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11 tips from a new mom

Posted on 11/03/2022 - 10:58 by Desarrollo WebAdictos

“Sharing my experiences as a new mom, I am sure that more than one will feel identified.” Nancy Aguilar describes herself on Mama Primeriza, a Facebook fan page with almost 130 thousand followers where she shares parenting tips and anecdotes of the most beautiful adventure of life: motherhood.

“I opened the page in 2020 because I had my emotions running high when my daughter was born. I started writing about how I felt and noticed that many people responded. I didn’t think it would be so successful,” Nancy tells us.

Those experiences led her to connect with thousands of women who felt identified. “More moms were going through the same thing I was going through.”

Two years after publishing her first post, Nancy tells us the top tips she would give to other new moms, including herself, to understand what is going on when having her first baby. This is what she replied to us. They are all very useful; we are sure they will work for you.

1. Reality surpasses everything you imagined

It is good to be informed and prepared before your baby’s arrival, but nothing compares to having him already in your arms. You can read thousands of books or even have some experience with nephews and children of friends, but do not expect everything to be as you were told or as the book said.

“Honestly, I did not imagine that motherhood would be like this. I had already supported my sister with her two girls, and I thought I knew what it was like to have a baby because I helped her bathe them, change them, take them to school… I thought I was ready, but nothing prepares you to have a baby when your body is recovering. It is a very strong physical and emotional wear. If you add that my baby was born during a pandemic, I stopped working and dealt with postpartum depression, which I did not expect.

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2. Your child is your teacher

When you have a child, you face a new world, and you have to learn little by little about it. You evolve as a person and mother because your baby is your best teacher.

“Emma has taught me that you have to evolve and grow to face what comes at each stage of your baby. Two years ago, I learned the whole topic of breastfeeding, diapers, and bathing the baby; today, I face emotional intelligence. I have realized that there are many things that I have to regulate to pass on to my daughter. Motherhood is growth.

3. Accept your new role

Motherhood is a radical life change that confronts you:

“At first, it is a shock. Seeing that you are no longer the woman you were before getting pregnant but a new woman with other responsibilities is very hard. It was tough for me, but now that I understand my role as a mom, it’s a blessing. I know that I have to grow up together with my daughter.

4. One day at a time

A bad day doesn’t define you as a mom.

“Every day is different and full of learning, so I would tell you to think about one day at a time. Do not punish yourself or get overwhelmed because maybe today was not good; tomorrow will be a new day, and you will think about things better. Calm down; this is motherhood; some days are excellent, and others not so much. We should not label ourselves or punish ourselves by saying that we are the worst mothers just because we had a bad day.

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5. Be patient

Go at your own pace, be patient with yourself, your body, and your baby. Each thing requires its time and a period of learning.

“Breastfeeding, for example, is an art. You learn, your baby learns, and there is a very nice bond. But before that connection happens, it isn’t easy to get used to. Some are successful, and it doesn’t hurt, but I wasn’t one of them, the truth is I struggled a lot, but I loved it when I managed it well. Don’t despair, be patient with yourself and your baby.”

6. Do not compare yourself

“I would also tell you not to compare your motherhood to someone else’s because they are all different. There is no better or worse. Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. As I almost always put in the texts I write, I would tell you: you are doing well”.

7. Sometimes, you feel overwhelmed

“For me, the first few weeks were very overwhelming; I felt lost. The page helped me get off my chest, and many moms told me they felt that way. That’s when I realized it wasn’t me; we ALL went through ups and downs. We have meltdowns. Motherhood is a flurry of emotions, but when you go down, there are two options: either you go further down, or is it a watershed for you to wake up and get ahead. There are days when I still feel overwhelmed, and that happens to all of us.”

8. You can’t control everything

“When activities and tasks come together when the day doesn’t give you up or don’t do what we had planned, you feel frustrated. Emma got to teach me that I can’t control everything. I used to have everything planned, and it turned out impossible. When you become a mother, you face the fact that there are things that get out of your hands, and you cannot control some situations, people, or emotions.

