We live in relatively low cost areas and will be paying $2400 a month for two kids. We’re actually considering a nanny because our cost will be comparable. What I really want is to live in a commune of parents who all work part-time so that we can watch each other's children and actually spend time with our kids…

My solution to this has just been to refuse to learn certain things that are his jobs. He can’t get the baby to sleep on his own? No problem. I don’t know how to do any of our financial planning. He thinks Oreos are a breakfast food for toddlers? No problem. I think that duct tape is a home repair material. It’s…

This is the nature of undocumented workers in the US: The system NEEDS them to function. They keep food/lodging/industrial costs low enough for stagnant middle class wages to afford. The very people campaigning for harsh penalties against immigrants know this, and they need those threats to keep those workers in their…

I cannot be the only woman who completely loses her sex drive and even finds sex painful whenever I’m pregnant or breastfeeding. Also, it’s very hard to concentrate on sex when you can clearly identify a baby foot lodged up under your rib. Sex work while pregnant sounds like the worst job I could imagine.

I see this case being complicated by the fact that not all female genital cutting is the same, and if you read the FBI documents these girls were subject to cutting of the clitoral hood and labia but NOT clitoridectomy as is classically assumed. Federal law bans any kind of cutting or piercing, but as a society on the…

I don’t subscribe to this in any way BUT the argument I’ve heard from a lot of Evangelicals is that the use of birth control promotes casual relationships and is not conducive to a culture of life. That is, morally as a society we want to create incentive to engage only in sexual relations within committed…

I loved Tucks pads. Same ingredients as padsicles minus the precious freezer space I saved for meals and cheaper to boot. 

Yeah, I had my baby out in just a few pushes, minor tearing that was sore but didn’t make walking hard after, and I was in my regular clothing within the week. Then I genuinely enjoyed and was deliriously happy during the newborn period. I want to be honest to the range of experiences, but I don’t appreciate attempts…

I can’t bring myself to not brush my teeth in the morning. It just doesn’t compute. I cannot walk out the door with the feeling of fuzz on my teeth and that taste in my mouth. My husband REGULARLY just forgets. And then gets super pissy if I double check before we go somewhere because he feels nagged. Dude, I’m not…

I used this method when trying to GET pregnant, so I can definitely believe it works. It’s just so beyond the level of physiologic understanding and daily consistency that most people I know have that I can’t imagine it would work that well outside of carefully selected patients. I’m really shocked that anyone…

I am ALL ABOUT vasectomies as safer, easier, and cheaper alternatives to tubal ligations. I cannot believe the number of women in committed relationships undergoing general anesthesia and all of the associated costs of OR time/staff and recovery from laparoscopy because their husbands refuse a scalpel-free office…

The trouble is that that’s sort of a false reason not to support these initiatives. Stigma against formula is a problem for a first world country (and not so much of a problem that the majority of women in every developed country don’t use formula, just saying). This is a WHO initiative, and in developing countries…

There's never a section in these articles on how fucking annoying "free range kids" are to everyone else. Keep your brats out of my lawn, from setting off my car alarms trying to play hide and seek in them, fucking with my garden, and moving my property around. Then when they're confronted those parents never increase…

Right. Relapse is not a failure. It is not the end of recovery. It’s just another part of that journey that means you need increased support and maybe a change of strategy. Addiction is not a binary state, and recovery is an ongoing process.

There are many many reasons these admitting privilege laws don’t make sense.... But among them is just that that isn’t a thing anymore. Like, there are only three doctors left near my rural hospital that admit their own patients. Everyone else just lets their patients get admitted by the general hospital service or…

I’m so fucking excited to involve my son in a co-ed scouting organization where women can be peers and not an “other” and where single gender activities won’t just promote the most bizarre and toxic manifestations of our gender roles.

Spot on. Longer maternity leave would be a big part of this—the crunch at the infant daycare level is extreme due to extra licensing and lower staff ratios. Cost aside (and that’s huge) the vacancy rate in my small city is <1%. Once we cross a year of age, we have many more options and lower prices

The DO school at MSU precedes the MD school and is the more highly ranked of the two nationally. Michigan has one of the highest proportions of DOs in the country. It’s more of a historical quirk that the state decided it needed to add an MD school.

That probably would have been bromocriptine. They stopped using it for suppression of lactation due to concerns about cardiac risks.

I feel the same complicated emotions. This isn’t a solution, but being pro-sex and pro-choice and pro-birth control doesn’t address the culture that doesn’t promote a conscious approach to parenthood. And most liberal, educated perspectives on this are way too rosy re: the fate of children in these situations. Love is…