Like accidentally seeing your parents naked, ambivalence about motherhood makes people uncomfortable. My baby turns 1 today. Later I’ll probably post an adorable picture of him on social media and write something about how I never knew what love was until he came along and what an honor it is to be his mother. All […]
Mom friendships form organically as the years go on, but what you really need out the gate isn’t a “mom tribe.” You simply need a tribe. Period. I was the first among my peers to have a baby. I had never felt as alone as I did in the midst of new parenthood. I wanted […]
Coffee, beer, food. If you have a parent of a brand-new baby on your Christmas list, you’re probably feeling a little stymied. They never have time to read or watch movies anymore, and that beautiful scarf you spent hours knitting is only going to end up living out its days as a burp cloth. Sure, […]
Early parenthood is hard. Instead of needing to solve every problem, how about just coping? I’ve always been uptight, and it just got worse when I had kids. So I’ve been working on it, starting with Mardi Gras. One stifling Lenten morning by the sandpit, a woman hiked up her maternity shorts and said, “You […]
I was so irrevocably jostled by motherhood that in the grips of a hysterical episode in my son’s third month, my husband and I questioned whether we’d made the right choice to have a child. We mothers are always joking about the funds we’ll need to save for our children’s future therapy due to our […]
Over these last nine months I have pumped everywhere from storage closets to bathrooms. My first foray back to the office after giving birth came just nine days after my son was born. I was still on maternity leave, technically. But I needed to be present for something that couldn’t wait. I hadn’t had the […]
“Living through what turned out to be nine days alone with my newborn daughter was the mothering equivalent of scaling Mt. Everest for me.” Growing up, I always knew there was some kind of dark secret surrounding my paternal grandmother. We never talked about her for a start. And the only photo I could find of […]
What the hell, at least there’s the possibility of having someone you can talk to during the day—someone else who gives a shit about shit. A real live baby. What will you do with it? Life forever changed in a six-and-a-half-pound package. What will you do with it? It is yours forever—no refund. Black hair, […]
