Magazine

First time dad looking confused holding a maternity dress in a baby nursery

Debugging The Maternity Baby Shower Dress Meltdown In Real Time

Exactly forty-five minutes before our backyard celebration was supposed to start, I found my wife stress-crying in our Portland bathroom with a humidity sensor from my server rack sitting on the counter. She was 31 weeks pregnant, and the highly-rated,...

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Pregnant woman looking annoyed while holding up an uncomfortable maternity dress

Finding a maternity dress for baby shower events without losing you...

I'm trapped in a zippered velvet prison. It's mid-July in Chicago, I'm thirty-three weeks pregnant, and the zipper on this supposed dream dress is stuck right over my left rib, which my daughter currently uses as a kicking bag. The...

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Pregnant woman sitting in a floral maternity dress looking exhausted with coffee

Finding A Baby Shower Dress That Actually Fits (Without The Tears)

Dear Sarah from six months agoβ€”wait, no. Maya is four now. So, dear Sarah from four years and six months ago. Whatever. Time is a completely meaningless construct anyway when you haven't had a full night of uninterrupted sleep since...

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Pregnant mom setting up a baby shower venue table with organic cotton blankets and wooden toys

Searching for Baby Shower Venues Near Me Without Going Broke

I was exactly twenty-nine weeks pregnant with my oldest, sweating entirely through a polyester maternity dress in the lobby of a local country club that smelled heavily of floor wax and old money. The event coordinator, bless her heart, was...

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A half-addressed baby shower invite sitting next to a spilled cup of lukewarm coffee.

The Honest Truth About Baby Shower Invites (And Surviving Them)

I was sitting at my kitchen island in July of 2017, my ankles swollen to the exact size and texture of grapefruits, wearing a maternity tank top that had a crusty mustard stain on the hem, crying over cardstock. Literally...

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A tired pregnant woman looking skeptically at a baby gender prediction chart

Is There Actually an Accurate Baby Gender Predictor Out There

At fourteen weeks pregnant, I went to a family dinner, stopped for coffee the next morning, and saw my obstetrician that afternoon. My mother-in-law took one look at my chin breakouts and declared I was carrying a girl who was...

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Exhausted pregnant mom on couch watching a soap opera on her phone

Exposing the Baby Bump to Billionaire Wife Fantasy for Real Moms

It was 2:43 AM last Tuesday, and I was pinned under a snoring toddler, elbow-deep in a bag of salt and vinegar chips, aggressively squinting at my phone screen in the dark. I had fallen down the darkest, weirdest rabbit...

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Pregnant mother wearing a comfortable flowing dress at a baby shower

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...

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A stressed husband holding a tape measure next to a pile of maternity dresses

The Impossible Physics of Finding the Right Baby Shower Dress

I was standing in our narrow Portland hallway with a flexible tape measure, trying to calculate the cubic volume of my wife's third-trimester bump. She was holding three different dresses on hangers, crying softly because none of them accounted for...

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