Hasta La Gadget!

This one won’t be as easy as your first — not that the first was easy (and if it was, you are a mythical creature and I covet your genetic good fortune). The first time around, all you had to think about was yourself, and your misery. You wallowed in the despair of the relentless and cruel life of morning sickness. You hauled your tired self to work, armed with snacks and constantly on the lookout for a place to throw up. You slept when you got home. Took it easy on the weekends. Prepared your own food. And you certainly didn’t prepare food for any little hungry people just moments after throwing up.

This time will be different.

The second time around, you know what to expect, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. When you’re inside the first trimester, and you already have a child to care for (or in my case, twins), you will be challenged in every sense of the word.

Here are a few things that I learned during the first (worst) trimester of my second pregnancy, and some tips for surviving with small children:

1. THIS IS ONLY TEMPORARY. This is probably the most important piece of advice I can give you. Although I told myself this over and over throughout the worst trimester, I sometimes didn’t believe myself. When you’re in the heart of your morning sickness, you quickly forget what it felt like to feel healthy, and you quickly forget that sometime in the near future you will feel healthy again. Feeling sick while taking care of small children can feel unbearable. Relentless. Cruel. But remember, THIS IS ONLY TEMPORARY. This too shall pass.

2. Pass the time however you can. If you find that your kids are playing nicely on their own, grab a good book and distract yourself while they play. There’s nothing better than escaping your misery and landing yourself into another world – if only for a few moments. If you’re not into books, try TV (see number 6). If you feel up to having visitors, invite someone over. If you feel well enough to go on playdates, plan something calm and easy. Whatever it is, pass the time. Before you know it, these days will be behind you and you’ll be feeling much better. This too shall pass.

3. Find someone to vent to. Growing a human being is really hard. It makes you feel sick, hungry, tired, exhausted, crabby, sad, achy, short of breath, hormonal, and swollen. And you have to go on living your normal life like none of this is happening. It helps if you find a friend you can vent to. Even better, a pregnant friend. Misery loves company, and nobody understands sudden food aversions, mood changes, and horrific heartburn like a pregnant friend. Also, you can feel like you’re in it together, and remind each other that this too shall pass.

4. You might feel regret. Once the morning sickness takes up what feels like a permanent residence in your life, you might feel regret. Like, what the hell was I thinking?? type of regret. You might wonder how you can handle another child if you can barely handle your current situation. You might feel overwhelmed and anxious. And then you might feel shame for even feeling any of these feelings. Don’t! It’s the hormones and the nausea and the fatigue. It’s the pressure of parenting. It’s the daunting idea of altering and changing the dynamics of your life and your family. But mostly it’s the stupid nausea. This too shall pass — and once you feel better, excitement will creep its way back in. You’ll quickly remember why you wanted to have another baby in the first place.

5. Snacks. Always have lots of snacks accessible. I don’t care if that means eating carrots or making an emergency trip to taco bell. Whatever your body needs during this time, oblige. They say that snacking often can help stave off morning sickness — so do whatever you have to do. You can worry about eating healthier when you start to feel better. This too shall pass.

6. TV is your friend (and your new babysitter). I don’t care if you were a “no screen time” or “limited screen time” type of parent before your pregnancy. Nausea and fatigue happens, things change, and TV helps. When you’re feeling nauseas and on the verge of throwing up, TV. When you’re so tired you can hardly keep your eyelids open, TV. When you’re bone tired and all you can handle is “horizontal parenting,” TV. When you’re little ones are wild and you can’t cope, TV. When you’re feeling overwhelmed and hormonal, TV. TV is your friend, and your new babysitter. Embrace it. Your kid’s brains will not turn to mush, and when you’re feeling better again you can cut back on this awesome babysitter — or even fire her completely. It’s up to you. But for now, TV. This too shall pass.

7. If your doctor offers you medications to treat nausea, take it. I was so desperate to feel better that I didn’t hesitate to fill my prescription for Diclegis. Once I adjusted to the medication and it kicked in, it was a true lifesaver. I slowly headed back to my life as a functioning person, and a much better mother. You don’t need to be a hero and suffer through the sickness. Take the medicine! You won’t need it forever. This too shall pass.

