What I read in 2019 (a booklist for highly sensitive, graphic-violence-and-casual-sex-averse recovering intellectuals who read to unwind but also learn and tend to get obsessively into one author at a time)
How’s that for a title? Descriptive, right? I’ve been putting this off and putting this off and putting this off because writing book lists is, like parenting a newborn, exhausting, and by nightfall all I want to…
Welcoming Big Ben
Sweet Benny (Benedict Reid Uebbing) is now 3 days old after a whirlwind of a weird labor ending in a surprise c-section and almost 10 solid pounds of chunky baby goodness. Some stats on our newest arrival:…
HELLO, IT’S ME
Adele will forever be commingled with Thanksgiving in my mind, inserted there by a now three year old SNL skit. anyway, guys, it has been a minute. Just to recap, I’ve: Left my job at CNA –…
Off the Charts NFP
Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a regular topic of discussion on this site. If you’d have asked me when I was daydreaming through my mandatory introductory sessions to the Sympto Thermal Method as a blushing bride-to-be whether I…
Last chance, doors are closing at midnight tonight (and ps, my highly irregular blogging schedule will resume … shortly)
For anyone out there who is still on the fence, Off the Charts is still open for new members…for a few more hours. After that? We won’t open doors again until spring 2020. (And you’ won’t hear…
Registration for Off the Charts is officially OPEN!
What’s your biggest struggle with NFP? Is it a lack of support? Is it a feeling of being overwhelmed by your own fertility, of not being confident in your ability to chart? Do you struggle with what…
It’s not goodbye, it’s see you around…
Today marks my final day with Catholic News Agency, home to Mama Needs Coffee for these past 6 years. It’s hard to remember when blogging was a thing you kind of hung your head about when answering…
The working mother
She rises at dawn to lace up her running shoes, logging hard-won miles in the gray light of morning. She is up before the sun with a sick baby, a nursing baby, an anxious kindergartener, making toast…
A culture that values abundance everywhere but in fertility
Having announced a pregnancy or two myself, I’ve witnessed the shifting attitude towards new life firsthand. First though, let me acknowledge my immense privilege, for not to do so would be disingenuous; Dave and I have tremendous…
Intimacy, love, and responsibility
The other night as I was swiping on mascara and applying a goodly amount of dry shampoo to my roots, one of my kids asked where I was going. “Oh, nowhere, actually, I’m giving a talk, erm,…
