Elspeth Ives explains to her five-year-old employer why she chooses to stay home with him and his siblings. “When did you decide you didn’t want to be anything, Mum?” my five-year-old son asked me on the way home from school. My very purpose and many everyday tasks...
Inspirational stories from mums juggling it all by Steph Adams and Samantha Brett. (Penguin Random House Australia, softback $39.99) The expensive cover of this softback coffee-table style book looked promising, covered with the head shots of some of the interviewees the authors canvassed about their life juggling...
Maria Jensen opens up about her experience with chronic morning sickness and suicide. June 2009. Two pink lines on the stick. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was pregnant with my third child – a child I swore I would never have after hyperemesis gravidarum (chronic...
Women who have suffered a pregnancy loss need to be kind to themselves, even when others aren’t, writes Michelle Hayward. I am a mother and a survivor. I am currently ‘recovering and healing’ from a pregnancy loss – a miscarriage at 10 weeks – and I...
While Nicole Hall received an earful of unhelpful advice, her son’s hearing problems went undiagnosed. My son Sam is five years old. He has auditory-processing difficulties and social-skills problems – and I believe the situation was preventable. I was constantly on guard, ready to leap in and...
Lawyer Claire Gibbs researches how, as a working mother of twins, she found she needed some additional support and flexibility particularly when first returning to the workforce. Feeling equal parts excitement and anxiety, I lay nervously on the uncomfortable examination table just like any woman who...
Amber Hamam finds herself in murky water as she overhears some bath-time whispers. I’m not conservative or a prude, but is it too much to ask that my daughter have an innocent childhood? I was at a children’s party recently, and since it ran late into the...
The roller-coaster ride of parenting becomes more challenging when Amanda McLeod is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I lost friends and colleagues who found it difficult to deal with my highs, lows and erratic behaviour. After 12 months of trying to conceive, I was overjoyed when the pregnancy...
Gemma Rolleman faces up to the fact she no longer has all the answers to her kids’ questions. It’s a sad day when your eight-year-old son turns to you for help with maths homework that might as well have been written in ancient Greek. For no...
It’s time to kill the outdated platitudes around what it takes to be the perfect mother. Or at least tune out their noise.