8. If your friends or family offer to help, take it. I’m not the kind of person that likes to accept help from others. But after feeling sick and desperate for weeks on end, I said yes to whoever offered to help me out. And if nobody is offering, reach out and ask. Have people come babysit, drop off food, or help out around the house. Any little bit will help you to keep your head above water. You won’t need help forever, this too shall pass.

9. Your parenting game will be off, and that’s okay. Your patience will be ebb and flow. You’re tired. Like really tired. And sick. And you have hormones — lots of them. It’s okay if you have off days. It’s okay if you lose your cool. It’s okay if you yell. It’s okay if you don’t entertain your kids and provide them with educational and stimulating activities. It’s okay if they don’t get any sunshine today. It’s okay if they eat some junk food. It’s okay if they don’t get a bath today, or tomorrow. It’s okay if you feel like you literally cannot parent after 6pm. It’s okay if you cry when your toddler(s) gang up on you and throw food all over the floor while your cleaning lady is literally slamming her car door and peeling away from your messy crazy house (wait, that might just be me). It’s okay. This too shall pass, and things will get better.

10. You might feel fat. The first trimester is often that really awkward stage where you feel pregnant internally (and by internally I mean the vomit that constantly erupts from your body), but don’t necessarily look pregnant externally. Maybe you look like you’ve had a few too many Taco Tuesdays, or like you had an entire large pizza for lunch. People take a second glance at you, silently wondering what’s going on and why you have a sudden beer belly. It’s probably too early to scream out, It’s okay, I’m just pregnant! So you just keep quiet and wait. And wait. Your body is changing, and that can be a difficult adjustment (even if you’ve experienced pregnancy before). Just ride it out, try to embrace the changes, and look for the beauty in it. After a while, you’ll get used to growing and growing and growing. If you feel overwhelmed, refer back to #1. This too shall pass (in 9 months or so).

The first trimester is all about survival. Do whatever you need to do, and just remember, this too shall pass. And in the end, it will all be worth it. And you might even forget about this horrific time in your life. And you might even convince yourself to do it all over again.

That is after all, how women keep having babies.

Hang in there mamma, you’ve got this.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

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It’s no secret that, if a room full of people witness the same event, there will be as many versions of what occurred as the number of people in the room. As we go through life, we create our own reality, even though we believe that the reality we create is the only choice possible. Add to that our tendency to embellish the truth or our often flawed memory, and the natural erosion of facts that occur when stories are told through the Whisper-Down-the-Lane generations. The result is a soupy mixture of truth, fantasy, and wistfulness.

Life in the Boomer Lane was reminded of this when she read an Aug. 9 Washington Post article titled “Some Delightful Family Legends Are Best Swallowed With A Grain of Salt.” It sent LBL on a trip down Memory Lane, festooned with the various family stories she had grown up with.

LBL’s favorite was a totally unsubstantiated story about an aunt who was told that her son, a soldier, had been killed in WWII. Each night, she awakened suddenly, with the strong feeling that her son was still alive. She looked at the clock and it read 3:15 a.m. This went on for quite some time, and family members thought she had lost it. Then, one afternoon at 3:15, she heard a knock on her door. There, she encountered an army official, telling her that her son had been found alive.

Another story involved the younger sister of one of LBL’s grandmothers, who allegedly, at age 16, ran off with one of her high school instructors. LBL asked her mother what happened, as a result. Her mother said that the girl’s father (LBL’s mother’s grandfather) promptly dropped dead at the news. LBL asked if he were sick. The answer was no, he was in perfect health and simply “immediately dropped dead.” Some time later, LBL found out that the man had actually been sick for many months/years following the daughter’s escapade. She asked her mother if that were the actual cause of his death, whatever lingering illness he had over all that time. Her mother insisted that it was his daughter’s actions that caused the death. It just took awhile.

LBL’s mother also told her that the same great-grandfather who met an untimely end had been the accountant to the mayor of Starokonstatinov, a city in Ukraine, where the family came from. This man was, according to LBL’s mother, a valued and trusted Jew to the Christian mayor. Since LBL comes from a long line of completely anonymous people, she has tried very hard to find any reference to this man. She has failed. All she has is a pair of obviously very old, very ornate scissors, that the mayor was supposed to have given LBL’s great-grandfather for his years of service. The scissors are shaped around a cross, an interesting gift for a Christian to have given a Jew.

