Mar 5, 2026
When Meghan Trainor shared that she used a surrogate for her third baby, after two C-sections and complicated pregnancies, my first reaction wasn’t shock. It was recognition.
Not because I have strong opinions about how celebrities grow their families, but because I understand the calculus that starts happening after your body has been through it. After surgery. After risk conversations. After recovery that’s longer and heavier than the announcement. After you’ve already done the brave thing twice. After infertility and operating rooms and signing forms you barely remember reading, I know how quickly gratitude and fear can live in the same body.
She said her doctors advised her against carrying again. She talked about safety, about wanting to be present for the kids she already has. It felt measured. Practical. And almost immediately, the commentary filled in the rest — privilege, outsourcing, what “real” motherhood requires.
It’s interesting how quickly women’s reproductive decisions become public debate, especially when they step even slightly outside the expected script. We celebrate endurance — fertility treatments, high-risk pregnancies, repeat surgeries — and then get uneasy when someone chooses not to endure one more round.
Surrogacy is layered (money, access, ethics), none of it simple. But so is pregnancy. Repeat C-sections carry increased risks. Maternal health in this country is complicated at best. Wanting safety, predictability, or simply not wanting to hand your body back to the operating room isn’t a scandal; it's a decision.
After you’ve handed your body over enough times, the question shifts. It’s not about proving you can do it again. It’s about deciding you don’t have to.
Mar 4, 2026
After two pregnancies and three babies, I thought I knew my body pretty well. We've been through infertility, loss, two vaginal births, and a C-section — I felt like we had a rhythm. And then my period came back postpartum and introduced itself like someone I’d met once in college and barely recognized now.
Not necessarily more painful. Just… different. Heavier. More dramatic. The kind of cycle that makes you check the calendar twice and wonder if your uterus has been quietly rebranding. I remember thinking, is this just what happens now? Because no one really mentions this part. You get the discharge instructions, the mesh underwear, the six-week clearance. You do not get a heads up that months later your period might return with a slightly louder personality.
There are reasons for it. After pregnancy, your uterus has stretched and shifted and done the absolute most. When your cycle returns, prostaglandins — the compounds that trigger uterine contractions — can fluctuate, and the uterine lining can be thicker at first, which can mean a heavier period. Breastfeeding adds another layer; prolactin suppresses ovulation, so when hormones finally recalibrate, things can feel unpredictable before they feel steady.
For a lot of women, the first three to six cycles are the messiest... heavier, irregular, just off. I wrote a full breakdown of what’s happening physiologically, what actually helps (timed NSAIDs, heat, pelvic floor PT), and when it’s worth checking in about conditions like endometriosis or adenomyosis (which pregnancy can temporarily mask) here.
Just because your body did something extraordinary doesn’t mean it snaps back into familiarity overnight. It’s allowed to need real support afterward.
Mar 3, 2026
I finished Half His Age in two nights — the kind where you look up, it’s past midnight, and you’re already tired for tomorrow. If you read I’m Glad My Mom Died and immediately decided Jeannette McCurdy could write anything and you’d follow... same.
I loved it. Then I read the reviews.
I felt that familiar tightening, the one that happens when something hits close to home and the internet decides it shouldn’t exist.
The premise is uncomfortable by design: a high school teacher, a student, an affair. People are calling it gratuitous, irresponsible, unnecessary. And I understand the instinct to recoil. We want stories like this to tell us exactly how to feel.
But that’s not what she’s doing.
McCurdy has spoken openly about being in a relationship with an older man when she was 18 — someone with power over her, someone who should have known better. Half His Age is her processing that experience through fiction, which is what writers do with the things that are too sharp to hold any other way. The discomfort isn’t incidental; it’s the whole point.
What she captures — the way a young woman can mistake control for love, intensity for intimacy, attention from the wrong person for proof of her own worth — is not gross. It’s true. It happens constantly, quietly, to girls who grow up to be women who are still untangling it decades later. (I don’t know many of us who don’t have some version of that story.)
Brilliant coming-of-age stories are rarely comfortable. The ones that stay with you usually aren’t.
And maybe the urge to look away says more about us than it does about the book.
Mar 2, 2026
There’s a very specific flavor of disappointment that can sneak into birthdays in your 30s. Not because anything goes wrong, exactly, but because the day rarely lives up to the cinematic version in your head. You’ve accumulated a whole life by now — kids, losses, career pivots, years of inside jokes in the group chat — and somehow you expect one dinner reservation and a slice of cake to capture all of it.
For the last few years, my birthday has landed in the middle of something: infertility, then pregnant and terrified after a loss (counting weeks instead of candles), then newly postpartum, which is less “birthday glow” and more “have I brushed my teeth today?” Every celebration felt slightly hijacked by whatever chapter I was white-knuckling through, like the day couldn’t just be a day.
