by Tina Santiago-Rodriguez (Philippines) | Jun 13, 2013 | Child Care, Husband, Parenting, Philippines, Tina Santiago-Rodriguez, Truly Rich Mom, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
I know some of you may not agree with the title of this post but humor me anyway. I’m writing this using my phone, while nursing and holding my seven-week-old daughter close to me, skin to skin. She’s been sick since birth, you see, and lost a significant amount of weight and is recovering from an infection. (The awesome ladies from my World Moms Blog family know in detail what’s been happening in my life lately and you folks who may be curious can get more details over at www.trulyrichmom.com.)
Anyway, back to the post title. While many mothers may not be raising their children with their husbands or partners or their kids’ birth fathers (because of their circumstances and/or choices), for many of us, this is still the set-up we have: mom AND dad work together to bring up the kids and make sure they become productive citizens.
This is certainly true in my case, and because it is Father’s Day this weekend, I want to take this opportunity to thank all the “World Dads” out there who are committed to helping their wives or partners raise their children, including my own husband.
The past seven weeks with our now-recovering baby have been extra challenging and I don’t think I could have survived them without her father. Anthony has been a pillar of strength for me and although I know that deep down he has been worried over our little one too, he has never shown it, and has always reminded me that “all is well.” (more…)
Tina Santiago-Rodriguez is a wife and homeschool mom by vocation, a licensed
physical therapist by education and currently the managing editor of Mustard, a
Catholic children's magazine published by Shepherd's Voice
Publications in the Philippines, by profession. She has been writing
passionately since her primary school years in Brunei, and contributes
regularly to several Philippine and foreign-based online and print publications. She also does sideline editing and scriptwriting jobs, when she has the time. Find out more about Tina through her personal
blogs: Truly Rich Mom and Teacher Mama Tina.
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by Sarah Sensamaust | Jun 12, 2013 | Africa, Child Care, Childhood, Cultural Differences, Family, Home, Living Abroad, Motherhood, World Motherhood
Look for Congo on any list ranking quality of life, poverty rate, violence per square meter, etc. and we don’t fare well. Great place to raise a kid, right?
Well, actually, for us, yes.
My friend Jill is my neighbor, co-worker and blogging partner on our blog Mama Congo. We raise our children, along with our husbands, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What we lack in first world standards, we make up for in mamas. Our children call at least 6 women “mama.” Maybe more depending on the day.
In the Congo every woman is called “Mama So-and-So.” I’m Mama Sarah, she’s Mama Jill, and the women who come to our homes everyday and help us raise our children are Mama Youyou, Mamicho, Mama Vida and Mama Nounou. That’s a lot of mamas between our two households.
My husband Adam and I moved to the Congo five years ago and Jill and her husband Johan moved in next door a little while later. Our children all run around together getting bit by mosquitoes while we call for them to return to their respective houses. It’s a great life; made possible mostly by our mamas.
Jill and I are about to travel back to the States to visit our families for the summer. We’ll spend time with the grandparents, show off the new tricks our kids can do, and indulge in all the food we can’t find in Congo. But sometimes it’s hard to leave our little “village” of women raising our children with us.
Sure we’ll miss their help, but what we mostly miss is how totally fun and wacky and sometimes completely puzzling it is to raise your kids with a Congolese woman by your side. For example, sometimes we’ll find the mamas up in a tree throwing fruit down to our kids. They yell in French, “Look out below!” As star fruit or bunches of bananas rain down.
Every now and then from my office window I’ll see them toting our children on their backs when their little legs are too tired to walk home from the playground. Even the smallest baby cries, “Au dos. Au dos,” (on your back) when she wants to hitch a ride.
I know that if my daughter hasn’t eaten enough of her breakfast, I’ll get an earful when Mama Youyou shows up. She examines the size of her belly, determines it’s not properly filled, and then coaxes her into eating more. Next she reminds me I need to keep my kids nice and fat so that if they get sick they’ll be okay.
When the kids do inevitably get sick, the mamas are the biggest worriers. I get that. Where we’re from in the States, children get sick and then they get better. Here in Congo, that’s not a guarantee. So everyone hovers and shakes their heads and carries them au dos all day while rotating cold washcloths on their foreheads. It’s a major production. And the children love it.
Sometimes people ask us if it’s hard to share that title of “mama” with others. It isn’t. It really isn’t! We feel like the luckiest mamas because our children are being raised in such a different and loving way. Sure, it took some time for everyone to adjust and learn their place in the household, but we’ve all got into a rhythm now. I hold this end, you hold that end as we wrestle their filthy bodies in the tub.
I think every mother can agree that raising your children with a lot of help, mixed in with doses of advice, and sprinkled with good old fashioned judgment to keep you on your toes, is a great way to be a mama.
Do your children have other “mamas” where you live? Who are they, and how do they help you?
This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Sarah. You can find Sarah blogging with Jill at Mama Congo.
