Abby Roth

Follow along at thefirstgensahm.substack.com and watch the full video on YouTube.com/classicallyabby 🧡

Can we please for the love of God and all that is holy (literally) stop talking about what grown women want and start talking about what children need? Anytime we have a discussion about motherhood, it’s about the wants of an adult woman and never about the needs of children.

This is so true and nobody talks about it honestly. Breastfeeding hurts in the first two weeks for most women, even with a perfect latch. Your nipples are not used to that level of friction and suction and they need time to toughen up. I have heard moms with 4+ kids say it still hurts at the beginning with every single baby and then goes away. The standard advice that "breastfeeding should never hurt if the latch is correct" makes women think something is wrong when the pain is actually a normal part of the adjustment. Yes, a bad latch can cause pain. But so can a brand new nipple being used 10+ times a day for the first time. Those are two very different things and they get lumped together in a way that confuses new moms and sometimes causes them to give up early. It gets better. Usually by week 2 or 3 the pain fades. Push through those first couple weeks if you can.

@chlosiphus Yes, it's really annoying. The best libraries keep the computers to the side and have a login so the younger kids don't get distracted.

Do all libraries have video games and computers these days btw bc I was thinking earlier how it’s kind of fucking annoying

I was out with my three kids (4, 2.5, and 8 months) this morning eating breakfast and reading books aloud to them. Three separate people came up to us to compliment our family and the fact that we were reading aloud together. Intentional parenting is the best way to put a positive image of large families in the world. P.S. I don't think 3 kids is a large family. But it's a good start. P.P.S. Not every morning looks perfect, even as intentional parents. But it's definitely more frequent when you put in the effort.

I just hate the discourse surrounding - your body is disgusting now - and - you will be hotter than ever. At the end of the day, your body will look different, but if you lose the babyweight and work out it will still look fine, especially in clothes. Loose skin and stretchmarks are genetic and look worse than not having them. But who is going to be seeing them unless your sole concern is wearing a bikini? I don't think most women will look hotter after having kids and guess what? That's not the point. If vanity is your main concern for why NOT to have babies, we have a bigger problem.

Maybe I’m in a bubble but I can’t think of a single one of my friends who have become mothers who after a year or so pp, looks noticeably different than she did before. I’m sure we all have our little changes here or there that we ourselves notice or are only visible without clothes, but I feel like both sides of this snap back debate are exaggerating mightily.

For the women concerned about their bodies changing after babies and for the women saying it won't change at all: I have had three babies. I have stretch marks and loose skin across my belly, but I am not over my pre-pregnancy weight. Is my body unmarred? No. Does it matter? Literally not one iota. I carried three humans and nourished them using only my body. The only person who will see what my body looks like now is the man who is helping raise these precious children. And you know what? We want more. Because my body being strong and healthy and fit has always mattered more than stretch marks and loose skin. But sometimes it takes having babies to realize that.

Lol that this has become a discussion of the problem with libraries becoming woke. Totally fair. My point was that there are parents who won't bring their children to the library because their kids are too wild, and if you can't bring your kids to civilized places (even for a short while) maybe you need to work on discipline.

I believe that being able to bring your children to the library (where there are toys and activities available) is a litmus test for your parenting.

@Romy_Holland Really recommend Siblings Without Rivalry. It's a great book.

sibling rivalry seems inevitable and a small amount is probably a positive, but it was such a damaging part of my family's culture that I really want to find a way to minimize it among my kids. I think two of my siblings internalized a sense of competition so deeply that they're now actively rooting for the rest of us to fail so that they'll feel better about themselves. the idea my kids would end up like this horrifies me, but I'm not sure the best way to avoid it. one idea is to reward the entire family when anyone succeeds, but I wonder if this would backfire somehow. maybe I'm overthinking it and in the absence of explicitly bad messaging the natural dynamic would be fine?

Motherhood is a full-time job. Especially with children under five. Even more so with babies under two. It requires your attention 24/7 no matter how badly people want this not to be the case. If you want to choose your job and outsource motherhood, just be honest about it.

Look, I am old-fashioned when it comes to Passover. We cook with matzah meal. This almond flour nonsense is not my speed. 😂

If you've never had a kid it's almost impossible to understand this, but there is nothing you can offer me that's better than pushing my three year old daughter in a swing at the park just before lunchtime and then swinging through the McDonalds drive thru to grab a Happy Meal and then stopping at the gas station to get a slurpee and some M&Ms, because why not, and pretending to race the other cars on the way home just to make her laugh and all the while she's asking questions about everything she sees and I'm smiling to myself because it's forcing me to come to terms with the fact I don't know how to explain even the most basic fundamentals of life. And I like that. I like feeling like the world still contains infinitudes as of yet unknown to me. I used to think it was cope when parents talked about this, because I was stupid and I wanted to enjoy my parties and my drugs and my affairs and my long nights out and my wine and my time to myself and my melodramatic crying fits and my hallucinations and my self-destructive spirals and the fact I had nobody to answer to. The happiness you get from raising a child is not the cheap dopamine hit of an easy pleasure, bought and paid for. It's the kind of happiness that you only get from choosing to undertake an adventure, and the colossal responsibility that comes with it, so that in moments stripped away, inch by inch, the new world you decided to brave and explore is revealed to you.

@bethanyshondark @audible_com @jk_rowling @amazon And for littles, the Yoto player is awesome!

For my parent homies: One of our life hacks is an Alexa + healthy @audible_com library. Kids play audiobooks in their rooms all day, every day. The full-cast @jk_rowling Harry Potters have been life-changing. (This is not sponsored by @amazon.)

I was driving my car today with just my baby girl (my boys were on a date with their daddy and grandpa) and even though I enjoy the quiet, it was disconcerting to look in the rear view mirror and see two empty carseats reflected back at me.

I spoke with a lovely mom at the park today with one 3.5-year-old child. She was sharing with me that she wanted a second but felt nervous about having another baby, messing with her routines and schedules, and how it would change things. I think every mother feels nervous to have a second baby. But it got me to thinking. I have always wanted a large family, so the idea of having more children was never negotiable to me. No matter how difficult the transition might be, I knew that having more was part and parcel of the family life I wanted. Even if I was nervous, it would never have stopped me from having more. But it must be so difficult for women today who are debating having any children at all, let alone two. There's not a recognition that parenthood is supposed to be consuming and that happy chaos is better than structured routines. So the question of adding another child is really overwhelming and might prevent them from having another baby. Make having lots of babies the norm, and then people won't be deterred by their fears!

@MattWalshBlog The correct answer is that you should bring your loud and do your best to make him be less loud.

It’s not just nostalgia. This was our childhood and it’s gone now. As a parent you can, through great effort, create the conditions for some version of this for your own children today. But the problem is that most of the other kids are screen addicted zombies who don’t really want to run around outside until the streetlights turn on. So an energetic, free spirited kid who’d rather climb a tree than stare at a screen ends up being kind of isolated. 30 years ago he’d have been the most popular kid in the neighborhood. Now the other kids in the neighborhood are home with the screen and he’s climbing the tree by himself.

Every child you add makes a many more connections for the entire family. The graph of love is not a bunch of arrows pointing only to mom. They will all have a long childhood of playing together. (n(n-1)/2 more connections to be exact)

What is this nonsense?

You know around three months old, when the baby starts loving you back? Absolutely incredible.