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For some, meal planning is what keeps your family afloat (or, rather, not spending a fortune on takeout for dinner every night). Maybe you’ve been doing it for years and have perfected your own system. Maybe you’re just dipping your toes into the meal planning pool now that everything feels so dang expensive, including groceries. Or perhaps you’re somewhere in the middle, and you feel like your meal planning system just needs a little organization. That’s where free printable meal planning templates come in. They can help you stick to your meal plan, grab the ingredients you need, and use up what you already have in the fridge.
If you’ve tried to make your own meal plan template or calendar before, you know it can be super frustrating for anyone who’s not an Excel whiz or Crafty Cathy. But you really don’t have to spend time DIYing a system when there are so many free, printable meal plan templates available online. There are some you can even customize online, if you’d rather type out your plan than write it by hand (some of us have bad hand writing, OK?). Whatever design, layout, and tools you need in a template, there’s probably one here that can help you out.
A meal plan template that will help you use up your food
The idea of meals being neatly organized by week is great, but in reality, there are usually some leftover ingredients you need to use up in the coming week. This template gives you room to jot those items down so you can meal plan with them in mind, and it also has a section to note anything you need to make ahead if you’re meal prepping or hosting a big get-together.
A printable meal plan you can add to any size planner
The biggest perk of this free printable meal planning template is that you can adjust the size to fit any notebook or planner, so if you have one where you like to keep all your lists, this one will merge right in. It’s split 50/50 between a meal plan section and a grocery list, and just keeps everything neat and tidy.
A free, printable grocery list with room to write your meal plan
If you want a pretty grocery list where you can also jot down your meals for the week (which can be handy to reference while you shop), this template is perfect. It also breaks down the grocery store sections so you can be sure you have everything you need in dairy before strolling over to produce.
If you’re meal planning for a family and you want to know what they’ll actually eat, this free, printable template has a section just to jot down what they’re asking for. There’s a small grocery list built in, which may not be big enough for everyone, but is plenty if you’re the type who keeps lots of pantry staples in stock.
Part of meal planning is knowing what on Earth you have, and it’s time-consuming to have to take stock of it when considering every recipe. Keeping a pantry, fridge, and freezer inventory makes meal planning so much easier, and you can take them shopping with you so you know exactly what you have at home. If you’re trying to cut down on your household’s food waste, this will be a huge help.
If you’ve never used Canva, you’ve got to try it out. They have free templates for so many uses you can customize to your liking and type right into, so your meal plan looks super neat each week. If you want one with more room in the grocery list side, try this option.
Do you prefer to sit down once a month to think about everything you’re going to eat, so you can be done with it? If that’s your style, you’ll love this free printable monthly meal planner, which is also available on Canva.
This free printable meal plan template is so cheerful and happy, and includes sections for writing down your meals and your grocery list. The unique thing about this one is the serving tracker, which is a handy addition if you’re trying to eat more veggies or fruits, for example.
This monthly calendar template actually is just a ready-made meal plan, with links to all the recipes for each meal included. If you try this layout and like organizing your meals this way, just search online for free calendar printables you can fill out the same way with your own recipes (or, again, Canva has a ton of calendar templates available for free).
For those who prefer a horizontal layout that is a bit more calendar-like or planner-y in nature, this design might work better for you. It too includes room to list out the groceries you need at the bottom, and has space to write down your breakfast, lunch, and dinner plans for each day.
If you like to plan your breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for the week, this one-page template can help keep you on track. You do have to subscribe to the blog’s newsletter to receive it in your inbox, but she also shares tips on using Google Calendar and Google Sheets to meal plan, too.
So, which printable is right for you? Even if none of these is just right, now you know just where to look for the perfect meal planning template.
When the calendar flips to April 1, these April Fool’s Day jokes for kids are a silly and entertaining way to get everyone laughing. The best thing about April Fool’s Day jokes is that they’re super simple to pull off. As opposed to a full-on prank that takes a bit of effort to put together, jokes like these just require a bit of smooth-talking, so they’re easy for kids to execute.
As a bonus, there are also a few joke ideas below for parents to use on their kids. (Because what is April Fool’s Day even if you can’t play a joke on your kiddo?) Not the best at joking around? There are also a handful of silly jokes about April Fool’s Day to tell included on this list as well.
If your kids do plan on using these ideas to mess with someone on April 1, make sure that they know when to let the unsuspecting person in on the joke. After all, it would be a shame for their friends to think they’re really moving away or their teacher to dock their grade for not turning in their homework. But when it’s all in good fun, everyone can share a few laughs on April Fool’s Day.
April Fool’s Day jokes for kids to tell their friends
Convince your friend that you’re moving to another country.
Tell your friends that you heard there would be no summer break this year.
Anytime your friend tries to talk to you, act like you can’t hear them.
Tell your friends that there’s a basket of candy on the sink in the school bathroom. When they go look for it, they won't find one.
Let your friends know that they changed the school lunch menu and will be serving sardine sandwiches today.
Convince your friend that they forgot about a really important homework assignment that’s due today.
April Fool’s Day jokes for kids to tell their parents
Say you won an award at school and the prize is that they have to take you somewhere fun to celebrate. (This one is a win-win if they actually believe it!)
Yell “Bug! Bug!” and dance around like there’s a bug on the floor until your parents realize there’s no bug at all.
Pretend you broke something really expensive, but don’t apologize for it. Watch your parents fume for a moment, but then let them in on the joke.
Go in the bathroom and shout things like “eww” and “gross” until you get your parent’s attention. When they ask what’s wrong, yell “April Fools!”
Tell your parents that you went outside and saw that their car has a flat tire. They’ll make a beeline to the car before they realize you’re kidding.
— LumiNola/E+/Getty Images
April Fool’s Day jokes for kids to tell their grandparents
Call your grandparents and tell them that you’ve done so well at school that you get to skip two whole grades next fall.
Tell your grandparents that you’re moving to Alaska. To make it more convincing, get your parents to play along.
Convince your grandparents that yesterday was your birthday and act like you’re upset that they didn’t call you.
FaceTime your grandparents and say that your parents left you home alone to go on vacation.
April Fool’s Day jokes for kids to tell their teachers
Tell the teacher that it’s your birthday and ask if the class can sing you “Happy Birthday.” Then shout “April Fools!” as soon as they finish singing.
Tell your teacher that your mom is picking you up to go to the dentist at a specific time. When that time rolls around and they ask why you haven’t left yet, let them in on the joke.
Pretend like you forgot to do your homework. (Eventually turn it in, though!)
Convince your teacher that you brought your pet mouse to school in your backpack.
April Fool’s Day jokes for parents to tell their kids
Tell your kids that from now on, they have school every Saturday.
Wake your kids up and say, “Surprise! We’re moving!” and convince them that you’re packing up the house right then and there to move far away.
Tell your kids the wifi is down and they can’t be online at all for the day. (Just be prepared for their protests.)
Offer to make your kids a special dessert for breakfast, but then just serve them something they always eat like cereal or eggs.
Tell your kids you won a trip to Disney World, but you’re going to go without them.
Remind your kids that they have a huge test at school today and watch them freak out when they realize they never studied.
Funny jokes about April Fool’ sDay for kids
What monster plays the most April Fools’ Day pranks? Prankenstein
What day is the worst to propose marriage to someone? April Fools’ Day!
What is a stepladder’s favorite holiday? April Stools’ Day!
What do you call a hammer that was purchased on April 1st? An April tool.
Why is it easy to play an April fools’ prank a baby born on March 31st? They were literally born yesterday!
What’s a gas pump’s favorite holiday? April Fuels’ Day.
When did the donkey annoy his best friend? April Mules’ Day.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Noah. Noah who? Noah-body. April Fools!
