Meg St-Esprit

I was sitting on my daughter’s bed one evening, reading her a bedtime story. She picked the story of Ruby Bridges, the first black child to integrate an all-white Southern elementary school in 1960 amongst a violent backlash. The children’s version…

I have three children, with three very different personalities. From the clothes they like, to the foods they eat (and refuse), to the ways they calm and express themselves, they are a very dissimilar bunch. Given the fact that two of them are…

As a kid, I more often made my Barbies adopt than I stuffed tissues up their dresses to make them pregnant. As a teen, I didn’t get why everyone sobbed watching TLC’s A Baby Story until I watched the episode where the family meets their baby in the…

It’s hard to imagine anything could outdo meeting your baby for the first time in terms of defining lifetime moments. Every woman remembers the moment she first “became” a mother — when her child was placed into her arms, when her world tilted on…

Online communities might be accessed through apps on our phones, but they are as real as the communities our mothers relied on when they were raising us. As a new mom with three kids born in less than two years — a new mom drowning in my new role —…

On any given day, a friend might walk into my house and see all three of my kids — 4-year-old twins and a 6 year old — sitting on the couches zonked out on a tablet. The screen illuminates their tiny faces, while I sit at the table working in peace…

In the months leading up to Trump’s inauguration, I feverishly tried to imprint memories of Barack Obama into my Black twins, who were then 3 years old. I was desperate that they remember when a man who reflected their beauty graced the highest seat…

Not only am I the mother of a princess-obsessed daughter, I am the daughter of a princess-obsessed mother. I’ve been "royal-watching" since toddlerhood, with a VHS tape my mom had recorded of Princess Diana’s wedding just a few years before I was…

The crib. The most basic baby item, the center of every nursery pinned on Pinterest. Matching crib-dresser-and-changer sets sell for thousands of dollars; used sets are battled for in the Facebook Marketplace. Purchasing a crib seems like a foregone…

As I sit in the mall play area, a bit bored out of my mind as my kiddos run around engaged in a raucous game of tag with some kids they just met, I snap an adorable picture as they run by. I post it, tag the location, and go back to scanning my…

“Hey mommas! I am weeks from my due date, and getting ready to pack my hospital bag! What were your must-haves? What did you bring and not even use? TIA!” This post, or a variation of it, showed up in my Facebook feed weekly during my childless…

In the middle of the night, a bedroom window creaks open, and a woman enters. She grabs the child sleeping from the bed, wrapped in a blanket, and sneaks out the window. They fade into the distance under the moonlight. The child’s parents wake up in…