The Real Parenting Guides

The truth about motherhood is, well; nobody ever tells you the truth about motherhood. It sure is a fun ride, like nothing else in this life, but it can be equally scary and boy can it be hard. It can be even harder if you are doing this alone, clueless, for the first time, and trying to live up to ridiculous standards set by outdated parenting guides, Hollywood; and frankly anything or anyone who ever told you it was easy. 

I am a mother of one (Yes, just one, as I am often pointed out). I had my five year old way before most of my friends were even married. Hadn't it been for a couple of friends who were a couple of months ahead down the same road, I pretty much did this clueless (just like everyone else, as I realized later on). My mother frankly couldn't even remember at what age I started walking. I had all these questions and nobody outside my pediatrician's office who actually cared. I didn't know if it was normal my baby wasn't crawling by the time she was 10 months, didn't walk until she was 16 months  or didn't say much by the time she was 2. And those were just the regular bits all new mothers wonder.  Then came the late postpartum depression, and there I was feeling completely alone and guilty for hating breastfeeding and wanting to occasionally doze off on the old cough medicine and just getting some actual sleep. 

Every time I searched for answers in the classic parenting guides, I ended up even more frustrated.  My kid wasn't eating, sleeping, talking or walking, and frankly I wasn't enjoying this at all. Surely enough, I was finding answers to all my textbook questions, but I wasn't relating at all to all the parenting BS. 

With time I've learnt I wasn't alone. And just when I thought I didn't need these parenting guides at all, I found an entire movement of Mommies all over the world speaking, blogging, posting, and writing and surprisingly, laughing their guilty, tired, amateur, sleep deprived heart and brains out.

Here is a list of my favorite kind of parenting guides: The Real Ones. Written by Moms all over the world who don't actually take themselves (or parenting) too seriously for us that still do, who share the common thread that binds us all: the undying love for our little earthquakes.

Click on each title to buy directly on Amazon and make sure to visit the authors' blogs. 

1. I Heart My Little A-Holes: A bunch of holy-crap moments no one ever told you about parenting, Karen Alpert

2. I Just Want to Pee Alone, by Jen of People I Want to Punch in the Throat

3. Moms Who Drink and Swear, Nicole Knepper

4. Sh*tty Mom: The Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us

5. Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood - The Good, The Bad and the Scary by Jill Smokler

6. Motherhood Come Naturally (and Other Vicious Lies), Jill Smokler

7. Ketchup is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves, Robin O'Bryant

8. Second Helping: A Collection Of Popular Columns, Robin O'Bryant

9. Reasons Mommy Drinks, Lyranda Martin-Evans and Fiona Stevenson

10. I just Want To Be Alone

Okay so number 10 is not technically a Parenting Guide, But if you enjoyed I Just Want to Pee Alone, you'll love I Just Want to Be Alone, a collection of the funniest essays dedicated to the Men in our lives. 

Happy Parenting!

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