Tag: funny

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Sorry, Pregnant mamas- I’m a belly toucher.

Sarah Bregel

Pregnant belly touching is kind of a no-no. Many mamas-to-be find it annoying, tactless or invasive. I get that, and I know I should keep my hands to myself at all costs. But sometimes, I do it anyway. It’s completely unintentional, I promise. But pregnant mamas, I’m sorry—I’m a bit of a belly toucher.

I know that having your belly rubbed is something a lot of pregnant women could likely do without, in part, because practically the moment you become pregnant, all of the sudden everyone thinks you are their own personal property. They want to give you their thoughts, opinions, and of course, unlimited belly rubs. It’s almost as if they believe a genie will come out and grant them three wishes, rather than a baby covered in mucous who screams all night.

Continue reading @Scary Mommy… 

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“I Never Planned On Being A Parent”

Sarah Bregel

At the time I turned twenty-four, the only thing I was nursing was a half a dozen vodka martinis and inevitably, a hangover. But by the end of the year, I had a full-time milk guzzler attached to my ever-expanding chest. This had not been in my plans for the year, but then, I was never much for plans.

I’ve always been a person who does things in extremes. I partied hard. I enjoyed the high highs of life which meant that sometimes I had to dig my way up from the low lows. So, it would only be fitting that when it came time for me to get knocked up, I’d be unmarried, underemployed, and under the influence. Motherhood would knock me off any high horse I’d ever ridden on. But for me, the work of it came early and it stayed late, like I always had.

It is for this reason that getting pregnant was the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. It was the worst because it altered everything I thought I wanted for my life—freedom, excitement, and spontaneity. It was the best because I eventually found out I didn’t need those things. But the road to get there was hard, harder than I had thought it would be.

Just a week after taking the test (the test which seems to have only one question but really has hundreds: Where we will live?, Can I handle this?, Will we be okay?, Will I make a good mother?), I was hit with the most attention-demanding nausea of my life. Every day was a battle. Getting out of bed was pure pain. No matter what I’d do to stave off morning sickness, I’d always end up on the bathroom floor for hours upon hours. Finally, I’d move to the couch, I’d bring a bowl, and there I’d stay.

Everything in my life shut down. It was as if someone was trying to tell me to make a clean break. “Leave the rest behind. There’s no room for it now. This motherhood thing is gonna get ya.” That god-awful nausea, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. But maybe in some ways throwing up my stomach lining for the better part of a year needed to happen to me. Maybe it made my first year as a mother less gut-wrenching because I’d already purged up so much of my past life. Maybe it was my detox, my saving grace. Maybe at the time I delivered, most of me was already gone.

For me, pregnancy was hard and terrifying. I’m not sure if it’s like this for most people, but it was for me. I didn’t eat pickles and ice cream. I ate toast and peanut butter, maybe mashed potatoes, or something that might, hopefully, maybe stick to my stomach. I didn’t take the classes or read the baby books. I figured everything would turn out the way it was supposed to (again, not big on the planning).

As my hips grew wider and I peed a little more every time I sneezed, I started to wonder what pregnancy was like for people who actually did plan to be parents and who mapped out every step of the way once they saw that pink plus sign. I’d never so much as thought about being a mother or really knew if I wanted to be one. I wondered how much easier the people who’d desired motherhood for years and years might have it than me, how much more graceful their transitions to being a parent would be than my own.

Excerpt from It’s Really 10 Months- Special Delivery 

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To continue reading my story (and heartfelt and hilarious others) you have to buy the book! 😉 

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You know you’re a stay-at-home parent in the summer when…

Sarah Bregel

I’m not gonna lie—being a stay at home mom in the summertime has its perks. Spending a lot of time at the pool and eating ice cream isn’t exactly something to complain about. But, no escape from the kids for a full three months can make a mom long for the ring of the school bell. Aside from the unavoidable fact that you’re home with children all summer long (which somehow seems way, way longer now than when I was a kid), here are a few ways you can tell that you’re a stay at home parent in the summer.

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1. You’re constantly covered in a mixture of sweat, spilled milk, chlorine and, most likely, urine. Hello, baby pool. Note to self: Just don’t think about why the pool’s already so warm on opening weekend.

2. You haven’t eaten anything for lunch besides PB&J crusts and the skins off everyone’s apples in weeks.

3. You keep buying new bathing suits at Target in hopes that your once weekly exercise routines in the kitchen are actually working and it’s just lighting, poorly made bikini tops or all the 18-year-old lifeguards making you look bad.

