Follow along at thefirstgensahm.substack.com and watch the full video on YouTube.com/classicallyabby 🧡

I might think Botox is immoral, and tradwives are making news again. WATCH: piped.video/tGSmtSfQrAA?is=YDvl…

This baby in my arms Who five days postpartum Returned to the hospital And stayed in the NICU for three days With jaundice that kept her from my arms As she lay under bright lights And I wasn't allowed to nurse But pumped every 2.5 hours like clockwork to keep up my supply and keep her fed This baby in my arms Who I feared I wouldn't be able to breastfeed like the others Because of her NICU stay This baby in my arms Breastfed exclusively for a whole year And I weaned her tonight. And as I fed her the last time from my body I thought to God Thank you for allowing me to feed my daughter And give of me to her.

I made my husband watch The Odyssey with me and maybe he wasn't wrong 🤪 WATCH: piped.video/Sw6UAk7l-Fk

My 5 Postpartum Glow Up Tips That You Should TOTALLY Steal (And Other Stuff Too)✨😊 WATCH: piped.video/watch?v=4DTsAGxy…

“ From their first months, babies are designed to form deep attachments to the few people closest to them—those who know them best and respond sensitively and consistently across thousands of small daily exchanges. Within these first relationships, a child's security, sense of self, and capacity to trust and connect with others are established, forming the foundation for lifelong well-being.”

"There’s a glaring gap in the case for expanding child care: what’s best for young children—the ones with the most at stake, whom no one is actually discussing." ifstudies.org/blog/child-car… @FamStudies

It's wild how physical injuries that would have taken a real emotional toll on me before kids now are no big deal. I sliced my finger open six months ago and needed stitches and all that I felt was annoyed that my daughter might have to miss one of her nursing sessions. I probably broke my toe yesterday and was mildly frustrated I might have to wear a flat sandle for a few weeks. These events used to be real rollercoasters for me, but getting hurt while surrounded by your children puts things in perspective really quickly. Both times, my older children ran over concerned and asked if I was OK (they are 4 and 2). After about a minute and assessing I was mostly fine, the jumping on me and "mommy mommy mommy" resumed. I prefer this version of me a lot more.

A clean kitchen that is never used except for reheating leftovers from restaurants is not a kitchen that has been lived in or loved. A kitchen has to get messy if you are really using it - flour might spill on the counters, oil might splatter on the stove, vegetable peelings might make it off the cutting board. But that's not a bad thing. You clean the kitchen up after, but you still use it in the process. Life's a little like that. It can't be pristine all the time if you want to really live it.

Real question: do people do the 3-day potty training because their kids are in school and they can't keep them home that long? Because I think I just potty trained my second son simply by keeping him undressed whenever he's home and it gave him a million opportunities to practice. But it wasn't 3 days and only 3 days.

The data shows moms working part-time, FT or staying home doesn't much move the needle re: marital happiness today. But a husband being employed full-time does--it's tied to happier wives & more stable marriages. This is one reason we should be doing a better job of preparing young men to be reliable breadwinners. Part of my conversation w/ @carinemhajjar @KateAndrs washingtonpost.com/opinions/… @wapo @AEI

Easy kid hack: clean the whole house at night but leave one toy out (magnatiles, keva blocks, magnetic trains) just in the middle of the floor. In the morning, the kids gravitate toward it and start playing without you telling them to!

I feel this.

I just tackled one of my biggest fears as a stay-at-home mom-- actually staying home all day with my kiddos. Turns out once your kids reach a certain age, they actually do play together a lot of the day! Six months ago this would have been a recipe for huge messes and meltdowns. But today was actually lovely. School in the morning. Naptime and quiet time while I cleaned. Kids played together while I prepared some things. We all played together for a while. Baked cookies. Now we are doing playdoh and then it's dinnertime. Now that I have conquered my fear, I don't feel the need to irrationally leave the house at every opportunity. So that's cool.

America already made daylight saving time permanent once. In December 1973, 79% of Americans supported it and Nixon signed it into law. By February 1974, eight weeks into the experiment, support had collapsed to 42%. The policy never changed. Winter arrived. Sunrise in Washington DC came at 8:27am. Kids left for school in total darkness, carrying flashlights and wearing reflective tape. When Congress moved to repeal, members cited the deaths of eight Florida schoolchildren in the first weeks of the change. The energy case collapsed too. The whole point was the oil embargo, and the Department of Transportation concluded the fuel savings were too small to matter. Ten months after signing it, Congress repealed it and Ford put the country back on standard time. There's a mechanism that makes this cycle repeat: permanent DST is only ever voted on when the sun is up. Polls run in the abstract, votes happen in warm months, and the benefit, a free hour of evening light, is easy to imagine year-round. The cost is concentrated in about 10 weeks of dark winter mornings and only becomes real after implementation. So the policy polls beautifully right up until January. Today's vote happened in July. The 1974 law passed in December, right before the exact winter that killed it. If this clears the Senate, the first real test arrives in January 2027, when sunrise in Indianapolis comes after 9am. Sleep researchers have watched this loop for 50 years, which is why the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the AMA, and the National Sleep Foundation all back the opposite reform, permanent standard time. Congress just picked the one version of clock reform America has already tried, hated, and repealed.

Hot take: crunchy moms sometimes take it too far. Trying to tandem breastfeed with a newborn and a toddler and cosleep with a newborn and toddler doesn't work for most women. Motherhood entails more than just giving breastmilk and sleeping next to your children. I say this as someone who exclusively breastfed my babies for the first year and often cosleeps for the first few months -- extended breastfeeding and cosleeping isn't as important as being rested enough to teach and raise your children all day. Mothers are more than warm bodies. I know enough women struggling to cope with motherhood when their second child comes along because they are treating breastfeeding and cosleeping as the most important responsibility they have to both of their children. You don't have to breastfeed forever. You don't have to cosleep forever. In fact, it might be better not to do those things -- especially if you are struggling to keep up with the more important roles you have to inhabit.

Do it. Have the big family. Devote your life to raising them well. This the dream and we are so lucky to be living it. ❤️

It's the phones. It's the phones for a hundred reasons. Here are a few: 1) Male consumption of porn reduces marriage (for like 10 reasons) 2) Because of time-wasting college kids and 20-somethings just socialize less, reducing marriage. 3) The dating apps ruin dating (for 10 reasons) 4) Social media gives us a false anthropology, which makes us too individualistic and too averse to connection and commitment. 5) The phones make us sad and make us hate ourselves. If we hate ourselves we don't want more of us.

I've talked about this for a long time. "Women working" has never been a new thing. The 1950s homemaker was an aberration. What is new is women working OUTSIDE the home for a different man. This was stuff generally only tolerated by the lower classes in the form of maids etc. Wives always did their part on the family farm or business historically. They had different jobs than the men, but they did more than raise kids. This is one of the reasons I've never been a big fan of the phrase "retiring your wife." Smart women get bored and want to do more than menial tasks to feel useful. It's much wiser for men to try to simply bring them back under their roof, leverage their mind and energy in more entrepreneurial ways for the family.