Welcome to my blog! I thought about starting this blog for years, and now finally feels like the right time to do so.
Over the years I have been many things: an aerospace engineer, a mathematician, a programmer; and (most fun of all) a teacher, tutor and mom. Sharing knowledge is my passion. I want to make life easier for each person I meet than it was for me. Hopefully you will be able to take from my journey those things that will help you in yours.
The site is called unprepared mom. That isn’t a mistake. Like most women, I feel unprepared in most of my daily life. Our pregnancy was a surprise. We became pregnant a year before we planned to, and had a very difficult pregnancy to boot. Despite the difficulties, I love my little bundle of joy– and she is all joy– but I wasn’t ready for her to be here quite yet.
You see, she showed up 10 weeks early. She came home the day we had planned her baby shower for… she never did get a baby shower. The day she was born her room had no flooring, a hideous brown color on the wall, and nothing else. When I say we were unprepared, I mean we had nothing, not a clue what we were doing or what we might need, and no support system to help.
I turned to the mommy blogs for help… and they were less than helpful. My family isn’t rich. We don’t live in a mansion. One TV, no sound system, and no cable is enough for us. The library is our go-to for entertainment. And power conservation is always on our mind (hello California energy prices). But somehow the mommy blogs all seemed to think we were made of money and had years to plan.
So, I did what I do best: I researched. I read review after review for every aspect of what caring for a baby might entail. Listened to hours of my parents and inlaws stories about what caring for a baby looked like for them. Pestered the nurses in the NICU with a thousand questions, and then followed each one up with more questions. I asked doctors and child play therapists what they thought or recommended. And I discovered having a baby doesn’t need to be as expensive as everyone made it out to be.
Less is more when it comes to children. Mistakes have a fairly large margin of error when raising happy and healthy children. Being super prepared isn’t as helpful as rolling with the punches. And 90% of the things they tell us we need to have or do are driven by consumerism.
That said, there are also areas where the mommy blogs are just plain missing information. There is very little out there on development, what your doctor might be looking for, and what should cause concern. What is “normal” and what needs intervention. As a result many children who would benefit from intervention don’t know they need it. I should know, my child needs early intervention.
So join me for this journey. It won’t be pintrest perfect. There will occasionally be statistics (promise to make them easy to understand). I’m all about the authentic, the un-put-together bits of parenthood and womanhood in today’s society. Life is messy. No one is perfect, and better access to information can only help.