I miss: a functioning digestive system hunger: For quite a few weeks, my only cues to eat have been 1) the clock, 2) Eric putting food in front of me, and 3) nausea / reflux-y feelings / excess saliva that are incredibly hard to read as ‘hunger’ when they feel more like ‘don’t eat! never eat again! [...]
[originally posted at my old blog on 15 December 2008] After giving birth, a woman bleeds quite a lot, and she’s discouraged from using tampons for about six weeks postpartum because they increase the risk of infection. Postpartum bleeding (which for some reason is called “lochia,” which I think is an ugly word) generally continues [...]
[originally posted at my old blog on 11 August 2009] I recently bought Laura Keegan’s book Breastfeeding with Comfort and Joy for a pregnant friend who really really wants to breastfeed her baby and has heard a few too many stories of people who never managed to make that work. I bought it sight-unseen, largely [...]
One of Noah’s Christmas gifts was a set of ‘story cards,’ a concept that was unfamiliar to me until recently. They’re sort of like a set of large playing cards, or glossy index cards, with beautiful and evocative pictures and no words. You can play with them in various ways, but the idea is that [...]
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
links for thought, November 2011
from Molly Remer at Talk Birth, “What Really Scares Me: Social Attitudes Towards Women” Perhaps we will reach a point in the future where anything having to do with women and their messy, excess hairy, birthy, butt fatty bodies will be dealt with by professionals. Wearing skirts. from TopHat at The Bee in Your Bonnet, “When to [...]