Ho Ho Holidays w/Vanessa Ragland!
12.16.15 | Share: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook
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Totally Mommy Podcast
Episode 102
Happy Holidays Laimemoms and Dads! Cohostest with the mostest, VANESSA RAGLAND is here to discuss impending baby-dom, our concerns over gun safety as mothers, and of course our good/bad/funnies! (Learning to relax! Pie sharing! Feeling anxious about labor! Turkey day sick den!/ Belly crumbs! Santa impressions!). Then we give our unqualified advice to listener questions about a heartbreaking situation involving a spouse’s betrayal and having to face single motherhood, how to cope with “gender disappointment” and why some parents seem hell bent on making it seem like being parents is, well… hell? Enjoy!
15 Comments!
Congrats on baby Otis!
First of all, a huge congrats to Elizabeth and Andy on baby Stedman’s birth! Woohoo!
I want to address the “gender disappointment” topic. I had a very similar reaction to finding out that my baby was boy. I took the time to grieve what I looked forward to about having a girl (I was the same as Vanessa and Elizabeth in having sisters and thinking I’d be better equipped as mother to a daughter), and then started allowing myself to fall head over heels in love with my boy. Now that he is 6 months old, I truly cannot imagine having a girl. I love having a little boy so much. I agree with Vanessa that as a mother to a boy, you can (and some may argue *should*) do almost everything you would with a girl. Maybe it’s even better for me to have a boy because the preconceptions of myself as a mother to a girl are thrown out the window.
This comment is GREAT. As a mother of a boy (who didn’t think she had any gender preferences until I found out I was having a boy and ended up going to my car and crying) I think this is spot on. I just found out I’m having another boy and that also took a little getting used to (b/c we are most likely done after this and I had to sort of “let go” of my idea of ever having a girl).
I think the first time it was the tears were more related to the fact I was worried I wouldn’t know how to be a mother to a boy (I only have one sister so I never grew up with boys). Turns out… I do and it’s so SO great. He is really the sweetest most perfect kid I could have ever asked for… and I think THAT’S really what a mother wants… to have a great kid… and it’s our preconceived notions that make us think that’s more likely with one gender or another… which ABSOLUTELY not true.
To put it succinctly.. all anyone wants is a kid who isn’t an asshole. And neither gender has better odds than the other in that regard. 🙂
(and I CAN NOT WAIT to hear Baby Stedman’s birth story… congrats mamma!)
The gender confusion letter (which you both answered v well in my non-parent opinion) reminded me of a post my lovely friend Keris wrote about initially not wanting 2 boys: https://dellasays.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/one-of-each/
Vanessa! I just wanted to give you my experience with language with my oldest (just over 3). She was a super late talker, I felt like she was way behind everyone else her age. She’s in daycare so I was able to see lots of similarly aged children and I would marvel at their speech. One of them came up to me when she was 2 (as in just turned 1) and said “I like your necklace!” When my daughter couldn’t even say necklace, much less put together a sentence. She’s always been super happy and super social and I knew she was understanding everything, so I just waited it out a bit longer. Low and behold as she hit 3 she became a FOUNTAIN of words and sentences. Now my husband and I are like ‘would you like to play the quiet game??’. She literally never.stops.talking. She still has some pronunciation issues but continues to grow in her speech development so I feel like it’s just something she was a late bloomer with. She walked pretty early (right after she turned 10 months) so I just chalked it up to her focusing more on the physical (which she’s always been more advanced at) and less on the verbal. So although I strongly believe in early intervention and help if there is a problem (and it never hurts to get him checked out if your mommy gut is telling you something is up!), I also think some kids are just a little slower to grow in that speech than others. So hang in there…not everyone is reciting the Gettysburg Address at 1.5-2. 🙂
P.S. Pop My Culture was one of the first podcasts I ever listened to…you’re awesome!
