Good for you. My family is just super-traditional about a lot of wedding stuff and it wouldn’t have been worth the drama it would have caused to shake things up. We had already rocked the boat by refusing to have a cash bar (my mom and grandma kept complaining it would encourage our guests to get drunk...we were like,…

I did this too. If you don’t care too much about the fancyness of the paper, I highly recommend printing through catprint.com. They are crazy cheap to begin with, always have codes floating around for 20% off. They even scored my escort cards and buffet labels for me without my asking, thereby negating the need for a…

I didn’t get one. Even the ones that come out “good” are still creepy as hell. Regular ultrasounds only for me, thanks. Most of the people I know who got them had commercial ones around 13 weeks to find out the gender early.

I was just remarking yesterday that it’s not even just the whole fleshy head that sits directly on the shoulders, it’s the pants pulled all the way up over the big round belly. My baby resembles not my husband nor me so much as my deceased grandpa in his later years.

Relatedly, I worry that I’m turning my daughter into a serial killer by binge watching Criminal Minds. She does love the theme song to 30 Rock though!

It makes me happy to hear you say that. I am a white American who worked for an Indian company for many years, and occasionally wore a sari for special events at the encouragement of my Indian bosses. I always felt a little weird about it, wondering if others in attendance might be looking at me askance. I bought a…

You poor thing. We have about two awful hours every night when the only thing that will calm her is a complex series of squats and bounces (it’s like a DIY barre class!) but the rest of the time she is pretty chill. I have the utmost respect for the parents of colicky babies...I was one and whenever my parents talk…

That’s true. TBH I do most of that stuff while nursing her, so I know what she’s up to, but when she is napping I am either sitting right in front of her or popping in every five minutes to make sure she’s still breathing. She’s 10 weeks now and it has only gotten worse with age...

That’s awesome. I ought to try doing that - my baby does cry a fair amount, but she never makes a peep in her stroller or baby carrier.

Definitely! I have been doing a lot of cooking and baking, and catching up on TV shows, and we go on a walk every day. Obviously a lot goes into baby care, and there are plenty of chores to do around the house, but there is still a lot of downtime, especially in the first couple months.

It’s not that boring. Baby care aside, I’ve read like 40 books on my Kindle since going on maternity leave at the end of April. All the breastfeeding and naps...it’s a bookworm’s dream!

I mean, she openly cowrote both books with Julia Turshen, who is very well respected in the industry. Who knows what the division of labor was, but she never presented them as all her doing.

Yes, that’s another thing - a lot of her recipes are super cheap! I swear, if it was literally anyone else we would all be applauding them, but because it’s Gwyneth it’s all jokes about kale and privilege.

That’s really interesting! I had my baby in San Francisco, in a hospital environment that was pretty hippie-dippy (for lack of a better word) as far as hospitals go, but they still wiped down the baby as a matter of course. I wish I had been able to have longer initial skin-to-skin contact - had I given birth in a…

No problem! :-)

I really wish I hadn’t clicked through, because now I don’t know if I can live without matching mother/daughter ID bracelets.

Do it! What I did not mention in my original post is that the only reason I was blowing out my hair in the first place is because I was scheduled to be induced the next day, and I wanted to look reasonably nice given the circumstances. Like I said, I didn’t pack makeup, but I did pack a whole little kit with different…

I just figure, Gwyneth provides us with so many opportunities to make fun of her, why would we need to make shit up?!

That’s smart. I buy most veggies as needed because I very conveniently live above a produce store. But I recently started doing all of my chopping whenever I have a few minutes throughout the day, because I have a baby who enjoys demanding my undivided attention around dinnertime, and I’ve been amazed at how much…

Haha - I don’t think it’s bad. I mean, in the moment I was obviously extremely concerned about the well being of my baby but it was certainly a relief to have the part that I’d been stressing about be over so quickly (and I was two full weeks overdue so I had been spending LOTS of time stressing). The only thing is, a…