This is hard to read as an adoptee. While I understand mothering a difficult child is challenging, a biological mother simply would not get the same support as this mother did, nor should she. She was right about one thing, this shouldn’t be about her, it should be about the traumatised child she chose to raise. Adoption is held up as this paragon, like it saves children and anyone who adopts is a saint. It’s simply not true. All adoption stems from loss and grief. 

@zylpen37 that’s the only movie I ever walked out of too. I sat in the upstairs foyer at the Astor in Melbourne, talking to the guy at the candy bar and patting the Astor cat. Much more enjoyable than the movie. 

I mean, isn’t this just being a Mum? I work part

Unfortunately for me, my mother is the one who behaves this way. I feel so sorry for my sisters in law. She is absolutely vile to them. There’s a photo of her at my brother’s wedding, screaming in his face because she didn’t praise her enough in his wedding speech. She’s a a raging narcissist and now she’s 84 and wonders why no one wants her to live with them. 

I have one son who is heading into high school next year. My husband and I only ever wanted one child. Our little family is awesome and I’ve never regretted not going again. However, people STILL ask me if we are going to have another one. Uh, I’m 49 and well and truly menopausal so that’s a resounding no. I’ve spent a decade explaining my choice but I did find “I nearly died in childbirth” was a fairly compelling answer that put an end to the conversation. But why did I feel like I had to explain that choice? 

This sounds like something my mother would say. She’s “old school” aka, a misogynist. You hate to see it in a woman but sadly, many older women have a very low bar set for their expectations of men. My mother constantly goes on and on about how hard it is for my husband to work a full time job… like no one else does it. She barely acknowledges the fact that I work 4 days a week AND run the entire household on top of that, which technically equates to way more than a full time job. I used to bite my tongue and let her feel sorry for my “poor husband working so hard”, now I just say “he works the same as everyone else and doesn’t have to commute. He’s fine.”

I think it’s been pretty evident for some time that the MAFS “experts” are matching certain people to create drama for the season, not because they think those people are in any way compatible. I couldn’t watch last season because of the experts’ complete lack of regard for Heidi’s well-being the season before - we all watched Mike treat Heidi like an hysterical harpy and Sir John repeatedly ask Heidi “how are we going to stop you from over-reacting to Mike treating you like your feelings are unimportant and your sole purpose is to make him feel good?” 

Love the recaps, really going to miss them. 

I’ll admit, I have a hard time feeling sympathy for someone who is part of a family who is responsible  for promoting and encouraging impossible body standards and has made an obscene amount of money off the self esteem of girls and women. 

I once shared with a mother’s group that my husband and I slept in separate beds. I joked that it was for his safety because I would smother him in his sleep because of his snoring. I was 100% shamed by this group of women, all of them judged me and my relationship and felt the need to list all of the reasons why separate bedrooms meant my relationship was doomed. Not all of them spoke, but several vocal ones were nodded along with. Needless to say, I stopped attending that group several weeks later. They were not my people. My husband and I have been together for another 10 years since that conversation, in fact we’ve been together for 22 years this year. Our sex life is great, we are also very good friends and laugh together all the time, none of which would be true if he kept me awake with his snoring every night. 

My God, those baggy jeans are not flattering to anyone, trust me, Gen X lived through that in the early 90’s. If you’re skinny, they make you look fat, if you’re even slightly overweight, they make you look huge. Awful. So are the ankle freezers. Right up there with the open toed boots that were trendy a few years back. Yech. 

I am friends with a Mum who loves spending time with her 3 kids, hates the end of school holidays and loved homeschooling and I’ve never heard her complain about her kids. I have another friend with 3 kids who are 100% a massive handful who would drive the best parent on the planet absolutely insane. Personally, I love my kid and I actually like him too and I enjoy his company, but I am aware that I only have one and anything beyond that becomes more challenging. As much as I love him, I complain about him when I catch up with other Mums because it is the only time I can vent about those annoying little things he does. And to be fair, I complain about my husband to those women too. This article comes across as pretty judgemental, and while that may not be your intention, you say that your kids drive you nuts sometimes too. Instead of judging the other mothers for complaining about their kids, maybe recognise that these gatherings are their only outlets for these complaints. Frankly, no one else wants to hear it. They probably love their kids and enjoy spending time with them too but when they’ve spent the day at each other’s throats, as they often do, it’s natural to want to vent about it. Maybe show some compassion and empathy for your peers rather than assuming they actually hate their kids and are bad parents for wanting a glass of wine at the end of a long day of homeschooling.

I recently had my second Mirena inserted. The first 5 years were great and definitely helped reduce the amount of migraines I used to get on the pill. I had mine inserted after I’d had a baby so it was a fairly easy procedure that only felt slightly more invasive than a Pap smear. Any discomfort was taken care of with some ibuprofen.