How to Serve Baby Shower Food Without Poisoning the Mother
There's a pervasive, Pinterest-fueled lie that catering a baby shower is an exercise in elegant pastel minimalism involving delicate cucumber sandwiches and unbothered women laughing in sunlit rooms. It's actually a high-stakes hostage negotiation with bacteria where one wrong slice...
My Brutally Honest Guide To Surviving The Baby Shower Cake Drama
I was thirty-three weeks pregnant with Maya, wearing a navy blue floral maternity wrap dress from Target that was actively cutting off the circulation to my ribs. It was 2:15 PM on a sweltering Sunday in July, I was sweating...
How to Choose Cute Baby Girl Names Without Losing Your Mind
We're sitting in the parking lot of a Texas Roadhouse in the dead of August. I'm 38 weeks pregnant, sweating through a maternity shirt I bought on clearance, and absolutely sobbing into a to-go container of buttered rolls. Why? Because...
What Nobody Tells You About Personalized Baby Gifts
I was sitting on a donut pillow in my cramped Chicago apartment, bleeding through postpartum mesh underwear, while my mother-in-law unboxed a neon pink fleece blanket the size of a parachute. It had my daughter's name embroidered across it in...
The brutal truth about catering for heavily pregnant women
At my own party, I stood at the edge of my sister-in-law's patio staring at a three-foot wooden board covered in prosciutto, unpasteurized brie, and what looked like homemade mayonnaise dip. My mother-in-law nudged my elbow. Beta, you need to...
The Brutal Truth About Shower Gifts That Guests Actually Keep
I'm standing in my kitchen, staring at a tiny resin carriage I just found in the back of my junk drawer. I honestly don't know whose party it came from. Before I had my own kid, I thought you had...
What to write in a baby shower card without losing your mind
I'm sitting in the passenger seat of our sedan, balancing a small square envelope on the dashboard while my husband dodges Chicago potholes. We're twenty minutes late to my cousin's baby shower. The pen I dug out of the glovebox...
The Truth About Maternity Dresses for Baby Showers
Let me tell y'all the biggest lie the internet ever sold us: that you're going to float into your celebration at thirty-two weeks pregnant looking like a perfectly contoured, dew-kissed fertility goddess in a restrictive satin gown. I'm starting right...
Writing a Baby Shower Card When You Have No Idea What to Say
I was standing in the greeting card aisle at the local Portland Fred Meyer, holding a pastel yellow card featuring a deeply anatomically incorrect stork, completely paralyzed. I had solicited advice from three different people on what to write in...