Why is the fertility rate across the Western world plummeting..? Ah, this is one clue.
Here is how I get to work and back:
- Get Lauca up.
- Change her nappy.
- Make her breakfast.
- Get self showered, dressed, hair and make up done.
- Sometimes have breakfast.
- Get Lauca dressed, hair brushed, face and hands washed.
- Check Lauca’s daycare bag, he packs it the night before but he invariably forgets something.
- Check I have everything I need for work.
- Pack handbag, folio case, Lauca’s daycare bag, (sometimes Lauca’s sheets if its a washing week), my lunch bag and stroller in to the car (thank myself for being sensible enough to enrol her in a daycare with a chef so I don’t have to make and carry her lunch with us).
- Get all our stuff and Lauca in the car.
- Drive to the station and try to find a spare park.
- Unload Lauca, stroller, handbag, folio case, daycare bag, sheets bag, lunch bag.
- Clip Lauca into stroller, walk up to the train platform.
- Buy a ticket, fold up stroller.
- Carry stroller, Lauca, handbag, folio case, daycare bag, sheets bag, and lunch bag on to train.
- Lay stroller in aisle-way to be cursed at later by other passengers tripping over it.
- Get Lauca in to the train seat next to me, prepare for 30 min trip.
- Feed Lauca (she is never hungry enough to eat much breakfast first thing in the morning).
- Train fills up with people squished together and standing all over my bags and stroller.
- Think about how Lauca is the only child here under school age but don’t wonder why – this is hard work.
- Try and keep Lauca from getting bored and making too much noise, asking to get out of the train, or wiping food on people or seats.
- Start reaching between people’s legs to collect our bags and stroller together before we get to our stop.
- Give Lauca a pep talk about how to get off the train.
- Scoop up bags and stroller and push Lauca along through the crowd of people squeezed together in the train.
- Stop Lauca from falling out the train door, drop bags and stroller on the platform and reach for her as the train door closes.
- Think about the minor miracle that happens every time we manage to get on or off a peak hour train together.
- Set up stroller and clip in.
- Gather bags and find an elevator because we can’t get up the stairs with a stroller.
- Find ticket and swim against stream to get through the one ticket gate that is large enough to fit a stroller through it.
- Walk 15 minutes to the daycare.
- Sign Lauca in, fold up stroller and put it away.
- Put daycare bag away in her pigeon hole, get a tissue to wipe her tears.
- Settle Lauca in, try and get her calm enough to stop crying, greet the carers.
- Leave and walk 15 mins to work wondering why I have to start my day in heartache and he is oblivious.
- Come in, sit down at my desk, feel hungry and wish I’d had breakfast, wish I could get to work earlier, feel exhausted, listen to inane jokes about my ‘long weekend’ (gentlemen, its not a long weekend if you don’t get paid for it and you don’t get to rest during it).
- Then at the end of the day….
- Wish I had longer to get the work done, instead finish work up in a mad panic and attempt to tell my boss telepathically not to stop me for a ten minute chat about work on may way out the door… I have stayed here until the very last possible second, I need to leave, now, right this moment, and collect my poor daughter from daycare.
- Wonder why none of these men I work with have to rush out the door to pick up their children from daycare.
- Carry lunch bag, handbag, and folio case and jog-walk 15 mins to daycare.
- Collect Lauca and her daycare bag.
- Check with the carers how Lauca’s day went.
- Collect notes to parents from the pigeon hole.
- Get stroller and unfold it and strap Lauca in.
- Fill out any paperwork and pay daycare.
- Sign Lauca out.
- Rush 10 mins to train station, find ticket, cut across a steady stream of commuters to get to the only ticket gate to allow a stroller to pass through.
- Get elevator down to the station and curse it for being slow – now I will have to go faster than a speeding locomotive to get us on the speeding locomotive.
- Fold up stroller and give Lauca a pep talk about sticking with me while I push through crowds of people to get us on a train.
- Carry handbag, lunch bag, folio case, daycare bag and stroller while trying to keep Lauca with me, and pick her up when she trips over and get on train.
- Am offered a spare seat and must get Lauca and I settled in to it with all our bags and stroller on the floor among people’s feet without falling over as train jerks away from the station.
- Try not to sweat on people, I am overheating from all the running to and fro.
