These are the baby products I still use every day, nine months in — not the ones I thought I’d use when I registered for them. When my son was born, I registered for — and was gifted — a genuinely absurd number of things. A wipe warmer I never plugged in twice. A special spoon set that lives in a drawer I’ve opened maybe once. A device that told me the “optimal” bath temperature, as if I couldn’t tell by putting my elbow in the water like every mother before me. Most of it got used a handful of…

By 5pm most days, I have zero decisions left in me. Not because I’m lazy. Not because I’m disorganized. But because by the time I’ve gotten through a full remote workday, handled two kids, made food appear three times, and kept the basic operations of our home running — my brain is done. And yet, somewhere in the background of all of that, there is always a quiet mental list running. The bathroom needs attention. The sheets haven’t been changed in longer than I’d like to admit. There’s something in the back of the fridge that probably needs to go.…

There’s a particular kind of tired that doesn’t come from doing too much. It comes from being the only person whose eyes see what needs doing. The laundry that needs washing. The thing that needs fixing. The surface that needs wiping. The item that needs ordering before it runs out. The appointment that needs booking before it gets forgotten. The seasonal clothes that need switching. The safety lock that still hasn’t been installed. Nobody put these things on a list. Nobody assigned them to you. You simply notice them — constantly, involuntarily, in the background of everything else you’re doing…

Meal planning for exhausted moms is not what the food blogs make it look like. It is not a color-coded weekly spread with prepped containers stacked neatly in the fridge. It is not an elaborate Sunday cooking session. It is not homemade granola and smoothie bowls and forty minutes of morning prep. It is: what can I make with the energy I actually have, that will not make me feel worse, that my kids will eat, and that takes as little decision-making as possible. That’s the bar. And it’s a completely legitimate one. I’ve been working with a nutritionist to…