motherhood

As you embark on this incredible journey of transitioning into #Motherhood #Motherhood and becoming a parent, it's important to remember that having a strong and supportive partner can make all the difference. The number one #hack for being a parent and alleviating the challenges of #postpartum is choosing a good partner to begin with.

While this realization may come after having kids for many of us, it's crucial to seek out character traits that indicate a person's ability to be a true teammate in parenting. In this article, we'll explore the importance of finding the right partner and how it can positively impact your parenting experience.

The Power of Partnership

Parenting is a lifelong commitment, spanning over 18 years of your life. It's crucial to consider the long-term implications of choosing a partner who will be an integral part of making your daily life more manageable.

From the beginning, we should prioritize the desire for a true partnership and a teammate who will support us not only during #Pregnancy but also throughout the period and beyond.

Identifying the Right Traits

Finding a partner with the right traits is essential for a successful parenting journey. Consider the following qualities when choosing a partner:

Communication and Empathy:

A partner who excels in communication and empathy will create a nurturing environment for your growing family. They will be there to listen, understand, and provide emotional support when you need it most.

Shared Values and Goals:

Finding a partner who shares your core values and parenting goals will ensure a harmonious upbringing for your children. Aligning on important issues such as discipline, education, and family values is key to creating a cohesive parenting strategy.

The Crucial Role of a Supportive Partner in the #postpartum Period

The #postpartum period, particularly the first six months, can be an intense and challenging time for new mothers. #hormonal fluctuations, sleep deprivation, physical recovery, and adjusting to the demands of caring for a newborn can feel overwhelming. Having a supportive partner during this time can make the transition into #Motherhood that much easier.

A supportive partner understands that is a period of adjustment and exhibits patience and empathy. They validate your feelings and thoughts related to the changes of becoming a mother, offering reassurance and understanding when you need it most.

They actively participate in caring for the baby, easing the burden on you as a new mother. From diaper changes to late-night feedings, a supportive partner is willing to help as much as possible with the baby, allowing you to get much-needed rest and self-care.

Additionally, a supportive partner recognizes the importance of taking care of you as a mother. They understand that when you are well-rested, emotionally supported, and nurtured, you can better care for your baby. They encourage you to prioritize self-care and provide the necessary support to make it happen.

Modeling Healthy #Relationships

As parents, we play a vital role in shaping our children's understanding of relationships. By modeling a healthy and respectful partnership, we can teach them the qualities to seek in a future partner.

Even if your current partner doesn't possess all the desired traits, it's essential to have open conversations with your children about what's important in a partner. This will empower them to make informed decisions in their own lives.

Nurturing Your #relationship

Maintaining a strong and fulfilling partnership requires investing time and effort into nurturing your relationship.

Carve out quality time together and prioritize self-care as individuals to strengthen your bond as parents. Recognize that #Parenthood is a shared responsibility.

Encourage open communication about parental duties, delegate tasks, and provide support to each other to ensure a balanced and harmonious parenting experience.

Building a Strong #Parenting Team

A strong parenting team relies on open and effective communication. Your partner should be someone with whom you can discuss parenting challenges, share responsibilities, and find solutions together. This collaborative approach fosters a sense of unity and strengthens your bond as parents.

Recognize the importance of balancing parenting responsibilities. A supportive partner actively contributes to household chores, childcare tasks, and daily routines, ensuring that the load is shared equitably. This balance allows both parents to feel supported and appreciated.

During the journey of motherhood, emotional support from your partner is invaluable. They offer a listening ear, a comforting presence, and words of encouragement. Their unwavering support helps you navigate the ups and downs of motherhood with confidence and resilience.

As you embark on your journey into parenthood, remember that choosing the right partner is the ultimate parenting hack. By seeking a partner who embodies the traits of a supportive teammate, you can create a nurturing environment for your child's growth and development.

Remember, it's never too late to model the kind of parent you want your children to have and to have open discussions about what's important in a partner. With the right partner by your side, your parenting experience will be enriched, and you'll be better equipped to navigate the joys and challenges of raising a child.

Parenthood is a beautiful adventure, and with a loving and supportive partner, you'll have an even greater chance to create lasting memories and forge a strong foundation for your family. Embrace this incredible opportunity and enjoy the journey together!

