filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
It’s Whiny Wednesday, your chance to gripe about the issues you’re dealing with this week. This week’s suggested topic is one we’ve all had to deal with:
An over-abundance of work pregnancies
I can relate to this one. When I was trying to conceive, I managed a small department of about eight people. One year we had three simultaneous pregnancies…and none of them was mine.
Whine away!
This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is that old chestnut:
The baby shower!
A reader wrote:
I would like to know how others handle baby showers. I have vowed to not go to any more baby showers after leaving the last one in tears and disappointed in myself because I felt so strong before I went. Do others have emotional issues about other people’s baby showers or am I alone?
After assuring her that she definitely was not alone in feeling this way, I thought I’d turn the topic over to you. And I’m adding to it the newest horror, the gender reveal party.
Please whine, rant, empathize, and even advise on this most delicate of topics.
I’ve seen this topic come up a lot in the blog comments, so I know that many of you have experienced this. It’s the topic of caring for aging parents, and whether the responsibility is shared fairly when you don’t have children.
What’s been your experience with this?
If you’re new to the site, you might wondering what Whiny Wednesday is all about.
A few years ago, some readers commented that they couldn’t express how they felt around friends and colleagues, as they were always made to feel as if they were whining. So, we created Whiny Wednesday as a safe place to vent about about whatever’s on your mind each week. It can be an issue surrounding living without children, or just a general grumble about life, work, family, the world.
I used to start each post with a gripe of my own, but lately I’ve found I’ve covered most of what bothers me, so I put out a call for Whiny Wednesday topics, and you, dear readers, came through! So, each week, I offer one of your suggested topics as a starting point, but as always, any topic is fair game.
So, let’s kick off with this week’s topic:
Parents who respond to hearing that you don’t have children with, “Do you want mine?”
Happy whining!
Facebook has been the topic of many Whiny Wednesday rants, and rightly so. Social media in general has perpetuated a myth of happiness that can make any kind of pain feel worse. So this week, our topic is this:
“The Illusion of Other People’s Perfect Lives”
Let us know how you feel.
40 years after the birth of the first IVF baby, the fertility industry has come a long way. But when it comes to the psychological aspects of infertility, most clinics are still in the dark ages. And for those of us for whom IVF was not the magic fix, what happens to us afterwards?
This week’s topic is for those of you who arrived here via the infertility route.
Do you feel you were left hanging by the fertility industry?
Okay, I know that’s a loaded question, so if you don’t feel like jumping in on this topic, or if it doesn’t apply to you, feel free to bring your own whine to the party this week.
With any kind of grief, there comes a point where those around you expect you to be over it. For many of us, that point comes just as the full impact of loss is hitting us and we are far from okay. So here’s this week’s topic:
The pressure to “get over” your loss
Have you felt that pressure from those around you?
It’s Whiny Wednesday and this is one that always makes me scratch my head:
“Having kids made me grow up.”
So, does this mean I’m not a grown-up? Because if so, I’d like to relinquish all these grown-up responsibilities I seem to have. How about you?
I just returned from the mall where I shopped for graduation gifts for the children of friends. I don’t begrudge the money or even the feelings of obligation, but buying gifts for other people’s children still stirs up some tough emotions. So, it’s the topic of this week’s Whiny Wednesday:
Buying gifts for other people’s children
Whine away, ladies, and feel free to chime in with anything else that’s setting you off today.
~ "a raw, transparent account of the gut-wrenching journey of infertility."
~ "a welcome sanity check for women left to wonder how society became so fixated on motherhood."
