Children

Most of us grow up envisioning the “perfect” family that we will have one day. One boy, one girl – 3 years apart. Right?

“Is she Black or white?” I asked another mom who was describing a little girl in her son’s class that she thought my family might know.

Luck.

In today's HAAHHAAH We Weren't Listening-to-You-Stupid-Pediatricians-Anyway, news: The American Academy of Pediatrics has

Though it's worth noting that my weight was beginning to become a health concern, I’d never considered my body a “problem” until I heard how doctors talked about it. In the same way a hurt child won’t start to cry until he sees the worry in his parent’s face, I never felt bad about my body until the first time I felt like I was being looked at with disgust. So whatever route you decide to take with the health of a child, make sure it’s treated as a growing opportunity and not a solution to a problem. Your children are not problems — they are the foundation upon which the adults of tomorrow will be built.

I’m a person who needs to know the facts. I bring a notebook with me to every doctor’s appointment. I record important meetings. The research list for my memoir is pages long. Why should pregnancy be any different? And so the research began.

When my son was a baby, I used my husband as a second set of hands. He was my co-parent, the other caretaker... I was no longer viewing him as my partner, but rather as an aide to attaining the next level of mothering. Even though my husband never called me out on my behavior, I slowly but surely hung up my need for perfection. Because if being a great mother means being a crappy wife, I don't want any part of it.

Once upon a time, the only thing to consider was “Does your kid watch too much TV?” But now it seems like nearly everyone can agree that kids these days spend far too much time looking at screens of all sorts.