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motherhood

Travel tips for breastfeeding moms

August 9, 2017 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

woman with suitcase, walking through airport terminal

Our friend Emily was disappointed in the resources she could find for business travel after having a baby. She’s sharing some recommendations for how to deal with traveling (and pumping breast milk), after thousands of miles traveled (and thousands of ounces pumped) over the last year. 

I am in sales, and I travel to visit clients one or two times per month, and have been doing so since my son was 3 months old. That’s 12 months of pumping on the road, and I have definitely encountered challenges along the way. I have learned many tips and tricks to making pumping as a traveling mom a bit easier. I hope that some of what I’ve learned can help fellow traveling-pumping moms meet their nursing goals, while also honoring their career obligations….

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Filed Under: Real Talk Tagged With: babies, breastfeeding, motherhood, pumping, travel, travel tips, travel with kids

Grateful for bagels

November 21, 2016 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

Bagel. by Alexander Rhys on Flickr

Bagel. by Alexander Rhys on Flickr

When I came back to work after 10 weeks of maternity leave, my co-workers, teammates, and friends signed a “Welcome back!” card.

They gave me a grace period to catch up on emails and remember where I was and what I needed to do.

They asked me about the baby, and about my older boy, and about me. 

But the thing I keep thinking about is bagels.

My manager detoured to my favorite local deli that first day and picked up a bag of fresh bagels, along with schmears, for my triumphant return to the office. She celebrated me with carbs and cream cheese. She remembered what I liked, and she made me feel like I was a necessary, loved part of the team by remembering that.

She sent an email alerting our team that I was back. She set meetings for us to catch up. She told me how glad she was to have me back in the office. She let me be for a few days, absorbing 10 weeks of missed meetings, emails, and work miscellanea. Her words mattered, but so did her gestures.

And now here I am, a few weeks back to work, living the working-mom life (thinking about and not thinking about my baby all day), being grateful for a place to think about other things, happy to make a good living by using my brain.

And I’m thankful for co-workers who welcomed me back with words and gestures, and who care enough to feed me. I’m grateful for the bagels.

Pay it forward

All this to say, if you have a co-worker coming back to work after a leave for any reason (family, personal, medical, maternity), greet them warmly. Sign a card. Ask how they’re doing. Let them settle back in for a few days. Bring them breakfast.

If she’s a new mom returning from maternity leave, ask if you can pick up her coffee one morning. If you know where the “wellness room” is for breastfeeding moms, make sure it’s stocked with paper towels, Lysol wipes, tissue and a comfortable chair. (Bonus points, if you’re a people-manager or HR manager and you add parenting magazines, storage for pumps and accessories, and a mini-fridge for milk storage.) Leave her a note to know you’re there in solidarity. Tell her kindly and gently if her shirt has spit-up all over the shoulder.

It takes a village, y’know?

Filed Under: Real Talk Tagged With: babies, bagels, career, maternity leave, motherhood, work-life balance, working mom

Decisions: There will be another

October 1, 2016 by Suzanne 3 Comments

Photo by Ananda Escudero Gomes via Unsplash

October marks the month to recognize Pregnancy and Infant Loss. Today, we’re sharing one story about loss from Katie Colt. She’s written for us before, on a much lighter subject; today she’s sharing an essay about her first son, Max, who passed away shortly after his birth.

…

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Filed Under: Decisions Tagged With: decisions, grief, infant loss, motherhood, parenting

Staying soft and being tired

September 22, 2016 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

img_7051Seven weeks ago, I welcomed my second baby boy to the world. We call him Theo. He excels at baby skills: Sleeping, eating, filling his diaper, and staring out into the world with wonder. He is a beautiful blank slate of humanity.

I’m stopping in here briefly to tell you about maternity leave, being a mom to two small humans, being sleep-deprived, and staying soft for a while.

…

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Filed Under: Miscellany Tagged With: kids, maternity leave, motherhood, parenting

Decisions: Back to full-time

August 22, 2016 by Leslie Leave a Comment

Back to full-time

Decisions is a series dedicated to the choices we make in our lives and the factors that led us to our given resolutions. We welcome guest posts to this series to hear about how you’ve tackled a life decision. Email your story ideas to thesmartdomestic@gmail.com.

A little over a year ago, I quit my job as a consultant to stay home full-time with my daughter. It’s incredible to think it has only been a year. The stress, the joy, the sleeplessness, the firsts, and the snuggles: they all blur together. They’re muddled in my mind as one big, gooey ball of my new life. Since my co-blogger has returned to work after the birth of her second child, questions about how to balance work and family still come up as we talk to each other and navigate our lives.

Here’s the blog post I blissfully wrote when I quit my job. It meant only worrying about home and baby for a while. Now, that I’m on the other side of that, I’m ready for a change. For myself (mostly) and for others who are at this point or going to be, here are some of the reasons why I’ve accepted a full-time position at my library. (I had previously been working part-time, 3 days a week.)

