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Do you ever really get over not having the baby boy or baby girl you dreamed of?

My friend Denise, blogger at Confessions of a Mean Mommy, is a a mom to two boys.  She still daydreams and writes about about the girl she never had.  It’s kind of sad that she bemoans what she’s missing when she has so much to be grateful for.  But then again, I can’t blame her.  I’m a mom to one boy and I do admit that I hold out hope for a girl in my future.

When I first found out I was having a boy, I was kind of stunned.  How would I raise a boy?  Would we be close?  Would he turn to me for advice? Would he eventually go to college and not call me for weeks on end?  My husband said I was being silly.  Lots of boys call their moms.  He talks to his mom at least once a week.

But still, how would I raise a boy when I’d never experienced what it was like to be a boy?  (more…)

Sound interesting?  I received a wonderful invitation to guest post at the TheLaughingStork.com, a blog by the amazingly funny Candy Kirby.  My post is live TODAY!

Please, click to this link to read about how take-out saved my marriage and take a moment to check-out the other goodies on this clever patchwork of stories about pregnancy and parenthood.  Thank you Candy!

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…)