In issuing the challenge, our stake president reminded us of Elder Bednar’s promise given in October 2011:

It is no coincidence that FamilySearch and other tools have come forth at a time when young people are so familiar with a wide range of information and communication technologies. Your fingers have been trained to text and tweet to accelerate and advance the work of the Lord—not just to communicate quickly with your friends. The skills and aptitude evident among many young people today are a preparation to contribute to the work of salvation. …

As you respond in faith to this invitation, your hearts shall turn to the fathers. The promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be implanted in your hearts. Your patriarchal blessing, with its declaration of lineage, will link you to these fathers and be more meaningful to you. Your love and gratitude for your ancestors will increase. Your testimony of and conversion to the Savior will become deep and abiding. And I promise you will be protected against the intensifying influence of the adversary. As you participate in and love this holy work, you will be safeguarded in your youth and throughout your lives.

This line got to me: “I promise you will be protected against the intensifying influence of the adversary.” If there’s anything I want for my children, it is that kind of protection. It is what I have prayed for them since they were small; I think of Mormon’s words, “A continual scene of wickedness has been before my eyes ever since I have been sufficient to behold the ways of man,” and they seem to apply so well today.

I want those blessings for my children. I don’t know what temptations they will face, but I want to layer them in as much spiritual protection as I possibly can. I want the Spirit thick around them, so that they can be strengthened enough to feel the joy of choosing well. I know there are no guarantees for the future, but this is my plan to fortify them right now.

I want to know–how have you implemented family history work into your family? What blessings have you seen from it?

Related posts:

1. Looking up
2. Fount of Many Blessings
3. What’s in a Name?

To reframe it in terms that are useful to me personally, having a hermeneutic of generosity towards others means that I refuse to allow myself to be irritated by them. I refuse to seek for reasons to be offended or bothered or critical. I assume they mean well, and I treat them accordingly unless proven otherwise.

I’ve been thinking about generous interpretations as I’ve read the recent war of words concerning Hillary Rosen and Ann Romney. There are better discussions and analysis of the issues surrounding the war between women here, and here. That’s not really what I want to go into right now.

What I’m most interested in are the stories behind the labels: working mom, stay-at-home mom, do-a- little-of-everything mom. Segullah‘s newest staff member, poet Terresa Wellborn, posted this on her Facebook wall, from Barry Lopez: “Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.”

For me, the two ideas are linked: that what creates the hermeneutic of generosity is the assumption that the person you’re hearing has a story, has a reason for being the way they are, for seeing the way they see and saying what they are saying. I believe that this is one of the most powerful aspects of charity: when we see others as they are, as God sees them, then we do not allow Satan to stir up our hearts to contend with anger. Instead, we assume good, because we see them as good.

Here’s my story: I’m a stay-at-home mom. I stay at home because I can, financially, and because I feel like that’s where God wants me to be (me, personally. Not you. Just me.). But I chafe at it sometimes, and second-guess myself. A while ago I attended a wedding reception and encountered one of the bishops I grew up with, who asked me what I was up to. “At home with my kids,” I told him. “You could have been anything,” he said, “and look at you. You chose to stay home.”

He meant it as a compliment, I am sure. But there’s a part of me that thinks, I could have been anything, and I didn’t. I didn’t do any of it. I didn’t write the book, I didn’t get the advanced degree, I didn’t have the job, I didn’t. And there are many women who had kids and also did all those things. I have no idea how, but they did, and I’m amazed by them. So when I’m being honest, I admit to a certain amount of envy. I know this is wrong, this envy, and I’m working to stop it.

Five years ago I was invited to join the staff of Segullah, and I was not sure that I should. Should I really take time away from my family just for something I wanted? (“Wanted” is a weak word; “yearned for” seems cheesy but accurate.) I knelt down to pray about it, and I felt overwhelmed by the Spirit telling me that this would be a good thing in my life, that I needed to do it, that it was all right. More than all right: that this was the direction God had blessed me with.

Maybe you have already figured this out, but for me, it was hard for me to believe that I was allowed, permitted, encouraged by God to cultivate the things I used to be good at, before I had children. I had thought I would need to put it all on hold till my kids were grown; to feel like I did not have to was eye-opening and liberating. I felt like God knew me as a person, not just as a mother, but as a woman with creative abilities that He wanted me to pursue. Right now I’m not employed, but maybe some day that’s where He will lead me. In fact, I hope it works out for me some time. I would love to go back to school, love to teach, when the timing works out for me and for our family.