LBL, herself, may be guilty of sketchy history. She has vivid memories of the final days that her mother was in the hospital, before her death. The King of the Gypsies was in the same hospital, dying at the same time. Every day that LBL arrived at the hospital, the entire lobby was filled with innumerable Gypsies, keeping 24-hour-a-day vigil. The memory was so vivid, in fact, that LBL incorporated it into a novel she wrote and titled the book, King of the Gypsies.

Years later, LBL mentioned this event to a close friend, who was surprised and told her that it was during her own mother’s final time in the hospital that the Gypsy king was dying. Her own memories were every bit as vivid as that of LBL. The issue was never resolved, each of them taking possession of a pretty incredible memory. Either one of them had faulty memory, or the King really got around.

LBL is well aware that, story-wise, her own life experiences are at the mercy of her children and grandchildren. The children all gathered last year to take oral histories of LBL and Then Husband, so she’s not concerned with that part. What does concern her are the infinite anecdotes that she may have told them in various moments throughout the years, that will eventually get spun into something other than complete reality.

She has only one request, that the King of the Gypsies has no part in any of this. Presumably, he did finally go on to the great caravan in the sky, and, unlike Elvis, will not come back.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Long-term relationships and marriages are bound to go through peaks and valleys, but if you’re enduring months, years and even decades of criticism from your lover or spouse, you’re in trouble.

Slowly but surely a toxic partner can undermine our confidence, self-esteem and even our health in order to control and contain us.

They criticize the way we look, the way we talk, the way we eat, the way we do pretty much everything.

This often results in us feeling lucky to have our toxic partner, because who else would want us with all of our flaws?

As our self-esteem takes a beating we’ll often rush to fill our partner’s needs and won’t feel like we deserve to have any needs of our own.

Criticism on Steroids

In hyper-destructive relationships our partner can even criticize us for reacting negatively to their outrageous, emotionally abusive behavior.

I have a client I’ll call Genevieve whose husband Michael is a carpenter, but his dream is to become a professional actor. When he’s not working he spends a great deal of his time auditioning for parts.

Recently Genevieve noticed that Michael wasn’t answering her texts or phone calls when he was out. She also noticed he wouldn’t leave his phone casually lying around.

Suspicious, she discovered he’d developed a “friendship” with a very attractive, single woman he met on a commercial audition for toothpaste.

She confronted Michael about her findings and told him she felt uncomfortable that he was developing a relationship with a woman she didn’t know.

Michael was furious Genevieve snooped and the criticisms came on hot and heavy. She was too insecure. She was suffocating him. She was cruel not to allow him to have friendships outside of their marriage.

When Genevieve said she’d be fine with the friendship if she could just meet the woman and they could incorporate her into their community, Michael went ballistic and disappeared for two days!

By the time her husband returned Genevieve was so cowed that she decided not to bring up the “other” woman again, for fear of losing Michael. She even apologized for giving him such a hard time.

Emotionally abusive men and women tear us down so they can control us, to make us think we don’t deserve what we want or even what we need.

Criticism keeps us trapped by making us think we’re unworthy of anything better. It confuses us by making us think that we’re the ones who are damaged, otherwise why would our partner treat us so poorly?

Raising the White Flag Isn’t About Giving Up, It’s About Surrendering to the Fact That We Need Help!

If you recognize yourself in this article you maybe be addicted to the emotional-cycle-of-abuse and might need help.

The first thing you must do is recognize you have absolutely no power over your partner’s criticism. If this is chronic behavior there’s not a pretzel shape you can fit yourself into that will make it stop.

You may need to gain the strength to leave the relationship permanently. Or, if you absolutely can’t leave due of finances, children and other factors, you’ll have to learn how to detach from the drama and set healthy boundaries within the relationship in order to rebuild your self-esteem and enjoy your life again.

There are a myriad sources of help for this painful cycle. You can begin by attending a 12-step program (CODA is often a good one, sometimes Al-Anon is good too), hiring a therapist or speaking with a spiritual advisor.

I’d love to help.

I walk clients through 12-step recovery with talk therapy and step-work. You can book a complimentary 10-minute consult with me to see if we’re a fit and/or opt-in to my biweekly newsletter.

My book, Ditch That Asshat! 14 Life-Altering Exercises to Stop Controlling Your Guy, Gain Control of Your Life & Invite “Real” Love is scheduled for release on Valentine’s Day 2017. Men will love it too!

