Category Archives: Parenting

Pushed

Posted in Moments of Motherhood, Parenting by

Ever have days when your kids are awesome, like they’re pictures of beauty and grace and even Mary Poppins would be jealous of how good you’ve got it? So do I! There are days where I’m just amazed by how grown up either of them are – Isla showing so much care and compassion and Norah taking great strides in her independency and personality. It makes my heart burst and my ovaries weak and then I want 1,000 more babies. (Much to my husband’s terror.) I post the crap out of those moments on social media because who doesn’t want to read about or see how amazing my little darlings are? No one! Everyone thinks that life going so wonderfully and life is roses and then?

Then they turn into Ivan Drago and I’m Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa is nowhere to be found to avenge my death.

ivan

It just goes to show that parenthood, no matter how shiny and magical it appears online, there’s always those moments that we don’t always speak of. Those moments where we feel like we’ve been pushed to our mental breaking points and we just want to give up.

I’ve had a lot of these moments lately and it has turned me into a hot mess of a mom. Forgetting what time school starts? Check. Completely forgetting details about something I was told less than a hour before? Absolutely. I can feel myself slowly breaking; The whining. The sleep strikes. The attitude. Little by little, it all slowly adds up and suddenly it’s 3 a.m. and I’m sitting on the floor outside of the bedroom doors in tears because I’ve finally been pushed to my breaking point.

Moments like these certainly have shut my ovaries up more than once and while I know that it’s absolutely a phase and “this too shall pass,” it’s sometimes hard to look past it all. Thankfully, I have a great support system that’s been there more than once to pick up the pieces and glue my sanity together. (I’m looking at you, my dear husband/Rocky stand-in!) I’m reminded that sometimes when things are the hardest it’s okay to shove my own parenting rules aside if it means my mental wellbeing stays intact.

Find peace in knowing that your kids aren’t the only ones with inner Ivan Dragos, and it’s okay to let the world know that. Together we’re stronger and if we support one another we’ll always have someone to help push us back into sanity.

My village

Posted in Moments of Motherhood, Parenting by

We’ve heard it a million times before, “It takes a village to raise a child,” and I’m not going to disagree. From relatives to daycare providers, doctors to dance teachers, there are so many people who enter our children’s lives and influence them in some shape or form. Hell, even my actual next door neighbour has taken part, taking Isla for her first trick-or-treating adventure last year.

While many of these villages that we parents are a part of are filled with “real life” people, I’m lucky enough to be a part of a virtual village as well. Call me crazy, but there’s 149 woman whom I’ve gotten to know over the past two years and sometimes I feel closer to them more than my “real life” friends sometimes. We relate to one another on a whole different level, and that’s not something you get every day.

So allow me to backtrack a bit: I was never a part of an online baby group when I was pregnant with Isla. I never thought to join one but after hearing about the support one of my friends found within her own birth group I figured I’d give joining one a try when I learned I was pregnant with Norah.

Finding a group was relatively easy; the pregnancy tracker app I had on my phone had a corresponding website with a message board community. I was able to find a sub-community of moms who were also all due in (or close to) June 2015 and one member was in the midst of creating a Facebook group. I asked to join and before I knew it, there were about 200 Canadian moms in one space of the internet.

I’m not going to lie, I was a bit skeptical of being in this group at first and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I figured that if I didn’t enjoy being in the group I would just leave and keep on my merry way. (I even said to Kyle that I’d probably leave the group after Norah was born, but here I am still, 2 years after joining!) Lets not kid ourselves, 200 women with pregnancy hormones can be a dangerous place to be in the real world, but give them the anonymity of a keyboard and the internet and it can be a whole new level of crazy.

There was all kinds of crazy in the beginning; fake profiles, fake pregnancies, ridiculous debates, etc., but they were all quickly weeded out and the remainder of us began our “bonding” process. The rest, really, is history.

I never would’ve thought that 150 women from all different backgrounds could all get along so well. From morning sickness to our baby’s milestones, we’ve been there to cheer, laugh, and even cry with one another. Our group is our village and it’s a place where there is brutally honesty without it being verbally abusive at the same time, and in a time where the virtual pen is often mightier than the sword and hate flows a little too freely, I’m thankful we have this understanding amongst one another.

Some (or in reality, most) would say I’m crazy for entrusting 149 strangers with the nitty gritty, personal details of my life, but how is it any different than the vast majority of people on Facebook? One person with 1000 Facebook “friends” certainly cannot be honest to God friends with every single one of them, no? Not wanting to go off on a tangent, I’ll just stop there and save that for another post someday…

So here’s to you women. You know who you are. You are my “people” and while I may have only met a couple of you in real life, I don’t think I ever feel more connected to a group of strangers.

 

 

Nothing is a Given

Posted in Moments of Motherhood, Parenting by

There are things in life that are for certain: The sun will rise in the east and set in the west, the grass is green, fall weather makes the leaves on the trees change their colours. While simple, these things are a few of things we can be sure of happening, life’s little guarantees.

There are also things that while they may seem simple enough, they are not. Like conceiving. Sure, when stripped down the math is simple: Have sex, get pregnant. In reality however, there are so many other factors; Ovulation. Egg count. Sperm count. Overall health. Conceiving is so much more complex than bumping uglies.

I’ve heard many people say over and over, “When we decide to get pregnant,” as if pregnancy is a given. However, what if it takes longer than anticipated to get to a place in your career where you feel comfortable or safe to take that time off to have a baby? And just because you decide to pull the goalie doesn’t mean than you’ll shoot and score on the first try. Unfortunately, the longer we wait to try and get pregnant, the riskier pregnancy can be.

And some women struggle for months, even years, before they get those two little pink lines on that intimidating white stick. Some even have to spend thousands of dollars on fertility treatments to have a child, and even then, it’s not guaranteed that there will be positive results. It’s unfathomable to think about not being able to have a child when that’s something you’ve dreamt about for as long as you can remember, and it’s heart-wrenching.

I really do wish bringing a new life into the world was as guaranteed as the sun rising and setting and that we women were all “Fertile Myrtle’s,” but sadly it is not, and I hope those waiting for the “right moment” in their lives to start trying at least acknowledge that.We cannot just decide to have a baby, but we can decide to give it a go. The rest is up to the powers that be, fate, or faith, whichever your give your heart and soul to. Fingers crossed, if you will.