Mental break

I know that I need more sleep. I know that I need to eat healthy, stretch, exercise, and rest. I had no idea that I would need to take mental breaks from life at home. It wasn’t on my radar. Work for me is that mental break. Everything at the library is somewhat in my control; solutions are to be had, mysteries are easily solvable, there is a schedule, and my patrons are great to be around. At 17 months, my daughter can be unpredictable. What she liked yesterday, she doesn’t like today, and then I am searching through the cupboards trying to fill her belly with something she will eat. At work, I don’t have to worry about this for 8 hours. I push it from my mind and take a break. It is absolutely crazy that work gives me that break, but it does.

Educational play

We play with the alphabet magnets, we sing songs, read books, and I talk up a storm with her. But quite frankly, I am too pooped from a long day of just watching her to do activities or make plans for educational play beyond that. That is why I am happy to send her to daycare. With other kids she can paint, go in the sprinkler, play with sand, squish play-dough between her fingers, learn social skills, and gain a little independence from mama. I’m totally committed to giving her every learning opportunity I am capable of, but there is no sense in making myself crazy. I’ll take the help where I can get it.

Opportunity

I didn’t actively seek going back to work full-time. It just happened that a position opened up at the right time. It’s a move upward and a pay increase. Not to mention, finding full-time work in libraries is difficult, so when an opportunity presents itself, you take it. I’m looking forward to taking on more responsibility and continuing to create a great library experience for every patron that walks through the door. I also like that my career journey continues. I made a personal master plan seven years ago, and while the details are different than what I imagined, I’m continuing to move and grow.

I can’t help but come back to the most important reason why this all makes sense for me; I got a year home with my daughter. I am incredibly lucky that my husband and I were able to make that happen. In the United States, we’re not guaranteed paid time off after the birth of a child. More than one friend has told me about how horrible it felt that first day back: thinking of the baby, being uncomfortable, not being able to concentrate on work. I fortunately only experienced two weeks of that before I quit. But having a year to adjust and get used to life with a child made going back to work full-time an easy decision.

Tell us your experience going back to work. What was it like for you? Is there any advice you would give to those who are returning? Post a comment below, on Facebook, or email thesmartdomestic@gmail.com. 

Filed Under: Decisions Tagged With: babies, decisions, maternity leave, motherhood, work, work-life balance, working mom

What comes out of you?

August 12, 2016 by Leslie Leave a Comment

Tiny Fey Quote

Filed Under: Quotes Tagged With: babies, fatherhood, motherhood, parenthood, parenting, quotes

Decisions: Parenting with nostalgia

August 5, 2016 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

decisions - nostalgia

Decisions is a series dedicated to the choices we make in our lives and the factors that led us to our given resolutions. We welcome guest posts to this series to hear about how you’ve tackled a life decision. Email your story ideas to thesmartdomestic@gmail.com.

Today, contributor Stephanie Mangino discusses how she’s merged her retro pop culture sensibilities with her daughter’s modern tastes. 

Merging our pop culture past and our kid’s present

By Stephanie Mangino

As my 7-year-old daughter and I walked hand-in-hand the short distance from the parking lot to her summer day camp, we talked about the music we’d just listened to on our car ride.

“You know, those guys I just played for you were friends with the ‘King of Rock’ guys,” I said. She looked at me. “Those earlier guys were RUN-DMC and ‘King of Rock’ was the flip side of the ’Walk This Way’ single.”

FYI, the first “guys” in question were the Beastie Boys. I played “Shake Your Rump” of “Paul’s Boutique,” because the girl is all about butts (in a joking way, not a Tina Belcher of “Bob’s Burgers” way).

The girl gazed up at me, smiling. “Mom, zip it,” she said with a mischievous grin.

“Zip it, lock it, put it in your pocket?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said as we continued walking.

Now, most of the time, I’m not politely asked to “Zip it,” nor is my husband, when we introduce the girl to the stuff from our childhoods that we love. I don’t remember making a specific decision to be fairly retro, in all ways, with the girl. Instead, it seemed to be a natural outgrowth of who we are as people, a couple, and parents. I nursed the girl with “Bonanza,” “Little House on the Prairie,” and “Magnum P.I.,” playing on the Hallmark channel. I had to cut out “Magnum,” though — its sounds seemed to irritate her tiny baby ears, for some reason.

