u/Gold_Market_2605

My husband got an offer in the US and we will soon be relocating to the other side of the world. I have lived most of my life in UAE. I also gave birth this year so with an infant. I am really overwhelmed cause it’s a completely new country and am still figuring myself out after becoming a mom. I don’t have a job so will be a stay at home mom until end of this year.

Can someone from the region guide me on how to integrate better in the US (Florida). Please be kind as I am anxious and running on loose nerves thinking of the move

I was born to high achieving parents. Both ambitious, confident and career-oriented. Both my parents were off to work until evening (sometimes late night) and I was at the mercy of my nanny who was deeply unsatisfied in her life. I felt lonely all my childhood. I had imaginary friends that I took care of, made tea for, or even napped with. It never felt off in my childhood as my window for understanding “family” was limited. I always felt like I couldn’t speak my mind. If I emotionally expressed myself (before an exam feeling scared or when I was bullied), it was always brushed off as “you are weak” or “look how strong I am, you are so weak for feeling emotional”. I rarely have any memories with my dad as he was always in his office. Most other kids had available fathers that would teach them how to ride a bike, or take them out on sundays, or teach them to make things. I have no such memory from my childhood. I have memories of being hit because I couldn’t understand what my dad was teaching me (I still hate maths because of that). My parents also fought a lot and sometimes they would escalate to suicide threats.

I met my now husband 5 years ago. He was not the kind of man I ever thought I would get married. He was a simple man, hardworking, caring, calm, not a social charmer. He would always be there for me when I felt low. Which felt off cause I wasn’t used to getting love without wanting something in return.
I couldn’t trust him for years! I always thought he wanted something from me. Slowly I let it go and learnt to lean on him. When I started living with him, I realised how different his family dynamics is. Of how he calls his family everyday. When I met his parents, I was surprised as to how low drama his family was. No fights. No passive aggression. It felt so odd to me. I felt out of place. When I got married to him, I spent the first year cautious of my in-laws, observing every little detail and questioning if they were being mean to me. They are generally nice to me and I couldn’t believe they would just do that.
For them their son comes first, and I come second. They love and care for him so much.

I feel so angry. I feel so jealous that I never got that relationship with my parents. Of how beautiful a thing was never in my fate - the selfless love of a parent. I feel angry as to why did my parents have a child if they wanted such a prolific career. Why did they birth me if they didn’t have the capacity to take care with devotion. I also get angry at my husband when his mother dotes on him or his father says he is proud of him.

I wish someone saw me too. I wish someone gave me that parental love too.

I was born to high achieving parents. Both ambitious, confident and career-oriented. Both my parents were off to work until evening (sometimes late night) and I was at the mercy of my nanny who was deeply unsatisfied in her life. I felt lonely all my childhood. I had imaginary friends that I took care of, made tea for, or even napped with. It never felt off in my childhood as my window for understanding “family” was limited. I always felt like I couldn’t speak my mind. If I emotionally expressed myself (before an exam feeling scared or when I was bullied), it was always brushed off as “you are weak” or “look how strong I am, you are so weak for feeling emotional”. I rarely have any memories with my dad as he was always in his office. Most other kids had available fathers that would teach them how to ride a bike, or take them out on sundays, or teach them to make things. I have no such memory from my childhood. I have memories of being hit because I couldn’t understand what my dad was teaching me (I still hate maths because of that). My parents also fought a lot and sometimes they would escalate to suicide threats.

I met my now husband 5 years ago. He was not the kind of man I ever thought I would get married. He was a simple man, hardworking, caring, calm, not a social charmer. He would always be there for me when I felt low. Which felt off cause I wasn’t used to getting love without wanting something in return.
I couldn’t trust him for years! I always thought he wanted something from me. Slowly I let it go and learnt to lean on him. When I started living with him, I realised how different his family dynamics is. Of how he calls his family everyday. When I met his parents, I was surprised as to how low drama his family was. No fights. No passive aggression. It felt so odd to me. I felt out of place. When I got married to him, I spent the first year cautious of my in-laws, observing every little detail and questioning if they were being mean to me. They are generally nice to me and I couldn’t believe they would just do that.
For them their son comes first, and I come second. They love and care for him so much.