What’s the main difference between Thanksgiving and April Fools’ Day? For one holiday you’re thankful, and for the other you’re prankful.
Why can April jump so high? It’s spring!
Knock, knock. Who’s there? April. April who? April Fools!
A and C were going to prank their friend. But instead they just letter B.
What did April Fools’ Day say when it won a big award? Prank you so much!
Why is everyone so exhausted on April 1? They just finished a 31-day-long March.
Which day do monkeys like the most? The first day of Ape-ril.
Why do eggs like April Fools’ Day? They love practical yolks.
No matter how you celebrate April Fool’s Day or who you celebrate it with, these jokes are sure to lighten the mood. Even for those who don’t really love pranking, these are nice and easy.
Beyoncé’s new album Cowboy Carter has finally dropped, and one song in particular is really resonating with moms. “Protector,” a slow, soft song all about the deep love Beyoncé has for her three children with husband JAY-Z, 12-year-old Blue Ivy and 6-year-old twins Rumi and Sir. A song that actually features, for the first time, the voice of her youngest daughter Rumi asking for the “lullaby,” which turns out to be “Protector.” A lullaby that is moms emotional with its relatable message.
“Protector,” which is one of 27 songs on Act II: Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s follow-up album to Act I: Renaissance, opens with Rumi calling out to her in a sweet little voice: “Mom, can I hear the lullaby? Please?” This is Rumi Carter’s first song credit on one of her mom’s albums, which means she now joins big sister Blue Ivy Carter as one of Beyoncé’s collaborators. Blue Ivy actually won a Grammy for her work on her mom’s song “Brown Skin Girl” when she was around Rumi’s age, and spent the past summer dancing with her mom in front of millions of people as part of her Renaissance World Tour.
Rumi’s inclusion on “Protector” is a bit softer, but it’s the lyrics of the song that are really getting to moms. For example, “And I will lead you down that road if you lose your way/Born to be a protector, mm-hmm/Even though I know someday you’re gonna shine on your own/I will be your projector.”
Indeed, as one listener said, this song and Beyoncé singing about motherhood “just has me in all my feels.”
Of course, the inclusion of Rumi asking for the lullaby from her mom right at the top really got the waterworks flowing for some moms.
That feeling of protecting your child while also letting them shine on their own, that push-pull of motherhood, is so perfectly defined by this song. As one mom wrote, “TALK THAT NURTURING MOTHER TALK BEY I know all the cool moms gon feel this.”
Some are even predicting this is going to be the Mother’s Day song everyone uses on TikTok this year.
Beyoncé’s song “Protector” really did hit on a universal truth for moms. That we are our children’s “protectors” but also their “projectors,” meant to shine on a light on them so they can shine themselves. Just as she is doing with her daughter Rumi by including her on this perfect, lovely song.
When Beyoncé first announced that she would be dropping a new album called Act II: CowboyCarter, reviews were mixed. Naturally, there were millions of us who were excited to get some new music from Beyoncé and were instantly obsessed with her single “Texas Hold ‘Em.” But there were some who criticized the singer for releasing a country music album. Enough critics that Beyoncé herself, as well as her mother, felt the need to put out several statements about her new album, which is the follow-up to 2022’s Act I: Renaissance. The truth is, Beyoncé has some deep roots in country music and Black cowboy culture, and she’s bringing all of that energy to an album that we already know will be nothing short of incredible.
Act II: Cowboy Carter, which comes out on March 29, features 27 songs including a much-anticipated cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and a song called “The Linda Martell Show,” a reference to one of the first Black artists to find success in country and the first to play the Opry. She also has two songs on her track list, “Dolly P” and “Smoke Hour Willie Nelson” that seem to reference country legends Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. Her first single from the album, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” already debuted at number one on Billboard’s Hot Country songs.
Which, according to her mom Tina Knowles, makes perfect sense for the Texas-born singer. “When people ask why is Beyoncé wearing cowboy hats? I actually laugh because it’s been here since she was a kid,” Knowles wrote in an Instagram post last month of the criticism her daughter’s new album has faced.
“We have always celebrated cowboy culture growing up in Texas,” Knowles explained alongside a video of her daughter dressed in cowboy attire through the years. “We also always understood that it was not just about it belonging to white culture only. In Texas there is a huge Black cowboy culture. Why do you think that my kids have integrated it into their fashion and art since the beginning.”
“We went to rodeos every year and my whole family dressed in Western fashion,” the singer’s mother continued. “Solange [Beyoncé’s younger sister] did a whole brilliant album and project based on Black Cowboy Culture ... It definitely was a part of our culture growing up.”
For her part, Beyoncé released a statement to her social media channels earlier this month about how her past informed this new album, per The Independent. “This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.”
Finally, the singer noted, “This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album. This is act ii COWBOY CARTER, and I am proud to share it with y’all!”
Ricky Martin always knew he wanted to be a father. Even as he was “Livin’ La Vida Loca” as one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, he never let go of his dream of a big family. And he made that dream come true. The actor, 52, is now a dad of four, and he’s so happy about it that you can’t help but feel happy for him. Here’s everything you need to know about his sweet family.
He worried he might never be a dad.
The Palm Royale actor opened up to Out magazine in 2020 about how he once worried he might not get the chance to be a father. “Many years I dreamt of being a father, and many, many, many times I went through this grieving process of ‘I am gay, I am a closeted gay man, and I’m not going to be able to be a daddy,’” he said at the time. He eventually decided to seek out a surrogate. “Obviously adoption is an option and it’s very beautiful, but unfortunately for gay men it’s very difficult to adopt in some countries.”
When he pictured fatherhood, he pictured a big family with “many grandkids in the future and have every Sunday filled with family but, you know, we have to see what happens.” It’s too early for the grandkids, but he now has four children in his life.
Martin welcomed twin boys in 20008, Matteo and Valentino, and right out of the gate he was a hands-on dad. “I don’t have a nanny. I’m doing this on my own because I don’t want to miss a moment. I have a personal assistant who helps me, someone who takes care of me while I’m taking care of them, but I’m the one who changes the diapers, the one that feeds them, the one that bathes them, the one that puts them to sleep,” he told People at the time from his home in Puerto Rico.
The birth of twins Matteo and Valentino had Martin thinking about the way he wanted to parent, including planning ahead to support his children in whatever they might want to do. “When I was 12 years old, I told my father that I wanted to be an artist and he supported me and I am very thankful,” he told Extra TV in 2020. “So I have to do the same. I have the experience ... I will clean the path for them.”
Matteo and Valentino are different, but they both enjoy a red carpet moment.
While his sons might be twins, Martin is all about celebrating their differences. “Matteo is more into the arts and Valentino is gonna spend his life in front of a screen because he wants to be the best YouTuber in the world,” he told Extra in 2020.
They are united in one thing though; they don’t mind hitting the red carpet for a big premiere with their dad, like they did for the premiere of Palm Royale recently. “I’m very happy they came with me to the premiere. I just love them because they’re real, they’re honest and I bring them with me everywhere, so they are exposed to my world," Martin told TODAY.
Martin welcomed only daughter Lucia with then-husband Jwan Yosef in late 2018. The proud dad announced his daughter’s arrival on Dec. 31, 2018 with a message reading, “We are beyond happy to announce that we have become parents to a beautiful and healthy baby girl, Lucia Martin-Yosef. It has been a special time for us and we cant wait to see where this stellar baby will take us. Both her beautiful brothers, me and Jwan have fallen in love with Lucia.”
While he and Yosef divorced in 2023, the couple continue to share joint custody of Lucia and her little brother Renn.
