Motherhood

The Real (and Gross) Side of Motherhood

IMG_2924

Motherhood is beautiful. There are so many moments that I have to pinch myself because the love and support I get from all three kids is unexplainable. But with those precious moments also come the less than ideal moments. You know, the real side of motherhood.

I remember the very first time I had to change a dirty diaper. I was in the hospital having just had Harlan and she made her first bowel movement. Not having ever changed a baby as little as she was, I was immediately frightened I’d hurt her tiny body and disgusted that something so gross could come out of that tiny body.

It only took a couple of changes before her poop no longer phased me. Two more kids and their poop is just another thing I come into contact with on a daily basis. I’ve had it all over my arm (and even face) from diaper blow outs and I haven’t once gagged. There’s so much that the books can prepare you for, but poop on your face? Yeah that’s something you just have to realize that it comes with the territory and know it’s going to happen many, many times, so you might as well get used to it.

As much as I’ve gotten used to my kids’ poop, I haven’t gotten used to the other gross things that they do. Just the other day I found Macks in the bathroom with Avery while she went potty. As soon as she got off of the toilet Macks runs over and sticks his arm right in the toilet. Yep, right there where Avery peed. That was a little much for me.

I’m constantly finding all three of them picking their noses and then wiping them on each other. Avery and Harlan find this a very funny game to play when they are sitting on the couch. They are left in hysterics and I am off in the corner trying not to dry heave.

Or a couple of weeks ago when Macks threw a full on tantrum on the doctor’s office floor because I told him he couldn’t lick the cabinets in the room.

Not to mention the times that Harlan would lick the subway pole when we lived in the city. Or when she’d drop a snack on the ground and pick it up to eat it before I had the chance to catch her. I wanted to take a bar of soap and just scrub her tongue, I was so grossed out.

Motherhood is full of so many gross moments, the ones that no one really prepares you for. It’s nice for others to tell you about the dreamy side of this journey, but what about the real side?

Kinsa, maker of the first smartphone-connected, app-enabled thermometer, knows just how gross kids can be (and what little we as parents can do about it.) No matter how much we try to prevent it, kids are germy… and those germs can lead to our little ones getting sick. When sickness strikes, Kinsa helps by making it simple to track temperature, symptoms, and more for your family and your pediatrician – and by letting you know what’s “going around” your community.

I was first introduced to Kinsa during the Los Angeles Biggest Baby Shower and wished I had it a few weeks later when Avery got really sick. I’d wake her up every couple of hours to take her temperature. I had a logbook of her temperature throughout the week of when she was sick. When I saw the ladies from Kinsa at Mom 2.0 a couple of weeks later I spilled to them how much this thermometer would have been a lifesaver when Avery was sick. Do you know how much easier it would have been to just show my pediatrician the app and be able to email him the log rather than flipping through pages of my notes that looked scribbled because of having to write it down in the dark at 3am?

Next Monday, June 1,  I am giving away one Kinsa Thermometer each day for a week to people who upload a photo using the hashtag #kidsaregross. Show me just how gross your little one is by uploading a photo. You can post the photo on my A Mommy in the City Facebook Page or on Instagram using #kidsaregross and tagging @amommyinthecity and @kinsahealthbytes. (All photos must be new and the contest is open to US residents only.)

You also have a chance to enter to win Kinsa’s soon to be released smartphone-connected ear thermometer. Just fill out the form below to be entered to win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Want to win a second Kinsa thermometer (they make great baby shower gifts)? Follow @Kinsahealthbytes and watch out for their Father’s Day contest for another chance to win.

{Disclosure: This post is brought to you in partnership with Kinsa. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the companies that help make A Mommy in the City possible!}

  • Share
Family

It’s All in Your Head

head

I waited by that phone all day long. My grandparents and aunt tried to do all that they could to try to distract us. At 11 years-old they could have done just about anything to take my attention away, but the reality was that I knew exactly what was going on. As much as they tried to sugar-coat the details or hide things from us, I knew that my mom was at the hospital laying on an operating table while the doctors opened up her skull and tried to save her life.

It was just a few weeks earlier that they found the aneurysm.

