Ayelet Waldman Quotes

As any female executive with a family knows, you're making mental lists all through the night. You're often not sure you've managed to sleep at all.

I was a house dad. Once, my wife was working as a dispatcher at the fire department, and I was staying home and writing while baby-sitting my son, who hardly ever slept. So I wrote in twenty-minute patches. Some of that early stuff is just dreadful. I got a thousand rejects.

When you have a new baby, you can get really overwhelmed, since it's such a huge responsibility. You're thrilled to be a mom, but your sleep schedule is so thrown off and it can be scary if you don't have a good support system.

I was writing and I have three kids. I was occupying my time with them but it was difficult.

The worst feature of a new baby is its mother's singing.

I try and get as much sleep as I possibly can, although it's harder with a baby.

Babies just change everything. You have to become super-selfless and super-tired and super-amenable to change. They just change all the time.

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate.

My last book, 'The Language of Flowers,' I wrote completely on naptime, when my little kids were asleep.

I didn't expect babies to need so many diapers. Nobody told me they needed to be changed so often.

Having a child is a big life change, but the really hectic period is relatively short. You can get through it.

Having an infant is stressful, and I know I won't get a lot of sleep initially, but it will be worth it.

My father had nine children, and when I had my first, he said, 'None of my kids got up in the middle of the night.' And I remember thinking, 'You didn't get up in the middle of the night! Every kid gets up in the middle of the night!'

The baby's been way easier than everyone made it out to be.

Nothing really prepared me for the amount of work, or the amount of rewards, that came with being a new mom.

I think letting babies cry it out is barbaric. Why would parenting stop when it's dark outside? You can't expect a baby to know that he's supposed to sleep just because we want to go to bed.

This whole motherhood thing has really been, like, back to work from the get-go. It's sort of a balance.

'Workin' Moms,' obviously, is about mothers who also work. But we're also expected to remain graceful when we return to work, and that's just impossible.

I work hard and try to combine a demanding career with motherhood.

You don't have to wait for your career to take off to become a mum: that's kind of what I want to show. Becoming a mum made me even more driven, and I think it doesn't stop your career - it just boosts it. It makes you well-organised, and with a little bit of sacrifice, of course you can do it all.

I like to have fun, but I don't have a lot of time for myself. I do have eight kids!

It goes without saying that the first few months after my son was born were the toughest of my life.

A couple of female standup comics I know refer to their kids as their Little Career Killers. I was like, I really do not want to feel that way.

My friends who have kids look like they haven't been to bed for a year.

My mum's a single mum, I'm a single mum, and you do find yourself rushing around just to make sure everything's all right.