When your Support System Quacks Up
When my first daughter (we’ll call her Rose) was born over five years ago, the local baby clinic was my lifeline. With no family living in Cape Town, and none of our close friends having had kids yet, my partner and I were in desperate need of support and advice. The clinic …
Look At That Tree!
Tonight Tom wouldn’t stop looking at our Christmas tree. Will came home from doing some last-minute Christmas shopping. (For some strange reason having a two-week old infant in the house has set us all back on our holiday chores.) He stomped upstairs with a grumble about needing some sleep. It …
The Care and Feeding of Small Humans
It seems simple. Have a baby/babies. Feed them. Repeat. Watch them grow, achieve, succeed and be happy. The End. NOT! It seems like how and what you feed your child, from the newborn stage until they leave for college, has become one of the most contentious and heated topics in the …
I Am Not a Parent
I am not a parent. In a way it would be appropriate to say that I am not a parent YET. As of this writing (at least its first draft), I’m sitting in a hospital lobby, next to our dozing doula, clacking away on my laptop. Willpower, worry, five hour …
The Day I Left the Baby Forums, With a Side of Sleep Methods Rambling
I remember the exact moment I swore off ever being a regular subscriber and reader of any parenting forums. My son, like many kids, has had his share of troubles sleeping through the night. Not the worst I’ve heard of, not the best. Average. I’d gotten through the worst of …
[email protected] the Birth Experience
A couple of years ago I wrote an essay about how my perception of the “birth experience” had changed from the birth of my first kidlet by c-section to the event of my triumphant VBAC. Spoiler alert: VBAC, SHMEEBAC. That essay eventually became a story that I told onstage — …