As a Keene native, I will attest to this. Hardly anyone sticks around. It’s a lovely little town...to visit.

Two of my bridesmaids wore fascinators and the thought that they might take away from any bridal headpiece I might choose literally never crossed my mind. And if it’s cold enough to wear a jacket over her dress, why would her grandma’s fur be any different than any other jacket (unless you are opposed to all fur…

Good Lord! You are a champion.

Thank you! Everything turned out just fine in the end - now she is a delightful 11-week old. We joke that her dramatic entrance was just her giving us a taste of what to expect in the future. :-)

Agree. Also, even though I did have bad tearing (and a fairly dramatic birth experience overall), I look back on the whole thing fondly and can’t wait to do it again in a few years. And I mean the whole entire thing, not just the part where they hand you a baby at the end.

The rest thing was my main rationale for getting it! I figured as soon as the baby was out, I would not be getting any good sleep for a while, so why compound that by not getting a good solid chunk of rest right before? My baby wound up in distress, and they gave me a small window of time to push her out before doing…

To be honest, I never saw the thing myself, just heard it, and I can’t say I have any desire to Google it either! But it helped get my baby out really quickly when she was in distress. And even with the tearing, I feel more or less back to normal a bit less than three months later.

They really are amazing. I got mine, went to sleep for a couple of hours, and when I woke up I was fully dilated and ready to go! It almost worked a little TOO well...

Good for you! I don’t see how anyone who has actually given birth vaginally could reasonably judge you for this (though surely some will!). I have no idea how I didn’t wreck mine; my baby’s head was 97th percentile and they only let me have 10-15 minutes to push (assisted by a vacuum) before they would have done an…

Never mind, I totally misread you. My bad!

This is why it makes far more sense to fund maternity leave through a short term disability-based payroll deduction like in California. Nearly everyone pays into it and pregnancy is treated the same as any other short-term disability. I am about four months into my almost six month maternity leave and the only portion…

I’ve said this before on other maternity leave-related posts, but CA’s Paid Family Leave program allows for six weeks of paid leave (plus an additional six unpaid if desired) that only begins after a separate pregnancy disability leave (short term disability funded via payroll tax) is completed. So if you give birth,…

You and me both. In fact, my husband’s distaste for this type of stuff extends far beyond serial killer-type fare and on into anything with a CGI-based supernatural element, no matter how fantastical. He watched an episode of Grimm with me once and claimed it gave him nightmares. A delicate soul, he is...

I love Vegas so much. I’ve been spending a week there for work every year for something like seven years now and have a pretty solid rotation of restaurants I keep going back to. I also love Jaleo and Julien Serrano but probably slightly favor the latter since there are a few other Jaleo locations. I also love Jose…

Nice. I told my husband that my skincare regimen is an investment in his future and that shut him right up!

People are so ridiculous. My baby had some minor side effects after her two-month vaccines, and I called the advice nurse line just to make sure her symptoms weren’t cause for greater concern. The poor nurse I spoke with must have been constantly dealing with idiots who refuse to give subsequent vaccinations after…

I love the name Poppy. If it didn’t sound awkwardly rhyme-y with my husband’s last name it would absolutely have been on my list for our daughter!

I do like Willow but Maple is just not a name. Of course I probably have no business disparaging tree names because my own daughter is named Juniper...but at least that shortens to the nice classic June.

Oh man, I love kids and am a parent myself, but having grown up with just one set of twins as siblings, I feel like that is the best/worst comeuppance ever.

I have this too. I am a scary movie fanatic but I would sooner get a root canal than go through a haunted house. Glad I am not the only one!