- Think about the minor miracle that happens every time we manage to get on or off a peak hour train together.
- Chat to Lauca to keep her distracted as she starts to get tired, frustrated, cramped and teary – 30 min trip.
- Get out of train, slightly less difficult as not as many people by the end of the line but still have to carry Lauca (too tired now to walk), a stroller, handbag, folio bag, lunch bag, daycare bag.
- Unfold stroller and clip Lauca in, find car.
- Get Lauca in the car, shove assorted bags inside, fold up stroller and put it in the car.
- Drive home.
- Get Lauca, handbag, folio case, lunch bag, daycare bag out of the car.
- Get inside – unpack folio bag, lunch bag, daycare bag.
- Starts the evening grind – dinner, bath, get toddler to sleep, clean-up etc etc.
- Ask him to pack daycare bag for the next day.
Now, this is how he gets to work and back.
- Showers, shaves, dresses.
- Puts on a playschool DVD for Lauca.
- Sometimes changes her nappy and sometimes makes her breakfast.
- Makes and drinks a coffee.
- Sometimes has breakfast.
- Packs bag, gathers helmet and jacket.
- Kisses us goodbye.
- Rides motorbike 35 mins to work.
- Parks motorbike and walks straight into office.
- Then at the end of the day…
- Pack up bag, gather helmet and jacket.
- Ride motorbike home 35-40mins in worse traffic.
- Park motorbike and walk straight in the house.
- Kisses us hello.
- Starts the evening grind – cooking dinner etc etc.
- Sometimes packs daycare bag for the next day and sometimes complains that it is too hard and he doesn’t know where everything is.
Off the top of my head there are a few strategies that could make life a lot easier:
Flexible work arrangements to allow some work from home, or start and finish times outside peak hours. More jobs offering part-time opportunities and greater acceptability around men working part-time jobs so we could both be working part-time. More respect for part-time workers – we’re not paid for full-time hours so don’t treat it like we can stay back full-time hours. More funding for public service so peak-hour trains aren’t so cramped, and maybe even carriages with room to pack strollers away. Train carriages with ramps for strollers and hello, wheelchairs. On-site daycare centres at work. Greater expectations on men to take up more of their share of parenting responsibilities. Me, being a little bit less of a stupid martyr and negotiating a fairer division of labour with my partner.
But.
The very worst thing about this, the thing that is worse than living this insanity is that this gross inequality between men and women is completely silent. Some women know about it, I suspect these are the same women who offer to help me get Lauca on and off the crowded train (ie. older women who have raised children). But I’m pretty sure almost no men know about it, certainly not the man I raise our child with (though I’m working on it) and definitely not the men I work with. This endurance test of mine is not seen, appreciated, or valued. Were it not for my (almost) two-year old witness it would be as if it never happened. Maybe if it was acknowledged I wouldn’t feel so spent, though I’d still feel it was unfair. The truth is no-one wants to know about it. Who wants to take up any of the slack, to create solutions that share the burden and the rewards of working life more equitably? It is easier to let women keep carrying the load, silently, in the background, to keep the cogs turning. On a good day I have a satisfying time at work and it feels worthwhile, I don’t want to even talk about how hard it is on a bad day. (Now you decide we should write the submission in this other direction?! Why did I put Lauca and I through this struggle so you could change your mind at the last moment and make the last two weeks work of mine redundant?!)
It starts at home, as a mother you must fight for equality in parenting. You’ll probably never get it, but if you don’t at least try we’re all screwed.
Wow, this is so enlightening. I confess I’m one of those childless women who sometimes rolls my eyes at women with squawking toddlers or strollers in my way. (In my defense, I’m usually responding to what seems like a galloping sense of entitlement, not to the mere existence of strollers and children. But I’m sure that on a bad day, many parents I would adore if I knew them can look just like the entitled jerkwads who really DO think the world should stop for them and their progeny.) I’ve been trying to break that habit anyway, since A) lots of my friends are having babies and B) I’m starting to think more about having one of my own, but now, I will do my best to think back to this post every time I find myself annoyed.
Oh yes, you hit the nail on the head. Over and over again.
Yup…in our society, we walk on eggshells, enslaved to lingo that doesn’t even make sense but somehow sounds more palatable to the powers that be and so we have to use it.
Thank you for your honesty, both of you.
