its-a-mom-brain-thing

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🙏

6 years, 3 babies. It’s difficult to remember what my life was like before children. I had hobbies. I had a lot of friends. I went out frequently. I had time for myself. I knew what true loneliness felt like.

I am not bitter. Still, sometimes motherhood is extremely dehumanizing. I have to plan simple self care, such as a shower, around the care and schedule of 3 little people. At their mercy always, it seems.

I do not have friends outside of the internet anymore. Partly that is milso/constant-moving life, other part is flat out abandonment from them. I was the first within our friend group to have a baby and get married. In fact, I think even now a majority of my old friends are still single and partying (which is okay, I am not criticizing. Only pointing out how we don’t relate as we once did).

I had so much time for any type of creative outlet I wanted to sample at the time. I wrote constantly… I was published!! So many opportunities right at my fingertips at that time. The “break” from my career after L’s birth turned into 2 more kids and a marriage. I’m uncertain that I’ll ever be a real writer again and it’s slightly soul crushing.

It is not all lost dreams and relationships, there are things that motherhood completely broke me of that I would probably still be struggling with today had I chosen not to have children yet. You wouldn’t be able to tell, but I am a recovered addict. Well, they tell us to never say “recovered”, but recovering. As we are supposed to always be addicts forever. However, I feel lightyears apart from that person. Do I think about heroin and narcotics still? Sure, from time to time, but not in ways that I’m not completely disgusted by their use and who I was using them. Back then I was filling such a void from my abusive past. Having children helped birth me into a more stable and LOVED (true unconditional LOVE) human being. I needed love.

That sick version of me still mattered though. She was the stepping stone to who I am now. Her thoughts and dreams still flow within me. Her wild, spontaneous, always hungry for experience self is the foundation of ME. Rarely these days I embody that essence of her for my own pleasure. My children are young and need my stability so I find ways to be both.

The random adventures to questionably dangerous places and substances morphed into adventures to new states, child-oriented attractions and “firsts”. It is a different kind of magic.

Motherhood is consuming. It crashes in like a massive tidal wave, completely destroying weak structures of you that once stood. The water smooths and fills all the cracks and emptiness in a single sweeping motion. To be birthed anew alongside your baby, a top the leftover foundation she before children laid.

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💀the diaper.

Please try cloth diapers! Less expensive, good for baby's skin, insanely less waste, and WAY easier than you think (or your parents think) thanks to modernization and simple inventive tweaks in the past ~25 years - i promise!!🙏

Important to know.

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Holding babies actually changes their DNA. Studies show children who had low physical contact as infants end up with DNA cells that are less mature than usual, which can result in delayed growth and development. This means the effects of withholding physical affection from babies aren’t just behavioral- they’re genetic. Source Source 2 Source 3

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InB4 Tumblr calls this “slavery“ and “child abuse“. She put a three hour cap on his workload. He was basically just doing chores and odd jobs for neighbors instead of sitting around on a three day break from school as a reward for his bad behavior. Good on the mom.

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These Family Photos by Elaine Baca Don’t Sugarcoat The Everyday Chaos Of Parenting

“These photos are all about the moment.”

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Kids These Days

Smartphones, tablets, and games have ruined our children. They fill the world with distraction, so they no longer learn patience and delayed gratification. 

Dead Wrong.

This is the marshmallow test.  How long can I wait before I eat i?  If I wait long enough I’ll get two.  And yes, if you don’t like marshmallows, you’ll get something else instead.

It’s a classic test of self-control, and how long children can wait to eat the marshmallow predicts fairly well how they’ll do in school later on, and if they’re able to avoid obesity, drugs, and crime.

Most people assume that children do worse on the marshmallow test nowadays; parents do and experts do.  But that’s wrong.

The researcher John Protzko looked at all the marshmallow tests over the last 50 years, and he noticed that kids nowadays are twice as good at waiting for the marshmallow.  For every decade, they can wait another minute.

So, why are parents and experts wrong?

John Protzko calls this the “kids nowadays” effect.  We always compare how impolite and impatient our kids are now to what we are like as adults.  Because we’ve forgotten all about how we were when we were kids.

We were much worse.

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Lego Doing It Right

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Shots fired

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real talk my mom never invaded my privacy, always knocked and waited for my “come in” instead of barging into my room, never tried to read my texts or journals or notes, and I always came to her with sensitive subjects; to the point of telling her I lost my virginity the /day/ I lost my virginity

what I’m saying is: respect your kids’ privacy and they will come to you with shit you’re worried about them doing

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“Why is there jelly on the wall?” “…I wasn’t eating up here.” “You weren’t?” “It wasn’t me. It must have been Daddy eating up here when he was watching the rain.”

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This is great parenting. (Source)

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ma’am im sorry but that baby was due today, i don’t care if its not done just turn in what you have