Martin and Yosef welcomed son Renn in October 2019, and it seems that Martin’s family is now complete. The dad admitted to Out magazine in 2020 that there are still “moments where I want 10 more, and then there are those mornings where everybody's crying and I'm like, 'Okay, maybe we're fine at six [people in the family].’”
My 12-year-old son has developed a fondness for sending me frenetic, nonsensical YouTube shorts.When I’ve reached my limit for the day — somewhere around the 17th — I usually respond with some variation of “My love, I’m not asking you to get off screens but for the love of God, please, please: watch something with a narrative.”
“No!” he’ll quip merrily. Within minute’s he’ll send me a text reading “This is sooo funny” along with another YouTube short of, I don’t know, some shrieking, hyperactive 19-year-old making a duet over a Minecraft stream. All I can think, after I stretch my jaw in an attempt to soothe my pierced eardrums, is “He could be watching Stranger Things. Or Avatar: The Last Air Bender. Come to think of it, he could be reading any book he wants. Why on earth would he choose this?”
I know I am not alone. Among parents of tweens and teens I know, there appears to be a largely unspoken hierarchy of screen time at play. We’ve long since stopped worrying about our toddler accidentally glimpsing a cartoon playing in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. (“He’s allowed 22 minutes of screen time a day! Should we count the 13 minutes he watched Peppa Pig while waiting to get his latest round of vaccinations?”) But we’re parents, so we still have worries. Surely, we think, a half an hour of Gravity Falls trumps a half an hour of mindless scrolling. Learning about the world in 30 second spurts, can’t be good for their brains. Right?
“It’s weird how I have a hierarchy of screen time, but I do,” admits Eve, a mom of two in Massachusetts. “My teens really like television and movies if that’s what’s showing, but don’t seek it out because the phone is in their hand or pocket and with them everywhere they go … I also think [Instagram] Reels are largely trash and wish they were watching television shows!”
“I'm trying really hard not to judge but sometimes it takes all of my willpower!” laments Courtney, a mom of two in California. “Yesterday and today my 9-year-old was watching this really odd YouTube channel with these really ridiculously silly little videos and every 15 seconds they play the same audio clip over and over and over and over. It seems so inane. But it really bothered my son when I made fun of it so I tried not to!”
Researchers have also taken notice of this change in tween and teen media habits. Yalda T. Uhls, Founder and CEO of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA, says that TikTok changed the game when it came to how social media companies like YouTube and Meta started putting out content — and how kids began consuming it. When I ask her if there’s anything to affirm our trepidation about how short-form content might be detrimental to our kids, she’s diplomatic but clear.
“You are using your adult experience with media to judge your children's use of media,” she told me. “It's something that nearly every parent has ever done since the beginning of time. Parents used to do this with books. Kids would read Horatio Alger and Jane Austen and many adults would freak out because they didn't grow up reading that kind of stuff, if reading at all. They were worried that reading would ruin young minds.
“It could just be that we're finally giving them the content that was developmentally appropriate for them.”
“That kind of thing happened over and over again: Our children grow up with this stuff, they adapt to it much quicker, they use it, they understand the language of it, and we feel scared and we don't understand it so we judge it, which is not necessarily the best way to parent your child's media consumption.”
In other words, there’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to children’s entertainment — or parents’ confused and negative reactions to it. In the immortal words of The Breakfast Club (which critics at the time didn’t always get either): the kids haven’t changed, you have.
That’s not to say watching a half an hour of reels is exactly the same as watching a half an hour of a traditional children’s show, either. Uhls explains that there are cognitive differences in terms of comprehension, but she says that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, short-form entertainment might be just your child’s speed.
“It takes a very long time for someone to really try to understand a full story,” she explains. “Some research finds that it takes until the age 14 to understand moral theme content. It could just be that we're finally giving them the content that was developmentally appropriate for them.”
Do not Uhls’s reasoning as proof that TikTok is ideal teen entertainment: she acknowledges that we don’t know enough to say so one way or the other. She does note that early research seems to indicate that there isn’t substantial evidence to suggest that shorter formats are more harmful or helpful in children’s learning and development. Moreover, she’s not aware of any research that suggests that indulging in short-form entertainment interferes with a child’s ability to watch or appreciate longer media.
“I think we're neurodiverse: everybody's different,” she says. “Some people like to process information really quickly. Some people like to process information more slowly. Some people like to jump from thing to thing to thing. Some people like to stick to one thing.”
Most people, she notes, use media to “space out.” Who can’t relate to the sense of not having the mental bandwidth to watch an hour of the latest cerebral prestige drama, but can half-watch 5 episodes of The Office while scrolling on our phones. Kids need that mental space too.
“Maybe they've had a really hard day at school,” she says. “They’ve had to sit in a classroom, listen, have all these friends around them doing different things. Being rejected, being pulled one way, being pulled another way, and they come home and they just need to space out: maybe that's what an hour of these TikTok reels is doing for them. It's allowing their brain to recover their emotions, to calm down.”
“If you are judging what they're doing, they will pick up on it and they will hide it from you.”
She also observes that nothing in her research has her worried about the disappearance of longer entertainment like movies and TV shows: a 90 -minute movie is giving more complexity, nuance, and general information than even the most compelling TikTok video. “All the things that make great story stories, that's never going to be replaced,” Uhls says. “We just had the Oscars: That kind of storytelling has been around forever and it's really important to humanity.”
So that hierarchy of screens? Probably among the sillier (and, if we’re being honest about our own social media habits, hypocritical) things parents worry about. But more importantly, we dismiss and mock our children’s chosen form of entertainment at our peril.
“I really, really think it's important for parents to understand that if you want to have a good relationship with your child, you don't want them to not share their media world with you because that is part of their world,” she cautions. “If you are judging what they're doing, they will pick up on it and they will hide it from you.”
She urges parents to be curious: ask children questions about what they’re watching and take some time to engage with it as well, not only to gauge whether it’s appropriate but to understand this aspect of their children’s lives. Not only is it a new (or maintained) method of bonding, but it means that if they do come across something troubling — misinformation, mean, bullying, or racist content, or other kinds of inappropriate videos — they’ll be more likely to come to a curious parent than a judgmental one.
The next time my son wanted me to watch a video, I put my own phone down to watch. The video was… whatever. But as my kid, who’s almost as tall as I am at this point, snuggled next to me and giggled watching a YouTuber frenetically make jokes about a nest of baby owls, I let myself smile and snuggle back.
When Christina Ricci was filming Yellowjackets, she was flying back and forth between Vancouver and her home in Los Angeles. All the time. And this had a serious side effect on her family. The mom of two admitted during a recent podcast interview that she did not bond with her daughter Cleopatra while working on Showtime’s popular series, which she found “very upsetting.”
Ricci sat down for a chat on Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty recently, and talked about what it looks like to be a working mom who is filming out of state. “Last year I was commuting back and forth to Vancouver for Yellowjackets,” Ricci explained, noting that her daughter Cleopatra, who turned 2 in December, was not attaching to her mom at the time. “She didn’t know me. We had no bond. So that was very upsetting.”
Unfortunately for Ricci, who shares Cleo with husband Mark Hampton and is also mom to 9-year-old son Freddie with ex-husband James Heerdegen, the cost of trying to bring her whole family with her to set proved to be too much. “My kids do not like it when I travel. When I’m away, I try to take my son with me as much as I can,” the mom explained, adding that it was too expensive when she was filming Yellowjackets in Vancouver.
“If you’re a series regular, you have to pay for everything, so I can’t... every time I go up and down, I can’t pay for four people, four flights, you know, and the rooms that you would need and all...it’s just too expensive to travel with everybody all the time.”
While finding a work/life balance is a struggle for Ricci, she did admit that her husband has made things easier for her. “I went and shot Wednesday in Romania when she was 2 months old, and Mark did every single night all night long. Like I just slept and worked the next day, and it made such a huge difference. It was so much easier this time around. You know, you have to have a good supportive partner,” she admitted to Doherty.