Kate – I know I saw things differently before I had a child so what can I say.. becoming a parent has meant getting very acquainted with humility. I’m always doing and thinking things as a mother that I never thought I’d ever do or think. Compromising my feminism has been one of the hardest elements of that, but dark confession – I’ve also let my baby pull price tags off merchandise just to keep her occupied while I shopped, even though I knew it would annoy sales assistants and customers alike. Eating your words – one of the integral experiences of parenthood. So, if you do have a child don’t be surprised if you feel pretty damn entitled (to a break, to some tolerance, to some acknowledgement) also.
em – thank you for letting me know that you feel the same way too as a mother. It is a reassuring moment when others nod in recognition.
Yeah, between relatives and friends who’ve gone before, I’m definitely convinced that the one universally true thing about parenthood is that you have no freakin’ idea what it’s like until the kid is there, and then you just do whatever works. And I am the type of person who goes batshit crazy without A) sleep or B) alone time, so I KNOW all my parenting theories will be out the window by week 2, and it’ll be a good day if I don’t leave the kid on the doorstep of a convent and then throw myself off an overpass.
Thank YOU for your honesty about the unexpected compromises of parenthood. That’s the kind of thing that gives me hope, in a strange way. When I read about people who present motherhood as this 24/7 joy that fulfills their destiny as women, I think, “Guh, not for me.” But when I read about people who say, “I’m exhausted all the time, and I question everything I do, and my feminist principles might just be on the back burner for the next 18 years, and my god, it is so hard… but it’s STILL the most incredible joy,” then I can actually see where I might fit in as a mother. 🙂
You should tag this post as a public service announcement. Thanks for sharing your day in such clear and understandable detail. And let me get those bags for you.
Thank you kitchentable.
[…] words) for whatever is left of a paycheck after daycare and other work costs are covered. This excellent post by blue milk illustrates the co-parenting myth applied to childcare arrangements. This would be me, too, if I […]
I just linked to this, you painted a perfect picture.
Many thanks bianca bean.
just stumbled across this.
i have 3 kids. dad of first two less helpful than you described, decamped when youngest was 2, now has decided ten years later that he has paid ‘enough’ child support. Luckily i am almost finished my degree, (delayed when then youngest developed heart problem due to a virus, and I had to take time off to provide full time care.)
father of youngest decamped for first 6 months of her life to decide whether or not he ‘really wanted to do this.’ Luckily he does, and is now very helpful… though no longer my partner.
I no longer have the energy to list all the stuff that i do, but admire yours. Keep writing!
Reading this made me realise that after years of being ‘a sole (loser) parent’,after being told it was ‘my fault for having them’ and that i should be more financially responsible for my ‘crotchfruit’,(i have worked part time doing everything from cleaning hotel rooms to painting weatherboards- and this year i made the deans list at my university.) that i had lost sight of the value of the work i do as a parent.
back to the essay, the washing, the dishes and the rest of it… feeling a little better.
Stumbled in, four days later than the last straggler. ^^
Amen to kitchentable‘s suggestion to tag this post as a PSA. I haven’t had any children yet, but this is more than likely in my future, the exception(s) being 1) that our local public trans is a bus system and 2) being informed by women such as yourself how share this invaluable information with the rest of the blogosphere, I might actually be in a place to more effectively negotiate schedules with my husband.
Come to think of it, he might be able to do some work from home… *plans*.
I’ve been enjoying everything I’ve read here so far. Consider yourself linked. ^^
Thank you rose for the really lovely comment you left on my website. I am not surprised you don’t value your own work and achievements as a
parent – it is a completely unrecognised labour in our society. If motherhood was valued then our society wouldn’t be so down on single
parents – single mothers are after all achieving the incredible, all by themselves. Speaking of which, I was really impressed with your story – your perseverance with tertiary study on top of the labour of raising three children alone. My mother did the same thing but even having witnessed it firsthand I still don’t know how single parents do it. I can’t imagine
anything harder than doing the whole parenting gig alone. For one, there is no buffer for single parents. As unfair as I find the sharing of parenting responsibilities at times in my relationship with my partner I realise that
on the scale of things he is one of the very good ones, and not only that but some help is always more than no help whatsoever. And in those moments of sheer parenting exhaustion when you feel like you are make or break on
surviving the day, even 15 minutes relief from the other parent can make the difference.