Continue reading @ Mommy Nearest… 

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5 Qualifications you should have to become a parent

Sarah Bregel

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for expressing such an interest in this position! It is truly the opportunity of a lifetime and your enthusiasm will surely be of the utmost importance when venturing down this new path. Below is a list of the five most important qualifications your future client/s will require on a near constant basis for the next 18 years or more. Probably more. We should also mention this is really a job that never ends. But don’t worry, it has many wonderful benefits, as you’ll soon find out.

1. A go-getter attitude is key

You must be willing to stop what you are doing and go get things approximately 180 times a day, including but not limited to: books, dolls, dresses, snacks, paper towels, baby wipes, diapers, bottles, pacifiers, crayons, paper, cups of water, more snacks, clean undies, wash cloths, stickers, blankets, hair brushes, lost socks, lost shoes, band-aids, tissues and much more. Note: A gym membership doesn’t come with this position, but it is unlikely that you will have time to exercise with any consistency anyway. This level of activity, though, will help you to feel energized which this position demands at all times.

dude whatevsss

Continue reading @ Mommy Nearest… 

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What would you do if you had the house entirely to yourself?

Sarah Bregel

Simple as it may seem, to most parents, having the house to themselves for an entire afternoon is a rare and exciting opportunity. We asked some hardworking mamas and papas around the country what they would do if this happened to them. The results were clever, hilarious, but mostly, just plain true. Read on to hear all of their answers and then chime in with your own response!

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Continue reading at Mommy Nearest… 

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The Fifty Stages of Sleep Deprivation

Sarah Bregel

While my pregnant self had entertained the thought that baby number two would be my “easy” baby, my “sleeper” baby, I regret to say, I was wrong. “I know how to swaddle!” I thought. “I know The Happiest Baby techniques!” “I know about white noise and overstimulation. We’ve totally got this!” BAH… HA. The only thing I’ve got is an eight month old kid who never sleeps. Not swaddled or wrapped, not in his “last resort” car seat or even in a stroller. I have the kid who watches absolutely everything and lifts his head up to look around when a floorboard creaks, even if he’s been up for hours on end. I’ve got the kid who can fight sleep like no one I’ve ever met in my entire life, conk out for ten minutes, then party all night. I’ve got the kid who wakes up screaming the second a nip slips out of his mouth or his body touches something that lacks a pulse. Having gone through an intense period of sleep deprivation with this child, I now know how important sleep is. Sleep can seriously make or break you. Not sleeping for months on end can tear your life apart and leave it like that crap in the bottom of a hamster’s cage- shredded.

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Here are the fifty stages of sleep deprivation as I know them:

 