So it seems she forgave him for choosing their daughter’s name without her. When little Cleopatra was born in December 2022, Ricci shared that her husband made a big name decision without her. “We were going to call her Cleo,” she told Ellen DeGeneres at the time. “I had a C-section and right before when they were preparing me they started talking about how we had to fill out birth certificate stuff my husband was like, ‘Well, we’re going to give her a full name right? And then her nickname is Cleo?’” She told him they could figure it out later, but he went ahead and decided on Cleopatra while she was in recovery.
It’s finally happened, folks. After insisting that he was not going to get a vasectomy even as his wife Jessie James Decker repeatedly (and publicly) asked him to do it, Eric Decker has gone under the knife. And apparently, he “survived” the ordeal.
The former NFL player has become almost as well known for his refusal to get a vasectomy as he was for his football career. Back in 2022, Decker admitted to Us Weekly that he believed a “little bit of his power” would be taken away if he got a vasectomy. At the time, Jessie James Decker said she was “done” having kids and even made a Father’s Day cocktail tutorial for a drink called “The Vasectomy” with Ryan Reynolds for his Aviation gin company, joking that the special ingredient was “reluctance.” This dad is reluctant no more.
On Monday, Decker took to Instagram to share a series of photos from his recent vasectomy, complete with a special “Vasectomy Survivor” t-shirt, frozen peas on his newly snipped man parts, and a big old glass of rum. “I survived” was all Decker had to say.
While we don’t know what it was that finally prompted him to go for a vasectomy, we feel comfortable assuming it might have something to do with the arrival of the couple’s fourth child. The couple welcomed son Denver Calloway Decker on Feb. 9, and are already parents to 10-year-old daughter Vivianne, 8-year-old son Eric. Jr, and 6-year-old son Forrest. All of whom were so excited to welcome another member of the family. “They are so excited,” the mom of four told Romper last month. “When I had Forrest, [Vivianne and Eric Jr.] were still babies themselves; they just weren’t as aware of what it meant. I don’t even know that they remember life without Forrest, that’s how young they all were. But this time around, I mean, I’m going to have a little girl who’s 10 years old, so she is completely aware of what this means.”
It’s lovely that the children all got to enjoy this pregnancy, because now we know it’s definitely the last. The Decker shop has closed for business, and the couple seem pretty happy about it. Jessie James Decker posted a bunch of crying laughing emojis on her husband’s post-op post, which feels pretty on brand for these two.
Before your kids spend the rest of the day hopped up on sugar from their candy-filled egg hunt, they’ll need a good breakfast to fuel their festivities. Instead of serving up the same cereal and toast spread you do on weekdays, try one of these Easter breakfast ideas to kick off your holiday.
From decadent crepes with homemade strawberry compote to a pretty sheet pan quiche with fresh spring greens baked right in, there are so many delicious options here. In case you’ll be too busy helping the Easter bunny hide eggs to make anything the day of, several of these Easter breakfasts can actually be made ahead of time, taking one thing off your plate the morning of the holiday. There are also a few heartier ideas that would be perfect for serving at an Easter brunch or taking to a potluck. No matter which way you go, a nutritious and filling breakfast on Easter Sunday is egg-actly what you and your family need.
Whether you prefer classic dishes that evoke nostalgia like bunny-shaped pancakes or are looking for something quick and easy that's still festive, this list offers something for every palate and preference. Easter breakfast should be about sharing delicious food and precious moments with loved ones, so pick your favorite recipe and hop to it!
Pretty Sheet Pan Quiche
— Brooklyn Supper
How pretty would this sheet pan quiche from Brooklyn Supper look on your Easter breakfast table? It’s just so gorgeous. Made with green garlic stalks, ramps, chives, and spinach, it’s filled with plenty of fresh spring greens and is super savory.
Carrot Cake Cinnamon Rolls
— Baked By Rachel
Carrots aren’t just for bunnies, you know. This Easter, take your breakfast to the next level with these carrot cake cinnamon rolls from Baked By Rachel. The cream cheese icing slathered across the top of a pan full of these hot out of the oven is just the dreamiest thing.
Rhubarb Muffins
— A Beautiful Plate
Is there anything more wholesome than a big, fluffy rhubarb muffin? This recipe from A Beautiful Plate is filled with chunks of fresh rhubarb and has maple syrup for a touch a sweetness. They’ll look so pretty on a platter, hot and fresh out of the oven.
Puff Pastry Strawberry Tart
— My Baking Addiction
There’s just something about strawberries on a puff pastry that awakens my spring-loving heart. Make this puff pastry strawberry tart from My Baking Addiction for an Easter breakfast idea that will put your family in a springtime state of mind.
Smoked Salmon & Cream Cheese Pastries
— Gimme Some Oven
This recipe for smoked salmon and cream cheese pastries from Gimme Some Oven looks fancy and complicated, but in reality, it is ridiculously simple to put together. Slice and bake up frozen puff pastry, top with cream cheese spread, smoked salmon, and herbs to serve up an impressive breakfast this Easter.
Glazed Strawberry Donuts
— Half Baked Harvest
How pretty are these baked strawberry glazed donuts? This recipe from Half Baked Harvest includes both freeze-dried strawberries and strawberry jam for extra berry goodness. Just set them out on your favorite spring platter for a picture-perfect Easter breakfast idea that will look so pretty on your Instagram feed.
Lemon Blueberry Oatmeal
— A Pretty Life
If you’re prepping a big Easter lunch or have to get up early for church, having something quick and easy to eat for Easter breakfast is a must. This lemon blueberry oatmeal recipe from A Pretty Life in the Suburbs takes just five minutes to come together with lemon yogurt, blueberries, and a bit of lemon zest. Easy, light, bright, and tasty!
Egg & Croissant Brunch Bake
— Pinch Of Yum
If a warm and flaky croissant brunch bake isn’t on your agenda this Easter Sunday, it should be. This recipe from Pinch Of Yum has tons of melty Swiss and Gruyere cheeses, diced brown sugar ham, caramelized onions, and a bit of dijon mustard to tie everything together. Feeding a crowd? With a dozen eggs and five to six mini croissants, you can expect to get nine to 12 servings.
Easter Bunny Pancakes
— DIY Candy
You really can’t go wrong with bunny-shaked pancakes as an Easter breakfast idea. Assemble this easy and delicious recipe from DIY Candy for your kids this year for a hopping good meal — you may even start a new tradition!
Scrambled Egg & Roast Asparagus Toast
— Foodie Crush
If you need a hearty Easter breakfast to fuel your family’s egg hunt, this recipe for scrambled egg and roasted asparagus toasts from Foodie Crush is packed with nutrients, and easy to assemble in individual servings. The combination of crumbled bacon or pancetta with roasted asparagus means this dish would also work well for an Easter brunch.
Ham & Broccoli Quiche
— Foodie Crush
There’s nothing like a hot slice of quiche to kick off your holiday morning and fuel your kids’ Easter egg hunt. Not only does this recipe for ham and broccoli quiche from Foodie Crush check the seasonal flavors box, but it’s filled with melty cheddar cheese and has a nice and flaky crust.
Strawberry Compote Crepes
— Food & Style
There’s no better time to whip up a batch of fresh crepes than on Easter morning. Especially if you don’t take the time to make crepes from scratch often, making this recipe from Food & Style complete with homemade strawberry compote will be a real treat.