I feel so angry. I feel so jealous that I never got that relationship with my parents. Of how beautiful a thing was never in my fate - the selfless love of a parent. I feel angry as to why did my parents have a child if they wanted such a prolific career. Why did they birth me if they didn’t have the capacity to take care with devotion. I also get angry at my husband when his mother dotes on him or his father says he is proud of him.

I wish someone saw me too. I wish someone gave me that parental love too.

I had a PPROM and my daughter was diagnosed with anorectal malformation at birth. The first week was the roughest as we were running multiple tests to negate VATER syndrome (a list of other conditions that occur together with anorectal malformation) and we had no clue if she will need an urgent reconstruction surgery so that she can pass stool or will need a surgery to correct the position. She was kept in the NICU until all her tests came back which seemed like the longest week of my life.

Sitting in my maternity ward, I stumbled across this group, and it gave me so much of strength.

We have some mini warriors here. And I’ve so much respect for parents that go through the tumultuous journey of having their baby in the NICU.

Just wanted to thank this community for sharing their stories!

This may be when they were young or now as adults. I’d love to know: are you still in touch? Do they still care for you? Do they still want you in their life?

I have a very active 5 month old. I tried the baby hug baby carrier but she hates it as she keeps tilting to the side. She gets fussy if I face her inward. I know we shouldn’t keep babies for more than 20 mins outward due to bad posture.

Please suggest which type of baby carrier should I go ahead with? I have heard great things about the Soul sling Laali, but I’m afraid my baby is going to hate it too. I really am tired of holding the baby all day

I penned down my thoughts as a fresh postpartum mama. It feels never ending and I have never felt this lonely and “unproductive” as I do now. I know it’s important for me to be with my LO, so wrote this down. I hope this stumbles across some other mother struggling through the newborn trenches and makes her smile 😃** **

There are two kinds of time.
There’s calendar time, which marches along with perfect indifference. One second. One minute. One year. And then there’s experienced time, which has absolutely no interest in fairness. 5 hours in an airport security line = approximately three geological epochs. A two-week vacation in Chiang Mai = somewhere between 18 minutes and a pleasant hallucination.

And then there’s the first year of motherhood.
Which somehow manages to feel both infinite and over before you’ve figured out what happened.

Let’s pretend you’re lucky enough to live to 90.
That’s roughly 32,850 days. Now imagine laying them all end to end like tiles stretching toward the horizon.
Your first year as a mother?
Just 365 of them.
A little more than 1%.
One small section of a very long road.

The first year has a peculiar property. It shrinks your world. Not emotionally (well also emotionally, I’m looking at you my crying baby). But geographically.
Suddenly your universe has a radius measured in minutes (no more than 3 hours if you are exclusively breastfeeding). The couch. The crib. The changing table. The salon if everyone is having an unusually cooperative day.

The logistics alone become astonishing. Leaving the house starts to resemble planning a space expedition. Checklist. Backup checklist. Emergency outfit. Emergency backup outfit. Diapers. Extra diapers because optimism has failed you before.
And somewhere in the middle of all this, you’re expected to do taxes and file for insurance reimbursement.

Human brains aren’t especially good at judging duration while immersed in difficult experiences. We substitute intensity for permanence. When something occupies nearly every waking thought, it quietly convinces us it will occupy every future version of ourselves too. Sleep deprivation reinforces this illusion. Routine reinforces it. Isolation reinforces it. Days blur together until Tuesday could just as easily be February.

Your internal narrator begins whispering:
“This is life now.”
Not:
“This is life this year.”
Those are very different sentences.

Imagine meeting your 80-year-old self. She remembers the first year. Of course she does.
It mattered. But she doesn’t remember it as an endless hallway. She remembers it as a chapter.
An exhausting one. Possibly the chapter with the least sleep ever recorded. But she remembers a lot more -

She remembers birthdays.
School plays.
Awkward teenage conversations.
Family holidays.
Career reinventions.
Friendships.
Trips.
Losses.
Quiet mornings.
Busy mornings.
Unexpected adventures.
Maybe grandchildren.
Thousands upon thousands of ordinary afternoons that haven’t happened yet. From her perspective, the first year is no longer the entire landscape.
It’s one pixel in a very large photograph.