I want to know your story: where do you fit into the continuum of working/SAHM moms? Do you ever second guess your decisions? Where had God led you? And, in the spirit of generous interpretation, let’s have the discussion be without preachiness or attacking anyone for the decisions they have made as they’ve worked to care for their families. Stories and compassion are what will hold us all together.

Related posts:

1. Bragging
2. A stone’s throw Part II
3. Posts of Christmas Past

And then there’s John D. Lee.

“We’ve got a bad guy in our history too,” I told my kids.

They were charmed by the romance of evil. “Ooh, what did he do? A bad guy?” Someone did an evil bwa ha ha ha laugh.

“No,” I said. “He’s not a silly bad guy. He was a real bad guy. He was the leader of some Mormons who pretended they were Indians and killed a bunch of settlers who were traveling to California.”

They sobered. “Why did they do that?” my son asked.

“It’s complicated,” I said. “They were mad about all the things people from the settlers’ states had done to the Mormons. But that doesn’t excuse what they did. It’s called the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and it was a terrible, terrible thing.”

And then we returned to stories of more-worthy, less black sheep ancestors.

But the conversation lingered with me all week long.

***
Also that week I followed the fallout of the Washington Post article concerning the history of the Church’s policy on blacks and the priesthood. I am grateful for their recent statement, and yet it feels like it’s not really mine to claim. I have not experienced racism personally, and I feel like I’m not equipped to own either the pain of our racist past or the joy of renouncing it.

I find myself in an odd place with both of these stories: I believe that they can all be healed. That there is infinite atoning healing available to any who were hurt by the Mountain Meadows Massacre, that those who have been wounded or shattered by racism can find peace. I believe there is healing for both the victims and the perpetrators, because they (we?) need it too. I don’t think the healing can come if we never talk about the hurts, if we pretend they don’t exist, or that they existed but never affect anyone now, or that that people who mention or find them problematic are just being troublemakers.

But I also don’t think that wallowing in the problems and discussing them over and over is a good path to healing, either. By the end of the week of reading blog posts on the Washington Post article, I felt saturated with righteous indignation and more than a little schadenfreude. And left hollow by it all–what good is gleeful triumph in the face of real pain?

I believe that we will heal from our past sins and mistakes when we learn to listen to and tell true stories about them, when we embrace the stories of our past and present. Not to excuse away our sins, but to understand better where we have come from, and where we are now. Healing as a process, not an event.

For all my talk about the power of true stories, though, I have not told my children the horrific details of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. We are easing into it; I’m not fully aware of them myself, although at some point I will read up on it more. I don’t have a resolution for the pain caused by the priesthood ban and its various doctrinal claims either. I just know that I come from both sides, from the notorious and the noble. I don’t want to pretend away the pain or the glory, and I don’t want to wallow in them either, spending so much time on one side that I deny the existence or the importance of the other.

Related posts:

1. A Sense of Who They Are Missing
2. Looking for a Book Club Pick? Try Sarah Dunster’s Lightning Tree
3. Looking Back, Moving Forward

I had just four commenters, and I wasn’t sure whether they all intended to enter, but given the long delay, I am offering copies of Variant to all four commenters. That would be Theric, Kellie, Rosalyn, and Kerri. You’re all winners! You can get reading for the Whitneys.

And now I want to know: what is the coolest thing you have ever won? Do you enter blog contests, like the major haul Design Mom gives away each Christmas? Or that HGTV dream home giveaway? Or radio contests? Do any of you have a knack for winning things, a lucky charm? Is it a waste of time to even enter? I figure someone has to win…

I have won two cookbooks, and they are both excellent: Annette Lyon’s Chocolate Never Faileth, which I won by entering a drawing at a book signing, and Luisa Perkins’ Comfortably Yum, which I won by buying a copy of Variant and entering her contest. I have not won a KitchenAid mixer, or a $500 gift card to Old Navy, or a designer stroller, or any one of the many other contests I have attempted to win. This makes me wonder if there’s some kind of cosmic Winning Gift, and my winning two cookbooks has made it so I’m not destined to win anything else again for a long time.