Fruit With Strawberry Fluff Dip
— A Pretty Life In The Suburbs
If you’re looking for a light and easy Easter breakfast idea, this strawberry fluff fruit dip from A Pretty Life In the Suburbs is made with just three simple ingredients. It’s light and sweet, perfect for dipping any kind of fruit your family enjoys. You can add this as a side to round off a heartier breakfast like quiche or scrambled eggs, or just serve the dip with plenty of fruit and something simple like toast.
Whether your family prefers to enjoy a decadent spread in the morning or you’re more into bunny-shaped toast to kick off your egg hunt, there’s a recipe or idea on this list sure to make your Easter breakfast egg-stra special this year!
There is just something about a novelty vacation spot. I distinctly remember as a kid going to a theme park and visiting their new “kid suites” which were all furnished to represent the theme park’s characters and vibes and being totally blown away.
And y’all. That was how my kids felt walking into the Eggo House of Pancakes in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Sponsored and rented out by HomeToGo, the Eggo House of Pancakes is a literal mountain house designed to look like a stack of pancakes on the outside — and the inside. There is syrup dripping from the roof line, the hot tub on the patio looks like an enormous stack of pancakes, and the trademark yellow and red of the iconic Eggo logo can be seen everywhere. And the inside? It is a breakfast lovers’ delight.
I have three daughters who live for waffles and pancakes. An Eggo breakfast is very common for us on busy school mornings, and all three of my girls are enormous breakfast eaters. Like, second and third breakfasts, and they could honestly just skip dinner (unless I offer breakfast for dinner and then, of course, they’re all in). The inside of this Eggo House of Pancakes blew their absolute minds.
A two-story house featuring four bedrooms and four full baths with two additional half-baths, there is tons of space and room to make this a huge family adventure. (We literally walked in and were like, “Should we... call our best friends and their kids to come join us?”) The downstairs has been turned into a huge game room area, with doors to head out to the patio hot tub and table (also a fire pit) and tons of entertainment. There’s a huge Eggo-themed pool table, there is a TV over the fireplace (where the mantel is also fashioned out of dripping syrup), and there’s a classic arcade game featuring all of your favorites — my kids thoroughly enjoyed playing Pac-Man.
There’s also a little area in an alcove that features a stack of plush pancakes to lay on, and all around the house, there are little details like blueberry and strawberry pillows (to represent your favorite pancake toppings) and mini stacks of pancakes to sit on. Upstairs, there’s another big living room with a TV, fireplace, and seating, and there is a super retro kitchen decked out in Eggo yellow and red with a fridge absolutely stocked with frozen Eggo pancakes and Eggo coffee creamer. The jars around the kitchen were filled with fun snacks and gummies, and the Eggo team made sure we had everything we needed for breakfast, including Eggo Blueberry Waffle Keurig cups, bacon, and whipped cream.
As Instagram-worthy as this place is, it really was such a special stay for our family. With three girls, two full-time jobs, and all of our activities, it’s not often we get to just fully decompress with our family of five. Staying in the Eggo House of Pancakes was just pure joy from start to finish. Our kids loved wandering from room to room and discovering some new detail, like the strawberry bed sheets and hand soaps shaped like pancakes. But the fact that it’s literally in the heart of the Smoky Mountains is even better.
— Eggo
We spent part of our weekend exploring Gatlinburg, a vacation spot in Tennessee that I went to a lot as a kid. We even took the kids with us to Sugarlands Distillery, a moonshine distillery where we got a tour and got to try some moonshine in a tasting, including the Eggo Brunch in a Jar moonshine. With an attractions pass courtesy of Eggo, we were also able to visit a few spots in town, including Ripley’s Believe it or Not!, which our girls were big fans of.
The Eggo House of Pancakes is a limited edition rental for the month of March, and has been booked pretty quickly each week through HomeToGo. My personal wish is that it becomes an annual spring break rental option because there is just nothing quite like a freezer full of pancakes and plenty of strawberry-shaped pillows to lounge on.
I’m nearly a year postpartum when I mention to my therapist that, for a while during my pregnancy, I expected it to end in termination. I said it casually, as part of explaining something else. Those 10 bleak, frozen weeks are, to me, an asterisk now. My therapist stopped me. “You grieved,” she said.
“But everything was fine,” I almost argue. Before I can, she repeats “you grieved,” and then the dreaded “how does that make you feel?” Heavy tears gush, as those agonizing weeks come rushing to the surface.
I remember sitting in my obstetrician’s office after my 12-week ultrasound. Even behind a mask, I could see her face fall as she looked over the results. “This is not good news. It’s not what we want to see,” she said, as I sat there, stunned. My first pregnancy had been easy and uneventful, and left me with nothing but a beautiful, big, healthy boy. I’d expected the same.
It was January of 2021, so I was in her office alone. I called my husband and he listened over speakerphone as the OB told us that a “suspected cystic hygroma” — a mysterious blob the perinatologist who looked at the images had seen — was very bad news. “These babies don’t usually live,” she said. It could mean a number of things, but none of them pointed to a pregnancy that would result in a healthy baby.
I’d have to wait a week to get the chorionic villus sampling (CVS) test, the next step toward more information about the mysterious blob on my ultrasound. It was the first Covid winter, and the days ran together in their slow similarity. My toddler and I passed the day with cars and Magna-Tiles, the immediacy of his needs a welcome distraction. But after he was asleep, I had nothing to do but curl up on the couch and sob.
Every question my situation stirred up is stigmatized, politicized, agonizing: Will I abort this baby? Can I raise a child with a genetic difference? It’s understandable that no one talks about experiences like mine, but the sense of secrecy around it compounds the hardship.
Showers were the worst. Alone with my body, its bulging breasts and sweet belly suddenly all treacherous and macabre. “This will not end well” ringing in my head, I’d cup my stomach in the shower with tears and water rushing together over me: “I’m so sorry,” I said to the blob.
We are introduced to a genetic counselor, and she guides us from result to result. The CVS test is much like an amniocentesis, but it takes placental tissue instead of amniotic fluid. The results come in waves. First, within a few days, comes the interphase fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) test, which looks at five major chromosomes involved in fetal abnormality: 21 (associated with Down syndrome), 18, 13, X, and Y. If those are all clear, some of the tissue samples are sent off for a “microarray,” which examines a complete set of chromosomes for additions or deletions. Some of these extra or missing chromosomes are associated with fetal abnormalities. Some of these deletions or additions are extremely rare; not much is known about what they may or may not mean. Among the many things that are unsettling about this process — from the potential physical pain of the CVS test itself to the agony of asking yourself and your spouse what you’d do if you discovered your growing baby has Down syndrome — all of the information that we wait for and receive is delivered in the language of probability. We live in a spin cycle of questions of science, mathematics, gut, and heart, Googling syndromes we’ve never heard of and wondering which is ours.
Gray areas cloud over as we go deeper. Instead of bringing relief, every hurdle we clear — not Down, not Trisomy 18, not Noonan — lines us up for more.
A few weeks after the ultrasound that started it all, a second perinatologist tells me that she doesn’t see the cystic hygroma that set all of this in motion. After weeks of what I now understand was grief, we are as stunned by the possibility that our baby is completely fine as we were when we were told it was not viable. “We have a saying in perinatology that if you put an ultrasound image in front of five of us, you would get five different interpretations,” she explains gently.
Hope seeps in as the weeks pass, and finally at 22 weeks, we come to the final hurdle, a fetal echocardiogram. By then, we know two things: First, that anything the doctors find at this point would likely be manageable by surgery soon after birth. And we know that our baby is a girl. We walk nervously around the neighborhood as we wait for the results. An hour later, our perinatologist delivers the news that our baby is healthy and normal, with an apology for all we’d been through. After 10 excruciating weeks, a quiet apology.
I feel joyful. I feel lucky. For a long time after we get the coveted “all clear,” it’s the only way I know to feel. Obviously, I can only be grateful.
