If you happen to run into Tania, she’s likely on her way to pick up one of her daughters from school. Or maybe she’s enroute to drop one of them off at voice lessons. If you caught her on her own, she’s likely on her way home from a twelve-hour shift at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the hospital. But she’s never too rushed for a quick check-in or to extend an open invitation for coffee. Her energy is high, her smile is warm, and her kindness is so genuine.
I met Tania when we had children in the same preschool/kindergarten program. At the time, I worked in the office at the school and got to know Tania a little bit. She regularly slipped in the office while fielding calls from one of her teenagers, maybe to turn in a field trip form or tuition payment for her preschooler, usually on her way to her own class. During that time, she was in the middle of getting her second degree. She’d made the decision to go back to school after years of teaching primary education and providing childcare, to study nursing. She was also raising five girls and I couldn’t help but admire her tenacity.
Months went by and like many others, COVID sent our school online when my daughter was in first grade and families made decisions on how to best support their children’s education. I left my position and found a school that supported my daughter’s needs and interests. When I learned that Tania’s youngest children were in the same K6 program as my daughter, I was really delighted. It’s always nice to have a connection to someone in a new place. It felt like running into Tania was an indication we’d find a rich community at my daughter’s new school.
She’s the kind of mom that fills reusable Trader Joe bags to the brim with snacks for the kids at school, she serves hot dogs at PTO functions (even though her and her family are all vegan) without judgment and looks like she must do yoga every day. She makes life look like it moves easily for her. The reality is she works extremely hard and is extremely resilient.
Tania has been an RN in the NICU now for several years. When I ask her about what led her here, it’s a unique story. Bottom line is this mama loves babies. She’s been a mama in all forms. She fostered babies through the entirety of their childhood, has provided surrogacy for another family, had her first biological baby through IUI frozen donor, and had her two youngest with her
former partner. I’m so grateful she shared her story with me.
Tania grew up in Wisconsin in a small community, with her sister, brother, and parents. When she was nine, she remembers standing in front of her farmhouse thinking, ‘I’m going to be here forever.’ Her family lived there for five generations. At nine she was okay with that, but not at 17. “There’s a Reba McEntire song, Is There Life Out There? It would come on the radio, and I’d
start crying. My mom would ask me, ‘what’s wrong?’ And I’d think, ‘I have to get out of here’. There has to be more than this tiny community.”
She spent days playing outside with her siblings, swinging, playing in the sandbox, and swimming. She rode her bike and pink Big Wheel everywhere and didn’t go to the house unless she was bleeding or thought she was dying. “But somehow if Mom knew we were close to the street she’d come flying out of the house.”
On other days, Tania and her sister divided the upstairs rooms of their house and played house together. Their brother was usually cast as the family dog.
A rainy Sunday might mean going to Fleet Farm with her dad or playing pinball with him in the house. When the kids were young, they might spend time riding next to their dad in a car seat in the tractor. Within a few minutes the bouncing would lull them to sleep for the next couple hours. This gave her mom a break. “A flannel that smells like diesel will always remind me of him.”
She had the kind of grandmother that loved to cook for a crowd, could peel an apple with a paring knife in one spiral, and always had at least 14 different kinds of Christmas cookies out during holiday gatherings. Tania remembers, “She never measured. Her biscuit cutter was a baking soda tin. When kids in my family went to college, she always sent ice-cream buckets full of cookies. Years of detective work finally determined how she made the best cookies. It was the Toll House recipe plus two tablespoons of water.”
The whole family was within an hour’s radius. “I miss that my kids aren’t growing up close to family. We used to see my extended family at least once a month, I miss that part for my kids,” she noted.
The family connection is intuitive. Even though she never got to meet her great
grandma, Rose, Tania’s daughter shares her birthday. When Braelyn was young, she had a handful of words, but could always spot a rose and say it clearly. “My grandma loved birds and Braelyn has always had an affinity for birds.”
