When you've lost a baby, everyone around you expects you to be fine once the new baby is born, as though that somehow takes away the pain of losing the first child. I needed to express how wrong that was.

Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit.

I can't stop staring at my beautiful new baby.

The worst feature of a new baby is its mother's singing.

The new father finally hangs up the phone, laughing at absolutely nothing. "Congratulations," I say, when what I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in stars so that she never, ever does to him what I have done to my parents.

Birth is an experience that demonstrates that life is not merely function and utility, but form and beauty.