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9. If you need help, look for it

Another piece of advice I would give you is that if you need help, look for it and accept it because we tend to fall for the I can do everything. It happened to me, and it’s not true. Even if you say, “It’s just a baby, and I can do it,” it is not true. It’s ok to accept help”.

10. Trust your body

“Be confident in your body and your instincts. Even if you don’t know how to do it well, you can”.

11. Be selective with the information

“Social networks have good and bad things, but it depends on what you decide to pay attention to. We have to be selective; we have the power to choose what to follow. Take what works for you and your family, and throw the rest away.”

Translated by: Ligia M. Oliver Manrique de Lara

Spanish version: Here

During breastfeeding, there is a crush of love between mom and baby

Posted on 28/02/2022 - 10:04 by Astrid Rivera Reynoso

Movies, television, and everything around you make you idealize motherhood. They have made you see that the moment you breastfeed your baby for the first time will be magical, and your connection will happen immediately. It is not always that way. Fatigue after childbirth, emotions, and myths make breastfeeding difficult.

When you become a mom, you face endless doubts, and every day you discover new things that are a challenge. Breastfeeding is one of them because it is as if it were your first exam on how to be a mother; if you do not do it well, people will judge you, and then you will assume that you are a bad mother so you hesitate to ask for help.

Do not feel bad for not being able to breastfeed your baby; the lack of support and information is one of the obstacles to breastfeeding in Mexico; only 31% of babies are exclusively breastfed in the first six months of life, according to Unicef.

Calm down; not everything has to be perfect, you are learning, and you will often make mistakes. You are not alone; many women want to help and accompany you in this new adventure. Ani Cuartas, a lactation consultant, tells you about her experience.

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From rage to love

Ani remembers her first time facing breastfeeding as the most significant challenge she had as a new mom; emotions and fatigue combined against her; postpartum depression made it more difficult for her to breastfeed her little Julia.

“I didn’t think I would last breastfeeding for six months; at first, it seemed that it was the most demanding, exhausting. Physical exhaustion and hormones made me feel angry about breastfeeding.”

The first month of breastfeeding was not pretty for Ani, so she started supplementing with formula.

“I wanted to feel that I was the good old Ana María that could go out for coffee, but I couldn’t do it because Julia had to eat and everything depended on me. I suffered very strong baby blues. So I complimented my daughter with formula initially because I said that not everything could depend on me”.

Julia started having reflux and constipation; she complained while she slept; this alarmed Ani and made her feel very guilty. She changed her pediatrician, who told her that her milk was of good quality, and she recommended stopping formula. Her daughter recovered, and Ani fell in love with breastfeeding.

“I felt that I was making my daughter sick because of depression and lack of accompaniment”.

One in seven women suffers from postpartum depression, which can occur at any time during the first year of giving birth; this is why women experiencing this condition require much more support for breastfeeding, warns the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Postpartum depression makes breastfeeding difficult. Photo: Pixabay

The crush

Once her baby was healthy again, the much-talked-about connection between mother and child when breastfeeding was born.

“I was alone in the house with her; I was breastfeeding her, and Julia unlatched, looked at me, smiled at me for the first time, looking into my eyes. She then went back to breastfeeding. There I said, Here is the connection”.

Ani tells mothers, “This connection with their children is not always immediate, as people would make you believe on television since women go through a very complicated process after giving birth. At such times, what you need most is support and the right information at the right time.”

“I completely fell in love with breastfeeding, I liked it so much that I breastfed my daughter for one year and nine months, I liked it so much that I became certified as a lactation consultant to support and accompany moms in this process”.

The mother-child connection during breastfeeding may not be immediate. Photo: Pixabay

Ani invites all mothers to seek help when they need it, “It is essential to have a support network so that you do not feel alone”.

She also tells us that in March, she will launch a recipe book in which she combines “The experience of being a mother and making delicious, healthy and easy food for my daughter, together with a gastro pediatrician so that we have dishes that are safe and that we contribute to our children”.