Then there are contests that require actual skill, like the Whitneys, or the new Mormon Lit Blitz writing contest. Writers sent in their pieces, 1000 words or less, and the fifteen finalists are being posted, one a day, so we can all read and discuss and vote on our favorites. The winner gets a new Kindle. I am a fan of the contest, because I love any idea that makes Mormon lit fresh and exciting, and also because it’s so fun to see familiar faces there: Kathryn Soper, Kerry Spencer, Terresa Wellborn, Sandra Taylor, and Deja Earley, all of whom have published with us in the journal or on the blog. And William Morris, who runs Motley Vision and edited Monsters and Mormons. I’ve enjoyed the writing so far. That’s a contest requiring a combination of skill and charm, and I wish all the finalists well. If they ever host another one, maybe I’ll try my hand at it.

But you know, winning something unexpected, requiring only luck, is like a gift from the universe, and if the universe decides to send me cookbooks, who am I to argue? What has the universe sent you lately?

Related posts:

1. It’s Contest Time!
2. Share Your Story
3. Segullah Writing Contest Questions and Answers

Just for fun, I thought Segullah could host a little contest here. Read a Whitney-eligible book (these are books published in 2011 by LDS authors; find a list of eligible books here), nominate it for a Whitney (click here) and then leave a post in the comments telling me which book you’ve nominated. Leave a separate comment for each book you nominate–one entry per book. I will choose one winner to receive a copy of Variant, by Robison Wells. This is a great book, Kirkus starred review, about a boy trapped in a creepy boarding school, with a twist. Contest ends December 7, and I will pick a random winner from entries after that.

Because of my baby (poor baby; I blame everything that’s flaky about my life right now on him.) I haven’t read all the Whitney-eligible books I had planned to. So many books, so little time. But here’s what I’ve read so far this year:

The Lost Gate, Orson Scott Card
Variant, Robison Wells
Back When You Were Easier to Love, Emily Wing Smith
Sean Griswold’s Head, Lindsay Leavitt
I Don’t Want to Kill You, Dan Wells
Crossed, Ally Condie
The Alloy of Law, Brandon Sanderson
The Beyonders, Brandon Mull

All of these books deserve to be considered for a Whitney, in my opinion, and I will be nominating them, along with some others that I hope to read before the end of the year. But there are plenty of other genres that need some attention. And if you know of a self-published or independently published book that you think deserves a closer look, nominate it!

Disclaimer: While Segullah does have a vote on the Whitney Academy, no one asked us to run this contest. This is just an in-house idea because I thought it would be fun.

Related posts:

1. LDS Storymakers, Whitney Awards, Monsters and Mormons
2. Whitney 2010 Nominees and Almost-Nominees
3. Nominate Whitney Finalists

Grace hovered around me one washday, as I boiled water, grated lye soap, and scrubbed. Washday was a good day to be a ghost, I thought, watching other people rub their hands till they bled, knowing you’d never have to do it again yourself. I worked stains out of our clothes. She followed me into the yard, as far as her house-binding would allow, as if daring me to talk to her. Finally I said, “What?”
“You shouldn’t be so rude. You ought to know what I’ve guessed already.”
“What is it?”
“Haven’t you noticed the laundry? Or have you not been counting the weeks? If I’m right, you’re with child.”
Ah.
She was right. And I had lost track of weeks. “You’re the first person to know,” I said. “I didn’t realize.” And then I scrubbed at the washboard and cried a little. She had stolen my good news from me.
Her glee at being right dissipated when she saw me crying. “I thought you’d be happy,” she said.
“I wanted to know myself,” I told her. “You should have guessed that. Or haven’t you been pregnant before?”
“I was, once,” she said. “But the baby came early, and died, and I died too. Didn’t Nathaniel tell you?”
I shook my head. “But that’s how Agnes died.”
Grace nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“I had made all the clothes,” Grace said. “The little gowns, and the cloth hemmed for diapers, and tiny booties. Quilts, too. I’ll show you, if you want.”
“Let me finish the wash,” I said. She left me alone as I washed, wringing out the clothes in long twisted sticks, shaking the water out in a fine mist, hanging them on the line so the cold breeze would blow them dry. Sometimes I noticed the spirits watching me work, and I envied them their indolence, their clean, idle existence. Don’t wish away your work, the Holy Spirit told me. You don’t want their pale half-life.
Grace waited for me inside the door. “Upstairs,” she said. “In the left bedroom, beneath the bed, there’s a long flat box.” She followed me as I went up the stairs and into the bedroom, and pulled the box from beneath the bed. I opened it and it was as she said, only more so. Stacks of diapers, rows of gowns, two baby quilts. Each little gown embroidered with flowers. Baby quilts dotted with tiny, even stitches.
“I didn’t become pregnant for four years after we married,” she told me. “I had time to work. I worried that Nathaniel would give my things away, but he didn’t. He saved them.”
“To remember you? Or to give to his next child?”
“I don’t know.” She reached for a white gown, but her hand passed through it. “I’ll let you use them.”
“You will?” I could use her baby things without asking, but I wanted permission. These were too beautiful to poach.
“I’ll let you use them if you’ll talk to Nathaniel for me. Give him a message from me.”
Such a condition. “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can. You can tell him that Grace loves him as much as she ever did. Or no, tell him this. Tell him that he’s got the best darned socks in the world.”
“What?”
“It was our joke, what he always used to say when I mended his things.”
“And am I supposed to run messages between the two of you?”
“Not lots of messages. Just this one. Please.”
I picked up a tiny bootie, knit out of white yarn. Five pairs of booties, each slightly larger than the one before. Careful anticipation for an arrival that came too early. “I’ll think about it,” I said.
I folded the baby clothes, stacking them in even rows, making them look as perfect and tidy as they had before. If Grace’s baby had survived, she would have spent many hours scrubbing these clothes, removing yeasty yellow stains, doing wash more than once a week to keep up. A living, crying, messy baby, ruining and redeeming every stitch.