All I can say is best of luck with the studies – I hope job recognition and a good salary are coming to you soon.
Thank you nightgigjo, your comment was really lovely.
This is a fabulous post. Thank you so much for putting it out there.
Thanks Liz, nice of you to take the time to comment.
Agree, agree, agree … but must also add that the thing I’m most weary of is being responsible for EVERYTHING. My husband’s role is that of assistant, sometimes available, sometimes not (at his whim). Out of milk? Mom’s fault. Kid misbehaving? Mom’s fault. Messy house? Mom’s fault. Checkbook not balanced? Mom’s fault. Going on a trip, forgot the kids’ toothbrushes? Mom’s fault. Kids need day care, doctor appointment, sign-up for school, piano lessons, soccer,? … You guessed it. He watches. And if any of it goes wrong, conveniently, he is not to blame.
My kids and I adore him. But I am driven crazy by the imbalance in labor (I work full-time outside the home, mind you) and responsbility.
[…] balance entitlements. It doesn’t pay much more than his previous job, but excitingly, this should be a thing of the […]
[…] in the daycare days I remember doing my best to jolly Lauca along, scaling a mountain of morning preparation, only to get her through the door of the centre and find that the one carer she had bonded with […]
[…] get pressured to conform to just one preferred body type, don’t they? Women still work the second shift, don’t they? Women still can’t guarantee that they can decide what happens to […]
Your itemising of the daily grind with kid in tow is very close to what what I used to do. It hurt to read it! How hard we women have to work in all our jobs.
[…] All this is not to say that I will be continuing forever more as a stay-at-home mother, nor even that I especially want to. Going back to work next year will be good for me (financially and mentally), but for the time being I am really enjoying the sense of accomplishment that comes with doing something pretty well because you can focus on it, and even more satisfyingly, having the power to fix something when there are problems with it. This is not to gloat, this is not to say that women should be at home, this is not to say that the fight to combine work and family life isn’t worth it, this is just to say that I am relieved to be taking a pause in that struggle. […]
[…] things I won’t get much time for soon – reading piles of books, having lunches with ladies (and babies and spilt drinks), baking […]
[…] am five years into this working mother thing, and I am still shocked about how unfair the work-family split is – all the work of getting […]
Oh wow. Stumbled across this blog last night and am hooked. Love the way you write. Wish you were in my mothers group. So much of what I have read has resonated but read this post and couldn’t help but comment. I can identify with all of your points but the two I feel so strongly about are –
‘Leave and walk 15 mins to work wondering why I have to start my day in heartache and he is oblivious’ (Could write so much on this point but I wont as I am not the blogger!)
and
‘Were it not for my (almost) two-year old witness it would be as if it never happened’. Isn’t that the truth.
Thanks for such wonderful, honest and insightful writing. Am looking forward to catching up on all your posts (in between parenting a toddler and attempting a full time work load in less than part time hours…)
[…] that ensues is largely theoretical for him, for everyone really, but the children and I, who are this strange little home team battling away together. He offers sympathy but it doesn’t even touch the sides for me; my pity party is deep and wide, […]
additionally – for those men who do do significant child care, the amount of shit they get is awful. Our culture tells men over and over they shouldn’t be doing the parenting (aka babysitting) and thus they don’t do it and women have to pick up the childcare responsibility they refused.
Legislation is shit too. here discrimination is legal, if it is positive benefits given to women because of their family responsibilities — that means it’s allowable for employers to decide to give flexible hours to women, for their parenting responsibilities, and not to men — and therefore they do so. The result is women end up doing the work. It’s hardly “positive”.
Wow, this hit so many points for me. I was doing an hour-long train commute with four-month-old twins (not our ideal plan; we had planned for hubby to stay at home with them but that fell through at the last minute). I quit after getting nearly assaulted by one of the train staff. (http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/blogs/pg-parental-guidance-advised/3406680/Twins-trains-and-trouble)
I’m fortunate enough to be home with them now, but it was SO. HARD. I was walking out the door with the twins and our five year old at 6:30am, walking 20 minutes to before-school care, walking 15 minutes to the train station, getting on the train, battling to keep them quiet and happy so as not to disturb any other commuters, walk 10 minutes to daycare, feed them, go to work, feed them, go to work, feed them (eating my lunch), go to work, feed them, go to work without staying one second past pick-up time, walk to the train station, battling to keep them happy and quiet, walking 25 minutes home, walking in the door at 6:45pm.