If you want more advice from Ani Castro, follow her on mujermamavilla.com

Translated by: Ligia M. Oliver Manrique de Lara

Spanish version: Here

Happy and strong: this is what the children of Millennial moms are like

Posted on 23/02/2022 - 19:35 by Astrid Rivera Reynoso

Criticism towards the way of raising children is very common, especially if they come from previous generations in which you feel watched all the time, either by your mother, mother-in-law, or grandmother; everyone thinks they know the magic formula about parenting. To all those who have criticized you, you can tell them that: Millennial moms raise happier children.

Most of the mothers in Mexico are Millennials; by 2020, 66.9% of births in Mexico will be to women under 30 years of age. According to Inegi, the average age of the Mexican population is 29 years old.

The Millennial Parents and Education Study, which analyzed 150,000 mothers born between 1980 and 1990, reveals that this sector is not afraid of negative criticism. They are willing to change the way they were raised and how to perceive life.

Research conducted by sociologists from the Walton Family Foundation indicates that Millennial moms have greater access to information, which gives them more tools to face the challenges that parenting entails.

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The average age in Mexico is 29. Photo: Piqsels

What are the children of Millennial moms like?

The conclusions of the investigation detail that the children raised by this group of the population have the following qualities:

Diverse: These types of moms are more interested in promoting in their little ones the importance of diversity and respect for all people regardless of their differences.
More communicative: They can better express their emotions and what they think.
Nature lovers: Children are concerned about animals and caring for nature.
Altruistic: Millennial mothers are witnesses to the selfishness of previous generations, so they encourage their little ones to share what they have and put limits on the competition with others.
Multitask: Although they are in constant contact with technology, this does not limit them from doing many tasks simultaneously. Their moms encourage them to get involved in many activities.

Children of Millennial moms can multitask. Photo: Pxhere

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Who are the Millennials?

It is a category spread in the media that brings together those born with the consolidation of the digital era and who became adults with the change of the millennium.

Although there is no agreement on its time limits, it can be said that its starting point of reference is the first years of the 1980s and that it extends until the end of the 1990s, explains the International Youth Organization (OIJ).

Rubén Darío Vázquez Romero, an academic from the Aragón Faculty of Higher Studies at UNAM, comments that millennials grew up with the Internet and easily understand digital communication.

“They point out what they don’t like and that had been normalized, such as systemic violence against women, labor abuse, etc… and they don’t hesitate to use the platforms to build these protests by creating trends and content on social networks that can point out situations and make us aware of them”.

This generation grew up with the consolidation of the digital world. Photo: Pixabay

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Tell us on Facebook if you are a Millennial mom and if you identified with this article.

Translated by: Ligia M. Oliver Manrique de Lara

Spanish version: Here

5 stigmas working moms face

Posted on 23/09/2021 - 13:45 by Desarrollo WebAdictos

In the 21st century, women are still forced to choose between motherhood and professional development. How many of us have been told phrases like “I don’t hire moms” or “we need someone without children”? No more discrimination and stigmas for working moms.

Juggling and wage gap

According to UN WOMEN, the gender wage gap is 16%, this means that women earn only 84% of what men earn.

In addition to being over-represented in vulnerable and informal jobs, women perform more care and domestic work than men, globally.

“The disadvantage due to motherhood is a reason for wage inequality. On average, working mothers are paid less, and the disparity is greater as the number of daughters or sons increases”, says UN Women.

Through a document that addresses the wage gap, the agency explains:

“The fact that mothers have lower wages is related to reduced working hours; being employed in jobs suitable for family life but with low wages; hiring and promotion decisions that harm their careers and with a lack of programs that support returning to work after being out of the labor market”.

In the book Overwhelmed, by Brigid Schulte, the author talks about confetti time: countless fragments that we cut out throughout the day in an attempt to satisfy the greatest number of demands. Working moms must “juggle” balancing their professional and family lives.

