Elizabeth Broadbent

Dear attachment parents, Maybe you decided to attachment parent (AP) when you were pregnant, as I did. Maybe you fell into it accidentally, because you had a fussy baby who wanted to be held constantly. However you discovered attachment parenting,…

You’re minding your own business and holding your brand-new baby, when someone comes up to you and starts a conversation. Maybe you’re taking to a friend. Maybe you’re talking to some random lady in Target. Maybe you haven’t even made it out of the…

I used to think it was OK to delay vaccines. I thought there were too many vaccines, and that my kids might have an allergic reaction to one. I thought that it didn't matter if they got behind on their shots. Then I did my research. I learned that I…

I was on two antidepressants while I was pregnant with my second son: Zoloft and Wellbutrin. I needed them desperately. I had a history of depression as a child, and I had also suffered from prenatal depression during my first pregnancy. I was…

My husband and I sleep in a bed that’s really a queen with a sidecarred twin. That’s because our 3-year-old still sleeps with us all night. And sometime in the middle of the night, our 7- and 5-year-olds tend to creep in to sleep with us as well. We…

"Oh, I would never vax," one of my friends said as she bounced her tiny son on her knee. My eyes widened. I'd known she was into alternative medicine and essential oils, but I didn't know her hippie streak ran this deep. "Vaccines are full of…

As someone who nurses an older child and practices extended breastfeeding, I feel like I am constantly on the defensive. I have to deal with people constantly accusing me of nursing for my own benefit, and not for my son’s. Worst of all, those…

We all know how tummy time works: you put your baby down on a blanket in a supine position, and in theory, you let them grab at toys or chew a rattle or what the hell ever. In practice, however, tummy time is different. Mostly, you just watch as…

Once, a kid chased my son down and bashed him on the head with a rock, leaving a bloody dent that would later become a scar. As I determined whether he would need stitches, the kid's mom apologized. "It's no big deal," I told her. Of course, that…

My kids like to jump on the couch. When I tell them not to jump on the couch, they respond by barrel-rolling onto the cushions, then wrestling each other while shrieking. This inevitably leads to tears and recriminations and woe. When this happens,…

My husband and I always knew we wanted to practice attachment parenting, or AP. We'd read about it in the context of adoption and foster care, which we'd considered, and it seemed like a great way to raise healthy, confident children. So I did all…

Dear Anxious Moms, They say that when you have a child, your heart goes walking around outside your body. You know this truth so well. And you know that with it comes an abiding fear like no other in your lifetime. The galloping thrum of your heart…

My 7-year-old Blaise is obsessed with the Revolutionary War. He loves learning about America’s fight for freedom and liberty. He especially adores George Washington, who, he will tell you, paid his own money to outfit his men. He also loves the…

I am the queen of baby weight. During my first pregnancy, I gained 50 pounds. I lost it all in about six months. During my second pregnancy, I packed on a whopping 70 pounds. That weight stuck around for at least nine months. And during my third…

As the saying goes, "breast is best" — and there's lots of research to support that. Breastfeeding gives babies essential vitamins and nutrients, as well as antibodies that protect children from ear infections and diarrhea. In fact, the Centers for…

My husband Bear and I used to foster greyhounds. We would take in a greyhound, often directly from the track, and try to get it to become accustomed to domestic life before it would be adopted by another family. The greyhounds didn’t know about…

When I became a mother, I had two things already: a Moby wrap, which I had bought during my pregnancy; and a long history of mental health issues. I had, in fact, suffered mightily from prenatal depression and needed to take both anti-depressants…

When I was pregnant with my youngest son Sunny, my pregnancy was absolutely hellish. At 6 weeks, I developed hyperemesis gravidarum, or extreme morning sickness, which led to me being hospitalized. The only thing that would treat it was phenergan, a…

Warning: This post contains references to mental illness and self-harm. I was 14 years old when I started self-harming. I was in French class, and I used a ruler. The ruler was plastic, and I ended up with bloody wounds on both wrists. I could go…

I breastfed all of my sons. We started wearing them on the day they were born, and we rarely took them out of their wraps. We co-slept and put them in cloth diapers. And when they started teething, we strung amber necklaces around their necks…