My eyes focus on my abdomen, the bulge pregnancy has left behind. My inner critic opens her mouth…but then I take in the whole picture. By Chrissie Dunham
new motherhood
We would take a million pictures of our child but none of us. Forget to schedule date nights because we never needed them before. By Elizabeth Newdom
My daughter collapses after an endless tantrum and says, I wish I wasn’t adopted. By Tanya Friedman
When you blow out the candle for her, be prepared: it will feel like blowing away her first year, your first year of motherhood. By Kaitlin Barker Davis
If my belly was round and full of baby, would I hate my body less? This body that betrayed me. By Brittany Wren
When he was two, I spent mornings stuffing tubes of penne with scrambled eggs to trick him into eating something other than pasta. By Marianna Marlowe
One day infants and diaper bags and hemorrhoids and boobs won’t be hanging off of your person like you’re a cross between a human mobile and a Sherpa. By Catherine Newman
The decision not to find out my unborn child’s sex is perhaps the most intimate and important one I have ever made. By Laine Munir
How could I do it all again? The uncomfortable pregnancy, the brutal birth, the dark newborn days. By Joy Netanya
Serena has arguably done as much for working moms in the past year as she’s done for tennis in the past decade. By Mary Pflum Peterson
I can’t imagine a time without children in my house, just as one month ago I could not imagine an evening without bath time. By Kelli Kirk
In a quiet, distant voice I tell my husband that I want to die. Not exactly dead, I clarify, but not this. By Laura G. Owens
I’ve never used expressions like potty, criss-cross applesauce, boo-boo and its sad cousin owie. They make me feel like an imposter. By Rosemary Harp
Do people really believe a baby’s size is a reliable precursor of his future happiness, intelligence, or even physical prowess? By Kelsey Osgood
He can’t reconcile where we’d find the time, money and energy. I feel like we’d figure it out, the way we did with the first. By Abigail Rasminsky
It was so much easier to ignore my own pounding heart amidst the turbulence when I was worrying about my son’s instead. By Lauren Apfel
Motherhood has become so consuming to me that I find it hard not to project onto others a desire for the sense of purpose it offers.
By Lauren Apfel
By stuffing my backpack with toys and dolls, I realized I was trying to control my children’s adventure.
By Andrea Hannah
I love my baby, but I miss my relationship with my husband terribly.
By Abigail Rasminsky
Photographs suggested a future, a future in which we would look back at this moment, but a future where our baby might be gone.
By Yvonne Spence
I couldn’t let my child have carte blanche access to my body for as long as she saw fit, the way I had originally thought I would.
By Doña Bumgarner
Any guilt or reservation about a “failed” birth plan was replaced by an unwavering commitment to my son.
By Stephanie Noll
Seven years on, my son is still a sucker, thumb mostly, but also occasionally sleeves, zippers, the pointed snout of a stuffed animal.
By Daisy Alpert Florin