This year was different. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t pursuing anything. No monitoring appointments, no two-week waits, no bracing for news. Just a regular Friday that happened to be mine.
My husband gave me the most beautiful earrings (the kind that make you feel more pulled together than you actually are), and two of my closest friends took me out for drinks, where we laughed about nothing and everything. My kids presented homemade cards and a dessert that was 90% sprinkles and 10% structure, which felt deeply on brand for our household.
Nothing was extravagant, and for once, I didn’t want it to be.
After years of wanting something so badly it tinted every single day, ordinary felt luxurious: healthy kids singing off-key, a stiff drink, jewelry I’ll wear on our next night out.
Thirty-seven wasn’t flashy or transformative; it was steady — and after everything, steady feels like winning.
Feb 27, 2026
Today is my 37th birthday, and if I could have one gift — no wrapping required — it would be a small reprieve from two-factor authentication.
I know. Cybersecurity. Identity theft. I’ve heard the arguments. I’m not unreasonable. I just also have ADHD, which means the gap between your code has been sent and me actually locating my phone, unlocking it, finding the text, reading the six digits, switching back to the original app, and entering them before they expire is… not always a gap I can close in time.
I have requested new codes while the original codes were still technically valid. I have, on at least one occasion, given up entirely and decided that whatever bill it was could wait until a more focused version of me showed up.
This isn’t laziness; it's a working memory thing. ADHD brains genuinely struggle to hold information across interruptions, which is, unfortunately, the entire premise of two-factor authentication. You disengage, reorient, hold the number in your head, switch back, and somewhere in that shuffle, the thread is gone. The code has expired. You’re back at square one.
There’s a specific kind of ADHD tax nobody talks about much: not the big, dramatic stuff, but the thousand tiny friction points that make ordinary life feel slightly harder than it looks from the outside. Two-factor authentication just happens to be the hill I’m choosing today, mostly because birthdays have a way of making you notice where your energy goes.
Thirty-seven feels like the age where you’re allowed to say that out loud. So happy birthday to me. Please send cake. And for the love of God, just let me log in.
Feb 27, 2026
Somewhere between the protein obsession and the cold plunge discourse, sleep quietly became the coolest thing you can do for your health. And honestly? It's about time.
Bustle recently ran a piece on sleep tips from Olympic athletes — the people whose entire careers depend on physical recovery — and what struck me wasn't how extreme their routines were. It was how unsexy most of the advice was. Consistent bedtimes. Dark rooms. No screens. The boring stuff, done with unusual commitment.
I have been doing the boring stuff, and I will not be entirely humble about it: my Oura ring recently gave me a 97% sleep score. In my family, this is not surprising. We are, all of us, gifted sleepers: the kind of people who can fall asleep anywhere, at any time, under any conditions. It's less a wellness practice and more just how we're wired. My contribution to the family legacy is simply that I go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. That's genuinely the whole routine.
And I think that's kind of the point.
We’ve spent so long treating sleep as the thing you sacrifice to prove you’re serious: about work, about ambition, about being the kind of person who has a lot going on. Hustle culture turned exhaustion into something aspirational. I’ll sleep when I’m dead was said out loud, by adults, as if that were a flex and not at least a little concerning.
Meanwhile, the research keeps piling up. Sleep shapes cortisol, immunity, appetite, and emotional regulation. Even Olympians talk about it now not as indulgence, but as infrastructure. What I notice most, though, is simpler than any data point. I’m steadier when I’m rested. Kinder. Slightly less reactive in the group chat.
I don’t have an elaborate wind-down routine. I just keep my bedtime. The ring doesn't lie.
Feb 24, 2026
They say death comes in threes, but lately it feels less like superstition and more like a pattern I can’t unsee. And the cause, in so many of these losses, is colon cancer.
First, the headlines about colon cancer and Catherine O’Hara (RIP, Moira Rose). Then James Van Der Beek — yes, our Dawson, forever standing on that dock in my teenage memory — opening up about his diagnosis before his recent passing. And then the one that truly knocked the wind out of me: my mom’s best friend Nancy, who felt more like an aunt, gone far too soon from the same disease.
I kept asking myself: Is this actually happening more, or are we just at the age where it starts touching our own lives?
According to the American Cancer Society's latest report, colorectal cancer rates in adults under 50 have been rising since the mid-1990s. It’s now the leading cause of cancer death in men under 50 and the second leading cause in women in that age group. That’s a staggering shift for something many of us still think of as a “later in life” diagnosis.
Researchers are still untangling why. Diet, ultra-processed foods, sedentary habits, microbiome changes, environmental exposures. Likely a mix. What we do know is practical: screening now starts at 45 for average-risk adults because of this rise. And symptoms matter, even if you feel healthy. Blood in the stool. Ongoing digestive changes. Unexplained weight loss. You're not dramatic for getting it checked out.
