Mom

The timing was perfect. A day after journalist Sarah Kelber launched her family blog “Homefront,” a major news story hit that was the ultimate fodder for a parenting-themed discussion. The story on the cover of Time was about attachment parenting, and it caused a wave of controversy not only because of its content, but because of the photograph attached to it: a mother breastfeeding her 3-year-old son. “I was like - I have to write about this, but what am I going to say?

From guest blogger Liz Atwood: Now I know why I've lost interest in shopping, wearing jewelry and painting my nails.  I thought I was just busy, but a new study says my boys may have changed my brain. The report published last week finds that women who share the womb with a twin brother or have baby boys have slight traces of male DNA in their brains decades later. The study concludes that genetic material doesn't just past from mother to son, but from son to mother. What all this means is still a mystery.

I woke up Saturday morning, took a look out at the clear, blue sky, and realized there was nowhere I had to go. Then it dawned on me: I'm no longer a soccer mom. This year, as my son entered middle school, he gave up the cleats. He really had lost interest in the sport mid-way through last season, but I wouldn't let him quit. His team ended up winning the league championship, so he went out on top. I was a faithful soccer mom. I took snacks to the team when it was my turn and I made sure my son made it to practices and games on time.

Heloise Lewis wears several hats. She's a prostitute who runs an escort business. She's a single mom who voraciously reads classic literature and has a close relationship with her 11-year-old son. And she's entangled with a murderer who also happens to be a drug dealer, a crime boss and, although he doesn't know it, her son's father. Meet the quirky but troubled protagonist of Laura Lippman's novel, "And When She Was Good," which looks at women's issues and at the sorry effects of murder, mayhem and drugs.

Michael? Michael, honey? It's mom. No. Not your mom. Not Debbie Phelps. But I am the mother of a couple of kids just your age, and I thought I'd offer you the advice I'd give them if they were about to step into an unfamiliar world. You have spent most of every day in a pool since you were 11 years old, and you are retiring from that life at the ripe old age of 27 as the most decorated Olympic athlete and the greatest swimmer of all time. Your future is a blank screen. You are rich and you are famous, and so you must be careful if you do not want to follow other famous athletes into scandal or financial ruin.

As the 2012 Olympics in London approach, I'm finding myself feeling strangely nostalgic.  Four years ago, my son Isaac was only a few weeks old, and we were still navigating the waters of the basics like sleeping and nursing and the difference between daytime and nighttime. In the midst of that, my husband had to leave for two weeks of annual training for the Marine Corps Reserves. I didn't know what time it was for days, and I found myself awake at all hours, cuddling my boy and trying to get him to go -- or, really, to stay -- asleep.

LaQuasha Singletary was having a normal pregnancy until the day her blood pressure shot up and her vision blurred. The Pikesville woman was rushed to Sinai Hospital, where she delivered a 2-pound, 8-ounce baby boy named Caleb Lyles 10 weeks sooner than expected. Caleb's early delivery left him vulnerable to necrotizing intestinal disorder, a potentially deadly disease common in premature babies whose digestive systems aren't fully developed. Studies show feeding with breast milk exclusively reduces babies chances of getting the disease.

Hilary Phelps was approaching the finish line of her first Ironman triathlon. Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" was playing. She was wrung out from more than 14 hours of swimming, cycling and now running, certain that there wasn't a single drop of liquid left inside her. Then she saw her family, and the tears started flowing as she ran into their arms - mom Debbie, sister Whitney and brother Michael. "I've never done anything this impressive," she remembers Michael saying. "Are you kidding me?"

Mildred Attman, who was a co-founder with her husband of the Acme Paper & Supply Co. and later became a homemaker, died Thursday of heart failure at Sinai Hospital. The longtime Pikesville resident was 88. The daughter of a successful businessman and a homemaker, Mildred Cohen was born and raised in Essex, where her father owned a grocery store, bowling alley and the New Essex Theater. Her family lived above the theater. "Mom reminisced wistfully about falling to sleep as she could hear the music from the golden age of cinema below her," a son, Gary L. Attman of Pikesville, said in a eulogy for his mother.

The only one coming out of the 2008 Olympics with anything close to Michael Phelps' star power was his mother, Debbie Phelps. Caught repeatedly on camera at the sidelines rooting for her son -- and tearing up unselfconsciously as he inched closer to Olympics history, Debbie Phelps, a full-time middle school principal, became America's Everymom, and ended the event not only with a book deal, but an arrangement to promote her favorite clothing store,...