Get Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night, Part 1

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Not getting enough sleep is the eternal complaint of all moms. You may be the mom who co-sleeps with their child and doesn’t even stir when baby wakes up to nurse or you have that rare child that began sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, but for the other 99% of us, we get so little sleep that when we do, we dream of sleeping. Maybe you tried everything or you are finally ready to try something. Here is my method for getting your child to sleep through the night in 10 difficult steps: Read more »

No Sick Days for Mom

My mother likes to tell this story as if I may forget it, but I never have: I was in elementary school, maybe 4th grade, and it was my mother’s turn to drive the carpool. On this particular morning, she had a terrible stomach flu. It was too late to find someone else to drive us kids to school, so she got in her car and proceeded in her duties as mom. Unfortunately, and most embarrassing to me, she would intermittently pull over the car, open the door, and vomit in the road.

It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that the significance of her actions became apparent to me. Moms don’t get a sick day. Read more »

MAAAAAAAMAAAAA!!!

As my daughter nears the 18-month mark, I am truly beginning to understand the extent of my impatience, perhaps because my daughter tests it everyday with her incessant whining. While my lovely offspring spends most of the day being ridiculously cute, she spends the rest of the time calling for me in a curdling cry, “MAAAAMAAAA” with no rational cause. Sometimes, a simple distraction will send her on her way, other times, a hug, but then there are the times when nothing will appease her. I shake my arms vehemently with insane rage pretending she is between them, before gently kneeling beside her and stroking her head. How can a little two foot person be both my reason for living and my reason for wanting to overdose on heroin?

I looked on the Internet for some advice. Read more »

Breast-feeding, cell-using driver charged

Do you remember when your newborn needed to be fed every two hours and, on the rare occasion that you left your house, those awkward moments when there wasn’t any suitable place in sight to do so? Maybe you were willing to do the bathroom stall thing. Perhaps you were one of the brave ones, whipping out your boob while standing in the checkout line. My back-up plan was always the car. I had to traipse back to the parking lot, but at least I could sit comfortably and listen to music. One woman took the idea of nursing in the car to an extreme. Sounds like a multi-tasker gone awry. Read more »

Cloth or Paper?

If you’re like me, you knew from the very start that you would use cloth diapers. Even though your mom could not understand why you would revert to such antiquated tactics and argued that what you saved in trash you wasted in water, you still could not commit to adding to the nasty refuse that piles up endlessly on land and sea. I explained to my mother: we’re not talking about folding cloths like origami napkins and pinning them on with ginormous safety pins (ouch!). Nowadays, they come with snaps and covers and liners and pretty colors and various fancy means for making the option easier. And, hey, I have a washer and dryer in my house, a blessing that needs to be gratefully returned to planet earth.

It was not long before reality set in. Read more »

Read it Again, Mom

How many times can you read The Jolly Barnyard before a tick develops that causes you to cluck intermittently while conversing? How many times can you read These Are My Hands before you begin announcing your body parts to grocery clerks? How many times can you read Red Fish Blue Fish before you begin speaking in rhyme at the post office? I have tested these theories and have found that, although mommies may feel like we are incurring these oddities, no one else seems to notice. Read more »

Think Outside the Toy Box

It’s Christmas day or maybe your child’s birthday or some other random holiday that grandparent’s use as an excuse to get your child a present. Regardless of how many times you asked them not to buy those toxic plastic toys made in China that play irritating “music” and quirky animal noises until you want to Van Gogh your ears, they still do and you have resigned yourself to it. Or perhaps, instead, you take out the batteries or maybe you take photos with your child holding them then hide the toy until grandma’s next visit or maybe you’ve got the chutzpah to write “Return to Sender” on the package, whatever. I digress. The toy is excitedly unwrapped by your child and when opened — it is a box! So, now your offspring, who has no concept of patience, claws and cries while you have to take the time to get the scissors to cut the tape to open the box to pull off the plastic covering to then, worst of all, untwist each of those annoying twist ties used to secure the toy to the box that you don’t need in the first place. Why, oh why, do we give children the toy in the box? Read more »

Five More Minutes

I was never a morning person. Instead, I was a night owl. The nighttime could be anything I wanted it to be: productive and creative or relaxing and indulgent Staying up late, I would sleep-in every day. My mean wake up time on a day I had no obligations was about 11 a.m. Then, I had a baby and mornings went from, that time of day I lazily slept through to, that time of day I dreaded. Read more »

Poop by Any Other Name

Though forewarned, I had no idea that when I became a mother I would talk about poop more than I did over the course of eight years at sleep-away camp. Baby poop, infant poop, toddler poop- all differ in size, color and consistency, each with their own corresponding attitude. The newborn poop is mellow and yellow, spewing forth often when the diaper is off, a slight, not quite unpleasant fragrance. The infant poop, with the onset of solid foods, also solidifies and is a definite stink bomb. My daughter imitates the way I breath heavily through my mouth when I open the diaper bucket to avoid the smell of saturated shit. Toddler poop is a whole new ball game. Not that it is so different from infant poop, but that she is now standing up and with her mobility comes some awkward poop moments. The most recent one being the bathtub poop. Read more »

Momnesia: In Need of Public Acceptance

Momnesia is real. Clinically speaking, it is a slow onset disease in which a woman becomes a mother and can no longer remember her phone number, her underwear or what she walked into the room for. Many doctors believe this disease may be caused by lack of sleep, excessive selflessness or unnatural amounts of multitasking. Momnesia still has light-years to go to gain public acceptance. Read more »