Having once been addicted to the emotional cycle-of-abuse myself, I know there’s a way out and a way in to something much, much better.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This piece was written for the launch of HuffPost Mexico on September 1st. To read this article in Spanish from HuffPost Mexico, click here.

Things seem to be looking up for Mexico’s LGBT community. Lawmakers have passed a series of anti-discrimination laws in recent years to protect gay rights, and President Enrique Peña Nieto has proposed constitutional reforms to legalize same-sex marriage across the country.

Legal progress has not eliminated acts of violence against members of the LGBT community, however, and transgender women have suffered the most in recent years. A report co-published by New York’s Cornell University Law School and California-based civil rights organization, the Transgender Law Center in May 2016 shows that Mexico has one of the world’s highest rates of transphobic violence — including harassment, hate crimes, and murder. The report estimates a total of 120 transphobic murders happened in the country between 2008 and late 2013.

Sometimes I tease people and say, ‘If you felt fat in high school, well, I was a boy!’
Ophelia Pastrana

Ophelia Pastrana, a tall, red-haired transgender woman with an infectious laugh, is among a growing movement of activists working to empower Mexico’s gay and trans community. Her YouTube channel, where she regularly delves into trans issues, attract tens of thousands of viewers.

Openly discussing her personal experiences is one of the ways Pastrana aims to inspire other trans women ― but she wasn’t always as outspoken.

Born in Bogota, Colombia, as Mauricio, she remembers beings a shy boy that everyone would pick on. “Sometimes I tease people and say, ‘If you felt fat in high school, well, I was a boy!’” she tells HuffPost Mexico.  

The 34-year-old started to transition six years ago, facing a number of challenges along the way. “I had to deal with a teenager’s dilemmas when I was 28,” she says.  

I ultimately had to look myself in the mirror and say: ‘I’m gonna make a change.’

Back then, she had already completed a Master’s degree and was running two digital media companies, one of which was her own. She wasn’t as concerned with her career ― which she managed to maintain as she settled into her new gender identity ― as she was with her social life, which suffered when she came out.

“Many people turned away from me because of silly little things,” she explains, recalling how her relatives, friends and co-workers reacted when they saw her in high heels and a skirt instead of a suit and tie.  

Pastrana believes that society’s aversion to transgender women can be explained by widespread misogyny and “hatred of everything feminine.”

But while some transgender activists work to shed light on the suffering endured by transgender women, Pastrana’s activism focuses on helping members of the community embrace their bodies and work on achieving self-love.

In addition to her digital activism on various platforms, Pastrana has opened up her house in the south of Mexico City to host transgender people. She has become an informal counselor and spokeswoman for the LGBT community, offering valuable advice for trans women battling societal prejudice and intolerance. 

“You have to work on your self-esteem,” she says. “Let them say whatever you want! They tell me, ‘You look like a man.’ Well, it doesn’t matter to me if you think so!” 

Pastrana is unnerved by society’s prevailing beauty standards, she explains, since they make transgender women believe that they need to “try a little harder” to be pretty.

“Many transgender people live frustrated because they are not pretty. I know some who started transitioning, ended up not being the beautiful women they had imagined, and then de-transitioned,” she says. 

Pastrana is intent on pushing transgender women to achieve their full potential, and tries to alert them to any self-imposed limitations.

“Whenever a person says, ‘If I come out, they’ll fire me,’ they are self-discriminating,” Pastrana says. “I tell them, ‘You have not been fired. The only person who has fired you is in your own head.’”

Pastrana admits that she hasn’t always found it easy to be confident, but she continues to figure out ways to push herself.

“This is going to sound very Michael Jackson of me, but to deal with self-empowerment,” she says, “I ultimately had to look myself in the mirror and say, ‘I’m gonna make a change.’” 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Donald Trump’s trip to Mexico capped off a chaotic month for the Republican nominee, in which he feuded with the family of a killed U.S. soldier, had abysmal poll numbers and saw his campaign chair resign under suspicion of working on behalf of pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.

After making the deportation of all 11 million undocumented immigrants the foundation of his presidential campaign, Trump seemed to have a different message each day last week. First, he suggested that he was open to “softening” his position, leading to speculation that he might consider allowing some undocumented immigrants to stay in the country. Later in the week, he reiterated his original hardline stance ― that undocumented immigrants would have to leave the country, then return, in order to have a path to citizenship. On Saturday he continued in that vein, promising to begin deportations within an hour of taking office.

