and caring (I know, I know, this doesn’t sound like me at all:)) 

Do’s (with permission) 

• Go over to the parents’ house while they are still in the hospital and stock their refrigerator.  
  • This can be a huge help to new parents who are in a daze and unlikely to take good care of their nutritional needs.   
• Once you are given the green light for a postpartum visit:  
  • Make it short. New mommies are getting into a groove and sometimes that means going topless to let their nipples breath. That is not something you need to interrupt.  
  • Touch base an hour or two before you arrive to see if there’s anything you can pick up for them: giant maxi pads, stool softeners, bourbon, etc.  
  • Take food.  Even if it’s not mealtime, you can bet that the new parents will always welcome food and/or booze depending on the couple. 
• Text or email instead of calling. 
  • There’s nothing worse than just lying down for a nap while the baby naps, when your phone won’t stop ringing with people wanting to hear all about the new babe. Be kind. Message before and schedule a time to chat.   
• Offer to give the new parents a few hours away after they've had a week or two to settle in.  
  • It’s so easy to get stuck in the cycle of baby as new parents. Help them break it up by offering to come over for an hour or two while they go out to grab a coffee or glass of wine alone and decide whether or not they still like each other.  

Don’ts 

• Don’t show up to the hospital right after mommy has delivered the placenta 
  • Unless you were given specific instructions to attend the cord cutting, then a hospital visit should not be on your list 
• Don’t give unsolicited advice or opinions to the new parents, even if you are super savvy and have a blog;), bite your tongue until you are asked for your opinion and be sure to give gently.
  • Examples of what NOT to say (taken from real life experiences):  
  • We never had to use a pacifier.” 
  • “Let me show you how to quiet a fussy baby” 
  • “Do you really think it’s a good idea to use a rock-and-play? I heard they cause brain damage.” 
  • “Strange, our baby slept through the night from the very beginning” 
  • “Can’t you just give her water? Why are you breastfeeding so much?” 
  • “Do you want some tips on how to lose your baby weight?” 
  • “You need to just sleep when the baby sleeps”---this is one of the most annoying because it’s not that a mother doesn’t try but if she wants to eventually wash off the aftermath of childbirth, then she will not be able to close her eyes every time baby does.  
• Don’t show up at the house unannounced. No really. You’re not welcome without a blessing from the new parents.   
• Don’t bring your little germ aka your child over to visit a newborn, specifically a firstborn. 
  • Even if you practice the very best in hygiene, kids are gross. No need to risk getting mommy or infant sick .   

Fur Babies v. First Babies

They’re the loves of your life and the apples of your eye. You post too many photos of them to Facebook and you spend way too much time talking about them at parties, boring your friends with lengthy descriptions of their adorable idiosyncrasies. You shell out thousands of dollars for toys and treats and day care, even though they often reward you by puking on your rug or chewing your shoes. They’re your pets, and nothing, especially not a baby, is ever going to displace them from the center of your universe. 

Except that once your first child is born, there will be a period of time during which you will hate your pets. Unaware of the changes to your life and theirs brought about by that giant naked mole-rat your keep fawning over, they will continue to demand your attention at a time when your ability to give one more ounce of yourself has been stripped raw. You will still love them, and you won’t do anything crazy like get rid of them—unless of course you are a narcissistic asshole with questionable parenting skills or they suddenly turn into Cujo—but you will most certainly resent their need for basic upkeep, and you will forget to feed them far more often than you’ll care to admit. 

Before the hate mail starts rolling in, please understand that I say this as a lifelong animal lover and complete nutcase about my pets. My parents rescued animals before it was cool and before there were leash laws—when I was born we had three dogs and at least five cats, one of whom was named Mr. Cat, because after a certain point you legitimately run out of options. When I adopted my first two cats after college in 2002, I devoted real time and brain-power to figuring out how, in the event of a terrorist attack and a city-wide evacuation, I was going to get from my office in downtown Boston to my apartment across the harbor to pick them up before escaping out of town. Over the past decade our two dogs, Whiskey and Oliver, between them have incurred every major medical malady known to veterinary science, destroyed no fewer than eight not-inexpensive rugs with their fecal matter, eaten one half of a Crate & Barrel couch, and made themselves canines non grata at all local dog parks and at least one day-camp facility, and yet for most of their lives I have publicly described them as my soul mates. 

All this to say, I get it. You love your pets like your babies…until you have an actual baby, when you discover that your pets require far more time and energy than you recognized back when they were the only creatures you were responsible for keeping alive. And they will announce their needs at the least opportune moments, like at 4am, when baby is on his sixth feeding of the night, and your precious Labrador starts dragging his ass across the rug in that “I’m going to blow at any moment” gesture that is completely your fault because you’ve recently switched his diet from boiled chicken and rice to whatever shit they sell at the Chevron down the street, so you race your doughy ass downstairs, trying not to pop your stitches or trip over your cat as he weaves between your legs in delight that someone finally wants to play during his peak energy hours, shove your dog out the back door, then proceed to watch as he spends the next twenty minutes in the corner of the yard sniffing his own three-day-old poop before setting off the neighbor’s motion-sensor floodlights and barking aggressively at his own shadow. 

In hindsight, I now know that it was not really their neediness that made me hate my once-beloved soul mates in those early postpartum weeks, it was my own guilt at my colossal negligence. For months I promised them nothing would change, hugging them close and whispering in their ears as I assembled nursery furniture and folded tiny rompers. They prepared me for motherhood like nothing else could, particularly the part that requires you to remove foreign objects from excrement, and yet after C was born I felt I had cast them aside, relegated to the emotional basement to live out their days feeding on scraps of affection and fading memories.

