October 30, 2010 at 8:07 am (Community, Loving life!, Men folk, Parenting, single mother, single parenting, The human body)
Tags: helpful boyfriend, isolation, married mother, sick child, single mother, teen pregnancy
As a mother who has been single since my baby was 8 weeks old there are things that some mothers with partners take as a given that I have never experienced. I’ve never known any different and have generally just kept my head down and got on with it. Now I have a man around I am learning that things can actually be very different indeed. Especially in the cases of sickness and grocery shopping.
A friend of mine recently disinvited Finn and me round for a playdate as Finn had one of his perennial colds. The reason she gave was that her husband was going away on business trip soon and she would be ‘single mommin’ it’ for a couple of days and couldn’t imagine having to look after a sick toddler all by herself. Wow. I guess it must be kind of like living a life dressed only in silk and then being asked to wear a scratchy old corn bag for a couple of days. And then someone saying that they would like to put some fleas in that scratchy old corn bag (the fleas being the toddler getting sick part…) Is this analogy making any sense?
Since starting daycare Finn has permanently been sick and I’ve permanently been by myself with him – quite often while I was sick too. Motherhood doesn’t stop because you have a temp of 103 or a migraine. Now, for the last year I have had come and go stomach flu and Finn – recognizing the signs that I am about to hurl – always comes joyously following me into the bathroom to splash his hands in the vomit as it whizzes out of my mouth. There’s never been time to throw him in his crib prior to puking and afterwards there’s barely been time to wash the vomit out of my hair before he’s clamoring for a pick up or his bottle or just something that he has to have right then and there. With no time to recover from these vomiting episodes this year I’ve became exhausted, dehydrated and I have lost pounds.
These are the glories of single motherhood that you just don’t discover till they slap you fat across the face at 4am. Read the rest of this entry »
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September 30, 2010 at 8:19 am (Men folk, Rants and raves and foams at the mouth, single mother, single parenting)
Tags: affair, cheating, divorce, divorce statistics, gynocologist, infidelity, marriage, pap smear, single mother, STD
of marriages resulting in children will end in divorce – according to my gynecologist. That means 70% of mothers – at some point – will be single mothers. That’s more mothers than not.
That’s a whole lot of mothers.
My gynecologist also tells me that married men having affairs isn’t the rarity we all might like to think it is. When I go in for my yearly check up and mention what’s happened between me and my soon to be ex-husband, she barely raises one of her neatly manicured eyebrows. She simply tells me it’s ‘going around’ and marks me down to be tested for every STD known to man without so much as a deep sigh or a disapproving shake of the head. It’s not that she’s not sympathetic, it just she’s just seen it thirteen times already that week.
Food for thought…
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August 25, 2010 at 9:34 am (Rants and raves and foams at the mouth, single mother)
Tags: films, single mother, strippers
Why in every movie that features a single mother is she always a stripper? Is this a viable career option that never got fully explained to me? Do strip joints mail women a job application along with their divorce decree? Is this something that single mothers are just supposed to do: They’ve fallen so far down the ladder from societies expectations (boo hiss you couldn’t keep your family together) why not just fall a little more and make some cash while you’re there? I’m going to keep a list of all the movies where single mothers are portrayed as strippers and at some point I’m going to make a complaint – to Mr. Hollywood.
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