So here we find ourselves near the end of what will pretty clearly be my last pregnancy. The baby will be here sometime in the next two or three weeks, which is such a very short time that I cannot understand why other people seem anxious about when I’m going to have that baby already: [...]
I present: evidence that I truly cannot draw! Also that I have no shame: Eric joked that I should offer a reward to anyone who can correctly identify all the items on this list. I told him to draw his own, then, which more or less shut him up. Noah, an over-forgiving art critic, loves [...]
I forget what it’s like to feel okay. Since I feel considerably less awful than I did three months ago, I often assume that I do in fact feel normal, that nothing’s really wrong, which leads to me thinking things like “Why do I feel so weird?” or “Why does it seem like everything’s so hard?” [...]
Welcome to First the Egg, a collection of practical information, links, and cultural criticism. This site is a feminist intervention in our rigidly-gendered culture of childbirth and parenting. It aims to provide a nonsexist space for people who want to learn, reflect, commiserate, or laugh about being pregnant, giving birth, and helping children grow up whole and happy.
Feel free to contact me with ideas or questions at
I am brave.
One part of Peggy Vincent’s memoir Baby Catcher that really struck me was her description of the birth of her own third child. Late in the labor, she writes: The next contraction came grinding down on me, but it felt different. A white-hot hole of knowledge opened in my pain. I saw that in my effort [...]