Kaitlyn Kochany is a Toronto-area freelance writer and editor. She had her son, NS, in January 2016, and has been trying to sleep and write since then.
Until I was a mother, I wasn’t really a woman. I know my non-mom friends are going to hate that. I would hate that. I would feel punched, as if my circumstances or choices had led me to being less-than, …
I am a fat mom. I didn’t start out like that, but I am now. Before I was a mom, I used to be fat, and then I got skinny, and then I got fat again. Then I got fit, …
Consider: a girl, no more than seven, stands with her cheeks puffed out, eyes averted to something more interesting off-camera. She’s wearing canvas dockworker pants, clogs with a slight platform, a ruffly knit vest. There’s a basket beside her, empty, …
Warning: this post contains mild spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of the Netflix show Stranger Things. Read at your own peril. Dr. Martin “Papa” Brenner: Okay, let’s start with the worst of the lot. Dr. Brenner, “father”/guardian/kidnapper of resident …
An incomplete list of things I fear as the mother of a 21-month old boy: // cancer; drowning; dying in a fire; dying in a Trump-related nuclear conflagration; getting hit by a car; growing up and going to university and …
Tonight, my no-longer-a-baby baby, clad only in a diaper, climbed on top of me and bellowed “I’m a punk!” the way a wolf would howl gleefully at a moon. He’s 20 months old. In baby terms, he’s a teenager—funny, wise, …
Many years ago, I read an advice column about ending friendships. The columnist pointed out that it’s not like a romantic breakup, which has a protocol and a timeline and had been immortalized in fiction and onscreen (mostly by John …
There is a picture of me somewhere—I’m not sure who took it or where I’ve seen it, but I have—of me in high school. In it, my hair is wrapped in a pink scarf, I’m wearing a vintage Coca-Cola shirt, …
I love breastfeeding NS. At first, it was a source of worry—is he getting enough? too much? at the right time? is he latched? is he full? fuck, what are my boob doing all the way down there?—but these days, …
When I was a kid, my mom favoured the kind of art that you might thing of as “boring museum:” gauzy and romantic, featuring lots of children in straw hats, mothers in white lace dresses, lazy days on a skiff, …