I’ve been recently diagnosed with BPD and I have a 16 month old boy. What has been most helpful for you? What has been the most challenging? If you have a partner, what do they do to best support you? #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Motherhood

I understand it’s popular right now. That words like bandwagon are thrown at it. Overdiagnosis. Trend. We are sick of hearing about it. ADHD is old news. Boring, even. Whatever, next, move on. But I will not move on, because I cannot. My neurodiverse brain doesn’t have that privilege.

It might be hard to imagine, and for your sake I truly hope it is, but some of us grow up feeling wrong. We look at those around us, the lucky ones who received the manual on ‘how to human’, and we scratch our heads. We hide our wrongness, remarkably well sometimes, and often for years. But it comes out, as it needs to, and in ways that make life hard.

It comes out in being late, for everything. It comes out in endlessly analysing everything you said, and did, and are, and hating those things. It comes out in overwhelm, in paralysing indecision. It comes out in half-finished jobs, and degrees, and in procrastination so intense it needs a new word to describe how impotent it makes us feel. It comes out in trauma, in self harm, in substance abuse and suicidality. In eating disorders, anxiety, and depression. It comes out in hurt, in emptiness, in an inner critic that destroys your confidence far quicker than any high school bully could.

However it comes out, and whatever it looks like for you, ADHD is real, and it can be debilitating. It’s trending because finally we are realising that it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to feel wrong anymore. We can talk about our struggles, validate our experiences, learn from our hardships and celebrate our differences so that we don’t have to spend even one more day feeling wrong for who we are.

Receiving my ADHD diagnosis not only allowed me to access the support and medication I needed to address the decreased dopamine my brain produces, but it enabled me to look back at my life and understand it. To have compassion for my confusion, my struggles and my hurt. Most importantly for me, it has given me a new lens to view my children, and their friends, and all of us who walk through the world with special, beautiful brains that feel it all.

I am so fucking grateful for the ‘trend’ of ADHD diagnosis. I am one of the ‘over’ diagnosed, and I jumped on that bandwagon like a life raft. I’ll never grow tired of talking about neurodiversity. I’ll never ‘move on’. And after a lifetime spent wishing so desperately that I could, I now realise that I truly don’t want to. To me, at least, that makes all the difference in the world.

I’ve recently come to the realization that we rarely hear women's personal experiences with miscarriage or abortion. As women, we are taught to keep these things a secret. I believe this is a major reason there is so much shame, stigma, misinformation, and lack of education when it comes to miscarriage and abortion. Because of this, I wanted to share these very individual and personal stories from women that have had an abortion. On today’s podcast episode, we hear from Mardalena Dawn Turpel who had an abortion 30 years ago. She explains the toll the abortion and having to keep it a secret had on her mental and physical health.

Listen to Mardalena’s story to learn about why she chose to have an abortion, the trauma she experienced, and how having to keep it a secret impacted her mental and physical health.

103. The Mental and Physical Toll of Keeping a Secret - AccordingtoDes

#Prochoice #MentalHealth #mentalandphysicalhealth #ReproductiveRights #reproductivehealth #Motherhood #physicalhealth #MentalHealthAwareness

It’s the one emotion that is best describing how I feel. I have grief over my lost relationship with my son. Sadness over the ugliness that we have become as a mother and son. Grief over the beautiful memories when he was young and I was still important as his mom, before he became a teenager and I became an irritant. I mean no disrespect to those who are truly grieving from a loss due to death, I don’t mean to trivialize that depth of grief. It’s just the only word that I can think of to describe the empty despair I am feeling right now. #Grief #Motherhood #Parenting #Depression #Anxiety

My son left today. He moved out. And he really needed to as his behavior has been so toxic and triggering for me. We needed a break from each other. I knew this day was coming so it’s no surprise. But it’s on the heels of another blowup filled with his manipulation, excuses, disrespect vs my indignation and cruel words.

I’ve written before about how he triggers me. How he causes my anxiety and flight vs fight responses to go into high alert. He’s 19 now. And he is learning EVERYTHING the hard way. It’s been painful to watch. Slowly he has become someone that I don’t understand. Someone that I don’t know anymore.