Photo credit to the authors.
by hjunderway | May 20, 2013 | Being Thankful, Child Care, Childhood, Cultural Differences, Education, Expat Life, Family, France, International, Language, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Multicultural, Parenting, Preschool, Relocating, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Looking back to my pregnancy as an almost mom to my one and only son, I literally had everything prepared for the first nine months of his life before his eyes ever saw the outside world.
Diapers and clothing gently washed and neatly lined up by size, ready for each growth spurt, each passage from newborn to infant and beyond. I bought “What to Expect….” for the first three years of his existence, pouring over every detail and mentally preparing myself for each developmental stage. I was ready for it all.
My planning served me well for the first three years of my son’s life, and then we up and decided to move to a foreign country. The “What to Expect” books were packed away in long-term storage in the United States, and along with it, my sense of direction as a mother.
We have spent the last year attempting to navigate our way through life in France when French isn’t your primary language, when there aren’t any grandparents to lend a hand, and when all that is familiar becomes a distant dream.
When we arrived in France, my son was 2 years, five months and together we plowed through understanding new social norms, French cuisine, and more recently, the education system.
We did this without a manual, and did okay without it. There were times when I just wanted to type in “raising an American boy in Paris” in Google to look for tips and clarity on what we were doing wrong (or right). If there had been a manual or how-to book, I would have read it 1,000 times and given copies to all of my new expatriate friends with children.
I wasn’t sure that we were doing right by our son when we entered him into a French school at age three (standard practice in France), when the teachers and students couldn’t even pronounce his name correctly. I wasn’t sure that we were doing it right when potty training took a huge deviation and we faced mounting laundry that took forever to dry on racks in our living room.
I know I wasn’t sure that we had done right by our son when he had a meltdown at a friend’s playgroup,hitting and kicking anyone and everyone who came into his path. When I had to pack him up early and head home, I may have had a meltdown myself. Again and again, I was looking for grand gestures in my son’s behavior as proof that he was adjusting appropriately to living in a new country, and I couldn’t find any.
Why do we always look for the grand gestures? Without a guide, we often get caught up looking for the big things and forgetting to spot the small ones.
For example, at 6 months of age, I knew that my son wasn’t able to crawl because he hadn’t developed enough upper body strength to support his head, which was off the charts developmentally. I knew this because the books and doctors told me so, and therefore I had an appropriate course of action to get him back on track. Having a guide instilled in me a parenting confidence that I knew my son and that we were doing everything right, but by whose standards?
Now, a year later and closer to preschool age than that of toddler, I find myself discovering more and more of the small indications that my little one is doing just fine transitioning in our new life abroad. I see it when my son doesn’t realize I’m watching and instead of saying, “Look, look!” with excitement, he yells out, “Regarde, regarde!” (Look in French.)
I see it when he stops to hug a strange toddler crying in the playground, or when he asks me if we can take an airplane home to see his grandparents and cousin. I see it when he takes my hand to cross the street but instead of letting go immediately, he gently slides his thumb repeatedly across my knuckles, something I’ve done to him a thousand times. As time goes on, he becomes more and more self-assured and more at home being who he is. And no manual could have prepared me for that.
Has there been a time when a manual or how-to book couldn’t help you effectively parent your child through a unique situation?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Jacki, an American expatriate mother living in Paris, France.
The image used in this post is credited to the author
Jacki, or “MommaExpat,” as she’s known in the Internet community, is a former family therapist turned stay-at-home mom in Paris, France. Jacki is passionate about issues as they relate to mothers and children on both domestic and international scenes, and is a Volunteer Ambassador for the Fistula Foundation. In addition to training for her first half marathon, Jacki can be found learning French in Paris and researching her next big trip. Jacki blogs at H J Underway, a chronicle of her daily life as a non-French speaking mom in France.
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by Wall Street Mama (USA) | May 17, 2013 | Child Care, Family, Health, Home, Husband, Kids, Life Balance, Motherhood, Parenting, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I made my first guest contribution to the World Moms Blog about two years ago. My article focused on being a “busy bee,” and managing working, motherhood and household duties. I wrote about energy, dedication to my career and “getting it all done,” even though I knew the workload was hard. At that point in time, my son had just turned one. Well, flash forward to 2013 and my son will be three in a few weeks and my daughter will be one in two months. There is only one word that comes to mind – Exhaustion! (more…)
Wall Street Mama was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago and moved to NJ when she was a teenager. She fell in love with New York City and set her mind to one thing after college – working on Wall Street. She has spent the last 16 years working on the trading floor at three major banks. As an Institutional Salesperson, she is responsible for helping large corporations and money funds invest their short term cash in the fixed income part of the market. She lives in the suburbs of central NJ with her husband of 11 years, their amazing 21 month old boy and their first baby – a very spoiled Maltese. She has baby #2 on the way and is expecting a little girl in June 2012. She is a full time working mother and struggles with “having it all” while wondering if that is even possible.