In the story I tried to find both the potential humor and the real pain of the Mormon doctrine that a man can be sealed to wives who are deceased at the same time as one living wife. We don’t practice polygamy anymore, but we do have men sealed to both deceased spouses and living wives. How do you feel about widowers remarrying? Do you want your spouse to remarry, and would you visit them if you could?

As for me, I would want my husband to remarry if I died. I wouldn’t want him to be alone. But if my mom died, even though I’d hate to see my dad lonely, I would also struggle mightily with having my father remarry. I would try very hard to be kind to her, but there’s no one like my mom, and I hope I never have to see her replaced.
I realize this can be a tender topic for many people, and I hope that I don’t open any wounds, but I’m interested in your opinions here.

And have an excellent Halloween, filled with cute kids and the best candy.

Related posts:

1. Art By Women, About Women
2. The Healing Power of Creativity
3. History of My Housewifery

Case in point: my story “The Living Wife” will appear in the upcoming Monsters and Mormons anthology. I had an idea about a woman who can see ghosts marrying a widower, a kind of ghostly take on polygamy. But I have never published fiction before, only a poem here or an essay there, so I wasn’t very confident about my ability to get something written. Still, I started working on it, and finally had a not-embarrassing draft ready a week before the deadline.

Then I found some excellent readers, who gave me wonderful feedback. One of them helped me cut out a lame extra character and brought focus to the whole thing. I incorporated their ideas and typed and typed up to the day of the deadline, only figuring out how to end the thing the day before.

Yeah, that’s probably not the best example of How You Are Supposed to Write. But it worked for me, and I believe that the deadline helped me keep going and actually finish instead of putting it off.

If you’re like me, you want to write a novel someday. Something big, something that feels permanent and has your name on the cover. But maybe if you’re also like me, you just can’t embark on that right now. Which is why I like essays. And poetry. And now, short fiction: it’s my small creation, small but real. You can do it too (and, if you do write novels already, take a break and write an essay for us!).

So, the Segullah essay, poetry, and fiction contest: deadline December 31. Please enter–get started thinking right now. Do some rush writing to get your ideas out. Read these blog posts with writing ideas. Get the raw material of your essay, poem, or story ready now, in October. Then in November you can shape it into a rough draft, find its structure and direction. In December you can show it to fellow writers who can help you polish it up. And December 31st, the deadline, you can click “send” and submit your work.

We can’t wait to read it.

Do you have any questions about the Segullah contest in the comments? How do deadlines help you in your writing, or the rest of your life? Or do they bug you and make you feel too pressured?

1-Genre fiction meets Mormons, which I think is a great premise. The book will be released October 31.

Related posts:

1. Want to write for Segullah? Read Segullah!
2. Share Your Story
3. Flex Your Writing Muscle!

“We’re doing the SNS,” I said. SNS meant Supplemental Nursing System, a bottle of breast milk around my neck, dripping down a tube taped to my chest, beneath a silicon nipple shield. The first time the lactation specialist showed it to me, untangling all the tiny tubes, demonstrating how it was supposed to work, I cried and cried. “Everyone cries when they see this,” she told me.

“You’ve got the SNS working well enough to go home? Really?” the therapist said. “Wow!”

“Why does everyone sound so surprised when I tell them that?”

