A few months ago, a friend from college told me about her miscarriage, which happened between her first and second child. “It’s so common,” she said. “I just think people should know that.” After this friend’s disclosure, another friend told me she had had the same experience. And then another. Miscarriages are common, which was…
As a man, I will never know what it is like to be a mother. I will certainly never know what it’s like to be a Hasidic woman expected to bear children year after year and withstand the challenges and pressures of motherhood — like the ones Judy Brown described so poignantly in her two…
On Monday on the Forward, Judy Brown shared her perspective on motherhood, based on her experience in the Hasidic community that she left. Now, I’d like to share my perspective on motherhood from within the Hasidic community of Boro Park. Having children was always important to me and I chose to remain steadfast to Haredi…
This is the thing you didn’t know: that motherhood is not all joy; that birth leaves scars forever; that often you will feel no love, only desperation. This is the thing you didn’t know: That pregnancy could fill you with that much dread, that you would weep from misery and they would call it postpartum…
I am six weeks pregnant. This is my fifth pregnancy after four losses. I don’t know what my status will be tomorrow but I am telling you about it today. It’s a relief for me to share this as publicly as possible. Not telling leaves the burden of my experience on me while allowing the…
This was a big week for the Knowles-Carter family. First, as you have likely heard, Beyoncé gave birth to a baby girl named Blue Ivy. Second, for those of us pushing for more open and honest discussion about the reproductive process, new daddy Jay-Z became a hero. Like many musicians before him — check out…
By this afternoon the internet is quite beside itself — or perhaps befuddled is the better word — with the story told by George W. Bush about having to drive his mom, former First Lady Barbara Bush, to the hospital after a miscarriage. Apparently on the way she showed him the remains of the miscarriage…
I am 30 — the age when, among other things, you begin to stop hearing from your friends for about three months. Then finally, at the end of 12 weeks, you get a Sunday afternoon call announcing what you knew already: She is pregnant, and at the end of her first trimester. I’ve experienced this…
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