For years she had complained of headaches and migraines. They became debilitating at times. She’d rush to the emergency room where doctors would give her a X-Ray and CT scan, but ultimately send her home with shot of powerful pain meds that would make the headache tolerable.

It was one headache that told her to investigate further. I have flashbacks of that day often. The images run so vividly through my mind. My mom was in bed with a pillow over her face and blinds closed. The light made it worse. My dad had taken her to the ER the night before, but the meds didn’t work. She called her doctors insisting that something wasn’t right. Although they had done tests at the hospital, one of her doctors told her to come into his office. They did more tests and a MRI that afternoon and that’s when they found it. The golfball-sized aneurysm behind her right eye. Doctors think that she’d had it her entire life and it just kept growing as she got older.

There were only a couple of hospitals in Florida that performed that kind of surgery. My parents made the decision to go to Miami where a team of doctors spent an entire day planning her surgery. She was rushed down by ambulance from Tampa to the hospital just a few days after the discovery of the aneurysm.

My dad watched as they wheeled her into surgery and sat in the hospital room while all four of us kids stayed at home in Tampa. My little brothers were oblivious to what was going on, much too young to understand. And I tried to protect my sister from the details because I didn’t want to scare her.

As the oldest child in the family, I felt it was my duty to stand up and take charge. With my dad in Miami, having a sister that was only 10 and two brothers under 2,  I needed to take over for my mom and do just as she would have done if she were there. I wanted to keep our house as normal as possible, even though it was so far from that.

The phone rang. 10 hours after she was wheeled into the operating room. She made it through successfully, but not before suffering a stroke on the table. It was going to take time for her to recover. She had a long journey ahead of her. We, had a long journey ahead of us.

The Brain Aneurysm Foundation describes a brain aneurysm as ” a weak bulging spot on the wall of a brain artery very much like a thin balloon or weak spot on an inner tube.” Over time that spot can have added pressure that eventually becomes weaker and eventually will rupture. Some of those that suffer from aneurysms may not experience any symptoms at all, others, like my mom, will have headaches, seeing double, pain above or behind the eye.

My mom’s surgery was nearly 20 years ago, but her journey is still very evocative to me. I’ve never publicly come out and told her story. People know bits and pieces, but I haven’t ever sat down and put those pieces together. Possibly to avoid the pain and just pretend it didn’t happen.

Recently I’ve seen story after story in my Facebook newsfeed of people who aren’t as lucky as my mom was. Aneurysms that have ruptured and have cost many people their lives with no prior warning until it was too late. With this being something that has had so much impact on my life, I didn’t want to be silent any longer.

As my mom recovered and would visit the doctor frequently, a question she asked the doctor was if this was hereditary. “They can be,” her doctor informed us. It doesn’t mean that I’m guaranteed one, but it does mean that I should take precaution and get myself scanned.

Growing up I was constantly reminded of the changes in our lives because of my mom’s aneurysm. Any time you do an extensive surgery on a person’s brain, there are a lot of risks and outcomes that could change their lives forever. It did ours. I won’t go into details on her before and after, because it’s not important, but what is important is that my mom is here with us and she is healthy.

If it wasn’t for my mom’s instinct to keep going to doctor after doctor urging them to find out why she was having all of these headaches, I am certain my mom wouldn’t be with us here today. But I am so thankful she is. And I thank those doctors that saved her life. And my life as well.

I love you mom.

 

There are possible ways that you can detect aneurysms early and get screened, you can find out more on the Brain Aneurysm Foundation’s website. 

 

  • Share
Motherhood

Finding Your Beauty

IMG_2096
“Mommy, you’re beautiful.” 

She smiles at me as I walk down the stairs with my hair disheveled and in my pajamas having just woke up. Avery greets me this way nearly every morning. It’s become her thing and she makes sure to tell me as many chances as she gets throughout the day.

I’ve been the first to admit that loving myself has become much harder as I’ve had children and have gotten older. Looking in the mirror, I was dying to see the real person staring back at me and not what the negativity inside of my mind had created. Slowly, I’ve gotten there. I’ve learned to love myself again.

