I’m working on a book proposal and looking for potential sources to interview. My proposal is focused on women who have brutal first brushes with motherhood. That includes anything along the lines of: a difficult pregnancy or complicated birth postpartum depression/anxiety, postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder, postpartum obsessive-compulsive
Read more →My family and I are vacationing in Colorado, and today we climbed Pikes Peak. Our Jeep did the actual climbing. But we successfully steered the vehicle skyward, to the mountain’s 14,115-foot summit. The 19-mile drive demands a stealthy crawl in low gear, up an increasingly steep two-lane
Read more →Mom had more faith than anyone I’ve met. Unshakable faith in Christ, really. I was reminded of that recently, as I rifled through a box of nearly forgotten items from my childhood. I landed on an autograph book, a gift for my tenth birthday. Among the few
Read more →I have five best friends. My husband, my sister, and three women–college friends–I’ve known for about 20 years. One of those three women, Nina, moved away from Chicagoland last month. Her husband landed a gig in Silicon Valley, so they packed up their kids, their lives and
Read more →Mothering two young children is sometimes like novocaine. It numbs my mind and makes me talk funny. On the toughest days, crafting a coherent sentence can be challenging. Not to mention holding a conversation about something complicated, like education policy. Once upon a lifetime ago, writing and editing stories about
Read more →While researching my post on the social and economic costs of breastfeeding, I realized new moms often face scrutiny no matter how they feed their babies. Stories shared by friends and colleagues sent me reflecting on my own experiences, which some have called unusual. My mom nursed me until
Read more →Annabelle, a friend of mine for just about 20 years, used a mix of her milk and formula to create the optimal feeding plan for her son. She worried her approach might threaten bonding with her son and draw reproach from others. Two years later, her son
Read more →After a briefly bumpy start, Kristin mastered the art of nursing her daughter, thanks in part to a lactation consultant. She breastfed for about two years, cherishing the midnight bonding that comes when baby cozies up to mom, and the rest of the world yawns to a
Read more →My cousin Rachel encountered complications as she sought to nurse her first child, Reid, in the fall of 2008. When she switched to formula, a close friend scorned her decision, suggesting that formula would turn Reid into a fat, lazy and sick child. This added an unnecessary layer of guilt
Read more →Moms who nurse their infants longer than six months experience greater financial setbacks than moms who nurse for less time, or not at all, according to new research. Tom Jacobs writes in the Pacific Standard: A study of 1,313 American women who gave birth between 1980 and
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