Ten Questions About Motherhood

This is a survey/questionnaire, I found on Dara's blog. She blogs over at Not In Jersey and you can find her responses here. Also, you will notice that the original survey also included "pet parent questions" but you all know how I feel about animals. However, if you choose to do this survey, you can add the pet questions back in :)

1. Did you have siblings as a child? Do you have children at home now? If so, tell us more about them.

I'm going to write about my kids first. Sam is eleven and loves baseball and reading. He has a very funny sense of humour. Rachel is nine and loves art, dancing, and people. She is very kind and always thinking about others.

I grew up as the oldest of four children, but as an adult, I feel like an only child. I wrote a blog post about my siblings just over five years ago and it still rings true today. You can read it here.

2. What age were you when you became a mommy for the first time? How many children and pets do you have?

I was 36, almost 37, when Sam was born. Rachel was born a few months after I turned 39. We have one pet -- Rachel's fish, Bluey.

me with Sam, May 2009 * me with Rachel, June 2011

3. Are your children biological or adopted?

 

My children are biological but I am adopted. As an adopted person who has no contact with her birth family, I LOVE the fact that I now know two people on earth who are genetically related to me. It's a cool feeling :) People often say I look like my dad but I know that's just nurture. However, when they tell me Rachel is my twin, that might actually be genetic!

4. If you have children, did you deliver them naturally or with pain meds or by C-section? If you adopted a baby, how old was it when you brought it home?

 

Both of our kids were born in unplanned home births and delivered by Dave. Sam's total labour was just over three hours (and we had no idea he was coming so quickly) and Rachel's total labour was twelve minutes. Yes, you read that right -- twelve minutes. You can read Sam's birth story here and Rachel's birth story here.

Sam at two days old, April 2009 * Rachel at a few hours old, June 2011

5. Did you breast feed or bottle feed or pump for your babies?

 

I breast fed both kids. However, I don't think I ever had a lot of milk and both kids ate fairly regularly and didn't gain a lot of weight. There were moments for both kids when we tried formula (because I was exhausted, at the end of my rope, and needed a break) but they never really ate it. If I was going to miss a feeding, I had to pump for about a week to get enough milk. It was a major pain and I was so glad to be finally done with breastfeeding.

6. Have you potty trained babies? Cloth diapers or disposable diapers with your babies?

 

We had a cloth diaper service for Sam, and started it with Rachel. However, they must have changed the detergent or something else because in September 2011, when Sam was 2 1/2 and Rachel was three months old, suddenly the diapers stopped working for us. Every time either kid would pee they would soak their whole outfit, the floor, their bed, everything. We worked with the diaper service for awhile to find a solution but eventually switched to disposables.

Potty training took about a year of off and on trying with Sam and lots of frustration. With Rachel it took three days. I was shocked at the difference.

7. Taken prenatal and parenting classes for your babies? Homeschool or public school or private school for your children?

 

With Sam, we took prenatal classes with our midwife. We still keep in touch with some of the friends we met in that class. For Rachel, we just went back for the homebirth refresher class! After Sam was born, I joined a New Mom's Group through the city we lived in at the time. Those women became some of my closest friends. You can read more about them here.

We met these friends because we were in the same prenatal class for our oldest kids.

Me with Sheri and Marcia, a few of my New Mom's friends in July 2019.

Our kids go to public school. Both kids have attended the same school since Junior Kindergarten (starting the year they turned four). This is Sam's last year at this school -- yikes!!! I LOVE that our school is a ten minute walk from our house. It's a great location!

8. What is the significance of your children’s names? If you could pick another name for yourself, would you? What would it be?

 

How much time do you have?!?!? Hahaha!!! I had Sam's name picked out for years, although I was originally drawn to the name Noah. Then one day I was babysitting some kids and I heard a clear voice saying, "You will have a son named Samuel Robert, not Noah Robert." (It was a month before Dave and I started dating, by the way.) Thankfully, when it came time to choosing names, Dave was on board :) Robert is after my dad. Shortly before Sam was born, Dave's grandma Shirley died. In the Jewish tradition, if you give your child a name starting with the same letter as a deceased loved one, then you are naming your child after them. So Sam is also named after Dave's Grandma Shirley.

Sam also has a Hebrew name, Shmuel Aryeh. Shmuel is Sam in Hebrew. Aryeh (pronounced "R-e-yay") means "lion" and there are quite a few men with the Hebrew name Shmuel Aryeh on Dave's dad's side of the family. It's kind of hilarious because my dad refers to Sam as Shmuel but no one else really does. However, a Hebrew name is used at the synagogue for adults during worship.

Since Dave is Jewish, and I am Christian, we decided to stick with Old Testament names for our kids. There were lots of names there (especially for boys) which we both liked. Rachel was a name we agreed on quite quickly for a girl. Rachel's middle name is Katie after my mom's dad's mom (my great grandma). Dave's dad's mom was named Connie so the K sound also recognizes her.

Rachel's Hebrew name is Rachel (pronounced the Hebrew way with a hard "ch") Kokava. When I lived in the Middle East I was adopted by a Palestinian family and they gave me the Arabic name of "Kokaba." So Rachel's middle Hebrew name honours that, as well as my and Dave's commitment to social justice. (You can read more about why I went to the Middle East and what I did here.)

9. If you have children, did you travel with them as babies? Did you use daycare for your children? Play dates? 

It will come as no surprise to anyone that we traveled with our kids as babies. Sam was just under three months old when he took his first flight and Rachel was just over four months old for hers. We mostly flew from Alberta to Ontario with the kids for the first few years of their lives. However, we did go to Austria with Sam when he was fourteen months old. And Sam took his first six hour road trip to Saskatoon when he was six weeks old. Rachel's first road trip to Saskatoon was when she was two and a half weeks old.

Sam's first flight, June 2009 * Sam flying home from Vienna, June 2010

 

Rachel's first road trip, July 2011 * Rachel's first flight, October 2011

We didn't use daycare for our kids -- at least not in a regular way. If you read my New Mom's post up above, you will see that we traded childcare sometimes. The year Sam was one, I went back to work half time and since Dave was a student, he stayed home with Sam while I worked. I quit my job a few months before Rachel was born and was then a stay at home mom until Rachel started Junior Kindergarten. (You can read my "I'm a stay at home mom now" post here.)

 

When we moved back to Ontario, we found a preschool we really liked and Sam went there two afternoons a week the year that he was three. Rachel went there one or two mornings (or afternoons) a week starting when she was two. We loved having play dates and went to quite a few play groups -- city ones, through church, etc.

10. What is one lesson you have learned or one take away from being a parent?

 

Kids are very quick to forgive, parenting requires a lot of patience (and apologizing), no two kids are the same, and it is so worth it! Also, kids are completely random and very funny.