He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in the darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make flesh that holds fast and binds eternity.

When she had him along, the world looked different, and she liked the way she saw things she’d never seen before. . . But she noticed other things, too — the way she herself felt acutely visible with the baby in her arms, and the way some people’s faces lit up when they saw a...

If your child is constantly interrupting or doing other things to get your attention, he is not getting enough communication of the right kind. Just the fact that you are in the house with him all day does not mean that you are necessarily devoting any time to communication of his choice.

For the most part, each day listed a different rendition of “Justin ate well” and “Justin took a great nap”. Every now and then they noted Justin doing unusual things, like biting. I was embarrassed to read “Justin is biting his friends again” or “Justin did better with biting and only bit one boy”. Other...

The health of your future kids does not start with their birth—it starts with you, right now, well before you plan to impregnate your wife.

It’s just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man – the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated off-spring – you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever...

A mother knows what her child’s gone through, even if she didn’t see it herself.

Too many times I’d left him reaching for me, from a babysitter’s arms. “Am I still a mother?” I asked myself… What parts of the day could I cut out and still give him enough? Paul never asked himself that. He thought he was a great dad.

Maybe she’d always wished to be beautiful and didn’t quite dare to, because she could tell that people didn’t say she was and more attention was given to other women, but she still had a frail hope that there’d been a mistake and she was after all.

Sometimes being a MOM is like a good ol’ country song! You lose your sleep, you lose your hair, you lose your patience, you lose your energy, you lose your memory AND you lose your SANITY! But you DO IT all for LOVE!

I suffer from CLAUSTROPHOBIA, a fear of closed spaces.For example, I’m petrified that the WINE store will be closed before I have time to get there!!!

My daughter asked me what it’s like to have children… So I followed her to the washroom every time she went and asked her questions through the door until she lost her S#!T…

It’s tough being AWESOME all the time, but the kids need someone to look up to!

Well, if that’s true, I wasted a hell of a lot of money on panty hose and lipstick.” Jettie snorted.

You don’t have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.

What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond – to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills...

A challenging career suddenly seemed more productive to me because I could measure the results of my work. These precious little ones had endless needs. They were busy little sinful creatures who demanded all of my body, time, life, emotions, and attention! As much as I loved my children, I often felt like a failure....

The Mother Of GodThe threefold terror of love; a fallen flareThrough the hollow of an ear;Wings beating about the room;The terror of all terrors that I boreThe Heavens in my womb.Had I not found content among the showsEvery common woman knows,Chimney corner, garden walk,Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothesAnd gather all the talk?What...

If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And if you’ve only got one or two, it’s almost harder. You have room left over – empty spaces that you think you’ve got to fill up.

Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.

Every woman is a gift when she becomes a daughter, Every woman is beautiful when she becomes a lover, Every woman is special when she becomes a wife, Every woman is a god when she becomes a Mother

Each woman must realize that she is the final guardian of her unborn child.

Once upon a time, I used to have a little girl.

Take this one in my belly. He (or she) is determined to be here. I can feel the force of his being. It’s as if he has something to do here and just wants to arrive and grow up so he can get to it.

I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow have passed magically away and the next time you look it will be bedtime.

The recent spate of magazines for “parents” (i.e., mothers) bombard the anxiety-induced mothers of America with reassurances that they can (after a $100,000 raise and a personality transplant) produce bright, motivated, focused, fun-loving, sensitive, cooperative, confident, contented kids just like the clean, obedient ones on the cover.

Motherhood is the greatest thing and the hardest thing.

My mom smiled at me. Her smile kind of hugged me.

The best thing she was, was her children.

Mother seemed happiest when making and tending home, the sewing machine whistling and the Mixmaster whirling. Her deepest impulse was to nurture, to simply dwell; it had nothing to do with ambition and achievement in the world…How had I come to believe that my world of questing and writing was more valuable than her dwelling...

A mother’s love is instinctual, unconditional, and forever.

Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness. This is the reality.

It had been six weeks since I brought my second child, my daughter, kicking and screaming into the world. Six weeks, that magic number men everywhere look forward to and women dread.

The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl’s highest calling. I hope I am ready.

You know you’re a mom when you open the door to the dishwasher mid-cycle and think, ‘This is the closest I’m going to get to a spa treatment till next Mother’s Day.'””Joining the words ‘Lose Weight, Effortlessly!’ in the same sentence may be a form of hate speech.””Try to make time for the things that...

I loved Duncan and I loved being his mother but I wasn’t sure I was prepared to be only his mother. Before we were even married, when Russell and I had gotten our dog, Humbert, I had walked him early one morning, and as I stood on a line for coffee, someone had offered him...

For as long as I am your mother and you are my only child, i will worry and hope and pray for you. Do not ask the impossible.

Then she had been a fiancee, a young wife, and a mother, and she had discovered that these words were far too small ever to contain the experience.

On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight into the kitchen, washing up the morning dishes she’d ignored, then getting dinner started. She measured out the nightly cup of rice, letting it soak in a pan on the counter. She peeled onions and potatoes...

The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women in the world — the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make “informed decisions” that will guarantee the successful course of our children’s lives. It tells...

I tried to do it all myself: be mommy and camp counselor and art teacher and prereading specialist (and somehow, in my off-hours, to do my own work). I tried my absolute best. And like so many of the moms around me, I started to go a little crazy.

Confession: Having kids did not fix me. I was not somehow more whole, less botched-up, or more certain just because I had a kid… I was still me, with all my holes and problems and questions – only now I was also exhuasted and had a lot more laundry to do.

Fanfare for the MakersA cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?To the small fire that never leaves the sky.To the great fire that boils the daily pot.To all the things we are not remembered by,Which we remember and bless. To all the thingsThat will not notice when we die,Yet lend the passing moment words and...

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent;...

Maybe I stepped into the skin my mother left behind, and became the girl my mother had been, the one she still wanted to be. Maybe I was wearing her youth now like an airy scarf, an accessory, all bright nerves and sticky pearls, and maybe that’s why she spent so much time staring at...

I’m getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people — and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang,...

The Astors and the Vanderbilts, their pleasure domes and money: she was sick of it. Sick of envying, sick of herself. She didn’t understand antiques or architecture, she couldn’t draw like Sylvia, she didn’t read like Ted, she had few interests and no expertise. A paucity for love was the only true thing she’d ever...

Although the infertile are entitled to sour grapes, it’s against the rules, isn’t it, to actually have a baby and spend any time at all on that banished parallel life in which you didn’t.

These girls probably use double negatives and watch “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila” with their babies instead of reading Eric Carle.

I was suppose to write a book about being a mom, to organize my thoughts into chapters and figure out a structure to hang them on, to make a lasting point, but somehow I decided to go ahead and become a mother instead.