Op-Ed

Call the American Academy of Pediatrics; turn me in. Call the SIDS foundation folks. Tell ’em all I did the unthinkable. I bucked the advice. I put my babies, both of them, to sleep on their tummies. And if I danced around that truth before, now I’m willing to admit it, to own up, to […]

When my partner and I were driving our newly placed, three-day old, adopted daughter home for the first time, my partner looked at the baby in the rearview mirror and announced, “You’re a girl! That’s a really complicated thing. Don’t take it too seriously.” As soon as we got the baby home, we began to […]

There’s nothing like a pre-nap triangle of PB&J and a glass of milk on the couch with some old friends on Sesame Street. That’s how I spent my afternoons after a hard day at kindergarten, but lately it seems too much to ask for our nation’s kids. These are difficult times, after all, and sacrifices […]

When any polite woman learned I was pregnant with twins, she’d ask, “Were you surprised?” I would say, “Yes, totally surprised!” The next question would inevitably be, “Do twins run in your family?” “Yes,” I’d say, “My aunt had triplets for her third pregnancy, and they’re 33.” This conversation was, of course, code. If I […]

Because I was too busy working and taking care of my kids, I only recently caught up with Rebecca Traister’s Salon interview with Debbie Klett, editor of Total 180!, a new magazine for stay-at-home moms, or, as Total 180! terms them, Chief Household Officers. The interview is of course accompanied by the usual flood of […]

During my first pregnancy, I dutifully answered my doctor’s questions — allergies to medications no, family history of cancer yes — until he asked: “Will you be breastfeeding?” Huh? I’d just turned 30. Like most who don’t answer to “Mom,” what I knew about breast-feeding couldn’t fill a sippy cup. Today it seems a month […]