And it was with the help of my daughters that I found my own beauty. In their eyes, I am the most beautiful person. They make it a point to tell me nearly every single day. It doesn’t matter what my hair looks like, what I’m wearing, if my face is breaking out, or if I’ve gained a few pounds. None of that matters. What matters to them is on the inside. It’s whether I snuggle up with them, or if I let them give me unlimited kisses. It’s telling them they did an amazing job at soccer or drawing a person on a piece of paper. It’s the beauty and confidence we have within that matters most. And it took a three and five year-old to show me that.

With all of this positivity, I wish I could just bottle it up and keep it for those moments when we really need. The reality is that it won’t always be this way. They won’t always see themselves (or me) with these rose colored glasses. Today’s society is just getting harder and harder for us to love ourselves. And I mean really and truly love ourselves. Between the filters for photos, apps that allow you to make yourself look thinner, body shaming in the tabloids,  it’s maddening. It’s disheartening to know that my girls will grow up being exposed to it no matter how much I try to shield them from it.

But I do have faith knowing that it will all come full circle. It’s through the confidence that my daughters have given me that I will soon need to pass along to them again. As they get older and those doubts start to enter into their mind, it’s up to me to remain confident within myself so that they know to do the same. When I falter (because it’s only natural to do so,) it’s my job not to do it in front of them. Complaining about the shape of my body or the cellulite on my legs will only inginte the flame inside of them to do much of the same.

A couple of weeks ago while I was attending the Mom 2.0 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, I had the chance to sit down and speak one-on-one with actress Molly Ringwald.  Ringwald has partnered with Dove to share her #beautystory, Dove’s newest campaign that encourages women to use the #beautystory hashtag and share the story of the women in your life that helped shape you. 

Rongwald was the keynote speaker at the conference and shared with us how she remained confident during her teen years and continues to do so into her adult years and with her children. She was such an inspiration to me growing up and continues to be and I was honored to be able to chat with her and get to know her.

I must disclose that nearly half of our conversation was about the shoes that I was wearing during the interview. They were J. Crew flats that I had to track down by calling nearly every store in Manhattan store because they were sold out online. That sparked a conversation about her looking for J.Crew pants that were sold out online as well and she was trying to track down herself. This is how down-to-earth Ringwald is. I couldn’t get half of the questions in because we were chatting like two girlfriends would. And that is why I love her.

Our formal interview was just as exciting, but so much more inspirational.

IMG_2713

What advice to you give to your children and the younger generation on how to love themselves?

“The best thing that you can do is the importance of story telling. And the importance of passing on information through generation after generation. I was bombarded like any other kid growing up on what was beautiful. I came from a family of blue-eyed blondes. And as you know, I had red hair. I felt like I really wasn’t that thing. I shared a room with my sister and because she was my older sister she was in control of what would be on the wall and what she put on the wall was all of those perfect images of girls like Christy Brinkly and for me it was torture I felt like then I guess I’m not beautiful. I think that for me where I got strength was from my mother and father telling me that that was only part of it and it was really about my brain and talent and my creativity. And that gave me the strength to be different and that’s how I ended up who I was. It’s all about not getting caught up in the trend so much and being true to who you are.”

As a mom, I’ve noticed that my body has changed a lot. How did you embrace those changes?

“Your body changes for sure. And there are certain things where you know you won’t look good in that you could when you were younger. I’ve put those clothes away and in a box with acid free tissue to save for my daughters when they get older. I think it’s just a matter of being the strongest and best you can be right now. For me I love to practice yoga. That’s what works best because it works my mind and body. I’m bringing my daughter with me to yoga class and she was like “wow mom you’re really strong.” beacuse she doesn’t know about those muscles. I look at old movies that I’ve done and I look at myself and say “wow you really didn’t know how to stand then, you didn’t have that confidence. And I think that’s the biggest difference between grown-up me and teenage me is that it’s reflected in my body in the way that I stand. And I think that’s a really good thing.”

If you could go back and do one of your projects again, what would it be?

“I think I really really enjoyed doing the breakfast club. I think the breakfast club is probably my favorite and I would love to experience it again and I’d like to remember even more. I did keep journals during that time. ”

 

  • Share
Newer Posts
Older Posts