  1. You start taking your kid to school without your bra on, regardless of the fact that your breasts are literally everywhere.
  2. Showering becomes either obsolete or the only thing you do in your day that brings you back from the brink. Until everyone starts screaming and you realize it was completely not worth it.
  3. Everything your husband does annoys you.
  4. Everything your husband doesn’t do annoys you.
  5. You begin to understand how horses sleep standing up.
  6. Falling asleep on the toilet seems like a very legitimate option. Until, again, everyone starts screaming at you.
  7. You unload half the dishwasher before realizing your cupboards are filled with gross, dirty dishes.
  8. You have a stack of eighteen sleep books next to your bed.
  9. You’re too tired to read any of them.
  10. You tell yourself that all the Angelina Ballerina your daughter has been watching is educational.
  11. You contemplate hiring a “sleep coach” but hang up when you forgot who you dialed.
  12. Out of desperation you let your baby scream approximately one time while you sob and guzzle half a box of wine.
  13. You become so guilt-ridden at letting your baby cry that you stay up all night anyway thinking about his cortisol levels which are no doubt, off the chart.
  14. You begin texting, emailing and Facebook messaging anyone (even total strangers) who had a similar struggle for encouraging words.
  15. You eliminate “getting dressed” from your daily tasks.
  16. Thirty-two people a day tell you they have a “great sleeper.”
  17. Twenty-eight people a day recommend “wearing your baby” and look at you with crazy eyes when you tell them he doesn’t like to sleep that way since he was four months old.
  18. Twelve people a day tell you to let your baby “cry it out.”
  19. Fifty people a day tell you to “enjoy every minute” even when you can’t quite put your finger on what “minutes” are.
  20. You install The Wonder Weeks App on your phone thinking perhaps it’s just a developmental milestone.
  21. You delete The Wonder Weeks App when you realize it’s not a developmental milestone that’s keeping your baby awake. He’s been awake since birth.
  22. After your fifth hysterical phone call, your sister who has gone back and forth in the past finally decides to never have kids because “hell no, I can’t deal with that.”
  23. You email a “gentle sleep coach” just to see what the deal is.
  24. You tell your husband nothing will ever work and this is all your fault because you were too stressed during pregnancy and also sometimes ate brie.
  25. You give up ever putting your boob away or trying to get the baby to sleep anywhere but on you and recommit to cosleeping completely.
  26. People tell you you’ll never get the baby out of your bed, he’ll be nursing till he’s in middle school and that you’ll get divorced.
  27. You tell your daughter to be quiet 18,564 times a day.
  28. She resents this, starts whining all the time and begins her own personal sleep-regression.
  29. Your entire nights are made up of trying to get people back to sleep only to be so wired from the constant waking that you completely give up on sleeping yourself and begin starting your days at 3 am only to feel like it’s midnight by 7:30 am.
  30. You give up co-sleeping AGAIN when the baby sleeps very poorly this way, literally suckles and bites you all night as you lay awake morphing your body into exceedingly more and more uncomfortable positions.
  31. Feel like you’ve been through the washing machine at six am and want to close your eyes so badly just when you’re supposed to be starting your day.
  32. You fantasize about nothing other than sleep.
  33. People tell you co-sleeping is really the best for the baby and it always worked for them.
  34. You start gathering doctor’s phone numbers so your husband can go ahead with his vasectomy.
  35. Drinking coffee makes you feel like puking.
  36. Not drinking coffee makes you feel like puking.
  37. You start praying on the regular.
  38. You overhear your husband praying also.
  39. You tell yourself “this too shall pass” twenty-five times a day.
  40. You make plans to go to yoga even if you’re tired.
  41. You cancel plans to go to yoga when you’re way beyond tired, bordering on incoherent and no amount of downdogging will get you anywhere close to feeling sort of okay.
  42. You stay over at your mother’s house when your husband goes out of town for work AGAIN, so that you can maybe, possibly avoid calling him in the middle of the night and ugly crying into the phone.
  43. You try to distract yourself from the fact the he’s sleeping soundly in a hotel bed with no one pulling at his teet or yelling in his ear.
  44. Consider taking up day drinking but realize you won’t be a fun drunk like you used to be anyway so what’s the point?
  45. You finally check your email and write back to the “gentle sleep coach” and feel a shred of something that resembles hope.
  46. Have a kind of okay night with the baby and consider cancelling the coaching appointment and saving all that money that you really don’t have in the first place.
  47. Have a horrible night with the baby and shell out the dollars.
  48. Get the baby to sleep and stay asleep for the first time ever and think it was the best money you ever spent.
  49. Celebrate by pouring yourself a huge glass of red wine but fall asleep before you can drink it.
  50. Sleep for three uninterrupted hours and feel as if you can take over the world and wonder how it’s even possible that you weren’t a way more productive person when you were sleeping for an astonishing seven or eight hours A NIGHT on the regular.
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5 Ways Life Has Changed Since Having My Second Kid

Sarah Bregel

Recently, I went from being a mother of one to a mother of two. The first few weeks of having two children had its challenges. Everyone was short on sleep and I was constantly occupied by the newest member of the family—my infant son. But Dad stepped it up, giving big sister a ton of love and attention and I was actually quite satisfied to be clutched by this new baby round the clock. I was happy to spend my days (and nights) getting to know the tiny person who’d already occupied my body for the better part of a year.

While there was undoubtedly more on my to-do list, overall, things didn’t seem that much harder. I even told a friend who inquired about how my life was different that it really wasn’t. While, yes, there was new baby who cried in the evenings, we were still doing the same things we’d always been doing.

Now five months into having two kids, I take it all back. I’m no longer high off birth hormones and newborn fumes. The acid trip has worn off and real life with two kids—one preschooler and one infant—has set in. Though I’m overjoyed to be reveling in what I feel is my “complete family,” I can now say with complete confidence that having two kids is no freaking joke. I’ll be the first one to fully acknowledge that having one child can be tremendously challenging, as well, but here’s how my life has changed since I gained one more.

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Continue reading on Mommy Nearest… 

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8 Chores you should pawn off on your kids

Sarah Bregel

I don’t like doing most chores. In fact, during my entire freshman year of college, my sheets never made it into a washing machine once. I know, it’s disgusting and totally sickens me now, thinking of how they were a very light shade of beige by the end of the year. At some point in early spring, I almost couldn’t take it anymore and was getting ready to tear them off my bed, but my roommate made a suggestion: “Well, you’ve made it this far, you might as well just keep it going.” I was easily persuaded.

Come summer, I think I just threw them out and vowed I’d do better the following year.