So, our daughter, in 2016, actually has an opinion on whether she prefers “The Munsters” or “The Addams Family” (Munsters, usually), is very familiar with all the characters on “The Andy Griffith Show,” knows that Davy Jones is ALWAYS falling in love on “The Monkees,” can compare a fantasy medieval character on a kid’s show to the “farm boy” in “The Princess Bride,” and sing parts of both “Beat It” and “Eat It,” preferring “Eat It.” She happily wears Labyrinth and Beatles T-shirts and, courtesy of a “Psych” episode, has become a bit of a Tears for Fears fan. She’s seen Witchiepoo from “H.R. Pufnstuf” and “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.” She knows the “WKRP in Cincinnati” theme song and always smiles when Def Leppard comes on a classic rock radio station. I listen to A TON of classic rock in the car. A TON.

Why is all this good? Why does this matter? Well, for me, it matters because I consider this stuff cultural and generational connective tissue. Here’s how I think about it:  My mom grew up watching “The Andy Griffith Show.” She quotes lines from it still, like “Nip it in the bud,” or “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never touch me.” I quote those same lines, and she and I laugh whenever we say them. My husband loves them, too. And now, so can my daughter. Her exposure to the show lets her get the joke while sharing something with all of us. We’ve conveyed our collective sense of humor to her with a few lines and a show. With the pop culture memories drawn exclusively from our own childhoods, something similar occurs. However, in this case, our moms remember how much we loved something and then share that info with the kiddo, which makes it impressive. (You know grandparental words carry far more weight than parental ones, yes? They’re so much more trustworthy than those people who remind you to brush your teeth each night.)

When we play the songs we like for her, we hand parts of our past to her in convenient little bundles. Whether or not she likes what she hears or sees, she’ll know we cared enough to share part of who we are with her through music. That goes for movies and books and general stuff, too.

Now, I can be a little pedantic about the things I enjoy, and I’m naturally inclined to lecture, which can turn off the girl sometimes. For example, my excitement and interest in the record player Santa brought means that the turntable is usually turned off. But when I step back and put a song on that I like, or play an old video just because, cool things can happen. One day, I turned on some Duran Duran videos, for the hell of it. To my delight, the girl loved “Rio.” My husband is more relaxed. He’ll turn on the TV and start some old show, without comment. The kid loves TV and eventually she rolls on over, watches and finds something she likes about it. Boom. Instant shared cultural currency.

All that said, we don’t completely live in the past. We listen to new songs, have cut the cable cord and run all our home media via the internet. The kiddo likes Minecraft and iPad games and the Kindle Fire. (She even reads from time to time, too.) She, like many others in the elementary school set, REALLY likes “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae).” When our family attended a party recently, the girl and a friend of hers caught lightning bugs and then decamped to her friend’s room to watch “My Little Pony” as the grown-ups listened to The Motels and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts on vinyl. She was upstairs making her own childhood memories as we were downstairs reliving some of ours. One day, if we’re lucky, both sets of those memories will meet and the girl will carry her personalized cultural currency to another generation.

Stephanie, a.k.a. Nostalgia Mom (www.nostalgiamom.com), is a former radio, print and web journalist, sometime blogger and full-time marketing writer. She has a history degree and a love of all kinds of old junk. She’s a wife to a husband who also loves old stuff (including her :)) and mother to one awesome kid, who unintentionally lives out Viv Savage’s maxim from “This Is Spinal Tap”: Have a good time, ALL the time.

Filed Under: Decisions Tagged With: motherhood, music, nostalgia, parenting, pop culture, television

In real life: How will you spend Mother’s Day?

May 6, 2016 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

art-statue-child-mother

I realize that Mother’s Day is fraught with emotions for a lot of people: Joy, sadness, grief, love, loss. But the overwhelming intention of the day is to celebrate the role of women and their work to care for others, whether they’re genetic offspring or not.

We asked our friends how they plan to spend Mother’s Day (whether they are mothers, or they celebrate the women in their lives). Turns out, the most important thing for most of us is to enjoy quality time with people we love….

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Filed Under: Real Talk Tagged With: moms, motherhood, mothers day, parenthood, parenting

Stay-at-home mom vs. daddy daycare

April 19, 2016 by Leslie 2 Comments

IMG_0081  When my co-blogger told me the news that her husband, Robb, would be quitting his job and taking care of their first baby, I wasn’t surprised. He is one of those guys that is great with kids, ready for his new life as a dad, and didn’t really care for his job anyways.

In my case, I didn’t decide until after my maternity leave that I would stay home. I was racked with indecision. I thought about studies that showed moms that worked had more independent and successful daughters. I thought about anecdotal stories of babies becoming aggressive from too much daycare. Was it better for me to stay home or for me to keep working? I didn’t really like my job. My husband loved his and made enough to support us, so I stayed home….

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Filed Under: Decisions Tagged With: babies, fatherhood, motherhood, parenting, stay-at-home mom

A good mother

April 4, 2016 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

good mother

Two doctors contend that for new moms, your health and happiness matter as much as your baby’s
(via The Washington Post)

Filed Under: Quotes Tagged With: babies, breastfeeding, motherhood, parenting

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