Allison Cooper

I remember very vividly those first days of feeding my son solids.

Pregnancy changes more than just your body and your emotions: it changes the “stuff” that you need on a daily basis, too. I didn’t realize just how much I needed — or how the packing game had changed — until I needed to place it all neatly into my (now) overflowing suitcase.

Then all of a sudden he stopped and muttered the words, “Nevermind mom, you don’t understand. You’re not a gamer.” That stopped me in my tracks.

Having a full schedule can be a wonderful thing, but also exhausting and a time suck — sucking time away from you! Take a look at your monthly calendar and plan what is most important to you and your family.

** If you haven’t yet watched this series, the below article includes some spoilers. **

One thing is for sure: it’s a heck of a lot easier to bank your child’s teeth that to deal with coordinating banking umbilical cord blood as soon as a baby is born.

When I brought my son into the world, I thought that he would be an awful lot like me. He had to be, right? He grew inside me; I nourished him; I was the one home with him day in and day out during those very impressionable years, while my husband worked a grueling military schedule — yet there are few similarities to be found.

There’s so much going on with a postpartum mom, so much more than meets the eye, and we need to be aware of that. Stop talking about her body!

Most of us grow up envisioning the “perfect” family that we will have one day. One boy, one girl – 3 years apart. Right?

[CN: mention of suicide] It’s not all real. We don’t live curated lives that are built around purposeful omissions of reality...