Tania left home to attend a small college in northern Indiana to get her degree in elementary education. She did a semester abroad in Cambridge. It was a time in her life that had a great impact on her. She fondly remembers living in a house with 18 others, hopping trains on weekends, taking super cheap flights ($20 to $30) to Madrid. Spring Break was spent in Italy and Norway. “I was encouraged to travel by some families I babysat for during college.”
After graduation, she spent a summer teaching English in Hangzhou and Lin’An in China. She distinctly remembers returning to the U.S. two weeks before 9/11. “The conditions where I was living were rough, but we had running water. I think about the food, the smells, the experience, and I’m so glad I went. That made me realize how much was out there. I wanted an adventure.”
In her 20s, Tania and best friend moved to Alaska, looking for an adventure. She was teaching preschool through the day, tutoring at Sylvan Learning Center in the evenings, and waitressing at a steakhouse on the weekends. “We decided to foster when we were in Alaska teaching.” At 26 years old, Tania and her friend were licensed to foster and quickly welcomed sisters, five months old and 16 months old. They came as a six-to-12-month placement, but a year later,
their parents relinquished rights. Tania would raise them. “In Anchorage there is a huge need for care.” She nannied for families, so she could be available for her babies and later started an in-home daycare.
A couple years later she would celebrate the birth of her own baby girl. And would also say goodbye to her best friend who died of cancer. Within a month, she had a birth, a death, and a move from Alaska to Arizona, where her parents and sister had moved. She had a four-year old, a three-year-old, and a newborn.
The result of moving wasn’t what she was looking for. “I was living in a community with mostly retired people. I had a teaching license, but I couldn’t
leave them. My sister was 45 or 50 minutes away. She had an in-home daycare, so I would drive over to hangout. It was hard living there. The first year was really hard, looking back I wish I would have stayed in Alaska for the community and support. My biggest regret was leaving Alaska. I will never again move because someone tells me to. It needs to be for the right reasons and because I want to do it. I stayed a year and a half.”
A friend that lived in Texas, also a single mom, had a newborn and invited Tania and her children to live with her. “I needed to get out (of Arizona), I wasn’t happy. But it fell apart really quickly. My friend had a lot of postpartum depression that went untreated. She went to live with her parents. Outside of Dallas. I was in a new place. I started an in-home daycare. The oldest
was in kindergarten. We’d talk to people. Go to the library and go to the pool.” But Tania was at a low, she didn’t have enough money for rent, or enough to leave.
“One of the dear families from Alaska connected with me. They said, ‘I got you’ and enough was deposited in my checking account the next day. I could get by until my daycare could pick-up. I looked into the surrogacy and got that going. The takeaway from that is that you never know what is going to happen, but things will work out. Through times where I just didn’t know which way to turn, I believed things would work out. If you put good out in the world, good will comeback. Other people have helped me. When I can, I help.”
Back in the Midwest, Tania reconnected with a childhood friend who she married and had two more children with. When her youngest was three years old she decided to go back to school to pursue her nursing study in Bloomington. At the time her children were 3, 5, 10, 13, 14.
Tania attended a job fair before she graduated and happened to get seated with the manager of perinatal at the hospital. She said, “I wasn’t supposed to be here interviewing today, and we just started talking.” She offered Tania the position during the fair.
Fast forward three years, Tania is a single mama again and has worked in the NICU since graduating. I can’t think of a better person to care for babies and help NICU parents. “Some parents are there for a short time, some are there for weeks and weeks and you really start to get a connection with them. It’s the hardest when you see a parent who has had a perfect pregnancy and then something didn’t go right. Those are the most shocking.”
With these parents, she can foster a connection by relating to her own parenting experience and pulling grounding tools from her own journey. She can assure parents the four-month regression thing is real, “Just when you think you have the schedule down, everything changes.” She also swears by the soothing benefits of water to calm a baby. “Water can always help, put them in a bath, put a cold washcloth on them. Every time there is a meltdown what comes to mind is water.”