Thank you for the link to your article, Donnelle.
Typical female–“Women are so busy–we have it soooo hard—why don’t men help us more—bla, bla, bla, bla.
I’m so glad that young men today are checking out of marriage and having children so hat they don’t have to listen to this feminist whining.
Any young guy today that gets married is hanging a boat anchor around his whole life.
This crap is why it just isn’t worth it.
Leave women to live in their own world of self-pity, failure to take responsibility for their own unhappiness and endless emotional analysis.
God, you sound like fun, are you single?
I don’t understand why women have not figured this out yet. Yes, YOU (the wife/gf/woman) will be doing 90% of the work, so if he does not pull his fair share (and he won’t) please do not bitch about what a piece of shit he is on TruMom Confessions. What did you expect?
This IS the main reason I don’t have kids. I helped my stepmother raise two kids, while I watched my dad go play golf on the weekends. I would come home from school and change diapers, bottle feed and burp them, and rock them to sleep. IT SUCKED!
So I guess my question is this: Do you mothers’ really have no idea that all the work will fall on you? Come on!
Rubbish. It is quite possible to negotiate a better deal and it is certainly worth trying. Step one is identifying the injustice in the current arrangement and then making your partner understand why it matters. Not all men will get it, but many will and things can change.
My partner and I do share the parenting & household work equally and that never would have happened if both of us weren’t acutely aware of the entrenched inequality that does exist in most households and the exhaustion and resentment that it creates. (The fact that it basically caused the divorce of parents probably also helped to make it an important issue for me).
This comment has been deleted for trolling.
However a copy of the comment can be seen discussed in this post.
This comment has been deleted for trolling.
However a copy of the comment can be seen discussed in this post.
wow Kathryn, do you really need to visit someone’s blog and then abuse them on it??
If you read bluemilk’s posts properly you’d have a better idea about where she’s coming from. eg, Lauca is not her real name, that’s private.
[…] kind of sympathise with Elizabeth’s sentiment here in her comment on a post of mine – Sorry, is our struggle stifling your productivity? (though am not so fond of its lack of tact, and certainly not the way in which that thread has […]
This comment has been deleted for trolling.
The topic of this post is not childfree/child-hating/mother-blaming. Other posts on this blog look at that topic and you can comment on those – check my categories – however trolling/abusive comments will be deleted.
Maybe it’s because of the work I do, but I am certainly aware of it — I notice it all the time*. And I am annoyed at my Dad (who I love dearly) for balancing things out better with my Mum (who I also love dearly) when she returned to work.
But then, I can totally see how it came about: he had an uninterrupted career path as well greater educational options to begin with and so was always going to be able to earn more. She didn’t and bravely embarked in a completely new direction when she went back to work. At this point in time, the division of both unpaid and paid work was split in a way to maximise family income, which meant my Mum did more unpaid work than my Dad. And she still does, even though there is no need to.
My partner and I haven’t had kids yet, but am wondering if we were to, would we be able to achieve a 50-50 division of unpaid work? Do the early years, where paid work is likely to be done by me, set a pattern that many find hard to break?
Just to conclude my ramble, I think that your policy ideas are sound. However, I don’t think that many of them will come about or even have maximum effect until the value and importance of unpaid work is recognised.
“My partner and I haven’t had kids yet, but am wondering if we were to, would we be able to achieve a 50-50 division of unpaid work? Do the early years, where paid work is likely to be done by me, set a pattern that many find hard to break?”
In answer to your questions – you two will have the advantage of being aware of the slippery slope upon which you’re perched but the patterns of gender division once you become parents are soooooo hard to break. From observation I have found that the couples with the best results in splitting unpaid work fairly are those where the men also took some paternity leave to be home with the baby while the mother returned to work. Where the woman took 6 months off and then the man, or a year off followed by a stint of him taking a year off etc.
I take your point about the policy shift coming from unpaid work being valued, but I wonder will unpaid work be recognised until men are doing it?
Sorry about the stray asterisk, and any other incoherences above — here is a paper about gender division of labour in Australia to maybe make up for it:
Click to access chesterspaper.pdf
jose jones – enjoyed your comments but off-topic: I LOVE your nickname – that is one of my favourite Pixies songs and I named my motorbike Jose Jones.