And one day, somewhere decades from now, you’ll look back at the woman who thought this season would never end. You’ll want to hug her. Not because she was wrong about how hard it was.
She wasn’t. She was only wrong about one thing.
She thought she was living in the whole story.
She was standing in the first chapter.

Hi all girlies and gents

Anyone used tret prescribed by a dermatologist? I see great praises both in research and from ppl on using tretinol as part of the PM routine.

I’m curious how are the effects for the Indian skin tone? Does it cause too much hyperpigmentation? Also, how do you get a prescription? Should I just visit a dermatologist?

I recently gave birth and postpartum has been difficult for me. I honestly didn’t anticipate how much it will mess with my body and how demanding taking care of a newborn would be. My in-laws have come to help us. And while my MIL does help by taking turns to overlook the baby while I shower, go to the gym, or have meals, her people-pleasing (or son-pleasing) tendencies are starting to bother me a lot. She won’t have meals without my husband. She will refuse to keep rotis made and will make hot rotis for husband even if it’s late in the night. Or keep the best of dishes separately for my husband (and imply I eat the leftovers). Now I don’t care what she does. But the problem is when my FIL glorifies this behaviour. Will boast “my wife has never had a meal without me” or “your MiL is the kind of woman that will wait for her kids (mind you. Not me. Just my husband) to eat”.

My husband has odd working hours and he grabs a meal whenever he gets free from work. He does not expect anyone to wait. I’m currently breastfeeding. So I cannot compromise on my meal times as my child depends completely on me for the nutrition.

The funny thing is if she does something she will say it out loud in front of my husband. She will purposely wait for him to show him how much she loves him. Or if I take a nap she will state these many hours I took care of the baby (it’s never direct all very subtle). Or how she never gets any haircut or buys anything for herself. And how her needs are so little and all she wants is serve my husband.

I ofcourse am not some sacrificial lamb. I have my own life and for me my husband is my partner. And her behaviour has started to really annoy me now. Like cut the crap lady. Like anything I do is never enough because of how she always wants to top up everything with her stupid unnecessary gestures.

I know she is helping us right now. So I can’t really say anything. But her behaviour is starting to emotionally affect me.

Does anyone have a son pleasing MiL like mine? How do you deal with these?

I recently gave birth and postpartum has been difficult for me. I honestly didn’t anticipate how much it will mess with my body and how demanding taking care of a newborn would be. My in-laws have come to help us. And while my MIL does help by taking turns to overlook the baby while I shower, go to the gym, or have meals, her people-pleasing (or son-pleasing) tendencies are starting to bother me a lot. She won’t have meals without my husband. She will refuse to keep rotis made and will make hot rotis for husband even if it’s late in the night. Or keep the best of dishes separately for my husband (and imply I eat the leftovers). Now I don’t care what she does. But the problem is when my FIL glorifies this behaviour. Will boast “my wife has never had a meal without me” or “your MiL is the kind of woman that will wait for her kids (mind you. Not me. Just my husband) to eat”.

My husband has odd working hours and he grabs a meal whenever he gets free from work. He does not expect anyone to wait. I’m currently breastfeeding. So I cannot compromise on my meal times as my child depends completely on me for the nutrition.

The funny thing is if she does something she will say it out loud in front of my husband. She will purposely wait for him to show him how much she loves him. Or if I take a nap she will state these many hours I took care of the baby (it’s never direct all very subtle). Or how she never gets any haircut or buys anything for herself. And how her needs are so little and all she wants is serve my husband.

I ofcourse am not some sacrificial lamb. I have my own life and for me my husband is my partner. And her behaviour has started to really annoy me now. Like cut the crap lady. Like anything I do is never enough because of how she always wants to top up everything with her stupid unnecessary gestures.

I know she is helping us right now. So I can’t really say anything. But her behaviour is starting to emotionally affect me.

Does anyone have a son pleasing MiL like mine? How do you deal with these?

I’m 4 months postpartum and while I love my baby I feel like it’s been forever I have had no action. I had a difficult pregnancy so I was home bound the whole time.

