Mythbuster Monday: “You’ll Never Be Able to Shower Again” — 5 Tips for Making Personal Grooming and Parenthood Go Together

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Each week in Mythbuster Monday, we tackle some of the crazy and often discouraging stuff people tell parents — especially expectant and new moms. Want to request a post on a specific parenting myth ? Contact us with your idea!

When I think about the crazy things friends and strangers alike said to me when I was pregnant with my twins and in the early weeks after their birth, I’m not sure whether to laugh, cry, or scream. The common themes were “never sleep again,” “never eat again” (to be discussed in a future post), and “never shower again.” Well, we’re 10 months in and I’m happy to report that I’ve taken a shower ALMOST every day since I came home from the hospital. Yeah, it’s not only possible, but it’s easy if you’re committed to it. On the days that I didn’t shower, here’s why:

  • The Percocet they gave me after my c-section made me so dizzy that standing on a slippery surface next to a glass door seemed like a bad idea. The massive blood loss I suffered during the section also didn’t help.
  • My c-section incision hurt and I didn’t want to stand up that long because I didn’t want to take another Percocet.
  • I decided I’d rather get an extra 20 minutes of sleep — a choice I’ve been making from time to time since high school.
  • I didn’t really need a shower that day.
  • I didn’t feel like drying my hair and it was cold out.
  • I had just gotten a haircut and didn’t want to ruin my blowout.
  • I was feeling lazy.

Here are five tips for making personal care part of every day: Continue reading →

Throwdown Thursday: Why I Let My Kids Cry and Why You Should, Too

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This post kicks off a new biweekly-ish feature at Amateur Parenting: Throwdown Thursday, wherein we discuss controversial parenting topics. This feature will  alternate more or less with Throwback Thursday, wherein we talk about life before kids or life at earlier stages of parenthood. Have a request for a topic? Contact us with your idea!

My twins are 10 months old, and I still get a lump in my throat whenever they start the waterworks. Sometimes I cry with them. In fact, for the first, oh, say 4 months or so, every time they cried for more than a few minutes, I’d end up bawling so hard I couldn’t see while I was trying to soothe them. Which of course really helped the situation. Good times.

I’ve definitely gotten better as they’ve gotten older, but there are still few things as painful as listening to my kiddos in distress. Here’s the thing, though: As much as I hate to see my kiddos upset, what I’ve realized over the last several months is that crying isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes babies and children just need to cry, and at those times as parents it is our responsibility to let them cry. Continue reading →

Working Mom Wednesday: Can You Really Have It All? And Do You Want To?

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This post kicks of a new weekly feature at Amateur Parenting: Working Mom Wednesday. Each week, we’ll discuss another aspect of the challenge and reward of balancing the roles of employee and mommy. Want to request a post on a specific working mom issue? Contact us with your idea!

This is a touchy topic, but I’ll be blunt: I think this notion of “having it all” is completely absurd. Yet when we consider working moms, we expect them to have it all. Right now. All the time. And gosh darn it, to look good doing it. Or alternately, we expect them to be haggard and incompetent because their wombs are sucking the life out of them. Neither of those are fair, but they both put unnecessary (and unfortunately unavoidable) pressure on moms.

I’m not suggesting that it must be “all career, no kids” or “all kids, no career” — those things can overlap. And you can have a lot. At some point in your life you can have everything. But you can’t have everything all at once all the time. There are sacrifices. There are priorities,  and not everything gets to be at the top of the list. There are “balances and tradeoffs.”

To be clear, this is not just an issue affecting moms. Dads and nonparents also get caught up in the “have it all” mentality. (It’s at the root of our massive economic crisis, if you ask me, but since you didn’t I’ll save that for another post.) But because I am a working mom, struggling mightily with how to balance being a good worker with being a good parent every day, this idea of moms having it all is near and dear to my heart.

Well, actually, it’s near but not so dear. I actually kind of totally hate it. Continue reading →

Mythbuster Monday: “You’ll Never Sleep Again” — 9 Tips for Getting the Rest You Need

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This post kicks of a new weekly feature at Amateur Parenting: Mythbuster Monday. Each week, we tackle some of the crazy and often discouraging stuff people tell parents — especially expectant and new moms. Want to request a post on a specific parenting myth ? Contact us with your idea!

When I was pregnant, virtually everyone I met told me, “You’d better sleep now, because once you have kids you’ll never sleep again!” and laughed like “Neener, neener, neener.” There was no variation, except sometimes they laughed extra hard when I told them I was having twins.

To these jerks charming and helpful individuals, I wish to say, “Bite me.” And that’s for two reasons:

  1. STOP SAYING DISCOURAGING CRAP TO NEW MOMS. Seriously. Knock it off. I’m sorry you hate your kids so much, but the rest of us don’t necessarily feel that way.
  2. It’s not true.

Maybe I’m just #doingitwrong, but I am a new mom of 10-month-old twins, and I’m generally pretty well rested. And I don’t get much help at night, either. When Daddy-in-Training is home, he’s amazing and a true partner to me in parenting our boys 24/7 — but he ain’t around much because of work. Despite that, I typically get about 7 hours a night, which is about what I got before I had kids. Just now, it’s in two shifts instead of all in one shot. (Unfortunately I need about 10 hours a night to be at 100%, but I basically have never gotten that consistently in my life so let’s not blame that on parenting.)

Let’s be real: When you’re the primary caregiver to a miniature human who needs you for everything, you’re probably not going to get 12 hours of uninterrupted beauty rest every night. But that doesn’t mean you can’t sleep, and sleep well. Here are my favorite strategies for getting the most possible shut-eye with kids.

Continue reading →

To My Sons After 2 Weeks of Teething Hell

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Dear Miles and Emmett,

You are now 42 weeks and 6 days old — almost 10 months since you came out of my belly. These last two weeks, I have wanted to shrink you and put you back in. Between the two of you, you’ve cut or are still cutting nine teeth. Nine. There has been a lot of screaming. There had been very little sleeping.

We’ve dosed you with Tylenol and Advil, rubbed teething gel on your gums, gone through about 200 Hyland’s teething tablets, made sure your amber teething necklaces were on at all times, given you frozen things to chew on, and rocked you endlessly. And nothing seemed to help you feel better. It was horrible. It was like the first 6 weeks after we came home from the hospital and we had no idea what you wanted or how to make you feel better — except this time we knew exactly what the problem was: You were in pain and there was nothing we could do about it.

Continue reading →