Lately, beneath the carpools and grocery runs and half-finished emails, there’s this heightened awareness of how fragile it all is, how ordinary and precious these days can be at the same time.
So yes, plan the trip, celebrate the birthday, stay up too late with your friends, and order the good bottle of wine. But also call your doctor, know your family history, and schedule the screening you’ve been putting off.
Two things can be true at once: life is precious and unpredictable, and protecting it is part of loving it.
Feb 23, 2026
They say some people eat to live, while others live to eat. As a second-generation Italian-American girl from Queens, I have always, proudly, lived to eat. Food is how we say "I love you" without actually saying it. It's Sunday sauce simmering for hours, it's too much bread on the table, it's arguing about whose meatballs are better.
"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" has, quite frankly, never resonated with me. Carbs are a personality trait where I'm from.
But here's the part that might surprise you: for most of my adult life, I didn't love to cook. I loved eating, I loved restaurants, I loved being cooked for, but the actual act of planning, prepping, and executing dinner on a random Wednesday when you have three kids, a full-time job, and approximately zero mental bandwidth left felt… exhausting.
And then, honestly, ChatGPT changed the game.
Now I type in what's in my fridge ("chicken thighs, San Marzano tomatoes, half an onion, a sad piece of pancetta"), and I get a straightforward, no-frills recipe in seconds. No life story, no ads, just clarity, which removes the friction and means I actually cook.
And here's what I didn't expect: I love what happens while I'm cooking. Not the chaotic, multitasking version, but the steadier one: audiobook in my ears (hi, Wild Reverence), hands moving, knife hitting the cutting board in a rhythm that somehow settles my nervous system. I don't even particularly love chopping, but I love how it quiets my brain while I'm doing something useful — something that ends with everyone gathered around the table.
For me, this isn't about being a trad wife or optimizing protein. It's about reconnecting to something that's always been part of my identity — food as joy, food as love — in a way that finally fits into my actual life. And realizing that maybe in your late 30s, you just become the nonna, whether you planned to or not.
Feb 11, 2026
I did not have “Bridgerton teaches us about the pleasure gap” on my 2026 bingo card, and yet… here we are.
Just when we’d all quietly filed Francesca away as the soft-spoken, piano-playing sister, season 4 gently (and brilliantly) flipped the script. The Pinnacle storyline doesn’t rely on scandal or smolder. It slows down, turns inward, and asks a far more interesting question than “Will this romance work?” It asks whether she’s actually fulfilled.
There’s a moment when Francesca asks her mother what a “pinnacle” even is, and it’s tender and awkward in a way that feels almost too real, because how many of us were taught how to be desirable long before we were taught how our own bodies work?
What feels radical about her arc isn’t the steaminess; it’s the attentiveness. Intimacy unfolds with her, not to her. She’s allowed to not know, to ask questions, to figure it out in real time.
And that’s the part that lingers for me, especially in a culture where female desire has so often been framed as reactive or performative, something we measure by whether everyone else is satisfied. But for many women, desire builds with safety and emotional connection, which isn’t prudish; it’s physiology. When we understand our anatomy and communicate what actually feels good, intimacy shifts. It becomes less about performance and more about presence.
Francesca doesn’t suddenly become louder; she becomes more attuned to herself, and somehow, in 2026, that still feels groundbreaking.
If a Regency-era drama can help normalize curiosity, communication, and centering our own pleasure, I’m all in. Read the full Rescripted breakdown here.
Feb 10, 2026
People don’t talk enough about how hard it is to know you’re “done” having kids after years of infertility. Mostly because “done” implies a level of certainty that infertility never really gives you.
For some of my friends, done was a feeling. A conversation that landed. A vasectomy scheduled. Boom, chapter closed. Their families felt complete in a calm, decisive way that I still find a little impressive.
For me, it’s blurrier.
My husband and I still pay for embryo storage, which means the question never fully goes away; it just kind of lingers in the background of our lives. Every month, that charge hits my card and gently reminds me that the possibility is still there, quite literally frozen and waiting, even if I’m not totally sure what I want to do with it.
It’s not that I don’t love the life we have — I really do. But in another universe, one where groceries were cheaper, and someone reliably cooked us dinner every night, I could absolutely imagine a fourth kid fitting right in. In this universe, I mostly imagine needing a nap. And maybe a personal assistant.
What I’m realizing is that after infertility, certainty is hard to trust. You get so used to living in the “maybe,” holding multiple futures in your head at once, that it becomes your default setting. Embryo storage just keeps that muscle strong.
Maybe being done doesn’t come with a clear, confident moment. Maybe it’s just noticing you don’t feel the same urgency anymore. Or that the ache is quieter than it used to be. And still, if I’m being honest, there’s a small part of me that hesitates every time that storage bill hits. Like… are we sure?
Kristyn Hodgdon