The look on my therapist’s face as she helped me process my grief long after the fact told me that this was not her first encounter with a situation like mine. How many women are blindsided by the darkness they find themselves in when a prenatal screening does not come back “all clear”? Every question my situation stirred up is stigmatized, politicized, agonizing: Will I abort this baby? When will I abort this baby? Can I raise a child with a genetic difference? It’s understandable that no one talks about experiences like mine, but the sense of secrecy around it compounds the hardship. Even after the fact, I only told very close family members about what we’d been through.
How often do women experience the whiplash I did?
“It is not uncommon,” Dr. Ilina Pluym, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells me. “My job as a perinatologist is to find those 3% of pregnancies affected by birth defects and genetic defects.” Necessarily, she explains, that means casting a wide net. “More often than not, I should be giving good news.”
Perhaps it is inevitable then that many of us find ourselves, as I did, grief-stricken in an ethical wilderness.
I ask Hilary Bowman-Smart, a researcher in bioethics at the University of South Australia who has spent years thinking about the extremely thorny ethical questions surrounding prenatal testing, about what we want from prenatal tests versus what they actually tell us. I know that I blithely expected reassurance at my 12-week ultrasound, and when I didn’t get that, I felt shocked, even though I knew that many pregnancies are complicated. Prenatal testing has been a source of bioethical dilemma since the very beginning, Bowman-Smart says. The tests have introduced a sense that pregnancy is not confirmed until you've got the “all clear.” “The issue is there are so many things we can test for now that many people will not be getting the ‘all clear’ they might be expecting,” she adds.
The expansion of the available prenatal screenings and genetic testing options has been rapid in recent years, though amnio and ultrasound imaging have been used widely for decades now. Meanwhile, supportive guidance for the pregnant people who are navigating an increasingly complex testing landscape has not kept pace with the volume of information that prenatal tests now offer.
“Genetic testing options have expanded so much, and there’s a big push to get them out to the masses, oftentimes driven by the corporations that are producing these tests,” says Katie Stoll, a genetic counselor and the executive director of the Genetic Support Foundation. While some of the tests can give relatively clear information — for example, a high probability that your baby will be born with Down syndrome — many just indicate the potential for complications without offering much direction. Genetic counselors like Stoll are going to be in higher and higher demand, as these tests and their results become more complex and confusing for laypeople to glean meaning from.
That is, if there is meaning to be gleaned, which is not always the case. As with the results of the chromosomal microarray that I had, many of the possible results would have given us information without a known meaning behind it. Yes, your child has an extra chromosome, but no, we don’t know what that means.
“People are being asked to make really big, life-changing decisions based on information that is not as certain as it's being framed as — either by the way the labs are reporting it or by the way their providers are translating it,” Stoll says. Life in post-Roe America is yet another complicating factor. I live in Oregon, where there is no gestational limit on abortion, and my OB assured me at the outset that she could terminate up to 24 weeks, which gave me a sense that I could wait to learn more before making a decision. However, if I had lived in a state with more restrictive abortion access, I would not have had time to undergo the many diagnostic tests that ultimately did give us an all clear. Instead, I would have had to make a life-changing decision based on information that I knew was uncertain.
While I am grateful I had the time to complete the process without abortion restriction, the entire agonizing experience left me blindsided for months. A bioethical concept known as “routinization” may be at the heart of what nags at me about my prenatal testing experience. Just as it sounds, “routinization” in health care refers to the process by which something — like an incredibly detailed genetic screening — becomes, for better or worse, routine. Some bioethicists believe routinization can erode a patient’s ability to give informed consent. In the world of prenatal tests like the CVS or the even more common noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) blood draw, it’s almost impossible for most patients to truly understand the complexity and uncertainty of the results with which they may be presented. “At a certain point, it can be like ‘Do you have a couple of months and a science degree?’” says Bowman-Smart.
I can’t help but see a connection between the grief that my prenatal testing experience imposed on my pregnancy and the PPD that descended when my daughter was born. And I will always be sad I wasn’t all the way present for her first months on Earth.
And it’s not just the patients who may be confused by ever-more complex prenatal tests. Many obstetricians have limited — if any — specialized training in genetics. It’s not that they know nothing about the prenatal tests they order, but even given abundant time, they may not know enough to truly explain the implications of a comprehensive prenatal genetic screening to the average patient.
Perhaps it is inevitable then that many of us — likely a growing number — find ourselves, as I did, grief-stricken in an ethical wilderness.
Prenatal genetic screenings are a gold mine of bioethical conundrums, Stoll tells me. My experience is a perfect example of what she — and many people who work on ethics in health care — call the “gradual trap.” It goes something like this: Many of us become pregnant and hop on a train of to-dos, as laid out by our OB. In the 15 minutes allotted to us in our OB’s office, we absorb what we can, and dutifully sign up for the next round of tests and check-ins, thinking simply: “This is what I am supposed to do, so I am going to do it.”
A pregnant person checks boxes until they encounter — as I did — a box that cannot be checked. A flag is raised, and suddenly — in an instant — they are knee-deep in an ethical sh*tstorm they didn’t even know existed and were not prepared for. There is an unfolding of one test into another and suddenly, the results leave you with more questions than certainties. Gradually, trapped.
In the end, my prenatal testing experience did give me a sort of “certainty.” Or as close to it as it is possible to have. But at what cost?
My ultimately healthy pregnancy resulted in both a beautiful baby girl and a nasty bout of postpartum depression, one that lifted with the help of time and a good therapist. I can’t help but see a connection between the grief that my prenatal testing experience imposed on my pregnancy and the PPD that descended when my daughter was born. And I will always be sad I wasn’t all the way present for her first months on Earth.
“There are so many reasons why attachment can be interrupted. Anytime there’s fear during pregnancy, delivery, or immediately postpartum,” says Felicity Colangelo, a counselor who specializes in perinatal care, when I ask her if my prenatal grief could be connected to the postpartum depression I experienced. It’s a normal survival response, she tells me, to disregard the fetus that’s growing in an effort to protect ourselves from grief. I wish I had called my grief by name when it came into my pregnancy. The ease with which Colangelo explains it all reminds me how powerful the right help at the right moment could have been. If I had named and processed my grief when it was happening to me, could I have parted with it before she was born?
Even in an ideal prenatal testing framework, one in which I truly understood what I was getting into, I was always going to find myself in a mess. But could it have been less traumatic? I believe so, yes. My experience with getting a complicated prenatal screening result is far from unique — this is happening to many, many pregnant people and as testing becomes more complex and routine, it is likely to happen even more often. It all feels messy, murky and confusing. And that, says Bowman-Smart, is because it is.
“I’m even less sure than when I started. Generally speaking, we shouldn’t be restricting access to tests. I don’t think that’s the answer,” says Bowman-Smart. “At the end of the day, the answer to so many ethical issues in health care is, fundamentally, resources. Whether it’s more counseling, more education, more professionals, more time — all of that is resources, and all of that is money. You can craft perfect guidelines, but if doctors don’t have enough time, what’s the point? We need to help people make decisions that they’ve reflected on and that they feel are right for them. We can only do that with adequate resources.”
I know that it would have helped me immensely if someone had said “This is very hard; here’s a good perinatal psychologist with a spot for you on their schedule.” I know how impossible it sounds that mental-health support like that would ever become as routine as the tests I underwent. And yet, we deserve it. My daughter deserved a mother who had processed the grief and trauma that had nothing at all — it turned out — to do with her. I wish I had demanded it. I wish I had been informed enough to know that I’d need it.
I’m nearly a year postpartum when I mention to my therapist that, for a while during my pregnancy, I expected it to end in termination. I said it casually, as part of explaining something else. Those 10 bleak, frozen weeks are, to me, an asterisk now. My therapist stopped me. “You grieved,” she said.
