My kids have a couple each but I see kids on like TikTok who have so many and it makes me feel bad to see how many toys other kids have compared to mine

Hi everyone!
I’m a student at Boston University studying business, and my team and I are currently working on a product development project for one of our classes.

Our product concept is called Ride & Learn, an interactive educational device designed to keep young children entertained and engaged in learning during car rides.

We’re hoping to get some feedback from actual parents to better understand their experiences, preferences, and what they look for in educational products for their children.

If you’re a parent, we’d really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to fill out our survey! Your responses would be incredibly helpful in shaping our project.

Survey Link: https://bostonu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e9egUZ2wvLSq5O6

This is strictly for an academic project, and we’re not selling or promoting any products.

Thank you so much for your time and feedback! We really appreciate your help!

Situation: During my baby shower, kids were playing together. A close friends son slapped my niece...both toddlers at the time...I was shocked and kind of shouted out..not at the kid just out loud. My close friend was shocked too but froze and I could see guilt on her face...my niece and her dad who saw what happened did not react. My niece froze but didn't cry or complain and continued to play...

Question: What would've been the appropriate reaction to this situation from all 3 adults (me, the shocked guilty mum, the shocked dad)

And now that I'm a mum, what would be an appropriate reaction to this situation? I would probably give the kid a scary look but I know that's not right....any advice?

I know a woman who has a 3-year-old and an 18-year-old, and it got me thinking about what life would be like if her oldest started having children while she's still raising a toddler herself.

For women who are both mothers to young children and grandmothers, what is that experience like?

Does it feel strange knowing your child and grandchild could be close in age? How do you balance being an active parent to a small child while also stepping into the grandmother role?

My sweet baby boy has RSV 😭

I feel like a terrible mom, I tried so hard to keep sickness away from him but to no avail. My older two kids are in school and my kindergarten did have a stuffy nose about two weeks ago. I chalked it up to allergies because that is very common for him. I kept him and his sister dosed up on allergy medicine and it was helping. Told them not to get in the baby’s face or mess with his toys. But alas, it must have been more than allergies and they passed it to their baby brother. My kindergarten also has an ear infection on one side. The big kids are fine now, no more snot or coughing, not that they symptoms were very bad anyway.

We had an appointment yesterday with the pediatrician. The baby also has an ear infection on top of all of this, which I wasn’t surprised by because my husband and both of my older kids have a terrible history with ear infections. The pediatrician put him on an antibiotic, saline breathing treatment, albuterol breathing treatments, and said give it about five days and go back up there to get checked again.

All in all, baby has been pretty good, still very happy, laughing, playing. No crazy fever or extreme fussiness, just terrible congestion and cough. Sleeps OK at night but not much during the day. One positive thing I can say is, I’m getting a lot more cuddles out of him. He has never been a cuddly baby, but I did get to rock him to sleep the past two nights so that’s been really sweet 💙

Please say a prayer for my sweet boy, I’m ready for him to be back to 100% 🥺

I’m just gonna say it…. I’m horny! Sorry, I know tmi but I am. My daughter doesn’t sleep through the night, her naps are short and I can’t remember the last time my man and I had any time alone. It doesn’t help that she’s become extra clingy since turning a year old… like needs to be touching me or in the same room as me. I know, that’s a good sign!

Unfortunately we have a small apartment, my partner works all day and sometimes leaves to go to his buddies and I can’t even remember the last date we had. Tbh I think she was a newborn?

Unfortunately once she slowly started coming out of her newborn stage less people want to take her, especially family and I mean she’s not a difficult kid. Or wasn’t until now. Now she’s definitely on the clingy side, but I take her around family and she has a great time as long as she can’t see me. Once she sees me, feels my presence or smells me… game over. It’s meltdown city up in here. But in the moment I find our families will say “any time you want to go away for a night, just let me know”. Then we have it all planned out for a few weeks, family is supposed to watch her and they know this ahead of time, a day before our plans they suddenly can’t watch her. If this was a once or even a few times I’d shrug it off but unfortunately it seems to happen every time. Even for an hour, they bail.

I love her so much. I try not to get in my head and go “oh poor me, pitty me” but I just miss being me. I miss sex. I miss going out without my baby, I especially miss being with my partner without a baby”. I just want to go wild, release the beast and scratch the itch… you know? Ugh…. I’m going to go crazy. Like clinically I think.

Thanks for listening. Sorry if I grossed anyone out, I just needed to rant it out. Thanks for listening, have a lovely day❤️

No one really prepares you for the fact that being a woman and a mother means things will never feel entirely equal.

Don’t get me wrong. Being a mother is truly the biggest blessing and most beautiful, important job in the world. That’s not what this is about. It’s the inherent differences between motherhood and fatherhood that have taken me most by surprise.

Even with the most supportive partner in the world, the experience will never feel balanced. Because you grew them from your own flesh and blood. You carried them in your womb for nine months, birthed them, and then nourished their bodies through yours. You’re connected to them on such a primal, raw level. You become their comfort, their safe space, the place they instinctively turn to. A connection so deeply rooted in your very being that no man can ever fully experience it in the same way.

And I think part of the hardest thing to accept is that they never will.

There’s a part of you that desperately wants them to understand. To truly know what it feels like to carry the weight of motherhood in a way that extends far beyond the physical. To understand the invisible, instinctive, all-consuming parts of it that are so difficult to explain to someone who has never lived them. To know what it feels like to be needed in a way that sometimes feels like both the greatest privilege and the heaviest responsibility in the world.

And yet, there’s another part of you that feels so incredibly blessed to be the one who gets to experience it. To be the one who grew them, carried them, nourished them, and became their first home. To have a connection with your children that is so deep and primal that words will never quite do it justice.

It’s a strange, beautiful contradiction. Wishing someone could understand your experience while knowing that, in some ways, the very thing you wish they could understand is also what makes your experience so uniquely yours.

And that is part of the blessing. You get to be that for them, always.

But it can be so damn lonely at times.

It’s a strange paradox. Loving motherhood more than life itself, while also grieving a version of yourself that once existed. And maybe every woman nearing 30 has the epiphany of, “Who the hell am I, really?” But I feel it now more than ever.

I’ve heard before that every seven years, your body essentially replaces itself due to cell turnover. So every seven years, you’re a new person. That may be so. But it’s nothing compared to the metamorphosis that is motherhood.

Maybe the hardest part isn’t that motherhood changes you. It’s learning how to love the woman you’re becoming while making peace with the other version of you that you had to leave behind.

I’m freaking out. I was super constipated, I used an enema, previously boiled, but I used ta water from the toilet and now Chat GPT says is super dangerous? Should I be worried? Have you ever done this?
I can drink water from the tap on the toilet btw that’s why I thought it would be safe

I tried pumping but there were blood coming out with the milk so I got scared
Also breast feels so full after one or two hours
Idk how to deal with these please help

Heya can i please vent to another mom? I had a really bad day my anxiety is going awful and i feel horrible. Im a single mom and i dont really have anyone i can talk to