Just as I was feeling most defeated by my sorry excuse for a day, the phone rang. It was my literary agent, calling from New York to give me the good news: A major publisher had just acquired my second parenting book -- on the joys of raising a larger family. It was 3 p.m. and things were looking up.

Soon after, a friend unexpectedly dropped by. I answered the door still dressed in my tattered flannel bathrobe. I invited her in and excitedly related the details of the new book deal to her. She immediately began to giggle uncontrollably.

"What?! What's so funny?" I asked with some annoyance while frantically trying to keep my 15-month-old from struggling out of my arms. He was intent on heading back to the cat-food bowl for a few more bites of what had lately become his favorite unauthorized snack.

"Well ... um ... just look at yourself," she said, bemusedly eyeing my sticky bathrobe, and probably the dishes in my sink, and the Legos and headless Barbies covering the dining room table. "You don't exactly look like some kind of 'parenting expert.'"

It's true. I really don't. Even fully dressed without the glitter in my hair. For one thing, many, if not most, writers of parenting books -- Dr. Benjamin Spock, John Rosemond, T. Berry Brazelton, Richard Ferber, James Dobson and Burton White, to name but a few -- are men. There are some female writers on the topic of child-care issues, including the wonderful Penelope Leach and Eda LeShan, but they constitute a distinct minority. Additionally, most of these pundits -- be they male or female -- are well past their own time in the parenting trenches. When these folks offer child-care guidance, it's through the rosy glow of memory, or based on solely academic observations.

By contrast, I wrote my first book, "Attachment Parenting: Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child," while actually living what I was writing about. When I penned the chapter explaining how parents can successfully "wear" their baby, it was with my own infant comfortably nestled in a sling on my chest as I typed. Writing the section on long-term breast-feeding was slow going, since I had the pleasant task of taking regular nursing breaks with both my toddler and her baby brother. I wrote my book not as a Ph.D. in child development or a world-renowned pediatric researcher, but as a 31-year-old mother and writer who wanted to offer parents information on a nurturing style that was really working for my own family and many others.

Despite the fact that I clearly don't fit the mold of the conventional parenting expert (and in fact don't think of myself as such), by virtue of having written rather extensively on child-care topics for newspapers and magazines, as well as being the author of two upcoming parenting books, that label is starting to stick. But the disconnect between being thought of as an authority on this subject and the normal ups and downs of my day-to-day life as a parent can be somewhat jarring at times. Although I believe sincerely and passionately in the topics about which I write, the fact is that I am a flesh-and-blood mama with real, live children. For this reason, I am not always able to measure up to the expectations that other people -- and even I myself -- sometimes have for me and my family.

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