The Secret to Loving Your Post-Baby Life: Going With the Flow

I have a new article up at The Life Change Network: It's called The Secret to Loving Your Post-Baby Life: Going with the Flow.

Here's a brief snippet:

It is so much easier to go with the flow: to accept the fact that you’re living in a baby-centered universe right now. That means meeting the needs of your newborn, taking the best possible care of yourself (you’re your baby’s support system, after all), and allowing other people to take care of you.

My Parenting Village

It’s one thing to want to have a baby. It’s quite another thing to become a parent. I learned that lesson the hard way within weeks of giving birth to my first child.

Julie was everything I had dreamed of and so much more: a picture-perfect newborn who also happened to be colicky.

I would plead with her. “Just take a short nap. Please. I need to get some sleep.” But she was too little to understand and too wired to succumb to sleep herself. Each time she would cry, I would join in.

[ essay continues at LifeChangeNetwork.com ]

Reconnecting With My Younger Mother Self

Last week, I had a chance to reconnect with my younger self -- the person I was when I was a brand new mother.

I was sitting in a coffee shop editing down excerpts of a letter I wrote to my newborn son the week he was born for a column I was writing for The Toronto Star. 

That same son was graduating from college the very next day, and I'd decided that it was the perfect time to revisit my new-mom hopes and dreams for my baby boy.

The column I wrote appears in today's Toronto Star. You can also read it at ParentCentral.ca -- the Toronto Star's website for parents.