“Because the SNS is a pain in the neck, and most people give up before now.”

“I’m used to nursing problems,” I said, and then I told her the same history I told the other lactation specialists (they were fabulous) who helped me in the NICU: how I never figured out nursing with my oldest two, and pumped my milk for them. And it took my two and a half months of pumping and trying to nurse till my third child finally caught on. He was the only one I nursed normally. “I’ve been cursed by the nursing gods,” I said. “But in a way, that kind of prepared me for the NICU experience, since premies have such a hard time nursing, and I had to pump anyway. I’m used to it. It’s the only nursing reality I have ever known.”

“You could be a motivational speaker,” she said. “All that pumping to give milk to your babies. Plus the SNS now.”

“Not me,” I told her. “Because it was too hard for me to ever impose that decision on anyone else. I could never, ever stand up in front of someone and tell them that they ought to do what I did. I chose it, but I wouldn’t give anyone a guilt trip for not doing the same thing.”

I brought my baby home with the SNS and the nipple shield and spent the next several weeks holed up in my bedroom, trying to get him to eat enough from it so that he could grow. It’s impossible to nurse discreetly with the SNS, and I didn’t want my older kids to watch everything, so I hunkered in the back room, listening to the sounds of bickering with one ear and the ipad earbud in the other. It took about an hour to get him to eat enough to sleep for two hours, and after that I still had to pump. And maybe shower. And maybe acknowledge the existence of my other children, and my husband.

When he reached 40 weeks gestational age, I went to see a lactation specialist for SNS weaning advice. She was a sweet lady but not too helpful; everything she told me I had already tried. And it was just. so. time-consuming. I needed to get ready for school to start, I needed to attack my laundry mountain, I needed to care for my entire family better than the SNS’s time commitment allowed. So I broke out the bottles for daytime feeding so I could feed the baby in fifteen minutes instead of sixty, and I still did the SNS at night. And still pumped 5-6 times a day, but this system worked better for me.

Until one night when I was so dizzy with fatigue that I used a bottle instead of the SNS, and since then it’s been all pumped milk bottles. But eventually the milk supply will run low, and we’ll be doing formula. I know how it goes; I’ve been here before.

I’m not really at peace with giving up on real nursing. I wish I were. I wish I could just pat myself on the back for all past and future pumping. There’s something primal and core for me about nursing, and I have felt the loss of that relationship with my two oldest children. It was incredibly validating as a mother to finally, finally be able to nurse my third child, and I was hoping I could make it work with this baby.

And yet, I’m also not ready to go back to being holed up in my bedroom all day long as I try to get my baby to nurse the right way. I just can’t do that anymore. I feel stuck and frustrated by the whole thing.

So this post may be the essence of Too Much Information, more than you ever wanted to know about my nursing experience. But I’m curious about all of yours. You NICU moms, did you pump? For how long? Did nursing ever magically start working for you three or four months out? Has anyone else been cursed by the nursing gods?

I will state up front that I really want stories–what did you do, what worked for you personally–but I’d prefer that you avoid saying “you should do this” or “have you tried that.” Because I’m pretty fragile and defensive about the whole situation, and I just can’t handle advice very well right now, even when it’s well-meant. I have been to the websites, I have read the books, I have visited the lactation specialists. I’m going to muddle through somehow.

And I will also say that I respect the feeding choices of any mother who feeds her baby in any way, breastfed, formula fed, whatever works for you and your family, and I hope that all comments also reflect that respect for different feeding choices. A breastfeeding motivational speaker I am not. I’m just a mom trying to feed her baby.

Related posts:

1. NICU Stories
2. Held Close
3. Nursing

I didn’t ask her about her story, and I didn’t ask any of the women I rode the elevator with, except to say occasionally, in a friendly way, “We wear the same bracelet.” They smiled tired smiles back.

Every time I saw someone wearing that bracelet, I wanted to know their story. How early was your baby? Mine was thirty-four weeks, five days. And yours? And is he breathing all right now? Yes, we’re on room air. He was on CPAP at first, but only for a day and a half, so that was pretty good. Have you started to nurse? How’s that going? How’s all that pumping? Eight times a day, more if I can fit it in. Yeah, I get up in the middle of the night and pump too. I’ve never had milk supply issues before, but it’s been harder this time around for some reason. Does it frustrate you too that no one gives you a straight answer about when your baby can come home? Except that would be terrible, to have them say “three weeks” or “two weeks” and have it drag out to four or five. To have something else go wrong.