I just wanted to throw my two cents in about speech and language development. There is absolutely no harm in getting Oliver evaluated. Especially if you have a ‘gut’ feeling that there might be an expressive speech/language delay. Worst case scenario is that a speech language pathologist says he is developing typically and does not have an expressive language or speech delay. There is, IMO, more harm in the ‘wait and see’ approach. Although some kids are late talkers, you can’t really know if they are or not without some expert input. I’ve never met a parent who took their child in for an early intervention evaluation and wish they had waited. In fact, most parents say ‘why did we wait so long?” The wait and see approach advocated by pediatricians is outdated. Especially since the research has shown that early intervention makes a big difference in a child’s progress with speech and language delays. Keep in mind that many pediatricians use the bare minimum of ‘6 words’ by 18 months as their guide, but in reality many typically developing children have 30-50 words by 18-20months and include words that are two syllables (think “ba oons” for balloons).. Evaluations are free through early intervention programs so I would look into your state’s programs. That’s just my two cents!
Thanks for these guys! I have always set my marker at the 2 year mark for evaluation. But honestly, he is meeting the amount of words everything says is normal, it’s more my paranoia / comparison which i really need to work on.
One thing my husband told me about having a son is that for boys their mom is ALWAYS the first love of their life and that it’s a special bond for their whole life. That has really stayed with me and gave me perspective when I felt like maybe I wouldn’t have a close relationship with my child because I was having a boy. Now two boys later and love love love having boys. In a house of three boys I have sort of goddess status which is not a bad place to be 😉 My advice, maybe treat yourself to a day out and browsing all the cute boys clothes and imagining your son. Not that it will change totally how you feel but it might start to help you bond. Also, little babies don’t seem very gendered, you can put little boys is cute ducky prints, etc.so you don’t miss out on all the cute baby stuff at all, treat yourself to some of that too!
Congrats again on Otis!! So excited for your family. Like most of your listeners, I am also so fed up with the gun policies in this country that I contacted my senators, who are both republicans and here was one of her response.
Dear Ms. Casaletto,
Thank you for contacting me about gun control and the Second Amendment. It is important for me to hear from folks in Iowa on policy matters such as this.
I am deeply saddened by news of tragic events that occur across our country involving firearms, and my thoughts and prayers continue to be with the friends and families of the victims of these events. It remains important that we, as a country, review all of the surrounding evidence and specific factors that lead to these independent tragedies. While I will carefully review any new gun control proposal put forward, I generally believe that overly restrictive gun control laws do very little to deter criminals while imposing unnecessary burdens on law-abiding Americans.
Our efforts to prevent future tragedies therefore need to focus on enforcing current gun laws, community engagement, and advancing mental health treatment – not on additional restrictions to law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights. Going forward, there should be a particularly thoughtful and considerate discussion surrounding mental health reforms that could help prevent incidents of gun violence stemming from mental illness.
Please know that I will continue to keep your views in mind as this issue is considered by the Senate in the future. Feel free to contact my office with any further information, as I always enjoy hearing from Iowans.
Sincerely,
Joni K. Ernst
United States Senator
I then responded to this by asking her how much her campaign received from the NRA and have yet to hear back. She is one of the senators who was bought and paid by the Koch brothers. The other senators had almost the same response 🙁 feeling hopeless in Iowa. I hope you other Laimemoms have better luck than me in your contacting your representatives.
I really loved what Vanessa said about “You don’t know who your child will be”. You go through life imagining this picture of your future and how it will be, but even if you have the 2 girls you always thought you’d have or whatever, you don’t know who those kids will be. Maybe they’ll be tomboys, maybe they’ll be super girly, maybe somewhere in between. It’s nice to daydream about what life will be like in the future, but I think we need to realize that it’s all a big unknown, and it’ll be how it’s going to be.
I wish I could reach out and hug the woman who wrote in about gender disappointment. Her email literally made me cry… I was her about a year and a half ago. I wanted a girl so badly, it was all I had ever imagined, especially being one of two girls in my family. Girls were all I knew, I loved drooling over little girl clothes, and had visions of Barbies and tea parties in my dreams. When I went to my gender ultrasound, the tech told me it was a girl. The whole time, I was looking at the images thinking this is HER little hands, HER little lips, HER little toes. Then she got real quiet at the end, and said “oh my God I’m so sorry… it’s a boy”. I couldn’t even hold myself together for the remainder of the appointment. When we left I totally lashed out, said I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore, and acted like a total nut. My mom took me shopping for cute boy things which did help, but it took me a while to feel connected. I actually had drafted up an email to send Elizabeth about this very topic, but felt so guilty for feeling that way that I couldn’t hit send.