But my while my “better” might have meant a few more trips to the laundromat, my hatred for doing chores, especially dishes and laundry, hasn’t subsided that much since 2003, the year I graduated from high school. I do these things now, and frequently, but I only do it so that my kids aren’t running around in filth. It appears I value their health a bit more than I did my own.

I’ve always suspected that a little too much was done for my sister and me when we were young (and not so young). My room was often cleaned for me. My laundry was washed and folded. On occasion, I rinsed a dish and put it in the dishwasher, but usually, I just put it in the sink and left it there, as if that was half the battle. I really don’t remember doing any chores as a kid… ever. And while I think there is some value in letting kids be kids, I also think doing chores as a child makes adjusting to doing them as an adult much easier.

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Continue reading at HuffPost Parents… 

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9 Rules for Grandparents to follow at the holidays so they get invited back next year

Sarah Bregel

When a parent becomes a grandparent, a series of chemical reactions take place in the human brain. This release of hormones (endorphins, oxytocin, etc) is known to contribute to what is generally referred to as “The Grandparent Effect” – grandparents doing whatever the hell they want with no regard to consequences all in the name of love.

Obviously, I’m joking, and I fully appreciate the amazing love Grandparents give. But the hormone cocktail would help explain some of the bizarre grandparent behavior I’ve both experienced first-hand and heard about from friends that seems to peak at the holidays. In fact, it’s one of the biggest complaints I hear new parents talking about: “Why do my child’s grandparents think they can do whatever they want with my kid just because it’s Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza? They should know better!” Or, to quote a friend, “Why are there candy cane flakes in my 8-month-old’s neck rolls?? She doesn’t even have teeth!”

If the grandparents are coming to town this holiday season, you may want to post this list up on your soon-to-be goodie-stuffed fridge. Or better yet, print it out and send it to them anonymously BEFORE all hell breaks loose at the “most wonderful time of the year.” Here’s what I’m telling my kids’ grandparents this winter:

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http://weheartit.com/entry/44974753

Read more: http://www.mommyish.com/2014/11/25/rules-for-grandparents-at-holidays/#ixzz3K6f8mc2N

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16 Things My Husband is Usually Doing Wrong (According to Me)

Sarah Bregel

Like most loving, decent, kind and patient spouses, I don’t like to rag on my husband. I really don’t! But sometimes his actions make me question if he is in fact, watching an episode of The Office in his head instead of being marginally invested in whatever else he is doing. Like having a conversation with his wife or caring for our two tiny humans.

I love my husband dearly. I’d marry him again if I could. Sometimes I wonder how we even found each other in this crazy mixed up world. In fact, I’d make a list of all the things he is doing right, but it would be too long and too gushy and I’d lose my street cred. Even so, I’ve had to practice patience over the last five years of my life as a spouse and a mother because though raising little ones is tough, I think co-parenting (and co-existing under the same roof at all times) might be even tougher.

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Since my partner (for life, ahhh!!… still gets me) also happens to be such a good sport (remind me to add that to the things he’s doing right list)…

Here are 16 things my husband is usually doing wrong (according to me):

1. Not answering questions. I talk. He doesn’t answer. I talk louder. He still doesn’t answer. I talk REALLY loud and he says “geez, why are you screaming?”

2. Not having breasts and therefore not being able to do the midnight feeding, the 2:30 am feeding OR the 5 am feeding.

3. Moving too slowly. This typically pertains to when bedtime is looming, when we have anywhere to be at a specific time or when one of our kids is about 30 seconds away from a huge meltdown. Enter: slow mo.

4. Looking at his phone so much you’d think there was a real life naked woman in there who talks to him and doesn’t leave a trail of breast milk wherever she goes.

5. Coming home with sixty percent of what was on the grocery list and a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t.

6. Two words. Selective. Hearing.

7. Two more words. Fake. Pooping.

8. Also, getting home from work and immediately excusing himself to poop when I haven’t pooped alone in five years and have been drowning in children all day.

9. Forgetting to flush. If it’s yellow, whatevs, I’m mellow. If it’s brown… PLEASE flush it down. I’ve already seen more poop today than you can possibly imagine.

10. Basically just pooping too much altogether for a thirty year old man.

11. Being able to sleep through crying, whining, and me being body-checked by children.

12. Falling asleep the second his head hits the pillow.

13. Working out twice and losing 8 pounds while I busting my ass at the gym five days a week and still have to wear pants with an elastic waist.

14. Buying so many kinds of good beer that I have no choice but to drink them. Hence #13.

15. Always needing me to find things.

16. Putting clothes on the little people. The tag goes in the back. Always in the back. How he did not think the backwards bathing suit on our four year old looked completely insane is beyond me. We are not raising a mini Christina Aguilera here!