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I was halfway through a slightly stale samosa in the L&D breakroom at Northwestern Memorial when I heard a first-time mom down the hall completely lose her mind. Her water had just broken, and instead of looking like a clear...

We were standing in the narrow hallway of our second-floor London flat, holding two incredibly heavy car seats containing two very small, very loud humans. It was raining, obviously. The boot of the Uber had just been emptied of a...

Squeak, squeak, squeak. That was the sound of my former coworker, a night charge nurse named Sarah, tapping a dry erase marker against the whiteboard in Room 4 at Northwestern Memorial. I was twenty-eight hours postpartum. I was leaking from...

My mother-in-law told me babies just get lazy at the end. The girl in my prenatal yoga class said her doula claims fetuses enter a deep meditative state to prepare for birth. A random mom on the internet said to...

I was exactly forty-eight hours postpartum, bleeding heavily into a mesh diaper the size of a surfboard, when the sharp knock came at the door. My mother-in-law had just proudly handed me a stiff, scratchy, sequined tulle gown that looked...

Listen, the biggest lie the internet feeds us is that separated parents magically morph into these enlightened beings who cheerfully hand off a toddler over matcha lattes on a Sunday morning. I've worked enough pediatric triage shifts to know the...