Tag: motherhood

A new blogging adventure

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The Great Pudding Club Hunt is over…for now.  But my infertility hasn’t been resolved.  Infertility doesn’t define me, but it is part of my life now.  I love this blog, I love the amazing people I have met through this blog, I love how it has helped me cope with infertility and how it taught me to keep fighting when things got really dark.

But this blog is not about being a parent, in fact it has always been about me not being a parent and dreaming of becoming a parent.  I am now a parent and I don’t want to write about being a parent here, I want to save this place as where I can speak freely about infertility and pregnancy loss.  I wanted a similar place where I can speak freely about being a parent, and that is not here but elsewhere.  So I have set up a new blog…

The Inconceivable Adventures of Parenthood

(https://inconceivableadventuresofparenthood.com)

I’m a little scared stepping out into the parenting world, I’m hoping this new blog will help me explore my thoughts and ideas.  There is so much parent bashing on the internet I am a little terrified!  But like I have used the great pudding club hunt to explore my thoughts, cope with the low times and share the good times with others in similar situations, I hope to use the inconceivable adventures of parenthood likewise.

I hope to see some of you there!!!

I will be posting here still, I am not going away, but it probably won’t be as regular (until our next pudding club hunt anyway ;-p)

The tears

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I woke up like any other morning, rolled over and checked my phone to see what the time was.  I can’t help but check my notifications on my phone in case something exciting has happened whilst I’ve been sleeping (a pretty bad habit of mine)…if there is a facebook notification then I open up facebook.  This morning, bleary eyed I opened up facebook and there was a stream of lovely photos of my friends in the UK celebrating mothers’ day (it’s not mothers day here in the US)…it warmed my heart. I like mothers’ day, I’ve never found mother’s day difficult whilst trying to conceive.  Yes it kind of sucks that I’m not a mum yet, but I feel more association with the day to my mother and celebrating her. But……

This morning as I woke up, for some reason when I read a post about someone who was pregnant and celebrating being a mother, it triggered me.  I thought about how far along I would be if huckleberry had decided to implant a few inches lower in my uterus rather than where ever else he was hiding probably in my fallopian tube (we never found out exactly).  I would be 32 weeks pregnant with a nice bump.  I would be waking up, probably complaining about some pregnancy ailment.  I would be asking huckleberry how he felt like behaving today.  We would probably have the nursery almost ready…..maybe I would have bought that adorable onesie I saw last week in TJ Maxx…maybe, just maybe, I would consider my self eligible for mothers’ day today.  And so this morning, I quietly had a bit of a cry thinking about these things of what might have been.

I’m not to dwell on the ‘what ifs’…but yet it reminded me that there are many, many women out there who have mother hearts.  We might not be able to see them, but they are loved by many. So to you all…happy mothers’ day X

mother's day.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Maternity Pay (Or Lack Thereof) in the USA

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This morning I read an article by the Huffington Post that reported on a recent visit to the USA by a UN delegation of 3 female human rights experts.  Their purpose? To assess gender equality in the USA.  The three women visited Alabama, Texas and Oregon to evaluate a wide range of US policies and attitudes as well as school, health and prison systems.  Apparently, the delegates were “appalled by the lack of gender equality in America”.  Well, the UN didn’t really need to send a delegation to come to that conclusion.  Amongst many areas of inequality, lagging behind world-wide standards, the one area that shocks me the most is paid maternity leave (or lack thereof).  The US is one of three countries in the world that does not guarantee women paid maternity leave.  Yes my non-American friends, this is quite unbelievable.

I cannot imagine for you, after all the added stresses and financial burdens of infertility to then be forced to make a decision about whether or not you can afford to take the time off work or how long you can take off without your job being threatened.   Now, there are some great companies in the US who do pay a reasonable amount of paid maternity leave…but they are also probably the same companies who have great infertility insurance coverage.  The financial battle doesn’t end for the family once the baby is born!  Oh no….

By the way, I haven’t even got onto the subject of paternity leave either.

Here is a wonderful 15 minute TED talk  about how the US needs paid family leave.  It brought me to the brink of tears (but that is quite easy to do for me ;-)) and is quite compelling.

https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/jessica_shortall_how_america_fails_new_parents_and_their_babies.html

I myself am lucky that although I live and work in the US, my employer is international so it takes the ‘average’ of all the different countries’ maternity leave policies and agrees a reasonable amount of full time paid leave.  Although I am British, unfortunately I won’t be able to take advantage of our government’s new scheme that allows the parents to decide which parent will take the maternity leave, the mother or the father – it can also be shared if so desired!  So Chris will get his 3 days of paternity leave or whatever it is not even worth writing about, but that is all.  Guess it’s all down to me then (for a few months at least to begin with)!

 

But not all hope is lost for my future American parents of newborns, things are moving forward today, there is a push by Obama to create a federal law for a minimum of 6 weeks paid maternity leave.  If I ever get a chance to have a say or participate in any kind of advocacy for US maternity pay I will jump at the chance.  I hope you will too!

Sorry, but being a mother is not the most important job in the world….

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Sorry, but being a mother is not the most important job in the world….

Ha!  Got you thinking there with that provocative statement….well it certainly got me thinking when I read this opinion article from the Guardian.  Catherine Deveny tells us that we should drop the slogan “Being a mother is the toughest job on the earth”.

Well Catherine, apparently you would be going against the opinion of 92% of mothers.  According to a survey by ‘Parents Magazine’, 92% of mothers agree that being a mother is the toughest job on earth.  The other 8% must be rocket scientists and coalminers (well at least according to @JillFilipovic.) And don’t forget the journalists at The Guardian.

Why does Catherine tell us we should quit the slogan?  Because she believes it encourages mothers to stay socially and financially hobbled, it alienates fathers and discourages other significant relationships between children and adults.  Hmmmm, I’d never thought of it like that before.

When you really think about it, she is right.  In her article she explores what a mother actually is in this context, and argues that the slogan delegitimises the relationship fathers, friends, grandparents, and carers have with children.  And what about those single dads out there?

“If being a mother were a job there’d be a selection process, pay, holidays, a superior to report to, performance assessments, Friday drinks, and you could resign from your job and get another one because you didn’t like the people you were working with.  It’s not a vocation either – being a mother is a relationship.”

(That’s my favourite part of the argument!)

But is she getting a bit het up about it all?  It’s just a saying, a phrase.  Surely it doesn’t cause any harm?  Who actually cares?

Well, when you evaluate it at deeper level it contributes to building up the idea that nothing a woman can achieve in life matters more than having babies.

My dear Friends, I am not saying that being a mother (in whatever guise) or even going through motherhood, isn’t tough, it is.  I have seen it and it isn’t pretty.  I’m looking forward to the challenge AND reward of being a mother someday.  But I’m not going to kill myself over this infertility, I’m not going to dig myself into a hole of physical pain and emotional suffering. At some point in the future we may have to make a choice of being childless and I don’t want to feel like I have failed.  Chris said this to me in the car yesterday after my HSG test.  “It’s not giving up, it’s not failure – it’s a decision”.  This slogan “Being a mother is the most important job in the world” will make me feel like I failed and will perpetuate a hole of sadness and depression in me, and I don’t want that.  And I also don’t want that for anyone of my friends and family, child-free, now and in the future (or anyone else in the world for a matter of fact).  My feelings are pretty much in alignment with Catherine…

“If you are using motherhood to assert that you care more about humanity than the next person, if you’re using it as a shorthand to imply that you are a more compassionate and hard-working person than the women and men standing around you, then feel free to get over yourself.”

NaBloPoMo November 2015