After a prenatal yoga class this past winter, two other pregnant women and I started talking about how we craved milk all the time. This was gross, we agreed.

Curled up in bed reading a new novel about Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf called Vanessa and Her Sister, I came to a section about Bell’s pregnancy in which she is instructed by her doctor to wear a corset and drink champagne. In the middle of navigating my own pregnancy, I laughed out loud. Indeed just like all the…

Like most of the pregnant population in the Western Hemisphere, I’ve spent the past weeks unusually engrossed by the spread of the Zika virus. In case you have not been joining me in Googling “Zika” while clutching your baby bump in terror, here’s the gist: the virus, spread by mosquitoes and multiplying in the…

On an extremely rainy night this past autumn, I stood under an umbrella, looking up at the generic chain stores of NYC’s 34th Street. New Yorkers know that you don’t go to 34th Street for shopping unless you’re a tourist; this mall-like thoroughfare exists to enable our passage elsewhere, period. But on this…