When I ask Tania how she balances the stress of the NICU and being a present parent, she explains. “Work has always been separate. I’m glad I don’t have babies now. I didn’t know I would be going right into the NICU. I work nights, it’s a different vibe and works out better for my work/life balance.”
“I fall into a weird age gap and mothering time with my co-workers. There are some nurses in their early 20s, just married or not yet married, then some that have been around a long time whose kids are grown. It’s nice to work with moms that have kids, they really get it. Sometimes our kids will have a travel basketball game or dance recital to get to and we help each other out. We all have different needs.”
Tania’s oldest foster children are now grown. The three youngest girls are at home and there’s always plenty of drama in the best possible way. “I can’t imagine having a boy at this point. Since 7th or 8th grade, I always thought I’d be a mama to all girls. Someone is always looking for something. They are always amazed I know where everything is. They always know I’ll find
it.” They also prioritize open communication. “You can talk about negative feelings here. I grew up talking about happy things, you didn’t rock the boat.”
Tania’s dedication to a healthful and mindful diet reflects her intentional parenting style. Her family has followed a vegan diet for 10 years now. “It is much easier now, than it was 10 years ago. And there is more awareness. Ten years ago, I was trying to find ingredients. I had to make everything from scratch. I kept a binder of recipes and was Googling recipes all the time. I
made our own peanut butter; I made bean and seed burgers. For Thanksgiving, handmade seitan loaves. Initially it was a good creative outlet. At the time it didn’t seem like so much work. After years of babies and kids it really got my mind going.”
“Braelyn would bring avocados to school for lunch and some of the kids had never seen them before. One friend’s mom called and said her kid asked for them. I would make a batch of cupcakes and put them in a freezer at school, so when kids bring in cupcakes for birthdays my kids could have one too. Over time it’s become easier. The youngest have always been vegan. Moving into Bloomington’s school district, it was more normal and accepted. Our friends have Nacho Night several months out of the year. They invite friends in, and they always have vegan cheese. Even going to Bradford Woods or camps, they always have options now. Sometimes it takes planning ahead. For a long time, it was impossible to go out at restaurants, but now you can get it just about anywhere, corn dogs, pizza.”
Another piece of her parenting style that strikes me, is her fluidity. She isn’t a fan of big plans and presses the point that sometimes the impromptu experiences for children are best. “This summer I tried to plan a fun day for us. We went down to the caverns and ziplines in southern Indiana. It was a couple hours away; we could do it all in one day. We had this all planned out. It rained the night before. The ziplines were closed, everything was wet, but we were like, ‘we’re still here, we can do the caverns.’ Halfway through the caverns, a lady comes running through and says, ‘we’re evacuating the entire park.’ There’s one road that crosses this lowline bridge over a river to get into the park and the water was rising so fast we all had to evacuate.
“We started driving back from southern Indiana and the kids asked if we could go to Nashville. We got slushies and went to the toy store and they each got to pick out something, then the candy story. While we were at the candy store, the tornado sirens started going off. So, we went back to the car and started driving back to Bloomington. We get to the edge of town, and realized we weren’t going to beat the storm.” Tania called a friend who was less than a mile from where they were and went to their house. The kids waited out the storm in their friend’s closet. So much for planning the perfect day.
Sitting at her patio, while watching Willow, her youngest, run through the yard in her butterfly wings while giggling, and listening to her 10-year-old, Lyra, belt out Taylor Swift lyrics with my own daughter, I can’t but love all the amazing girl energy here. It’s such a joy to witness the connection Tania has with her girls, and the girls have witnessed their mom do a lot of hard work over the years. “Life is not exactly what I envisioned. They always ask me what I wanted to be when I grow up, and I tell them, ‘I truly wanted to be a mom’. They are the most important things to me. My kids have truly kept me going.”
Thank you for sharing your beautiful story with us, Tania!
Wonderfully Woven 