Trump’s bad August got its start in the waning days of July, when he lashed out against Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a U.S. soldier who was killed in Iraq in 2004. With his wife at his side, Khizr Khan gave a moving speech at the Democratic National Convention asking what Trump had sacrificed for his country. Trump responded by suggesting that Ghazala Khan “maybe… wasn’t allowed” to speak that night because of her Muslim faith. Khan herself then explained that she didn’t speak because she is still moved to tears just by seeing a picture of her son.

The Republican standard-bearer then turned his sights on his own party, refusing to endorse the re-election bids of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.). Trump gave in just three days later and endorsed all three.

Trump, who has made sexist and misogynistic comments throughout his campaign (and for years before that), said he would expect his daughter Ivanka to quit her job if she were sexually harassed. In a separate interview, Trump’s son Eric said that Ivanka simply wouldn’t allow herself to be subjected to sexual harassment.

Later in the month, it was revealed that Trump was being advised by former Fox News head Roger Ailes, who resigned from Fox in July amid numerous allegations of sexual harassment. 

Trump used August to try and launch a series of bizarre attacks against Hillary Clinton, at one point apparently suggesting that the Democratic nominee should be shot.

“If she gets to pick her judges ― nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. “Although, the Second Amendment people. Maybe there is. I don’t know.” Trump also claimed he was unfamiliar with comments in which one of his advisers called for Clinton to be shot for treason, but called the adviser “a very fine person” nonetheless.

The month continued to get worse. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, resigned on Aug. 19 amid questions about his work on behalf of pro-Russian forces in Ukraine. The New York Times reported on Aug. 14 that Manafort’s name appeared in a secret government ledger in Ukraine. The Associated Press soon followed with reports detailing how Manafort’s firm had orchestrated a lobbying campaign on behalf of Ukraine, but failed to disclose the work to the Justice Department as required by federal law.

After Manafort’s resignation, Trump tapped Kellyanne Conway to be his campaign manager and hired Steve Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, as his campaign chairman. Reports soon emerged that Bannon had been charged with domestic violence in 1996 and that he was registered to vote at an empty house in Florida.

Meanwhile, Trump’s poll numbers dropped as he fell behind Clinton in virtually every survey. Adding to the embarrassment was Michael Cohen, executive vice president at the Trump Organization, who seemed to be in denial about the campaign’s numbers in an exchange with CNN’s Brianna Keilar. When Cohen asked repeatedly which polls showed Trump down, Keilar simply said “all of them.” She was correct.

Trump and his campaign also began to question Clinton’s health, peddling unsubstantiated rumors that she was medically unfit to be president. The attack wound up backfiring, leading to increased scrutiny on irregularities in a letter that Trump’s doctor, Harold Bornstein, had sent attesting to his health. Bornstein admitted that he wrote the letter in five minutes while a car was waiting for him.

Various surrogates for Trump, charged with defending and promoting their candidate, also had some noteworthy flubs. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, insisted that Manafort’s departure did not signal turmoil for the Trump campaign because John Kerry also shook up his staff at about the same point in the 2004 presidential election cycle. (Kerry, you’ll recall, went on to lose that election.) As Trump publicly pushed Clinton to release more of her medical records, Ben Carson said that Trump should release his. And as Trump tried to appeal to African-American voters, Mark Burns, a pastor and Trump surrogate, tweeted an image of Clinton in blackface and captioned it: “Black Americans, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VOTES and letting me use you again..See you again in 4 years.”

In an ostensible effort to attract black voters, Trump painted an inaccurate picture of American cities, claiming that life in black communities has gotten so bad that African-Americans would have nothing to lose by voting for him. After Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of NBA player Dwyane Wade, was killed in Chicago, Trump took advantage of the tragedy, tweeting that it was “just what I have been saying” and declaring that “African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!”

And because he couldn’t seem to find enough people to insult, Trump also went after a fire marshal at one of his rallies and a mother whose baby was crying.

As The Washington Post’s Dan Balz noted, Trump’s actions took away attention from Clinton at a time when questions continued to linger about her use of a private email server and about whether donors to the Clinton Foundation got preferential treatment when she was secretary of state.

Though it’s easy to assume that Trump’s bad August will hurt him in November, the GOP nominee has said that he could stand in the middle of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and shoot people without losing votes. One hopes it doesn’t come to that.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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