According to the ranking, Mejores empresas para madres trabajadoras, by Mamá Godín, out of the 960 executive positions, 334 are held by women. That is, 36% of that figure, only 13% are mothers, in contrast to 64% occupied by men, of whom 27% are fathers. “With these data we can analyze the situation of mothers and their low participation in the labor force”, says Aideé Zamorano, founder of Mamá Godín.

Inegi data indicate that 33.4% of working mothers work in the informal sector. In addition, they do not have access to health services as a labor benefit.

In addition to inequalities at work (the salary gap and the glass ceiling), working mothers face social stigmas that limit their development.

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1. “I don’t hire women with children because they ask for a lot of permits”

Many companies do not want to give mothers maternity leave, nor are they flexible with them during pregnancy and lactation.

Between January 2011 and March 2020, the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred) received 723 reports of women fired because their employers found out that they were going to be mothers; even though this is illegal.

Most working mothers feel that they are not given flexibility in their jobs. They prefer to work in companies where they can do remote work or opt for informal work to have more time to spend at home and raising children.

2. “Working mothers abandon their children”

There are tensions between working and non-working mothers over how to raise children. Mothers who decide to work are singled out and it is believed that they do not pay the same attention to their children or do not “take good care of them”.

This is deeply rooted in society; historically women have been in charge of raising children. The ideal would be to create a national care system, or increase government support and programs aimed at working mothers.

As for companies, they should implement flexible hours, remote work, coaching programs, support groups for working mothers, as well as medical and psychological care for infants and mothers, especially in times of pandemic, since high rates of stress, depression and anxiety have been reported, according to WHO data.

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3. “Housework is a women’s thing”

Historically, women are the main heads of the household, which makes it difficult for them to combine motherhood and housework with a steady job.

Women spend an average of 4.1 hours a day on housework and childcare, in contrast men spend 1.7 hours a day, according to the Covid-19 report and the economy of care, prepared by UN Women. In addition to their working day outside the home, women carry out another workday inside the home.

Some approaches focus on promoting new models of fatherhood among men, as well as educating girls and boys to share these responsibilities. For example, the Three Rs approach: recognize, redistribute and reduce domestic and care work.

4. “Caring for children is mere responsibility of mothers”

Culturally established gender roles in society tend to make women’s participation in newborn care mandatory.

The Federal Labor Law reinforces it, since a pregnant woman in Mexico is granted 84 days of maternity leave, distributed before and after childbirth, while a man only 5 days of paternity leave.

“It is the companies the ones that have the responsibility and the challenge of equalizing maternity and paternity benefits, in order not to reinforce stereotypes in the laws, since the bias drives women out of the labor market”, adds Zamorano.

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5. The “luchona” (fight) moms

Mothers who for some reason live without the father of their children are singled out and stigmatized. With the arrival of social networks, this mockery has gone viral and they are called “Luchona (wrestling) moms” forgetting the responsibility of the father who abandons his children and the mother is the only one in charge of providing and caring for them.

In 2020, 36.7 million women aged 15 and over who have at least one daughter or son were identified, of which 11 million do not have a spouse, which represents 30.1%.

Of the total number of mothers who do not declare having a spouse, 66.9% were once in a relationship, and are currently divorced, separated or widowed, while the remaining 33.1% declare themselves single.

As for the economically active population, 5.9 million are single mothers, of which 43% are single and 57% were once in a relationship.

Mothers without a spouse who are heads of their household and are employed are 3.4 million, equal to 71.8% of all women who declare themselves in charge of their household, according to a document prepared by Inmujeres.

We need public policies with a gender perspective that do not reinforce these stereotypes. It is essential to promote tax incentives for companies that hire more women and mothers, as well as a Government provider of a national care system and other initiatives that can be implemented to break down stigmas. But above all, society is also required to get involved to really achieve a change in mentality, ideas and beliefs.

Translated by: Ligia M. Oliver Manrique de Lara

Spanish version: Here

Other topics of interest: To be or not to be a mother, a well-thought and individual decision Children beyond the family What the lockdown took from the children.