Do you ever get a break?
Earlier this month, three of the four people in my family were vomiting. I was terrified that the baby would get it and we'd be up all night dealing with a puking toddler and newborn.
Normally during a bout of stomach illness, at least for my no longer existent, past non-parenting self, I'd curl up on the bed and moan and distract myself from the bucket by sipping electrolyte water or watching terribly trashy television just to get by.
But what happens when your toddler gets sick, and your baby gets sick?
For parents, one of the hardest things to reckon with is that you never truly get much—if any—time off. And mothers in particular are hit the hardest.
Thankfully right now my little family seems to be well past the worst of it, but if you've ever felt that inner rage come out because you don't get a break, ever, I have several books for you today.
Today I'm cataloguing my reading list recommendations based on your emotions and feelings. Scroll down to find the book suited to your particular situation.
Yours in all the mayhem and madness,
— Sarah Peck
Executive Director
Startup Pregnant
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If you want to know why you feel...
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ALL THE RAGE.
If you're looking for data about how messed up motherhood is in our country, take a look at All The Rage: Mothers, Fathers, And The Myth Of Equal Partnership. Journalist and psychologist Darcy Lockman looks at "the most pernicious problem facing modern parents—how egalitarian relationships become traditional ones when children are introduced into the household."
From the back cover: "In an era of seemingly unprecedented feminist activism, enlightenment, and change, data shows that one area of gender inequality stubbornly persists: the disproportionate amount of parental work that falls on women, no matter their background, class, or professional status."
Read this if: you want to understand why you feel so angry.
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OVERWHELMED.
If you feel like you never quite have enough time and you don't know why you feel so frazzled (and behind), read this. Brigid Sculte's book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has The Time opened my eyes last year to how piecemeal a parent's lives can become, and why we're suffering so much from lack of supportive social structures and child care, and what it does to our work, our love, and our play.
From the back cover: "It is a deeply reported and researched, honest and often hilarious journey from feeling that, as one character in the book said, time is like a "rabid lunatic" running naked and screaming as your life flies past you, to understanding the historical and cultural roots of the overwhelm, how worrying about all there is to do and the pressure of feeling like we're never have enough time to do it all, or do it well, is "contaminating" our experience of time, how time pressure and stress is resculpting our brains and shaping our workplaces, our relationships and squeezing the space that the Greeks said was the point of living a Good Life: that elusive moment of peace called leisure."
Read this if: you want to understand why you feel behind constantly.
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MISUNDERSTOOD.
It's not all rage-inducing, however! If the two books above look like too much to handle, read this one for a bit more peace of mind. This book, What No One Tells You: A Guide to Your Emotions From Pregnancy to Motherhood, will most likely make you feel a bit better because you'll feel more heard and understood.
Alexandra Sacks, MD and Catherine Birndorf, MD, are two reproductive psychiatrists who have thirty years of combined experience listening to new and expectant mothers. They have heard it all. Their book covers "the complicated emotions that women experience, and show why it’s natural for “matrescence”—the birth of a mother—to be as stressful and transformative a period as adolescence."
Read this if: you want to know if what you're feeling during pregnancy and motherhood is normal (it is, and there are so many ways to feel).
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