Am glad that you appreciate it – the Pixies are wonderful.
I like your blog, too. Of course, I came here via HaT, which I find absolutely essential reading — they/ you keep me thinking!
Hi Bluemilk,
I want to thank you for this post and your million other posts on mothering. I used to think ‘Oh, I’ll just make sure that me and my Nigel do 50-50 when we have kids, I’ll insist!’, – and even actually SAID this to an exasperated fellow gradstudent who was venting about having her career stunted by child care responsibilities while her husband’s had had every advantage – wince/sigh. I’m re-evaulating that position.
Without words like yours, Bluemilk, and those of the other ridiculously wise feminist mothers in the blogosphere, I would still be paralysed, caught between my ideal feminism, and my actual life. I have long been certain that I couldn’t function as a feminist if I had children; I thought that feminism ideally meant living as much like a man as possible. Which for a long time made me terrified of the idea of motherhood.
I am just starting to get my head around the idea of being a feminist, and living like a woman, and being able to be authentic. And you have made this possible. I hope that makes sense. But thankyou. Thankyou a LOT.
Oh Jess, you have written a comment that will keep me going for days, no, weeks of low points in writing. Thank you.
Of course men don’t know about it. They honestly think they hold their half up! But they don’t realize that we just propped the other side on a wall…
[…] This ranty post on what was my own commute to work versus Bill’s commute remains one of my most popular posts ever. Things have improved greatly since then in terms of sharing the load between us but I still have some killer commutes to work, including one morning a week that involves four separate drop-offs before I finally arrive at the office. […]
[…] the nitty gritty of their lives and how they make their decisions, it is kind of like when I wrote this): So lucky to have sociable children, though! I have witnessed the pain and stress of parents who […]
[…] with her kids at 6 (via Laura at 11d). I’m pretty sure that her commute is not like the average commute of the working mother of young children (bluemilk nails it as usual), and she probably has someone […]
[…] with her kids at 6 (via Laura at 11d). I’m pretty sure that her commute is not like the average commute of the working mother of young children (bluemilk nails it as usual), and she probably has […]
As a husband, I can see how bluemilk would be frustrated by her family work plan. Clearly there is a lack of balance, but I don’t think it stems from her husband not doing “his half” of the work. The whole point of marriage is to find someone you can devote your life to. While you are joined in holy matrimony, two become one flesh and all, there is still 200% of work to be done! If each spouse doesn’t do 100% of the work, ie, everything they possibly can, BOTH sides will feel like there is stuff undone that the other could be doing. The whole point is to think of your family above yourself, and doing EVERYTHING that can be done for it. If both husband and wife do this, there will be no gap to be made up, because both of you will immediately fill a gap as soon as it becomes apparent. The secret is that the sum of a husband and wife is actually GREATER than it’s parts individually.
OMG bluemilk it is all so obvious when someone…nope sorry can’t go on with the charade. Thanks for the mansplaining Matt, with a bit of Dr Phil on the side. I think you kinda missed the point.
hah hah. And the solution was so simple all along. Thank you Matt for solving this for us.
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[…] Many working parents need to make a big head and heart switch when they get home from work each day. Share your solutions and gain ideas. (Beth, this makes me think of this post from the feminist-mum blogger Blue Milk Sorry, is our struggle stifling your productivity?) […]
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[…] bluemilk vergleicht ihren Weg zur Arbeit mit dem ihres Partners – sie bringt das Kind zur Betreuung und holt es wieder ab, er fährt Motorrad: Sorry, is our struggle stifling your productivity? […]
[…] PhD is the freedom. I can take my daughter to school. Sounds idyllic right? Except, like Bluemilk illustrates, it’s actually a series of stupid, tedious, stressful tasks that you have to get out of the […]
[…] around childcare and housework. Women still seem to end up doing far more of these everyday tasks, even when both parents are working. And if fathers do take on some of the childcare, then they’re praised for it. Or praised for […]
[…] Sorry, is our struggle stifling your productivity? […]
[…] On in/equality in parenting (This one hit me like a train.) […]
I work full time with two children, one diabetic. My life is similar. Without the stroller and the train. I don’t want my daughter to have to do this.