Once you get the basics down (feed the baby, burp the baby, change the baby, rock the baby to sleep) you’ll be faced with the inevitable curveballs, the problems you have to solve in the moment. With some field-tested solutions, and your innate smarts, you’ll be prepared for anything!

1. The Last Diaper

A time may come, if it hasn’t already, when you are down to one diaper—or no diapers!—either at home or while on the go. You have options:

• Advanced Warning: The following isn’t as gross as it sounds. If you have only one diaper left, chances are you have some sanitary pads in the house or, if you’re in a mall or restaurant, you can buy one from a ladies room vending machine. Stick a highly absorbent pad into that last diaper. The pad will absorb all or most of the mess and enable you to just change the pads until you can get your hands on more diapers. Read the rest »

Once you get the basics down (feed the baby, burp the baby, change the baby, rock the baby to sleep) you’ll be faced with the inevitable curve balls, the problems you have to solve in the moment. With some field-tested solutions, and your innate smarts, you’ll be prepared for anything!

1. The Last Diaper

A time may come, if it hasn’t already, when you are down to one diaper—or no diapers!—either at home or while on the go. You have options:

• Advanced Warning: The following isn’t as gross as it sounds. If you have only one diaper left, chances are you have some sanitary pads in the house or, if you’re in a mall or restaurant, you can buy one from a ladies room vending machine. Stick a highly absorbent pad into that last diaper. The pad will absorb all or most of the mess and enable you to just change the pads until you can get your hands on more diapers. Read the rest »

Surely, for some women, being a Stay-at-Home mother is an entirely magnificent, totally blissful, always fulfilling, happily-ever-after dream come true.

I’m not one of those women—and that’s okay.

In my now seven-plus years as a Stay-at-Home mom, I know I’m not alone in having mixed feelings about having left the paid workforce to be the 24/7 hands-on parent to my children. From time to time, most all women doing the job (and Stay-at-Home motherhood is a job) struggle with the challenges of this kind of in-the-trenches motherhood.

Round-the-clock parenting often has as many downs as ups. The constant demands that come from being the sole adult charged with the care of little minds and bodies (and the surroundings in which they exist) involves a daily routine that many Stay-at-Home moms need both skill and fortitude to survive. As with any job, we have moments of feeling overwhelmed, overworked, unappreciated, and under-compensated. And all that’s before the 9 am start of the traditional workday. Read the rest »

As Halloween approaches, and my fifth grader is figuring out what costume to wear, he asked me to list what he dressed as for every one of his past ten Halloweens. As I flipped through the images in my mind—the dinosaur costume he wore as a four-month-old, the monkey costume I put on him the year after—I realized that while he always had a good costume, I never put much effort into the planning and creation of his, or his twin sisters’, Halloween get-ups. Some moms are crafty, and love to decorate for the holidays. I’m neither. Read the rest »

Women are often defined by their relationships to others, and for most of history women followed the single-lane path from being a father’s daughter to a husband’s wife to a child’s mother. While familial labels also apply to males, men have traditionally been allowed to just be whomever they are—without a stated link to someone else. (Think of the notable men, past and present, about whom you know little or nothing regarding their marital and family status.)

I make this observation as a woman who, having left a successful career to become a stay-at-home mom, is now mostly identified by whom I care for rather than the whole of who I am. Most adult women are mothers, but each one of us is a mother and more.

It’s important for men and society-at-large to understand that truth, but it’s essential for women to accept that they needn’t be solely defined by or worse, consumed by, motherhood. I suspect that each of us would be more content in our daily lives, and collectively more supportive of one another, if we abandoned the head games that accompany our work as mothers. (And yes, I consider motherhood and childrearing to be a job.) Hence …. Read the rest »