The closest thing I have to a superpower is lactating. Making food that another human can eat—and thrive on—from my own flesh (well, technically my blood) has always been and always will be absolutely miraculous to me. And like any true superpower, I can use it for the highest good: saving lives.
Family
Baby Girl Gets a Name!
Baby girl is three weeks old today, which makes it high time for her to get a name! We've been having a hard time making a decision, as our final contenders all seemed to fit. But, after three weeks of delaying and trying out the finalists, and then a couple days of calling her just one of...
A Great Thing Sweden Does For New Babies (and Their Families)
I remember the first time we went to the pediatrician when August, our first, was born. It was within the first week of leaving the hospital, and it was our first excursion out of the house with the baby. It took us at least thirty minutes to get ready—we had to pack the diaper bag, get...
What's the Deal With Cutting the Cord?
I'm curious—did you (or your partner, husband, baby's father, baby's other mother, etc.) cut the umbilical cord after you delivered the baby? It seems to be this momentous things that fathers (or one of the aforementioned others) are supposed to do. With all three of our children's births, James was handed the scissors at the appropriate time...
Some Thoughts on the Postpartum Period
Little Bing-Bong is ten days old today. We've been home for eight of those, adjusting to life as a new family of five—mostly this means adjusting to being the mother of a newborn again. I was inspired by this post on one of my favorite blogs, Reading My Tea Leaves, to share with you what this...
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
As you might have guessed, my silence this last week has been due to the fact that the baby has arrived! In fact, she came just a few hours after I published my last post.
Alternative (and Free) Souvenir Ideas
Slipping away to some exotic or culturally rich location for a vacation is wonderful; bringing home souvenirs from that vacation, which jog travel memories and help the vacation last longer in your mind, is also wonderful. But that doesn't mean you have to stop at those kitschy, overstuffed bric-a-brac shops and pony up for some mass-produced (and questionably...
Some Pics From Our Trip to Spain
And we're back! We had such a lovely time in Spain, and now it feels great to be home again. Spain was just what we needed: a break from the dark winter. We got so much sunshine and warmth (except in Granada), and I felt an infusion of energy. I got so much exercise walking everywhere...
A Trick to Making Vacation More Pleasurable
Last winter we went to Portugal for a month. We stayed in a lovely town outside of Lisbon and we found a Swedish school, where we sent August a couple days per week. Some days James and I took turns taking care of the boys so that the other could put in a few hours of work (I...
The Third Trimester of My Third Pregnancy in My (Late) Thirties
(Nota bene: the pictures in this post have almost nothing to do with the content. This is mostly because my husband refuses to take pictures of me, also because I find selfies to be too self-aggrandizing to bother taking any, and because it's winter in Sweden and the light is shit.) I'm just over 32 weeks into this...