Now I browse through social media and feel like a complete loser. I know people glamourise their life and are pretending to be perfect online. But I am unable to rationalise with it. I have deleted all apps from my phone and download Instagram and LinkedIn once in a while to update myself with what’s happening. But everytime I log in, it drains me. It makes me feel very little. Makes me feel like I am not enough.

How do I cope with this? How do I stop comparing myself to everyone? How do I learn to be happy?

For context: I have recently started therapy and that has helped me connect a lot of dots. It’s work in progress. But any tips/hacks would really help.

The newborn phase feels never ending. I feel like my life completely changed overnight and I have no time to be a person again but just take care of my baby. I am sleep deprived and I have started to feel envious of people that don’t have to do these things and are achieving or relaxing in life.

Can someone please reassure me that life is pretty long and this is just a phase in life. I should enjoy this phase and not rush into “getting back” in shape/identity roles.

Hello y’all

I had a baby girl this year and I’m a little terrified of raising her right. The society is so deeply critical of girls that I want to make sure she never has to question herself or ruminate in self doubt so that some toxic man swoops in and misbehaves with her.

I also grew up abroad, so I always had this script that I need to be cautious of how I am perceived socially. This really messed up with me at work as I became a total people pleaser.

What are some things you think help to raise confidence of a girl if she’s raised abroad.

Hey! I’m 3 months PP and I plan on swimming working out now. None of my old swim suits fit me anymore, so I’m looking for a new one. I had a C section and have the mama pooch. Has anyone shopped for a swimsuit post C section? Pls suggest brands/styles.

I want a skort style as I feel very conscious of my body. And anything that hides the pooch. Pls suggest!

I am usually mind your own business type of a person, unless something harms me. If someone doesn’t want kids, I don’t care, you do you. But this new trend of how kids are an inconvenience to public spaces and judgement on “entitled” parents is really disheartening.

They want that kids should not run, play, explore around and stay put minding their own business. I was surprised to see so many negative comments on a scenario where my baby was crying on the flight (which I cannot really help as it causes physical discomfort). This crying is “distressing”. It is distressing but as a parent you are trying to soothe them, I mean, no one likes a crying baby!

One of them went to the extend of sending me a personal message and comparing mothers to her street cat. She says if a cat can give birth to a litter, I am sure it is not a big deal.

There’s just such little grace towards parents and this attitude “it’s your problem”. I am really concerned about all the bitterness towards kids

I btw have really close friends that are childfree and are the sweetest. I understand they are pestered a lot for having kids, so they feel bitter about this topic, but let’s not hate on someone that is yet to develop a nervous system. What’s the difference if your body has grown but you still level up to a kid mentally?

Just wanted to rant because I was so sad seeing it

In Uni I had a big girl gang, we used to hang out and do everything together. Always a call/SMS away in crisis. Now everyone is in different corners of the world and you get replies after 2-3 days. We haven’t met in a decade. And it’s just impossible to make friends as an adult. The only ppl I hang out with are husband’s friends and their spouse or my work colleagues and ocasssionally a gym friend

I just miss having my girl gang with me. End of rant. Just feeling low today

Hi all

I think I look like a complete mess. Have gained 10kgs, have acne on my skin, big eye bags due to sleep deprivation, and have that dry damaged hair look

I am currently breastfeeding, and plan to wean off after the 6 months mark. Thats when my hunger pangs will go down and will be able to workout and actually see results. I will also be able to use retinol and colour my hair.

To other mommas out there, what glow tips can you recommend me? I reaalllllly want to not look like I do. Please suggest glow-up tips. I wanna be that Santoor-mom yall!

I got great suggestions from this community and have started walking now. It has been great for my mental health. I’m exclusively breastfeeding, so I’ve no control on my diet, I am hungry all the time. Pls suggest your diet/meal plans so that I can eat healthy without effecting my milk supply!

I’m 11 weeks PP, and eat eggs and lean protein only

The recent war has really shaken me up. I am scared of the future, more than ever. How do you decide whether you want to move back to India? Also, how is your country for a family? And how easy is it to get visa and work around details?

Context: i am 2nd gen Indian in Dubai, parents have moved back and are retired. They keep visiting me but are happy back in India. I have some savings and flexibility to consider a move. But everytime I go back to India, I realise how I might never belong there. It is also so dirty and chaotic. I am also scared of not feeling free.