by Guest Blogger on May 10, 2013
This post is the final installment of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
Sixteen years ago, I labored and Lamazed and my first tiny child squawked his way into the delivery room, making his sunny-side up entrance into this world. My world changed that day, and then it changed again and again, in ways I never would have imagined in back when I was young and guileless and selfishly happy.
But let’s back up, because really, the biggest change happened a few years earlier, while I was doggedly climbing the corporate ladder in Seattle.
Everything about the Seattle years was lovely, despite the rainy season. The outdoors call to every resident and my new husband and I dove right in. We hiked and biked and explored the magnificent coastline of the great northwest. We reveled, too, in the excitement of being downtown, spending Saturday nights at the Trattoria, our favorite restaurant, drinking red wine, eating too much pasta, and contemplating the future. It was a magical time, and I was happy.
And then, one by one, it happened: our friends started having babies.
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by Guest Blogger on May 3, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
I am a planner. It’s a control thing. I think deep down I’ve always known that control is an illusion, but that didn’t stop me from pursuing it or from trying to plan as much as possible, even in the face of uncertainty.
Motherhood is a prime example of something I’ve been planning for as long as I can remember. I’ve always loved babies, and as a child my plan was to get married in my twenties, have four babies, and stay home with them. It didn’t work out that way, but I continued to deny my subconscious suspicion that the terms “family” and “planning” might just be polar opposites.
Undeterred, I came up with Plan B. [click to continue…]
by Guest Blogger on April 26, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
It was shortly after my birthday when my boyfriend popped the question. It wasn’t a marriage proposal, but a baby one. He was twenty five and wanted to be a young dad and at twenty years old, I wanted nothing more than to be a mom. We didn’t tell anyone what we were planning. Our friends and parents already thought we were a crazy impetuous duo, having moved in together after just six months of young love, but hey, we’d known each other for two years!
It was ten long months later that I finally registered a positive on the stick. In that time I had become slightly, um, obsessive. I read everything I could get my hands on relating to conception and pregnancy and in my crazed state, I seemed to have lost my ability to count properly. Thankfully, once I figured out my actual ovulation dates, we were golden.
Throughout my pregnancy I continued to read, and form opinions. Opinions on the best prenatal care, the most natural way to give birth, how my baby would eat and sleep. As my belly got bigger, my social life shrank. I still had movie nights with friends, and I’d attend the odd concert, but their lives of partying and serial beaus seemed farther and farther away from my own in a committed relationship, contemplating my future as a mother.
Then, our beautiful baby boy arrived, and the friends? They disappeared. [click to continue…]
by Guest Blogger on April 12, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
Motherhood is tricky business. It’s defined differently by different people and cultures; in fact, my daughter was 8 years old before I felt comfortable being acknowledged on Mother’s Day. My path to motherhood came with a prefix: Step. I am a stepmom. [click to continue…]
by Guest Blogger on April 5, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
If you ran into me at Target this morning, you’d immediately think, “Wow! She has her hands full!” You’d witness a sweatpants-clad, 30-ish woman, pushing a cart with three-year-old twin girls strapped in the in the front and an active five-year-old begging for the Lightning McQueen mac-n-cheese.
What you probably wouldn’t realize is how much I struggled to become a mom and how my journey has impacted not only my parenting, but also my worldview. [click to continue…]
by Guest Blogger on March 29, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
I touched my 39-week pregnant belly, placing both hands beneath the swelling bump. It was the night before I was to be induced and I couldn’t sleep.
My soon-to-be son thumped a foot from the inside and I smiled. I’ll hold you tomorrow, I thought. After 39 long weeks I would finally see your eyes. My pregnancy included nausea for seventeen weeks. I feared I would lose you. Unexpected bleeding when I found out I had placenta previa. I feared I would lose you. An emergency room visit and diagnosis of the flu. I feared I would lose you.
My first pregnancy was painful and exhausting. But it was also the most beautiful experience of anticipation I have ever felt.
Everyone I knew that had kids talked about this phenomenon that happened when you became a mother. They told me that the bond was instant. They discussed the births of their children as if they were monumental, life-changing moments. I hoped mine would be like that.