My childhood trauma/baggage was being ignored. There was always something more important going on. And in retrospect I know it wasn’t intentional or mean. My mom was widowed at 24 with 3 kids under 6, me being the youngest. She was busy. My job was (everyone say it with me now….) to be seen, not heard and not cause my mom any unnecessary stress. She worked nights so she wouldn’t have to miss work if my sisters and I were sick. As a mom now, I know she did an amazing job with what she had on her plate. But, as with most childhoods, there was some form of damage done.

I have done a lot of therapy to understand how my childhood has shaped who I am as a person and have been able to feel at peace with it all. But I never stopped to think how my childhood shaped who I am as a mother.

We are all doomed to repeat the patterns of our past, right? Or at least hold the responsibility to identify the bad patterns and fix them. I always worried about being emotionally unavailable to my kids since it was the only method of parenting I was exposed to. I wanted to BE THERE for them. And I did consciously make certain changes in my life to achieve that. I worked from home just about all their lives so they would know I am always here. I encouraged and supported any and all extracurricular interests, got the great house in the cul-de-sac with the pool in the backyard. Birthday parties, trips, they never “wanted”’for anything. I feel pretty good about the kind of mother I was up until the teenage years. When their emotional needs changed.

But I didn’t fight for the family dinner time every night as they got older and started sprouting their wings. I didn’t want to impose the guilt that was shamed into me by forcing them to choose between family time and what they wanted to do. Slowly we started to all drift into our own worlds and apart from each other. I saw it happening. I knew it was happening. But emotional intimacy was such an uncomfortable thing for me that I just let it happen. I never wanted my kids to feel forced to spend time with me. If they wanted to connect, they knew where I was. I did all the obligatory check-ins through high school to take a temp on their lives, friends, needs. But never pushed beyond that. I told myself because they were boys and I am mom, the connection was foreign to both of us and it was all normal.

Tonight I have realized so much more damage that I have caused. Growing up emotionally ignored transformed me to put my thoughts, opinions and emotions front and center as an adult. I am able to speak with conviction and have no problem asking for what I need. But I am realizing that I have been so focused on my position to defend and protect that ignored little girl, that I have irreparably ignored my childrens needs. Disagreements and arguments have been fueled with my desire to be heard and to be right, instead of listening, supporting, understanding. I have been so focused on standing up for myself that I forced my kids into having to stand up for themselves against their own mother. I am supposed to be there to support them, encourage them, to put their needs first. Instead I put my own emotional baggage in the way. I look back now and see so many missed opportunities where I should have paused, put my subconscious agenda away, and been there for them. I repeated my childhood by ignoring my own children emotional needs.

Tonight I am feeling like a complete failure as a mom. The strings that are supposed to connect a mothers heart to her sons feels severed. And I honestly don’t know if it will ever be recovered. I feel like I have caused permanent damage. I am so ashamed of myself.

Now it has to be said that my son that moved out hasbeen no peach. He proudly acknowledges he is on the train tracks and playing chicken with the train but that this is “how he learns”. That’s a hard process to watch. He has been disrespectful to me, my husband, our home. A lot of it the usual teenage crap, but heightened because he has ADD, depression and anxiety. He has not been an easy child. But my heart is breaking over realizing that I didn’t necessarily make it easier on him. Or maybe I am pointing out all of his shortcomings to ease my guilt. Or maybe I am the reason why he is this way.

What I do know is the guilt, regret, shame and heartache I feel tonight is very very heavy.

And I am so very sorry. #Anxiety #Depression #Motherhood

Is this an egotistical choice or just a part of being human?

I keep debating with myself about #Adoption , #insemination , making a deal with a friend... So that I can also have my kids and the opportunity to teach them the way I feel it's better for them and the world where they live. I had my fair share of raising children (my own brothers and at work) and I know I'm very maternal...

But... I suffer from #RheumatoidArthritis #Fibromyalgia (and others)...

And...I mean, I've been asked by doctors if I'd just want to remove my uterus (when I got a tiny cervix surgery) and speak about my decisions as if they ever asked what they were.

But having an illness that isn't going to get any better, not wanting a father figure, all the days that I have to spend in bed... Would it be me raising a happy child or would the child be my carer?

I'd love to be the one to make a child happy. But not having to go through adversities as soon as I had to. That broke me.