“But everything was fine,” I almost argue. Before I can, she repeats “you grieved,” and then the dreaded “how does that make you feel?” Heavy tears gush, as those agonizing weeks come rushing to the surface.
I remember sitting in my obstetrician’s office after my 12-week ultrasound. Even behind a mask, I could see her face fall as she looked over the results. “This is not good news. It’s not what we want to see,” she said, as I sat there, stunned. My first pregnancy had been easy and uneventful, and left me with nothing but a beautiful, big, healthy boy. I’d expected the same.
It was January of 2021, so I was in her office alone. I called my husband and he listened over speakerphone as the OB told us that a “suspected cystic hygroma” — a mysterious blob the perinatologist who looked at the images had seen — was very bad news. “These babies don’t usually live,” she said. It could mean a number of things, but none of them pointed to a pregnancy that would result in a healthy baby.
I’d have to wait a week to get the chorionic villus sampling (CVS) test, the next step toward more information about the mysterious blob on my ultrasound. It was the first Covid winter, and the days ran together in their slow similarity. My toddler and I passed the day with cars and Magna-Tiles, the immediacy of his needs a welcome distraction. But after he was asleep, I had nothing to do but curl up on the couch and sob.
Every question my situation stirred up is stigmatized, politicized, agonizing: Will I abort this baby? Can I raise a child with a genetic difference? It’s understandable that no one talks about experiences like mine, but the sense of secrecy around it compounds the hardship.
Showers were the worst. Alone with my body, its bulging breasts and sweet belly suddenly all treacherous and macabre. “This will not end well” ringing in my head, I’d cup my stomach in the shower with tears and water rushing together over me: “I’m so sorry,” I said to the blob.
We are introduced to a genetic counselor, and she guides us from result to result. The CVS test is much like an amniocentesis, but it takes placental tissue instead of amniotic fluid. The results come in waves. First, within a few days, comes the interphase fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) test, which looks at five major chromosomes involved in fetal abnormality: 21 (associated with Down syndrome), 18, 13, X, and Y. If those are all clear, some of the tissue samples are sent off for a “microarray,” which examines a complete set of chromosomes for additions or deletions. Some of these extra or missing chromosomes are associated with fetal abnormalities. Some of these deletions or additions are extremely rare; not much is known about what they may or may not mean. Among the many things that are unsettling about this process — from the potential physical pain of the CVS test itself to the agony of asking yourself and your spouse what you’d do if you discovered your growing baby has Down syndrome — all of the information that we wait for and receive is delivered in the language of probability. We live in a spin cycle of questions of science, mathematics, gut, and heart, Googling syndromes we’ve never heard of and wondering which is ours.
Gray areas cloud over as we go deeper. Instead of bringing relief, every hurdle we clear — not Down, not Trisomy 18, not Noonan — lines us up for more.
A few weeks after the ultrasound that started it all, a second perinatologist tells me that she doesn’t see the cystic hygroma that set all of this in motion. After weeks of what I now understand was grief, we are as stunned by the possibility that our baby is completely fine as we were when we were told it was not viable. “We have a saying in perinatology that if you put an ultrasound image in front of five of us, you would get five different interpretations,” she explains gently.
Hope seeps in as the weeks pass, and finally at 22 weeks, we come to the final hurdle, a fetal echocardiogram. By then, we know two things: First, that anything the doctors find at this point would likely be manageable by surgery soon after birth. And we know that our baby is a girl. We walk nervously around the neighborhood as we wait for the results. An hour later, our perinatologist delivers the news that our baby is healthy and normal, with an apology for all we’d been through. After 10 excruciating weeks, a quiet apology.
I feel joyful. I feel lucky. For a long time after we get the coveted “all clear,” it’s the only way I know to feel. Obviously, I can only be grateful.
The look on my therapist’s face as she helped me process my grief long after the fact told me that this was not her first encounter with a situation like mine. How many women are blindsided by the darkness they find themselves in when a prenatal screening does not come back “all clear”? Every question my situation stirred up is stigmatized, politicized, agonizing: Will I abort this baby? When will I abort this baby? Can I raise a child with a genetic difference? It’s understandable that no one talks about experiences like mine, but the sense of secrecy around it compounds the hardship. Even after the fact, I only told very close family members about what we’d been through.
How often do women experience the whiplash I did?
“It is not uncommon,” Dr. Ilina Pluym, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells me. “My job as a perinatologist is to find those 3% of pregnancies affected by birth defects and genetic defects.” Necessarily, she explains, that means casting a wide net. “More often than not, I should be giving good news.”
Perhaps it is inevitable then that many of us find ourselves, as I did, grief-stricken in an ethical wilderness.
I ask Hilary Bowman-Smart, a researcher in bioethics at the University of South Australia who has spent years thinking about the extremely thorny ethical questions surrounding prenatal testing, about what we want from prenatal tests versus what they actually tell us. I know that I blithely expected reassurance at my 12-week ultrasound, and when I didn’t get that, I felt shocked, even though I knew that many pregnancies are complicated. Prenatal testing has been a source of bioethical dilemma since the very beginning, Bowman-Smart says. The tests have introduced a sense that pregnancy is not confirmed until you've got the “all clear.” “The issue is there are so many things we can test for now that many people will not be getting the ‘all clear’ they might be expecting,” she adds.
The expansion of the available prenatal screenings and genetic testing options has been rapid in recent years, though amnio and ultrasound imaging have been used widely for decades now. Meanwhile, supportive guidance for the pregnant people who are navigating an increasingly complex testing landscape has not kept pace with the volume of information that prenatal tests now offer.
“Genetic testing options have expanded so much, and there’s a big push to get them out to the masses, oftentimes driven by the corporations that are producing these tests,” says Katie Stoll, a genetic counselor and the executive director of the Genetic Support Foundation. While some of the tests can give relatively clear information — for example, a high probability that your baby will be born with Down syndrome — many just indicate the potential for complications without offering much direction. Genetic counselors like Stoll are going to be in higher and higher demand, as these tests and their results become more complex and confusing for laypeople to glean meaning from.
That is, if there is meaning to be gleaned, which is not always the case. As with the results of the chromosomal microarray that I had, many of the possible results would have given us information without a known meaning behind it. Yes, your child has an extra chromosome, but no, we don’t know what that means.
“People are being asked to make really big, life-changing decisions based on information that is not as certain as it's being framed as — either by the way the labs are reporting it or by the way their providers are translating it,” Stoll says. Life in post-Roe America is yet another complicating factor. I live in Oregon, where there is no gestational limit on abortion, and my OB assured me at the outset that she could terminate up to 24 weeks, which gave me a sense that I could wait to learn more before making a decision. However, if I had lived in a state with more restrictive abortion access, I would not have had time to undergo the many diagnostic tests that ultimately did give us an all clear. Instead, I would have had to make a life-changing decision based on information that I knew was uncertain.
While I am grateful I had the time to complete the process without abortion restriction, the entire agonizing experience left me blindsided for months. A bioethical concept known as “routinization” may be at the heart of what nags at me about my prenatal testing experience. Just as it sounds, “routinization” in health care refers to the process by which something — like an incredibly detailed genetic screening — becomes, for better or worse, routine. Some bioethicists believe routinization can erode a patient’s ability to give informed consent. In the world of prenatal tests like the CVS or the even more common noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) blood draw, it’s almost impossible for most patients to truly understand the complexity and uncertainty of the results with which they may be presented. “At a certain point, it can be like ‘Do you have a couple of months and a science degree?’” says Bowman-Smart.