We’ve all seen births happen on television and in the movies. This beautiful moment happens when the brand new baby is placed in their mother’s arms pink and screaming. That’s what I pictured. Half the fun and angst is not knowing what your birth will be like. We all want control and we all think we’ll have it. But it doesn’t always end up that way.
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by Guest Blogger on March 22, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more about the series, read this post. To read all posts in the series, click here.
“I have to tell you something,” I said hoarsely, not at all sure how I would manage to speak the next words aloud. I’d caught a cold while I was in New York, but it wasn’t congestion closing my throat.
I was perched on the hearth of my fireplace, across from my best friend, Kirsten, who was lounging sideways across my purple love seat. My ex took the couch part of the set the previous year and I hadn’t got around to replacing it. I was usually the only one sitting in my living room, anyway.
I was 38, divorced, and gave notice last month at the job where I had worked for the last 10 years because I was burnt out and exhausted. I was starting an MBA program in the fall but I didn’t know what would happen after that. This was the first time in my life I had not had a plan. My dreams of career, family and relationship all felt out of reach. It was terrifying but I was desperate. The last month had felt like I was teetering on the edge of a high cliff, praying my feet would find solid ground.
This week I should have been in my office telling my team I would no longer be their manager, but instead I was home, blowing my nose and worrying about my late period. [click to continue…]
by Guest Blogger on March 15, 2013
This post is part of our reader-submitted guest post series, My Path to Motherhood. For more on the series and how to submit your story, read this post. If you missed the first post in the series, click here to read it.
Sometime around my 24th birthday, my knowledge that I wanted children went from “someday” to “RIGHT NOW”. I blame hormones. Still, it took me 9 more years to have my first child.
That was lesson one: patience.
My first pregnancy was perfect! I was one of those annoying women who LOVED being pregnant and had no ill side-effects. I even went into labor on my due date! How perfect is that?
Turns out, far from perfect. I was in labor for 4 days, and after a delivery that utilized every intervention I knew of short of the C-section, my son was born with a purple-black hue to his skin, barely breathing, and was whisked away by the NICU almost immediately.
My vision of a water bath birth with a midwife gently talking me through a natural, drug-free delivery, followed by immediately nursing my perfect, healthy child began fading away the minute I started labor, and what remained of that dream went POOF when I realized my son had an APGAR of 2 and didn’t cry for the first 3 minutes he was alive.
That was lesson two: expect the unexpected. [click to continue…]
by Guest Blogger on March 8, 2013
This guest post is the first in our series, My Path to Motherhood. For more on the series and how to submit your story, read this post.
The year was 2003. My husband, Andy, and I were living in Guadalajara, México. We were having the time of our lives, soaking in a foreign culture, traveling to the beach every other weekend and entertaining house guests from our home country. One morning, driving in the company-issued Ford Taurus on our way to work, I asked Andy, “Do you think we should have kids?”
“Yes, eventually. But not this year. This is too much fun. I like our lives.”
“Me too.”
The year passed, we moved back to the United States. We discussed having a child again and decided it was a good time. I quickly became pregnant and our lives changed. We immediately shifted our focus from weekend trips and tequila to family cars and cribs.
Before we knew it, we’d had our first ultrasound, which revealed there was no longer a baby. As long as I live, I will never forget the nurse’s tone of voice when she said, “Oh sweetie, I’m soooo sooooorry.” It took me a second to understand what was going on, but I knew I never wanted anyone to call me sweetie again. [click to continue…]
by Guest Blogger on March 6, 2013
This post is by Kristen Levithan, Happiest Mom contributor and blogger at Motherese. You can read previous historical motherhood posts by clicking here.
Earlier this year, the world lost a mother and writer who millions had come to think of as a friend. Pauline Phillips, better known as “Dear Abby,” died of natural causes on January 16, 2013 at the age of 94 after years of battling Alzheimer’s. In addition to being the author of the most widely-syndicated news column in the world, Phillips also paved the way for future generations of writers and bloggers for whom writing publicly about private life has become second nature.
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