I would have liked to ask those other women, but I did not. Partly because I was shy, and partly because it was such a personal experience. Yes, I had a premature baby, but he was born at nearly thirty-five weeks, which is a whole different league than a baby born at thirty-two, or thirty, or earlier. I’m in the NICU mom club, and I’m not saying it was easy, but I felt like I was still not… worthy, I guess, to share my story with someone whose story could be much more intense than mine was.

And I know the feeling of having someone pry when you’re not ready to open up. The week after I went home, when my baby was still in the hospital, I had to go nursing bra shopping–it was something I’d left for the end of my pregnancy, and then bed rest prevented me from going. The sales girl was helpful and chatty, but I did not want to chat. “Did you have your baby yet?” she chirped. “Uh-huh,” I said.

“And what did you have?”

“A boy,” I said. “And can I try that other one on too?” She wanted a birth story, but I wasn’t ready to tell her. Weepy with postpartum hormones, I did not want to share my story with a stranger, even a kind one.

But eventually my deflections did not work, and as she rang up my purchase she asked the question that sent me over, “And when were you due?”

“July 28th,” I said.

“Oh.” Now she understood, and seeing the understanding on her face made me lose everything I had been holding in. “So he was early. Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. Even knowing that he was going to be okay, it was still hard to stand there in Motherhood Maternity, passing over my credit card, signing the receipt, weeping to a stranger.

So I thought about that when I saw the girl in the wheelchair, the girl who was me a few weeks ago. I did not want to ask questions she wasn’t ready to answer to a stranger. But I hoped for her that her baby was like mine: off of his IV, starting to wake up to feed, and comforted enough in her presence to sleep. I hoped she was doing all right, that her husband was taking care of things at home, that someone was praying for her and that she could feel those prayers as intensely as I have felt the ones of family and friends in the last month.

My baby is home now, and he’s doing fine. He was born at thirty-four weeks and five days, because my amniotic fluid was too low. I had a c-section, and my recovery from that was excellent. We are still trying to figure out nursing, but he’s eating well and gaining weight with our current system. Those are the more mundane details. But the heart of this whole experience is much harder to articulate. I have, as I said, felt divine help and prayers strengthening me and my family. I have been blessed by many, many friends and family members who have sacrificed time and energy to care for me and my family. I have realized, more than with my previous children, the way my whole world can revolve around giving birth. There are thousands of women like me, with stories of their baby’s stormy transition from heaven to earth.

Do you have a NICU story you’d like to share? No pressure, though, if you don’t want to. I will enjoy whatever you’ve got to say. I can’t promise to comment much, because I’m working on very little sleep, but I will read them all. And thank you.

Related posts:

1. Why Would You . . .
2. Auction item #8: baby legwarmers
3. The Prayer I Haven’t Been Ready To Pray

But I went beyond the magazines. I bought my own stash of pregnancy and baby books: the venerable What to Expect series, Your Pregnancy Week by Week, the slightly naughty Girlfriend’s Guide books, a breastfeeding tome entitled So That’s What They’re For. In the course of my parenting I have purchased books on coping with picky eaters, getting my child to sleep, disciplining preschoolers, making your own Super Baby Food, and no less than four books on How To Potty Train.

Sometimes I think I’ve tried to find validation in my shelf of parenting books, as if knowing that I followed this method for sleep or that method for potty training made me a better mother. Like writing a research paper and having a large Works Cited pages: proof I did my parenting homework and was well qualified.

But no book I’ve ever read has really made me feel qualified and knowledgable. I haven’t opened most of the books on my parenting shelf in years. There are a couple I plan to refer to for specific things: the Love and Logic discipline series, or my favorite baby sleep book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. But there’s just too much information for my little brain to process and apply. And ultimately I have to strike out on my own, making choices for my family and owning my decisions. I need to make my own Works Cited page, composed not of Experts, but of life experience.

Part of me is always wondering, though, if that shiny new parenting book will have the magic key that makes everything run smoothly in our home. I have not, for instance, read any book that talks extensively about how to integrate a fourth baby into your family (it’s always “what to do when baby number two comes along.” Possibly three. Do they think we’ve got it all figured out by four, or am I in a rare enough demographic that no one writes articles for us?).

Is there a magic method that fixes everything? How do you feel about parenting books and advice articles? What’s on your parenting Works Cited list?

Related posts:

1. A Living Sacrifice, part V: Adoption
2. Parenting and Happiness
3. Dealbreakers