Meg St-Esprit

Co-breastfeeding, where both parents nurse the child, is relatively unheard. The process to achieve this, induced lactation, is often touted in some mothering communities as a mysterious act that a friend-of-a-friend tried, once, maybe. Most parents…

He might be white in your copy of The Night Before Christmas, but from corporate events to malls across America, families are seeking out diverse Santas. After all, why shouldn’t the jolliest and most magical man on the planet reflect the kids he…

I have four kids. Three of them have October birthdays, which makes for a fun and hectic Halloween season. This also means that my current first grader started kindergarten a few weeks before he turned 6, and my 5-year-old twins will do the same…

When we decided eight years ago to build our family via adoption, we knew that many parts of our journey to parenting would be different. Paperwork instead of pregnancy tests, social worker visits in lieu of OB-GYN visits. I fully embraced our…

Even for women who badly want to breastfeed, there can be a slew of obstacles, from mastitis to latch issues. For Meghan Wooldridge, mother of three, the breastfeeding itself seemed to be going okay, but something else was going on. “It took…

“I couldn’t eat lunch meat or take an aspirin, but I sat as nurses in Haz-mat suits put chemicals into my veins.” The baby inside of Stephanie Hosford was completely dependent on her for everything that it needed, and yet she was voluntarily loading…

Written in 1934 by theologian Reihold Neibuhr, the serenity prayer has been used in sermons for generations and was later adopted in short form by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs. It has provided comfort to generations of folks in a…

Sitting on the couch, watching reruns of an old mindless sitcom while wrapped in an afghan, I watch midnight tick by on my phone. I breathe a little sigh of relief, and feel a pang of grief hit my gut at the same moment. I kiss the four-week-old…

“We devised a plan to get my father-in-law whisky and let him relax. Whiskey and cigar, mellow out and not be bringing his energy in his room," Josh Tarnofsky tells Romper by phone of wife Steph Hendel delivering their son, attended by the baby's…

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…