It wasn’t long into our relationship when my then-boyfriend, now husband, asked me if I would ever consider living in his native England. While trying to play down my initial “holy crap, this might just be serious” reaction, I immediately answered with a solid yes. Fast forward a few years and a couple of kids later and you couldn’t drag my card-carrying, U.S. citizen husband off American soil. The great weather and excellent job opportunities of the Bay Area had sucked him in for good. … //READ MORE

It happens every school year in first and second grade classrooms all over the country. As soon as the curriculum begins to focus on reading, writing and math, parents are called into school to discuss the possibility that their child has a learning challenge. If you’re one of these parents, perhaps you got the call because your child isn’t reading on grade level. Maybe your son has a short attention span and is having difficulty sitting in his seat. Perhaps your daughter isn’t getting along with her peers. Whatever the reason, the teacher is concerned and suggests that you have your child “evaluated.”

Academic evaluations are routinely done by public school at no cost to parents, or may be done privately by professionals specializing in educational evaluations. The latter can be very costly. Either way, the process can be stressful and overwhelming.  If your family is in this situation, here are some steps you can take to make things easier. … //READ MORE

During a recent dinner with several mom friends, the discussion turned to the stay-at-home vs. go-back-to-work debate. Now, this is a hot topic that many women start thinking about from the day that little plus sign appears on their pregnancy-test applicator. It’s a subject on which everyone—from mothers-in-law to politicians—seems to have a strong opinion, and those opinions can get pretty heated. When women begin judging one another, it can become downright nasty. I know a few stay-at-home moms who are righteous about their choice, as well as a couple of career-driven moms who view themselves as superior for remaining in the work force. Thank goodness, the majority of my friends fall somewhere in between, understanding that this is a decision every woman must make for herself, that there’s no one right answer and, most important, that children raised by both working moms and stay-at-home moms will most likely turn out absolutely fine.

Still, everyone has something to say on the topic. At this gathering of close friends, guards dropped and the women at the table got honest and emotional talking about the often-agonizing decision of whether to head back to a work and leave your baby in someone else’s care, or stay at home to enjoy your child but put the brakes on your career. One of the moms said she knew the moment she got engaged that she wanted to stay home to raise a family full time. (“My mom and grandma and great-grandma did it—I guess it’s in my DNA,” she said.) Another woman insisted she was destined to work until the day she died. “As much as I love my kids, I would be bored out of my fucking mind … //READ MORE

To all you supermoms out there who had absolutely no problems breastfeeding, I say congratulations and go to hell. (Of course, I mean that in the most affectionate way.) But if your nursing endeavors resembled, like mine did, a Stanley Kubrick flick, I say, pull up a chair, sista, and let’s commiserate.

Nursing did not come easy to me. For starters, none of the women in my family had done it, so there was no maternal experience trickling down through the generations. Second, I gave birth in a New York hospital where “doula” was a dirty word and the nurses were too understaffed and not as educated as they should’ve been on the benefits of breastfeeding. At the time my daughter was born, a new mother with any intentions of not bottle-feeding in that maternity ward had the Similac cans stacked against her. … //READ MORE

Sitting on the concrete basement floor packing away my youngest daughter’s outgrown toddler clothes, I spied the rose-and-ivory chenille sweater someone had knit for her, and heard the whisper. “There’s no one else to save this for.” I surveyed the hill of blankets, onesies and elastic-waist pants I was so neatly folding and packing in plastic bins, and began to consider why I was bothering with the effort. We had said two, now we had two.

Yet I continued my careful sorting and folding.

I let that whisper float in my heart for months, not daring to make my doubt real by voicing it to my husband. It just kind of lingered, while I waited to see whether it would intensify or fade.

We were good, the four of us, two adults, two kids. Why mess with that? Parenthood is the ultimate leap of faith. Nothing is guaranteed—not your health, not the child’s, and you don’t know who you’re going to get. So I should have been content with my lucky lot. But I just couldn’t shake the baby feeling. When I broached the subject of a third, my husband considered it for a few weeks before agreeing to “see what happens.” … //READ MORE

I clearly remember the night I went into labor with my first child. It was around 6 p.m. on July 6, 1991—my 5th wedding anniversary. The pains started slowly at first, leaving time to celebrate with Thai food (that did not stay with me long) and for my husband to vacuum the house (last minute nesting?). Hours later I found out my doctor was on vacation and hours after that a nurse told me the umbilical cord might be wrapped around my baby’s neck hence the long labor. It was not an ideal birth.

Then at 11:18 a.m., after a suction marathon by a fill-in doc with very strong Popeye-like arms, I heard the infant cry and that fateful announcement, “It’s a girl!” … //READ MORE