I can’t help but see a connection between the grief that my prenatal testing experience imposed on my pregnancy and the PPD that descended when my daughter was born. And I will always be sad I wasn’t all the way present for her first months on Earth.
And it’s not just the patients who may be confused by ever-more complex prenatal tests. Many obstetricians have limited — if any — specialized training in genetics. It’s not that they know nothing about the prenatal tests they order, but even given abundant time, they may not know enough to truly explain the implications of a comprehensive prenatal genetic screening to the average patient.
Perhaps it is inevitable then that many of us — likely a growing number — find ourselves, as I did, grief-stricken in an ethical wilderness.
Prenatal genetic screenings are a gold mine of bioethical conundrums, Stoll tells me. My experience is a perfect example of what she — and many people who work on ethics in health care — call the “gradual trap.” It goes something like this: Many of us become pregnant and hop on a train of to-dos, as laid out by our OB. In the 15 minutes allotted to us in our OB’s office, we absorb what we can, and dutifully sign up for the next round of tests and check-ins, thinking simply: “This is what I am supposed to do, so I am going to do it.”
A pregnant person checks boxes until they encounter — as I did — a box that cannot be checked. A flag is raised, and suddenly — in an instant — they are knee-deep in an ethical sh*tstorm they didn’t even know existed and were not prepared for. There is an unfolding of one test into another and suddenly, the results leave you with more questions than certainties. Gradually, trapped.
In the end, my prenatal testing experience did give me a sort of “certainty.” Or as close to it as it is possible to have. But at what cost?
My ultimately healthy pregnancy resulted in both a beautiful baby girl and a nasty bout of postpartum depression, one that lifted with the help of time and a good therapist. I can’t help but see a connection between the grief that my prenatal testing experience imposed on my pregnancy and the PPD that descended when my daughter was born. And I will always be sad I wasn’t all the way present for her first months on Earth.
“There are so many reasons why attachment can be interrupted. Anytime there’s fear during pregnancy, delivery, or immediately postpartum,” says Felicity Colangelo, a counselor who specializes in perinatal care, when I ask her if my prenatal grief could be connected to the postpartum depression I experienced. It’s a normal survival response, she tells me, to disregard the fetus that’s growing in an effort to protect ourselves from grief. I wish I had called my grief by name when it came into my pregnancy. The ease with which Colangelo explains it all reminds me how powerful the right help at the right moment could have been. If I had named and processed my grief when it was happening to me, could I have parted with it before she was born?
Even in an ideal prenatal testing framework, one in which I truly understood what I was getting into, I was always going to find myself in a mess. But could it have been less traumatic? I believe so, yes. My experience with getting a complicated prenatal screening result is far from unique — this is happening to many, many pregnant people and as testing becomes more complex and routine, it is likely to happen even more often. It all feels messy, murky and confusing. And that, says Bowman-Smart, is because it is.
“I’m even less sure than when I started. Generally speaking, we shouldn’t be restricting access to tests. I don’t think that’s the answer,” says Bowman-Smart. “At the end of the day, the answer to so many ethical issues in health care is, fundamentally, resources. Whether it’s more counseling, more education, more professionals, more time — all of that is resources, and all of that is money. You can craft perfect guidelines, but if doctors don’t have enough time, what’s the point? We need to help people make decisions that they’ve reflected on and that they feel are right for them. We can only do that with adequate resources.”
I know that it would have helped me immensely if someone had said “This is very hard; here’s a good perinatal psychologist with a spot for you on their schedule.” I know how impossible it sounds that mental-health support like that would ever become as routine as the tests I underwent. And yet, we deserve it. My daughter deserved a mother who had processed the grief and trauma that had nothing at all — it turned out — to do with her. I wish I had demanded it. I wish I had been informed enough to know that I’d need it.
Anyone who has spent some time getting physical between the sheets knows sex isn’t the cleanest activity. Between the saliva, arousal sweat, and cum, a post-coitous towel down is basically a requirement. But as messy as it may be, people rarely complain about the fluid that accompanies a quality shag. That is, until it’s leaking from your breasts. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you’ve had a baby, are expecting, or simply have boobs, there is a chance your breasts will leak during sex.
“Breasts are machines and serve one primary purpose — to produce milk,” says OB-GYN Dr. Idries Abdur-Rahman. Abdur-Rahman says oxytocin is to blame for them leaking, because it’s responsible for a lot of things that happen in the human body, especially during pregnancy. So if you find your breasts are a bit leaky while you’re romping around with your partner, don’t panic. There’s nothing to worry about — it’s just what happens when the oxytocin hormone gets involved. And don’t get embarrassed either. It’s a totally normal thing that happens with the human body, and shouldn’t be treated as anything else. Here’s what to know about your leaky breasts during sex, and what it all means.
Leaky breasts when you’re pregnant
— Iconic/E+/Getty Images
Remember all that hormone talk? Let’s circle back to that. “Oxytocin is the primary hormone involved in breastfeeding, because it causes contractions in the muscle cells that surround the milk glands, forcing the release of milk,” Abdur-Rahman says. “Oxytocin is also called the love hormone because it is released in abundance during sex and orgasm, which stimulates closer bonding.”
But, that hormone also doesn’t know why it’s being released. So when it releases during sex, it can stimulate the release of breast milk or colostrum at the same time. Hence: leaky breasts during sex.
Leaky breasts when you’re not pregnant
What if you’re no longer pregnant and are no longer breastfeeding your baby? What would cause leakage then? “Women who are not pregnant can still experience leakage from the breasts. If they’ve breastfed in the past, they can still experience intermittent lactation even after weaning their baby,” Abdur-Rahman says. Even after weaning, it can take up to six months for your breasts to stop lactating completely.
When leaky breasts may be a health issue
While not common, leakage from the breasts can be indicative of a medical issue, says Abdur-Rahman, the most common of which is called a prolactinoma. It’s a benign tumor in your pituitary gland, which is the part of the brain where the hormone prolactin is produced. Leaking boobs in this instance would make sense, since prolactin is the hormone that stimulates the production of breast milk.
A tumor in the pituitary gland can cause women to produce breast milk whether or not they’re pregnant or postpartum. In addition to prolactinomas, certain tumors of the breast can cause nipple discharge, so be sure to get checked out if this is happening, Abdur-Rahman says. “Anytime a woman experiences leakage from the breasts not related to pregnancy or breastfeeding, it should be further evaluated,” he says.
Another condition you could be suffering from is galactorrhea, which often occurs when breast tissue becomes incredibly sensitive to prolactin, according to Mayo Clinic. Prolactin is the hormone responsible for producing breast milk, but can also be the result of the overstimulation of breasts during sex. Thanks a lot, boob play! Galactorrhea affects 20 to 25% of women in the United States, according to The American Academy of Family Physicians. Despite the frequency, doctors have yet to find a cure.
How to handle leaky boobs
“Unfortunately, the best way to address leakage from the breasts is time and reduced breast stimulation,” Abdur-Rahman says. So, sorry to anyone who really enjoys boob play as part of sex.
If you’re pregnant and actively breastfeeding, however, there’s nothing you can do to stop leakage during sex, Abdur-Rahman says. “I advise all of my patients to wear a bra with nursing pads or to just incorporate the leakage into foreplay and the act of intercourse — hey, breast milk can provide health benefits to adults as well.”
But after weaning, you should also minimize breast stimulation, as stimulation just leads to more milk production. “This means wearing a well-fitted bra, reducing touching of the breasts, and minimizing water stimulation of the breasts when showering,” Abdur-Rahman says.
Speaking of showering, another way you can try to stay clean from leaking breast milk when having sex is to have sex in the shower. Any bodily fluids will be way less noticeable that way. You can also try nursing or pumping before sex, or simply keeping a towel close by to wipe off.
