After each of my four babies was born, my family was blessed by the generosity of friends who brought us meals. The chores of meal planning and preparation loom large above the heads of new moms who are already sleep-deprived, bodies exhausted from giving birth, and minds tired from trying to adjust to the addition of a new family member. After my first baby was born, I had such terrible postpartum anxiety, I could hardly remember to feed myself. My poor mother who was visiting to help me nearly starved!  If you have a friend or family member who’s recently had a new baby, bringing a meal for the new…

Work-life balance is the concept that a person feels comfortable with the amount and quality of time spent on their job versus their personal life. Sarah Buckley Friedberg recently shed light on the elusiveness of this concept in a Facebook post that went viral. She outlined the contradictory set of demands placed upon working moms and the difficulty of living up to society’s standard of work-life balance. As a working mom, I agree that it can be a challenge to find work-life balance. I love my job and normally enjoy going to work, but it can be really hard to leave my kids in the morning. And when I’m at…

I argue with myself on a regular basis about being a working mom vs. a stay-at-home mom. We are in the category of family that could “make it work” if I decided I wanted to step back from my career and stay at home full-time with our four kids. At this point, my take-home pay is not much more than the cost of childcare, so it would not make a huge financial impact on our family if I decided to resign. But if a woman has the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom, this does not mean she should necessarily take it. No one arrangement is definitively better for the…

I have a Master’s degree and have been working a professional job in my field for eight-and-a-half years. I also have four children ages seven months to seven years. Although I’m passionate about my career and love the university job I work for 30 hours a week, I often find myself torn. It is difficult to juggle work life and home life, and the thought of resigning and becoming a stay-at-home mom crosses my mind frequently. In fact, now that we have had our fourth baby and are paying nearly as much in childcare as I take home in my paycheck, we are contemplating it even more seriously. Plenty of…

Do you ever feel like you just need to figure out how to organize your life? With four young kids, I often feel like I’m in survival mode, barely holding it all together. But I found a collection of resources this week that has truly sparked a change in me. I have begun to fill my mind with strategies, systems, and tools that can help me organize my life and manage all aspects of my household. Disclosure: As an affiliate for Ultimate Bundles, I may earn a commission if you click through the links below and make a purchase. The Ultimate Productivity Bundle is a collection of electronic resources designed…

I recently asked my Facebook followers about what they do to make parenting less stressful. Many of the helpful responses made their way into this post, which I suggest you bookmark to read later. But there was one answer that I thought warranted its own post altogether: living a minimalist lifestyle. A minimalist lifestyle is far from how I would describe my family’s way of life. Our playroom is overflowing with toys and our closets are overflowing with clothes. I know I should be grateful for my family’s abundance, and I truly am. But sometimes I feel like our house is suffocating us. Maybe that’s why I am so intrigued…

Parenting is certainly one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done, but also the most stressful. There are so many demands on my time, energy, and emotions each day. I love finding ways to make things simpler, more efficient, and ultimately less stressful. Here is a collection of some tricks you can try to make your own parenting less stressful. Hopefully, these will make it a little easier to enjoy your family! Many of these ideas were suggested by the fabulous moms on my Four to Love Facebook page. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you click through and make…

I am pleased to feature this guest post about postpartum depression and anxiety written by author Bridget Croteau. When I was a first-time mom, I experienced the baby blues for several weeks. I was weepy, detached, and forlorn. I found myself overwhelmed by even simple tasks, often neglected to eat, and worried about everything. Eventually, I started to come out of the darkness, find myself again, and enjoy motherhood. Bridget is committed to shedding light on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders such as postpartum depression and anxiety, and supporting and encouraging parents who are experiencing such disorders. –Jennie Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn…

As a mom, I am always looking for ways to make life easier. There is no room for inefficiency when you have to care for four kids, cook meals, keep a house reasonably tidy, work a job or two, and sleep sometimes. I embrace any gifts to make life easier or item I come across that somehow frees up some of my resources to allow me to more easily accomplish all I need to. If you are a mom looking for ideas to put on your own wish list, or you are hoping to pick out gifts to make life easier for a mom, I have put together a list…