What the rainbow baby definition actually means in real life
It was a Tuesday in late October, raining that gross sideways rain we get in Seattle, and I was sitting in the driver's seat of my Honda CR-V in the Walgreens parking lot. I was wearing these awful maternity leggings...
Proud Curvy Girl Seeks Lost Baby Daddy: 3 AM Doomscroll Notes
Dear Priya from last November. You're currently sitting on the closed lid of the downstairs toilet. The bathmat is damp under your bare feet because your husband took a shower three hours ago and didn't turn on the exhaust fan....
What I Wish I Knew Before Obsessing Over Popular Baby Names 2024
It was 2017, a Tuesday, and I was sweating through a heather-gray maternity tunic at a crowded Starbucks on 4th Street, desperately trying to ignore the fact that my compression leggings were actively cutting off circulation to my thighs. My...
The hospital whiteboard standoff over popular baby names
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...
How A Weird Little Platypus Baby Cured My Milestone Anxiety
I was sitting on the freezing hexagonal tiles of our extremely cramped downstairs bathroom at 3:14 AM wearing a pair of Dave's gym shorts that I’d aggressively rolled up at the waist and a nursing tank covered in what I...
Oh My Little Baby Boy: Demolishing The Tough Infant Myth Today
I was in the middle of wrestling a mustard-yellow blowout off my six-month-old when my great-aunt patted my shoulder and told me I was coddling him. He was sobbing because he was cold and covered in his own waste. I...
Nuclear Bomb vs Coughing Baby: A Late Night Letter to Myself
Dear Jess from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the cold, cheap linoleum of the master bathroom with the shower running on full-blast hot, peeling the beige wallpaper right off the drywall while you rock a sweaty, angry six-month-old...
The Messy Truth About Surviving Your Baby's First Rhinovirus
I was sitting in the dark in my rocking chair at three in the morning, holding a six-month-old who sounded exactly like a broken coffee percolator. Snot was literally bubbling out of his left nostril with every breath. My oldest...
Rihanna New Baby: What Having Three Under Four Actually Means
I was standing in line at the local H-E-B last week with a cart full of clearance diapers and a toddler actively licking the shopping cart handle, when the cashier decided to lean over and tell me I really needed...