The Price of Motherhood and Christmas

The popular Christmas song by Boney M rings in my head: “Mary’s boy child Jesus Christ was born on Christmas Day….Hark the Herald angels sing”

It sounds like it was a glorious birth experience, doesn’t it? Yet Mary had just traveled a couple  days on the back of a donkey, at full term! Now that couldn’t have been fun or very comfortable, although maybe it did help to get labor started if there was any doubt that her son Jesus would arrive late to his divinely scheduled birthday. Hopefully Joseph and Mary had been to some kind of birthing prep class because I don’t see mention of any doula or midwife present at this birth…

Motherhood is truly wonderful for the most part, but it does have its challenges, which for some moms, perhaps like Mary, begin before baby is even born. As the baby grows, mom can develop back pain, pubic symphysis pain, which makes even getting in...

My family went to New York City for a few days over Christmas. We had some fun and got exercise ice skating in Bryant Park, walking the streets of New York City and Central Park....although we were tempted to hitch a ride in a rickshaw at Central Park!

Ice skating with my girls :)

On our last day there we decided to walk the Brooklyn Bridge. it was only two stops on the subway from out hotel, so we calculated that we had more than enough time to go do that and still leave at 1:30 pm to get to the airport on time for our 5:30pm flight.

All went well until we got on the wrong train to come back to our hotel!

It makes a difference whether you enter the subway at one street corner or another sometimes if you aren't sure about what you're doing! In our haste, and thinking we could figure it out on our own, we got on the brown line instead of the green, and then found that we couldn't just go to the next stop because they didn't connect there.

We fumbled around looking at the subway app...