Wall Street Mama was married at the age of 25 but waited to have children because she felt she was too focused on her career which required a lot of traveling and entertaining. When she was finally ready, she thought she could plan the exact month she was ready to have a child, like everything else she planned in her life. She was shocked and frustrated when things did not go according to her plan. Fast forward four years later, after a miscarriage and several rounds of failed fertility injections, her little miracle was conceived naturally. She never thought in a million years, that she and her husband would be in their late 30’s by the time they had their first child.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, she has endured some of the most difficult years of her life. The stress of trying to conceive was combined with some of life’s biggest challenges. She and her husband, who is a trader, both lost their jobs on Wall Street the exact same month. Her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and she ended up passing away while she was 6 months pregnant. At times it didn’t seem like things would ever get better, but she has learned that life is cyclical and what comes down must again go up.
Leaving her baby boy with a wonderful nanny each day is difficult, but at times it is easier than she would have expected. She still enjoys the seemingly addictive draw of working on Wall Street. The past few years have been dramatically different from the “good days” but she is focused on trying to achieve what she once had before. She is currently working on launching her own blog, Wall Street Mama, in an attempt to guide others who are focused on continuing their career, yet struggle with leaving their little ones at home. She is weathering the ups and downs of the market and motherhood, one day at a time.
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by Kristyn Zalota | Feb 5, 2013 | Babies, Being Thankful, Birthing, Child Care, Clean Birth Kits, Death and Dying, Humanity, Inspirational, International, Maternal Health, Poverty, Social Good, Women's Rights, World Moms Blog, World Voice, Younger Children
This post is the third installment by Kristyn Zalota, Founder of CleanBirth.org, about her work in Laos. To read the first post in the series,click here: “One Mom’s Mission to Save Lives in Laos”. To read the second post, click here: “Small Project Big Impact: Making Birth Safe in Laos”.
As you may know from my previous posts, I am a mom on a mission to make birth safer in Laos. This month my organization, , has the goal of raising enough funds to save 1,000 mothers and 1,000 babies.
I am a doula, Lamaze educator, and advocate for safe birth for impoverished women. I was drawn to work in Laos, because women there die at a higher rate than Afghani women and Lao babies die at a higher rate than babies in Sudan.
In November 2012, I traveled to southern Laos and, with my Lao partner organization, trained nurses in the use and distribution of Clean Birth Kits. When the nurses told me that women give birth alone, I agreed to fund community education about safe birthing practices
Having completed the nurses’ training, we went deep into the mountains to visit the clinics there. I immediately sensed the grinding poverty of the area. People live on $1 per day. The life expectancy of women is short, either due to childbirth (8-12 births) or disease. Most will lose several babies.
What do you see when you walk into the villages? Naked kids with runny noses. Mothers with babies in slings. Bamboo and wood one-room dwellings on stilts. No electricity, not a single store. While a new road connecting Thailand and Vietnam is bringing change, it is mostly in the form of human trafficking, HIV, and environmental degradation. (more…)
Kristyn brings her years of experience as an entrepreneur and serial volunteer to CleanBirth.org. She holds a MA, has run small businesses in Russia and the US, and has volunteered in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Uganda on projects related to women’s empowerment.
After having children, Kristyn became an advocate for mothers in the US, as a doula and Lamaze educator, and abroad, as the Founder of CleanBirth.org. She is honored to provide nurses in Laos with the supplies, funding and training they need to lower maternal and infant mortality rates in their villages.
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by specialneedmom2 | Jan 16, 2013 | Canada, Child Care, Life Balance, Younger Children
Childcare. No word conjures such stress and anxiety in the mind of a working mom as “childcare.” There are countless little things that can cause enormous problems. Your child is too sick to attend. Your child care provider is too sick to care for your child. Your child care provider is late. You are running late to pick up your child. Never mind possible personality or caregiving style conflicts.
Stress. Anxiety. Too many problems to solve while juggling too many plates. Eventually one of those plates will drop, and who picks up the pieces?
For me, just the experience of searching for a childcare provider for my oldest child was the single most stressful experience of my life. I spent hours on the phone, calling centres, trying to be put onto their waitlists in hopes of getting a childcare spot. I visited centres and caregivers, asking about programs, schedules, and meals. It was harder to plan than my wedding, and as it turned out, more expensive.
In the Greater Toronto Area parents who hope to have licensed childcare for their child are told to put their child on waitlists – when they are about 3 months PREGNANT with that child. You might have a chance at a spot by the time your twelve month maternity leave is over – that means your wait is at least 18 months. (more…)
Angela is a Special Education teacher who blogs about her super-powered special needs family. She has a 3 year old with Prader-Willi Syndrome and a 5 year old with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and Sensory Processing Disorder. The odds of these random genetic events occurring at the same time are astronomical. "When you add our typically developing one year old baby boy to the mix, you have a very busy household!", she explains.
Angela admits to having too many appointments, too many school problems, and being generally too busy as she tries to live life to the fullest. Please visit her family at Half Past Normal for more of their adventures! If you want to connect to chat, you can find her on Twitter @specialneedmom2
If you are interested in Special Education policies and procedures in Ontario – or just some excellent strategies and accommodations – please check out Angela's other site at Special Ed on the Bell Curve.
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