The good news is they can handle it. This is what the last 10,000 years of evolution has prepared them for—undying loyalty for their family through good times and bad, feast and famine, colic and sleep training and everything beyond. So in moments of despair, when you’ve just screamed every four-letter word your hormone-addled brain can remember because your angel rescue bishon-poodle mix woke the baby up when she mistook a UPS delivery for the onset of the zombie apocalypse, take heart—as soon as your little one starts on solid foods, all will be forgiven. Your pets may never again be your number one priority (sorry guys, but in the event of an alien invasion, you’re on your own), but if my own childhood spent in an unlicensed animal shelter is any indication, someday soon they may become your child’s BFF, and you will find yourself falling in love with them all over again. Plus you’ll have someone else to help clean the litter, and that totally makes the kid worth it, too.

Written by: Kathleen

After several months of intense debate, the team finally agrees that the new guy can stay.

The Birds and the Bees Revisited

The moment you go from actively not trying to get pregnant to actively trying to get pregnant, your sex life changes. Often it’s not a single moment but a month or more of inactively not trying, the birth control equivalent of slowly stepping into a freezing cold swimming pool rather than closing your eyes and jumping. You pull the goalie then forget to invite the other team to play. Or the other team is so freaked out they don’t even try to score. Or they do try to score but don’t, and then you start to wonder if there’s something wrong with the other team, if they’re too old or too stressed out or smoked too much pot in college. That’s when you go from dipping your toes in the water to doing a running cannonball off the diving board—Geronimo, kids, it’s time to get busy.

Unfortunately, despite what the Lifetime Movie Network and your high school guidance counselor want you to believe, making a baby is not as easy as a six-pack of Zima and a rec room couch. I went to a progressive school that prided itself on a liberal and comprehensive sex education curriculum. I remember writing anonymous questions about boobs and periods in fifth grade, a particularly horrific slide show about STDs in seventh grade, and a series of heated arguments throughout high school about whether legalizing prostitution would empower or oppress women. At the age of 32, when my husband and I decided to close our eyes and jump into the baby-making pool, I could argue the constitutionality of abortion, gay marriage, and pornography. I knew how HIV was transmitted on a molecular level. I could recite statistics on the risks associated with advanced maternal age as they related to miscarriage, infertility, and chromosomal abnormalities. But I didn’t truly understand that I could only get pregnant on four, maybe five days of the month, and probably fewer, because I was a maternal dinosaur and my husband smoked a lot of pot in college.

That’s the annoying truth of it. While it seems like every teenager on reality TV can get pregnant 26 days a month, and you swear your best friend occasionally gets knocked up in the shower, you and your old “career oriented” eggs have only a 12- to 24-hour window to get fertilized after ovulation. Your husband’s boys may be able to survive longer, depending on whether your fallopian tubes resemble a mahogany-paneled man-cave with a built-in beer tap and 60-inch plasma television or a women’s studies class at Smith, but at most you have five days during which sex leads to baby. Five days is the best-case scenario, and let’s be honest ladies, at our age, we have to aim for the bull’s eye just to hit the target.

So if you’re done testing the water and you’re ready to dive in, don’t waste your energy shaving your legs the first day after your period ends. Start spritzing your fancy Versace perfume a few days before you think you’ll ovulate, and save date-night at your favorite martini bar for the day before. And if that night happens to coincide with a major sporting event or highly anticipated episode of The Walking Dead, you might as well throw on your yoga pants, open a bottle of pinot, and wait ‘til next month.

Written by: Kathleen

PS: If you've been doing cannonballs for several months and are starting to get antsy, or if you're just trying to be more precise in your baby-making so you don't end up with, say, a Christmas due date, I highly recommend www.fertilityfriend.com and the accompanying app for more comprehensive information and tools to maximize your chances of getting pregnant regardless of who dies in the next episode of Game of Thrones.

Are You Raising an Asshole?

If you haven’t gotten there yet, you will: that moment when you realize that you may have given birth to Rosemary’s baby. The first time your precious offspring starts acting like Kanye West, humiliating you in public, interrupting others and  wearing Gucci, you know you have trouble brewing. Now some of you might say it is offensive to call a young child an A-hole, but I think we all know that there is really no other term to describe their behavior. If they were adults, you would most certainly call them something you can’t say in front of your grandmother.

Here are a few clues that you might be raising an asshole. If your child has ever:

• thrown a sizeable hard toy at your head
• screamed “I hate you” at you in a public place
• asked you “mommy, do you still have a baby in your tummy?”
• squeezed an entire tube of toothpaste out on your counter
•  painted your walls with her poop
• shown up with a twin—while technically I know the child didn’t choose this, we all know it’s rude to bring a guest if the invitation didn’t specifically say plus one
• woken up two hours early when you decide to have a few extra drinks the night before
•  used your bedspread as a blank canvas for finger painting
•  stiff bodied herself so you can’t get her in her car seat in front of a crowd of parents at school (tip: tickle her stomach so she’s forced to sandwich)
•  grabbed items off the grocery store shelves as you cart by so that they break on the floor
•  ran from you in public forcing you to look like you are abducting her

If you have experienced one or more of these things, or something worse, you are, in fact, raising an asshole. You are not alone. We have all either dealt with or are still dealing with the bi-polar antics of a youngster. The best we can all do is hope that the problem can correct itself once they become teenagers and we have the opportunity to be even bigger assholes back to them. Stay strong! Also, I can’t leave you without mentioning that we are not raising the very first generation of assholes and we should all take the time to call the people who dealt with our former A-hole selves and thank them for not kicking us at out of the house at 4 years old.

DISCLAIMER: For those “mature” parents, I am sure there is much worse coming down the pipe as our kids get older. Not there yet. Stay tuned. 

Written by: Alice

Always let your little a-hole know you have the upper hand...