ExpectingWords.com - Helping expecting couples find the right words at the right times

Moms can be meanies. It’s no surprise that when I wrote about this sad fact on my blog, I had nearly a dozen responses of women sharing their experience of being attacked by other moms.

Jen, who has a 5 year old son with Autism explained that when he was younger she would keep him on a baby harness so he wouldn’t run off on her outside, which he had done many times. She had one mother telling her she was treating her son like a dog. Another told her she was cruel.

Georgia wrote that she was attacked during her pregnancy for gaining too much weight and deciding to induce labor. But everyone has their reasons.

For Georgia, she induced because (more…)

I promised to be a little more patient and my husband promised to be a little faster. That’s the compromise we reached once it became clear that I had gotten used to barking orders: “Get the washcloth! Bring me the bottle! Go find him the tiny little stuffed dog he loves that is usually in his crib but not here right now!” Yes, I mean those exclamation points.

I’m hoping I’m not the only one who suffers from I-Had-a-Baby-and-Turned-Into-a-Barking-Dog syndrome.

According to new research that I wrote about in another post, 90 percent of couples say their relationship is worse since they had a baby. I suspect it’s because life tends to feel like an emergency all the time when there’s a baby or toddler around. The sense of urgency means many of us push niceties, tactfulness, and respect to the side for the greater good (the child).

I read a story a few months ago about a mom who was bathing her three young kids in the tub, (more…)

Yes, if you consider the loss of your former life as reason for depression.

In the Mind column in The New York Times, author Richard A. Friedman presented the idea of fathers getting postpartum depression as something odd and unexpected by doctors.

Really?  I would have thought dads could get postpartum depression, simply because having a baby is such an enormous life-changing event with unpredictable results.  It must rise to the level of a traumatic event for some dads.  I mean, I’m a mom and sometimes I’m traumatized by my own child.

If depression could be triggered by losing one’s job, ending a marriage, losing a loved one, going into bankruptcy, or simply getting bogged down and lost in the mundane activities of life, then of course a chaos machine like a new baby could be such a trigger.

Most moms and dads I know went through some form of mourning period for their old life when the first baby arrived: those spontaneous dinners out, the quiet time on the couch, uninterrupted time to read a book, sleeping in, late nights with friends, were all mainly… gone.   (more…)

“No, you cannot come in late,” is what my one year old “boss” would say if he understood the question.

“But please son, it’s the weekend.  I’m not asking for much, just an extra half hour.  6:30 wake up instead of 6am.  Can you do that for me?”

“No, I will not.  And I might even wake up at 5:30am if I feel like it.  This is the job you signed up for.  Now deal with it.”

And so I do.  And so does my husband.  There are so many amazing things about having a child.  We love it, don’t get me wrong.  But sleeping past 6?  I miss it.  Only about 10% of kids are early birds and we have one of them.

So what does my situation have to do with the 90% of you who do not or will not suffer from early bird mornings?  (more…)

You know those conversations that make you itchy. When you’re pregnant you receive unwanted or rude advice, when it’s publicly known that you’re trying to conceive, you get suggestions to stop trying to so hard, to relax and take a vacation (like how are you supposed to do that when you have to work?) and when you’re a parent, other parents are out there judging your choices.

But what if someone really does want to help a friend or relative who’s struggling with infertility, pregnancy or parenting? Is there any way a well-wisher can offer advice without seeming critical and offensive?

In response to my blog post Behind Closed Doors: Trying to Conceive, one woman who had decided not to have any children, commented that as a stepmom, she watches her stepdaughters struggle with infertility. She wrote, “I know most of you are going to hate to hear me say this but I honestly believe stressing out about it and ‘trying too hard’ really does make it harder… I know [people] who had been trying for years and then gave up and as soon as they ’stopped trying’ because they were going to start the adoption process or even adopted a child then suddenly became pregnant.” (more…)