In Which TIME Magazine Channels Its Inner National Enquirer

Inquiring minds want to know . . . does that woman on the cover of Time Magazine REALLY nurse her kid in that position?  And did she REALLY think she was furthering the cause of extended breastfeeding by posing for that controversial cover shot?  And did it ever occur to her that she was exploiting [...]

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My Big Baby

This will be short and sweet today because we are having a birthday party here tonight which means I have to actually clean the house.  And bake a cake.  In addition to all that other stuff. It’s a measure of just how crazy things are around here that poor William turned 11 on March 5 [...]

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Those Conversations You Don’t Want to Have with Your Kids

William (age 10) hit me with a couple of difficult topics right in a row the other night.  This post is part one. Many parents struggle with how to talk to their children about where babies come from.  When I was growing up, I had many friends whose parents completely ignored this essential topic, leaving [...]

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Twenty Years Ago Today . . .

. . . right about now, actually, I was welcoming my first child into the world. We knew that Emily’s birth would require a C-section because she was breech.  Although my obstetrician was one of the last left in town who would assist at a vaginal breech delivery, he required that one have a “proven [...]

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It’s Leo!

So, I really meant to get back on a regular blogging schedule for the new year, and I was doing pretty well.  My last post, however, was January 20, and that’s when I got sidetracked.  Because late that evening I became an aunt again!  This is Leo.  Isn’t he beautiful?  Leo’s parents have other kids [...]

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Embryo Adoption

The following was one of my last columns for the East Tennessee Catholic.  I did a quick check before reprinting it here to make sure that it still accurately reflects the Church’s position on this issue.    Most of the mail attorneys receive is dry and uninteresting, as you might expect.  But the brochure I pulled out of [...]

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World Breastfeeding Week

According to Mothering Magazine it is World Breastfeeding Week.  So I need to take a little break from musical topics to wax lyrical on the joys and the benefits of breastfeeding. Except surely by now you know the benefits of breastfeeding, right?  If you don’t, click here.  (And we lactivists, by the way, prefer to [...]

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Whose Judgment?

Here’s a column reprint from 2003, which I was inspired to run today by a Facebook post by my friend Amy Wilson (you can see her here) whom I have known since first grade.  She said:  “The difference between a flower and a weed is judgment.” It was a rare sunny day, and 9-year-old Jake, 2-year-old [...]

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Got baby?

Because I’m on vacation (where I envisioned I would have uninterrupted to hours to blog, but that isn’t happening) here is another column reprint for you: Billboards. They are everywhere in our town and in our state. Their unsightliness mars the beauty of rural roadsides, and adds to the ugliness of already overdeveloped commercial strips. [...]

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New Life

Congratulations to my friend Katie and her husband Jon on the birth of Georgia Allison Hickman, who has brought a gigantic dose of joy to a family sorely in need of it after the loss of the big brother she will never meet in this life.  Georgia arrived a month early and is a tiny [...]

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