Gender disappointment is real, and is very difficult to wrap your head around. My advice to you is to allow yourself to mourn the loss of the life you had pictured, but then take time to imagine all the fun things that you will be able to do. Shopping for cute boy things did help, as most shopping does 🙂 I found comfort in seeing the love many of my friends and coworkers had with their own sons, and imagined myself in their shoes. The thing that actually helped the most was pouring myself into his nursery, which brought back the excitement for his arrival.
Now that my son is here and is 14 months old, I’ll echo every other mother’s words when I say he is the most amazing little guy and now I can’t imagine NOT being a boy mom. I am actually hoping when it’s time for #2, that we have another boy 🙂 In retrospect, I feel so silly for feeling disconnected but pregnancy and all those hormones make you think and feel many things! You are not alone at all, and if you fake it till you make it, you will come around. Hang in the momma because once he’s here your life is going to change in amazing ways!
Congrats Elizabeth and Andy on the birth of baby Steadman! Elizabeth (and Vanessa), I love the podcasts and I have listened religiously since the first episode. It helps get me get through life raising a four year old and a two year old.
Normally I am a very passive listener but I feel very strongly about the topic of gun control that was brought up in the beginning of the episode. Please don’t get me wrong, I am all for stricter guns laws. These mass shootings have become the new normal in our country and that needs to change. The comments that bothered me were about the gentleman you saw while driving that had NRA stickers covering his back window. Just because he belongs to the NRA doesn’t mean he is trigger happy and will shoot you for disagreeing with your opinion. I don’t think a lot of people understand what the NRA stands for. The people who belong to the NRA typically are the law abiding citizens that have passed the background checks and have gone through the process to own a gun legally.
People say we can’t just discriminate against all Muslims and lock our borders but the same goes for people who choose to support the NRA, we can’t say all NRA members are going to commit a mass shooting.
I hope I was able to communicate my opinion effectively. I support stricter guns laws but we can’t judge those people who choose to own guns. This is a difficult topic in our country but the topic needs to be discussed so that changes can be made to keep our country safe.
Thank you ladies for the podcast each week. I was super excited when Vanessa came on as a permanent guest every other week. Even though our opinions might differ slightly, I will continue to be a loyal listener because in the end we want the same thing: a world where our kids are safe!
Thank you for the kind words and happy holidays to your family as well! Fair enough regarding the NRA dude, I see your point. I don’t actually judge people who choose to own guns responsibly and who also support stricter gun laws. My issue is actually with the leadership of the NRA, who have put money and political power over the safety and well being of our society/children and especially their gun owning members whose lives and families are more at risk for gun violence than anyone. The NRA used to be a sensible organization that even encouraged common sense gun measures, but has now become nothing short of a terrorist organization - it’s incredibly corrupt - lining the pockets of politicians to keep their interests and cash flowing while watching now more people killed from their efforts - lack of regulation, spreading propaganda, mass production, etc. - more people are now killed from guns in our country than cars, when 95% of families own cars and only 32% own guns. So while you are totally right - and I truly don’t judge someone for owning a gun if they are responsible and take the issue seriously - but I do judge someone for supporting/belonging to and giving money to the NRA.
Hope the differentiation is clear! Thank you for writing in, I think this sort of dialogue is super important.
Just wanted to echo all the words of encouragement for the mom with gender disappointment. I also grew up with all sisters and was kind of terrified of what to do with a boy. My son is 22 months old and I can’t imagine life any differently. I sometimes miss the bows and frills but boy clothes are pretty fun and cute. Plus, like Vanessa said, you can still do a lot of the same things. My MIL (who has 2 boys) told me while pregnant that a son will always love his mother. Plus you get to avoid the girl drama and will learn a lot about construction vehicles. I also say to feel your sadness but maybe talk to friends who have boys, shop for clothes, decorate the nursery and let yourself grieve and move past. Hugs!